Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing between the necessary upheaval that occurs as part of adjustment and the kind of misery symptomatic of a situation better overall avoided.

It can be a fine distinction, but it’s the difference between making a fruitless effort that clearly lacks any benefit (like sticking by your decision to work for someone who throws gold plated pens at your head over writing a resignation letter made from crayons, shredded cast contracts and swatches of his Humvee's leather interior) or suffering a trial by fire in order to prosper (moving to London).

These days, I’ve been forced into making these distinctions quite a lot, and they cover a wide variety of areas ranging from professional development right down to niggling little issues like whether or not to leave the house. But if the British have done one thing right in their culture of fried foods and friendly repression, it was introducing the concept of being (or not being) bothered.

If you’re ever in a position whereby you need to make a decision and it seems like an impossible decision to make, try asking yourself the following:

Am I bothered?

If the answer is no, then start clearing your social calendar and get out the glue and scissors – it’s as easy as that!

Well, most things are as easy as that. Sometimes you need to compromise for the good of your health, your family and your security in general, in which case I guess you’re slightly bothered.

Something I find slightly bothering (semantic 180!) though, is the way in which people here will go out of their way to be polite, and the ways in which I’m going out of my own way to do the same, even though the polite thing to do would be to keep ourselves in check and say something to those who can’t do the same.

For instance, everyone is afraid to tell the sales guy to quit pounding his desk with his fists to make a point. They’ll hold meetings about it and bounce emails back and forth and mutter under their breath – everything except just tell the guy to stop. On several occasions I’ve stopped myself from saying something because I realise that it may be inappropriate to do so. But I’m not sure.

The other day at tennis, a group of boys was monopolising one of only four available courts, despite the growing queue of people who wanted a go. Maybe the slack child labour laws of yore have softened current perspectives on youth (or maybe it’s their guns) but in Canada, if a kid is fucking around on a court with a tennis case over his hand in place of an actual racket, that kid is called on it and swiftly dealt with. Here, it took someone nearly an hour to make a delicate inquiry into the nature of their plans to wrap it up.

The kids did leave shortly after this weak admonition but I felt vaguely dissatisfied with the lack of authority and rectitude with which this effect was achieved.

Though I AM experiencing a fair bit of premenstrual tension and so am holding off on making any decisions - big, small, scissors-requiring or otherwise.

And that’s all the time we have for today. Stay tuned?