On Friday, I Shake It Off

Well, that was a pair of days.  Work is very chaotic and high volume at this point and it is taking a toll.  The last pair of evenings I did get some time to relax and unwind, but as of this morning it wasn't enough. I had a sleepless night with an interruption that made me very cranky.  When my alarm woke me this morning I had to hit the snooze button and get some more sleep.  It helped, but not a lot.

Additionally, I've had some entertaining interruptions the last two days layered on top of the work load.  My friend Tyrone had his new motorcycle stolen from in front of his apartment three days ago (on Wednesday).  Fortunately the police recovered it a few blocks away - because the thieves who stole it crashed it and was trying to fix it on the side of the road. 

As they were trying to fix it, they broke into a car on the side of the street to see if they could get some tools.  The owners of the car heard the commotion and called the police.  The thieves got away, but not before the daughter of the homeowner shot some video of them.  Now, most likely, they won't be caught - but the odds are good the police will be able to pull a case together if they can identify the suspects.

So, I've given Tyrone a ride home from work the last two days since he is without transportation.  I'll probably pick him up again today, but next week he's going to have figure out another solution.  It's about a two hour trip to pick him up and take him home and then make it back to my home and that is a big chunk of the day.  My plan today is to browbeat into spending some money and renting a car.

I often joke with people that MY life is pretty straightforward and drama free.  What stress and drama I have tends to come from the stress and drama in the people around me spilling over into my world. I'm a pretty resilient person and I see my friends sometimes struggle with rolling with the punches of life.

Here is the way I look at it in a nutshell.  Life is a rough and tumble game. You're going to get knocked down. You're going to get battered.  You're going to pick up some bruises and scars along the way.  The trick is to understand that it's not personal. It's just life.  Shake it off and get back into the game.

So, with that little pep talk for myself, today I am going to shake it up and get back in the game.

Simon and Garfunkel - The Boxer

A Spot of Tea

Chaos Tea would be a good name for a band.

It is a little after 7 o'clock in the evening here in California. The workday was as chaotic as I expected. I had a solid block of meetings from 8:00 AM until 1:30 PM. That is always brutal on a Monday because everyone tries to hit the deck running and email are flying all over.

I made it through the day and tomorrow's calendar is fairly clear, so I've blocked out some time for what I called Project 125. It's the number of backlogged email I want to try and get through.

I wrapped work around 5:00 PM then popped out for a bite to eat at a local dinner. It was tasty and quite which is exactly what I was looking for. After dinner I circled back home, restocked my tea box, and made myself a nice cup of Harrowgate of London Orange & Lemon tea to savor as the sun sets on a beautiful evening.

My mind is kind of exhausted from all the mental gymnastics of the day so my energy is running a bit low. Savoring a cup of tea has restorative powers, even more so when it's coupled with the poetry of Mary Oliver (which I always get confused with the music of Jane Olivor).

So, with a cup of good tea and a good book of poetry I wish you, dear reader, all of the good things in life - and tomorrow is another day!

Strange Days

These have been strange days.

If I had to sum it up in a nutshell - over the last year or so I've lost a lot of focus. Between the work overload and assorted bits of chaos in my personal life I became cluttered. I've been working this year to regain some of the clarity I've lost. My motivation has been low. When all it seems you're trying to do is move sand dunes you tend to get tired of shoveling sand.

This weekend was pretty good, though I moved through it under the shadow of work. The weather in this part of California was stunningly beautiful and a welcome relief from the long wet winter. It was nice just wandering around in the sun.

I met up with Tyrone at the Hickory Pit, then swung over to visit Bob for a while. It was a nice visit, all things considered. Brandy swung by my place during the day and dropped of several servings of chicken tortilla soup from her restaurant. After that I ran a few errands and then met Rick for lunch down at an Asian Fusion place. I had a miso glazed piece of sea bass that was truly outstanding.

From there I swung home and spent a lazy few hours watching a movie (Killing Me Softly) and then The Simpsons. My inner clock is still off due to the switch to daylight savings time today.

I'm not looking forward to work tomorrow because the chaos level is going to be pretty high. But, it will be a good day otherwise and I'll get a chance to work on my detachment from expectations and cognitive focus on attaining key steps in a wide variety of projects.

It's weird because I know all kinds of tricks and techniques for controlling workflow, detaching from expectations, and attaining clarity - I'm just struggling to implement them.

On that note I'm going to call it a night and curl up with a book to read myself to sleep.


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So, This Is Tuesday

I thought I would start the morning writing an entry here as I work to get back into the habit of writing on a daily basis.  My work meeting schedule is pretty light today so I'm hoping for a productive day, all in all.

I had a good Sunday - breakfast at Denny's and then stopped to visit with Bob and Kai for a while. They were both doing well.  After that I circled home and spent a fairly lazy afternoon doing next to nothing.

Monday was typical work chaos. I didn't really accomplish anything, but I did manage to go to a couple of meetings, listen in on a couple of teleconference and keep the email flood down to a small rush.  Monday evening I spent watching the latest episode of "Fear the Walking Dead" and reading articles on Flipboard, then a call with TR, and finally curling up in bed to read "Central Station", a new SciFi novel I've been working my way through. 

I got a good night sleep and woke up this morning with a head stuffed from allergies.  I am going to try and hammer my way through the email backlog (which is sitting at about 40 or so) and work some on the conversion reports I'm overdue on.  The main thing I want to say at the end of the day is that I was able to get my arms firmly around the projects I've got rolling.

We've got a pretty powerful weakness in our approach to work.  Basically, at a very high level, a project has certain key steps.  Discovery, Requirements, Coding, Systems Test, User Test, Deployment. 

Our main customer can not seem to get the requirements portion down and so more often than not we go into coding with our customers still working on figuring out exactly what it is they want to do.  Previously our upper management did a bad job of getting requirements locked down.  We're still struggling in that area - because of the internal politics of corporations, we just can't get to requirements lock.  The new management is doing a better job, but there is still a lot of way to go there.

Chaos, Ascending

So, there we are at work, lined up for a go live in about two weeks on a fairly major project.  The check boxes are being checked off, the final pieces of the puzzle are being moved into place - and - as I expected, at the last possible minute there is a hard curve ball flying in from the pitchers mound.  In order to coordinate with another group who has a project hitting the same technical space our management decides to advance the project a week. Suddenly, the available time to get everything lined up disappears.  We have just a little under a week to get all the pieces into place.  Fortunately, it is possible.  Difficult, but possible. The plane, on final approach, starts to shake from turbulence and there is a strong and unexpected crosswind...and I, I...

Feel exuberant.  I saw it coming.  Not this particular bit of madness but something of this nature so I held a bit in reserve.  I made sure that our top speed was being measured with my hand on the reins so that when this pony needed that extra bit of get up and go, it was there. I let go of the reins and barring an unforeseen accident we will cross the finish line with all things in good order.  Still, I do get tired of the madness and the stress associated with the sudden change has made folks, well, a bit testy.

Our functional project manager, who is otherwise doing a good job, is bouncing off the walls due to his own stress levels.  This is his first major project for the Evil Corporation so I am sure he wants to do well and that has got him spinning in all kinds of circles.  Our trusty project engineer, whom I had my own clashes with earlier in this project, is feeling pinned against the wall. The functional project manager had the same conversation I had with him - about who is in charge. That there simply just reflects the eternal battle against bureaucracy.  He is a good guy, he is just a little too deep into the bureaucracy.

The next seven days or so are going to be highly chaotic as we try to slide across the finish line. I am going to try and stay tight, stay focused, and keep a good sense of humor. It is always a bit of a struggle, since the stress will be flowing freely in all directions.  Fortunately, I am confident that we are ready to go, even if we are going into Chaos, Ascending.

A Little Bit Bare

It was a full out run through the day here at the office, trying to play some catch up for the time I lost to the forces of chaos a little earlier in the week.  I was actually kind of successful, managing to knock ten items off the task list, so that was a good feeling.  There was also a nice break in the day, in the middle, when we stopped for a baby shower for one of the analysts which was a good and simple celebration of our humanity.

I think I am going to stop for a park walk in the way home tonight, if the weather permits.  It has been raining, very lightly, off and on this week, so it is muggy outside right now.  When I went out a little earlier, the humidity was on the borderline of making it an uncomfortable day.  If it is uncomfortable, then I might have to seek another option when I leave the office.  I may stop and shoot an hour or so of practice pool, just to unwind a bit before heading home. I suppose that I could also do a quick walk through the market to pick up some incidental odds and ends.  I haven’t been doing very much cooking for the last couple of weeks, so I noticed last night that my cupboard was getting a little bit bare.

Work, Chaos, Fire and Aliens

First, let me start this entry by giving a bit of a pop culture shout out to a very good show currently running on Syfy - Defiance.  I am enjoying it a lot and it seems to get better and better with each successive episode, which is exactly what you want to see in a television show.  It helps that it also features one of my favorite actors - the beautiful and talented Jamie Murray.

So, this week has been pretty busy at work, mostly dealing with our post go-live issues, the corporate Game of Thrones, and, today - a fire in our building. It was a small fire, caused by an electrical short, in another part of the building. The result was a morning of chaos since we were all barred from the building.  Fortunately, no one was hurt and we were cleared to get back into the building later in the day.

We've got one person out on vacation and another out sick, so our small group is effectively at half staff, meaning in addition to being chaotic, the day was also, well, chaotic.  About midway through the day I had a splitting headache, equal parts dehydration and stress.  I drank 24 ounces of water, took a Tylenol, and napped for thirty minutes.  The triple attack on the headache eased it onto a downward trajectory, which was nice.

I was going to cook something, but at the last minute decided to run out and get a cheese burger, simple and pleasurable. Given the assorted chaos of the day I am really feeling the desire to have a very simple and quiet night.

An Indifferent Lunch

I just wrapped up a rather indifferent lunch at the cafeteria near my office. I am making it a point to linger over a tall glass of water and enjoy the moment.

The day is chaotic at work, but no more chaos than expected. UAT continues at a maddening pace. The project consists of three distinct part and I've got the only part that went on time. Now (and my fingers are crossed) it looks like the whole project might get delayed due to the inability of the other two parts of the project to make it out of system test.

I'd like to see the delay as it would allow all of us to spend more time in test and more time polishing out work. I think the overall project would benefit from it. Actually, it would have benefited from a realistic setting of expectations and schedule way back in the beginning. Ah, if wishes were horses...
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Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

It was a crazy cascade of a day.  I basically worked from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM.  I did knock a few things off the list, but a large portion of the day was spent going from one meeting to another.  Chaos carefully layered on top of chaos, with a few flying monkey's thrown in for the entertainment value.  But, even with all that, it was mostly a positive. There was one meeting during the day that was frustrating, largely because their were so many people on the meeting, and I wasn't even really sure what most of them were doing there.

I swung home for a simple dinner at about 3:00 PM, but pretty much immediately popped back online to keep working, through I did watch an episode of Ghost Hunters while I was working. I finally broke it off and called it an evening, then spent a wonderful hour on the phone with T.R.. Now, with the windows open and the fans blowing, I am settled in to unwind before calling it a night.  I reckon I'll watch about an hour or so of TV, then curl up with "Cities of the Plain" and keep reading.  I did realize the other day where the title of the novel comes from:

"And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow..."  Genesis 19:29.

Given that this is a Cormac McCarthy book, I can imagine it is going to turn out to be a bit more than a distant allusion. I read an amusing quote from him the other day on Good Reads:

"I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else." Cormac McCarthy

There are definitely times when I have to agree with that.

A Spring Evening

Tuesday was pure chaos.

Wednesday was simple and productive.

There is a lesson about balance wrapped in there somewhere.

It's Wednesday evening now and I am settling in, watching Once Upon A Time on the DVR and planning a quiet evening reading and, hopefully, a conversation with T.R.. 

I like the simplicity of it all.

Having spent the first quarter of the year attempting to be more deliberate and observing the flow of things, one of the things I was coming to understand was that I needed to make the choices that would slim my life down - make it more simple, make it more slender. 

That is not always an easy thing to do.

But, it is worth the effort.

Chaotic Savoring

The end of the working day is approaching. It's been a bit of an exercise in controlled chaos today. I had crafted the plan for the day around a pair of morning meetings. But, one was cancelled and the other moved into the afternoon, so I ended up doing the things I had planned to do in the afternoon in the morning and the things I had planned to do in the afternoon in the morning.

Then, I got pulled into a pair of unexpected meetings, in between which I weaved the fabric of lunch (excellent enchilada suizas at Mexicali Grill), made it back for my last meeting, and then managed to weave something productive out of the remaining fabric of the day.

Now, I am on the long slide into the evening. It has been an absolutely beautiful early fall day here. In the complexity of the weave of the day, I managed to spend some time sitting outside the building, on a bench, between two maple trees watching a solitary honey bee weave its way in and out of late blooming flowers.

I am looking forward to the evening. I am looking forward to getting home, opening the patio doors wide, grilling a rib-eye steak, tossing together a simple salad, and savoring what remains of this day. I guess, in the sum of it, as the afternoon winds down, it was a day for savoring. Chaotic savoring, but savoring none the less.