It's a Square World!

Towards the end of last week, there were distinct feelings of tidiness chez moi.  I'd written my (longer than usual) blog about great-aunt Mary Jane being the link between the generations and incorporated into it my latest discoveries.  There were a dozen or so characters that I then had to properly absorb into my - perhaps overly-complex - data records and beyond that my desk seemed to be just about clear.

How could I dare to think such a thing?  I do realise that, in my little world, a clear desk is tantamount to blasphemy but I dream sometimes about being able to sit down and look at some of the books on my shelves without being prompted by the need to research some obscure detail of meaning, source or location.

I suppose it's true to say that this week's feeling of overload began two or three weeks ago, when two totally independent events occurred.  Firstly, in order to support my humble and by no means extravagant lifestyle, I had decided to sell some of my investments, a move that I knew would necessitate the deletion of several lines from the spreadsheets that I use to monitor these things.  And secondly, I responded to an appeal for administrative help from a political organisation with a purple, green and white emblem (Let the reader understand, for the avoidance of any doubt, that I've not slipped back a century and joined the Women's Social & Political Union!).

Now, these three tasks have one thing in common - and here I have to confess the geometric inaccuracy of my title - Excel, where the shape is (usually, at any rate) the rectangle and not the square.  As many will be aware, I love spreadsheets; more than once I've said that I think in spreadsheets.  Much of my home life for the last twenty years has been spent looking at a computer screen and, for a large part of that, at a spreadsheet ... or several.  I dread to think what life would be like if they became illegal or suddenly stopped working!

Over the years I've gained considerable experience in making use of the remarkable capabilities of Excel, although I'm regularly reminded of the vastness of that power of which I have no knowledge at all.  But, as with anything powerful, be it electronic or mechanical, if it's used wrongly it can prove very damaging.  Take, for example, the removal of those investments I'd sold.  What should have been the work of an hour or so, given the way a dozen or so spreadsheets are linked together, actually absorbed the whole of Tuesday!  And all because of the fundamental, but much repeated, misuse of one character in a formula.

The work I'm doing for 'not-the-WSPU' is totally spreadsheet based, too.  It involves combining data from many sources into one new 'product'.  However, some of the sources are not identically aligned with the others, so much shuffling and subsidiary transfer of information is involved, all of which takes time and care if it is to give the right solution.  The completion of one phase of this work took up another day and a half of my week.

Then back to the domestic life.  At the start of the present lock-down (that pesky virus gets everywhere!) I discovered that involving a third party in my weekly food shopping gets complicated.  It made me realise just how much of that function depended on my own mental processes.  Enter Excel!  During those early weeks I devised an application to convert a weekly stock-take of my food cupboards into a shopping list.  This worked well, and I'm in the process of extending that so I can incorporate the delay between obtaining an online-shopping delivery slot and the delivery of that order.  Again is revealed the need for logical thinking - not always present at the outset of a project - and constant refinement, but I know it will save time and mental energy once it is set up.

And now, thanks to last week's post here, I've got some new information to explore and incorporate into my family tree ... an Excel-user's work is never done!