An early morning here in California. I went to sleep last night about 9:30 or so, after spending some time with T.R. and I fell straight into a deep sleep. I woke up this morning about 4:30 AM with no memories of dreaming, rested and refreshed. I laid there in the darkness for a while, contemplating the nature of the universe, and decided falling back asleep wasn't in the cards today. I got up, had Gort brew me a cup of coffee, made a bowl of cereal, and than settled in to ease my way into the day.
I mentioned in an earlier entry that I had gone up to the Los Altos Art & Wine festival and had a good time. As usual, I carried my camera with me. I posted five new pictures to my Flickr account. As I went through them I was amused that, of my favorite pictures from the day, none of them actually have anything to do with the festival. One of the pictures includes a couple sake bottles, but that was entirely incidental.
Here is the link: Los Altos Art and Wine 2011
I'm in final countdown to vacation of course. I have three days of work left and I am planning on going in a little early today, since I like to leave work as cleanly as possible when I start vacation. I already have one meeting planned while I am on vacation, but it is a pretty straightforward thing in support of a project I am a contributor on. It's a pretty top down driven program, so my contributions are limited. (The project team has been told what their result is going to be, so there really isn't any creativity or imagination there.)
The apartment complex here is going to install new lighting (ceiling lights with fans) in three rooms and new carpet on the 29th. So, on the 28th I've got to get all the stuff in the apartment (fortunately, there isn't a lot of it) moved off the carpet. Supposedly they can do the whole place in a single day, so it will be inconvenient but not to bad. I am looking forward to getting the new carpet. Between here and there, into the first couple of days of my vacation, I am going to do some more purging. I've got approximately six items of furniture and some more small stuff that I need to get rid of as I continue on my journey of minimalism. I parse out things I don't need or use and continually find, layered beneath them, more things that I don't need or use. It's been an interesting journey and I am curious where it is going to end up.
We're entering a period of high change at work, with many teams running in many directions looking at many projects, and changes in the process of how we actually operate as a larger entity. As with all change, the verdict is still out. There are things being done now that I do not like (my objection has primarily been with process, not results), as we seem to be transitioning to a very top down structure. Quite frankly, I am not sure it is going to work, but that may definitely be reflected in my own philosophy that an open and collaborative environment is far more effective and efficient. My boss came around the other day and scheduled a series of meetings for some workload redistribution and then asked us how we were feeling about it and I responded "ask the question again in ninety days". It's going to be a personal challenge for me to try and embrace changes I don't necessarily believe in, that I may in some cases actual think is movement in the wrong direct - but the thing I keep reminding myself is - everything changes.
To keep me focused, I've got one of my favorite little haiku displayed on my computer desktop at work. It is from Eric Lustbader's "The Golden Naginata".
We were dawn's dewdrops
Blasted from existence.
We were never stone.
I think it speaks eloquently to the transitory nature of the world, including the working world. The only constant is change. I think that as long as I keep reminding myself of that, I should be fine. I am currently in a place where I am well equipped to deal with the rising stress that comes with change. I will just approach in a focused and disciplined manner, with my sense of curiosity intact, using the variety of stress management techniques I had refreshed during my time in work stress counseling. Chief among those is this - give an honest days work, do the best you can, and don't become attached to the outcome.
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