Due to the stress levels this year my ability to focus has taken a big hit.  I see it in a variety of places and at a variety of times.

I usually sleep well, but when I wake, I wake to a racing mind. It's not racing toward any destination. It's just racing.  Often it's filled with throwaway thoughts. It takes me a while to get it under control. Sometimes it will settle of its own accord. Other times I will have to deliberately pull it in with meditation.

When I start work there are times when just the act of starting work is very difficult.  There are other times when I am able to start okay.  Sometimes I can get fairly deeply into the day before I get derailed.

It doesn't take much to derail me.  Something unexpected.  Something trivial.  Something irritating.  Whatever focus and motivation I had just goes away and I find myself caught in a mind-loop that won't let go.  The monkey has his hand in the jar and is not going to let go, even though he is trapped.

I can see it in the evening, at the end of the day, when I just want to stare blankly at the wall.  Once I stop for the day that is it, I'm done.  Consequently I am losing a good section of time where I am most personally productive - the evenings.

Another place I can see it is writing.  I have been having a hard time writing with any sort of attention to detail. It is far to easy to let myself be distracted and then just...do nothing.

I know that part of it is the mind/body healing from the high levels of stress.  I know that eventually I will make it through and return to a time where focus comes more naturally, more easily.  In the interim though it is irritating me.

So, let me just finish this up and post it.  Then we will see if I can focus back and pull myself out of  my focus-free mind.  Let go monkey! Let go!

Let's Start The Day

I've got about 15 minutes before I'm going to officially start the work day. It's going to be a challenging morning. I've got a pair of meetings that have the potential to turn confrontational, but I suspect they'll go smooth enough, especially since I'm the only one that knows what is going on. In short I should be able to deflect or defer any serious criticism.

I had a sleepless night. I went to bed about 9:30 PM and then tossed and turned for a while before I dropped off. I woke about 3:00 AM, then tossed and turned for a while before I got up. I've deliberately tried to keep the morning low key and simple in anticipation of the stress that's going to unfold over the course of the next couple of hours.

First thing I'm going to do when I start the working day is spend an hour and a half methodically going the the elements of a process I have to brief on at 8:00 AM. The briefing is scheduled for an hour but I'm not sure it's going to take that long.

Immediately on the heels of that meeting I have what we call the "tools" meeting, where I've got to brief on two overdue projects that have been hampered by constant fire fighting. That should go okay because basically we're almost there and I have a small window left to close on the items.

So, that's the day that lies ahead of me. Wish me luck!

Adventures of a Human Being

Quite frankly, today I am exhausted, frustrated and overwhelmed, mainly in the working world.  Back in the late January and early February time frame we had two senior level project managers quit on short notice (both because of the exhausting and frustrating work load).  As a result of that my organization absorbed their work load with the promise of additional resources to replace the lost people.  Well, fast forward to the end of April and there are still no replacement personnel yet.  So, essentially two of us absorbed the work of two other people with no reduction in our already existing workloads.

Then, when you layer into it that, as an overall organization (the project teams, technical teams, and customer teams) we seem to be stuck in permanent fire-fighting mode, it's just exhausting.  You can hear the exhaustion and frustration in people's voices on teleconferences and you can see it in the tone of a variety of communications. 

Now, I've been through times like this before and I know that the trick to getting through them is to just keep your head down and keep swimming.  But, lately it has been difficult swimming. I need to roll over on my back and float for a while. I've got a couple of days of vacation coming up around the 10th, so that should provide some relief. But today, it's exhaustion and frustration.  I'm going to meet with my manager a bit later in the day and vent.  I know she's trying to get those extra resources (she's as exhausted and frustrated as everyone else is) but I guess I just need to vent.

So, let me pivot away from the work environment.  (It's always amusing to me how just writing down your frustrations. Those three paragraphs have helped release some of the stress, just that small period of time floating on my back.)

I've really got nothing to complain about in my personal life.  It has been going well enough. The heavy workload has squeezed some of my personal life out, but I am still getting some good personal enjoyment time - some good reading, some good movies, some good conversations and socialization. I'm even getting ample time to write. So, in that aspect, my personal life as a human being is going pretty good, it's just the work frustration that has a pretty firm grip on me.

Today is Friday however, so I have the weekend ahead of me and I am looking forward to that.  I am going to drive up to Fremont on Saturday and have lunch with my friend Ty, who I haven't seen in a couple of months.  I am looking forward to that.  I also want to spend some time minimizing (i.e. throwing crap away) in my apartment.  Strange, but there always seems to be "more stuff". It's like I have a teleporter in the closet that mysteriously makes stuff appear.

Monday Mania

I was primed to let go of a full-scale vent about midday today. Everything in the universe was under my skin. I actually took a break from work and sat down and started writing. Furiously writing. They weren't exactly pleasant things.

Writing them down and then releasing them helped. Finally breaking through a logjam at work helped. A bit of lunch helped. My stress was banging off the walls and every little thing was waiting to let go.

The currents are still running deep inside of me and I suspect I'm going to fight the same battle again tomorrow, though hopefully not as bad.

Tonight though I'm having a small snack and planning on curling up for a while before sleep with Neil Gaiman's retelling of Norse Mythology. I hate to say it, but so far I'm underwhelmed. I'm hoping it gets better. So far I'd have to rate it as a mediocre retelling. But I'm going to figuratively cross my fingers and keep reading.

Let's see - every day has a high point and, though I had to dig a bit to find it, there were definitely a few great moments. Two things popped immediately to my mind. I had a great conversation with TR tonight, which always helps to soothe my soul.

Then, at sometime mid-morning the mockingbird made his triumphant return. He was sitting in the fruit tree across the street running through his repertoire of bird songs and other urban sounds, which includes his imitation of a car alarm. Last year they nested around the corner. I'm thinking it would be pretty cool if they nested just across the street.

I also had a very pleasant hot bath a short while ago, which was very soothing and sandalwood scented. Then, writing this has helped soothe my soul a little, so as days go, though it had its horrible moments of stress, it was, at the end, a good day. And that's all I ask for at the end of the day. Here's hoping for sweet sleep and pleasant dreams.


Sent from my iPhone

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

Another Brick In The Wall

I'm still working on getting back into the habit of writing a little something here every day.  It's been busy at work, very busy, and we're in what amounts to be a very insane cycle and I'm worried about whether or not two of my projects are going to get configured in time.  One's my fault and the other one is just, I think, a bit too much work for the configuration specialist with all that is going on.  Otherwise though, my work mood is good and I'm actually going to pivot back over to my work computer and put another couple of bricks in the wall.

I went out to Holder's for dinner tonight - corned beef hash, two eggs over easy, hash browns and Swedish pancakes.  Very simple, very tasty.  Tonight, I think I am going to settle in and watch a movie and try to get to sleep early because I've got a meeting at the crack of dawn.  I am also going to make a call to the folks to check up on them.  My sister told me today that my step-dad took a tumble but that he was not injured, so I thought it would be a good idea to check up on them.  I tried calling them earlier in the day but there was no answer - but that appears to be because I call them while they were out for lunch.

The Return

Well, when I set this aside for a while due to being incredibly busy in my personal and professional life I never imagined it would be a year plus before I came back.  Welcome back me!

Most of the craziness was in my professional life.  I had seven major projects coordinating the work between four different vendors and it pretty much ate all my free time.  By the time I reached the end of the day I was simply exhausted.  A whole ton of personal stuff got set aside and I am still just recovering from it, trying to work my way back to some resemblance of a rhythm or routine.

I am looking forward to getting back into the habit of writing here regularly!  Today has been a pretty quiet day.  I'm already a quarter into the new year and I have a much more reasonable four or five major projects, which is closer to my capacity (and still have a life).

I even managed to get out of town and go down to LA over the weekend for a sort of mini-vacation.

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.

Sliding Into The Evening

Okay, it was a much better day today.  All days start with the sleep of the night before and I got an excellent nights sleep.  I crawled into bed at 9:00 PM, read a few pages in the magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, then went out like a light.  I had a great dream about a naked woman wrapped in butterscotch sheets and slept clean through the night. I woke at about 4:30 AM (my normal time) after that solid seven and a half hours of sleep.  I was alert and vibrant.

The morning was spent with waffles and coffee, then a call with TR, then off to the office.  My Monkey Mind went half crazy on the drive in, so I focused on slowing the day down and doing one thing after another and keeping a running list of what I accomplished. 

That is one of the things I learned in stress management.  When you are in a time of feeling completely overwhelmed keep a running list of your accomplishments through the day. If, during the day or at the end of the day, you feel like you didn't accomplish anything or that you spun your wheels all day, you can simply look at the list and it will help you realize that you are doing fine - working hard and steady, moving forward, completing tasks and that it is the environment around you that is chaotic.

I worked ten steady hours. I got things done.  I moved toward goals.  There was minimal wasted time, minimal wasted effort.  The day was filled with productive work. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of chaos at work, but it is not my chaos - it is the chaos of the world around me.  One of the more interesting things I spent the time doing today was listening to a webcast from our vice presidents discussing what is going on and what their future plans are.  It was interesting and amusing and at times quite a contrast to what is actually happening on the ground level.

For example, one of the things they cited as an example was they wanted to do was start whittling back all the customization and make the processes simpler and more direct.  Uh, except that is exactly the opposite of what we actually did over the last year plus on the big project.  Where we made things more customized and more complex.  So, there is obviously a disconnect their somewhere.

But, I have to say, as I slide into the evening. All in all it was a good day on this side of the universe. Whoever you are and wherever you are I hope your day was the same.

Work Venting

Well, I am back to work a week and I'm very aware of how work effects my mood. I am actually really tempted to blame it on the lack of natural light.  I go into the office and it seems that inevitably two things happen.

First, I find motivation to be very hard.  I just can't get going.  I struggle and stumble and fight to be productive.  On a rare day I make headway, but most of the time each day is a struggle.  For whatever reason the weight of my office environment seems to be so oppressive it is smothering me. I am sitting here in my living room and instantly contrasting it to this space - which is bright, open, spacious, colorful. We are scheduled to move out of our current office area at the end of September. I hope we move into a space where we have access to a lot of natural light.  If we fail to get natural light, then it would be nice to land in a space that is at least new and bright.

Second, I struggle daily it seems to get my arms around what the actual expectations are of my position.  A large part of this struggle I lay at the feet of my incompetent upper management. Since my director is so engaged in micromanaging every aspect, we lose the incentive to seek self motivation.  Since we cannot make decisions, we are compelled into a passive mode where we wait for decisions to be made.

This huge level of uncertainty, of not knowing what is expected of me, either in subject matter or in substance, makes each day difficult.  One of the examples I was giving my boss during my one of one is - I get pressured to become an expert in something, only it seems that no sooner do I start to develop that expertise, then I am switched over to something else.  I don't seem to work on any one thing long enough to develop that level of expertise.  In my manager wants me to develop expertise in certain areas, then she has to give those areas to me and allow me the opportunity to become an expert in them.

Then, you can add into the layers of complexity there the fact that though I am willing to work hard, and I am willing to go the extra mile, I am not willing to allow the company to redefine the mile.  Several times it has been intimated that I need to work more hours - yet that is a zero sum game.  I increase my productivity by working more hours and get nothing in return. It's a loosing proposition.  So, I am willing to go the extra mile and work extra hours when needed, but I really am not willing to work the extra hours as a constant thing.

I know that, in general, the universe is not a personal thing - but I swear, sometimes it seems like my director was sent to be a vexation upon me.  It gets even more complex in that, though I have no problems fighting with management and struggling for what is right, my poor manager is caught ind between me and my incompetent director. 

We're still going through a big re-organization at work and so far it has all been hush-hush.  The higher levels of management (Vice Presidents) have been set, but the lower levels (who the various directors and managers report to) have not yet been set of announced.  I have my fingers crossed that we're going to get some sort of relief from the incompetent director during that whole process. (We've also got the dark horse of the corporate Game of Thrones running out there.)  I am honestly not sure how much longer I can put up with it.

Well, obviously, I've been back one week and I needed to get a work vent out - that is not a good sign.  On the plus side though, it does feel good to get that vent out there.  Thank you for being the people who saw that vent.

Authentic Sleeplessness

I slept fitfully last night.  It was, according to weather.com, the last day of our sweet little heat wave.  By the time I went to bed, about 9:30 P.M., it was still 80 degrees inside and outside.  I slept with all the windows wide open and both heavy duty fans running.  As the night progresses they slowly, gradually, pulled the temperature down. 

Of course, with it being the 4th of July, it was hardly a tranquil night outside, with a rather astounding and diverse array of fireworks rattling the neighborhood, ranging from tiny strings of lady fingers to some pretty massive explosives - large enough to rattle windows and set off car alarms.  They kept up the show until probably around 11:00 PM, when they fell silent.  In the distance you could hear the deep booms of the commercial grade fireworks at the variety of shows around the valley. Then, most likely due to the heat, I seemed to sleep in about two hour blocks through the night.  Two thought threads ran through my dreams and my waking moments during the night. 

First, I dreamed about work, but it wasn’t really work.  In the dream, I was trying to advance forward on some project and I was waiting on three photographs - the photographs had to be specific dimensions and compositions - and (this part actually relates to the real working world) - I could not adjust them myself, even through it would be a relatively simple thing.  Consequently, I was caught in a circle where I kept having to go back and request that it be done over and over.  Two of the photos were corrected relatively quickly, but the third one was very problematic and required many iterations of rework.

Second, I thought about and carried some of the weight of my friend Tony’s work troubles. Now, here is the simple truth - there is nothing I can do to influence the outcomes of his whole dramatic arc there at work.  All I can do is provide him with encouragement and support.  Which I cannot do in the middle of the night as I muddle through waves of fitful sleep.  But, aparently, it is pretty deeply engrained in my nature that I worry about things, including things I simple do not have the ability to influence.  Tony has been playing The Game of Thrones at work - and he stumbled - which means, well, as Cersei Lannister says “When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die.”  He is not going to die of course, except perhaps metaphorically.  He is, at least in the initial stages, not going to win though.  I carry it in the middle of the night because he is my dear friend and I wish him all the best.

So, yesterday, as I was moving through the day - and then into the evening and night and early hours of the morning I was thinking about what in means to be authentic, in the Buddhist sense.  Of course, religously speaking, I am not a Buddhist, I am a Catholic, but I do find many things in Buddhism to be of value and the whole concept of being authentic is one of them.  The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa has this to say about it:

“So maybe the point is to confront ourselves with the question: am I really a good person, a good human being? Because that is what characterizes being an authentic Buddhist.”

http://kagyuoffice.org/what-makes-an-authentic-buddhist/

To me, the whole concept of being an authentic anything hinges around first, being in the moment, and then second, being the things you value in that moment.  If you value compassion, then being compassionate is being authentic.  If you value generosity, then being generous is being authentic.  Every time you do not live you values, you take a step away from being authentic.  Everything you live your values, you take a step toward being authentic.  It is a pretty interesting concept, at least to me, and I am sure I will be thinking about it for a while at least.

The Slippery

I’ve got a fairly light schedule again today here at the office, so I am looking forward to a productive day.  I am still working my way through my backlog of smaller tasks and I am anticipating making some more headway today.  I am probably going to drop down off of IM and email so I can work undisturbed for periods of time. It’s hard to say what kind of mood I am in today.  I definitely had a moody weekend and that moodiness is lingering just under the surface. I’ll try not to succumb to it as I go through the day.

One of the interesting things I’ve observed in the first part of the year is, for a wide variety of reasons, I was holding on very tightly last year. This year has been more of an exercise in letting go, metaphorically. I’ve caught myself, a couple of times, walking down the hallway with my hands clenched tightly into fists, entirely subconsciously.  When I would do that, I would carefully release my hands, but I am not sure I’ve managed to get to the root cause of it.  Though, in part, it has been because I’ve been avoiding doing some hard inner work.

I need a day or a weekend pair of days to sit and stare at the wall, to do some meditation and self-examination. I can see where I want to be, but I cannot seem to move there.  I am encountering good old resistance.  In this case, it is not taking the form of direct resistance, but it is taking the form of slipperiness. (I am actually surprised slipperiness is a real word). I keep finding ways to slide away from the goal. I approach it and then just slip to the side.  It is kind of interesting to watch actually. It is like my psyche knows that if it were to throw up some direct resistance I could quickly overcome it, but as long as it dodges, slips aside, I am not quite at the point where I am willing to pursue it into the corners.  The monkey mind is pretty tricky.

Thursday Winds Down

Well, it was a tough day I work.  I had a rough morning as, yet again, requirements change according to whims at the last moment. Very frustrating and I am sure the frustration crept into my voice more than once.  I managed to make it through the day.  It is just damn hard to work up any enthusiasm when you're constantly trying to hit a moving target.

So, let's pull out of my work brain for a bit. It has been a pleasant enough evening, with the sound of rain ushering me through the last hours of the day. I had pizza for dinner (the first time since the food poisoning incident, though from a different pizza joint), then spent most of the evening either in conversation (nephew, step-dad) and watching three episodes of "Spartacus: War of the Damned", which brings me up to day on that particular series.

I think I am going to head into an early bed tonight, read myself to sleep with some more of "The Pattern Scars" and try to get a good solid night worth of sleep. I went to an optometrist appointment yesterday and I've got an internist appointment tomorrow - so I guess as I wove in and out of too much stress and exhaustion this week, it was a doctor week.

I am not sure what I am going to do tomorrow, but I actually have a whole list of things that need to be done - laundry, a serious round of household cleaning, maybe some purging, and half a dozen incidental errands that need to be done.  There actually should be enough stuff to keep me busy through the weekend.  I kept my work hours down to four 9 hour days this week, deliberately and with intention, so that I would get a chance to relax and try and catch up on my sleep.  It seems to have worked - though I am still battling stress at work, I do feel more rested.  I think a solid weekend of resting is going to help  me a lot.

Just Be Still

Let me just say, for the record - "Holy crap what a week."  Let's start at the beginning - I worked, uh, pretty constantly all week.  I put in a series of 15 hour work days driving hard toward the deadline.  I actually made the deadline - I made it in an all day and into the night marathon rapid prototyping session, which was exactly what we needed to make the goal.  Then, I collapsed.  The day after the deadline we discovered that - of the four major segments of the project - we were the only ones who actually made the deadline. (Lots of high fives in the conference room.)  For a brief period of time the decision was to let my team go live all by our bad selves and let the other parts of the project catch up, but cooler heads prevailed and they've stepped back to do a more general re-plan and release. We've got next week to close up our documentation and then we'll be pointed at another part of the project to help play catch up.  I was so happy to cross that major milestone that I am giddy - though there is plenty of work ahead, it just feels damn good to move something into configuration lock.  I have a lot of other thoughts, but I am in no condition to put them out there tonight.  For the most part they don't make any sense, even to me. So tonight, my brain is so fried I am not even watching TV because it is too stimulating and I plan to spend tomorrow, perhaps the entire day, and be still. That is all, just be still.

The Uncertain Places

I was nearing burn out, so I kept today short and to the point (short being relative, I worked about ten hours). I left work a little early tonight to go see H&R Block, then came home for a simple dinner of mushroom soup and a peanut butter and jelly on Paleo Bread sandwich. After supper, I was just settling in for the night, had just kicked off my shoes and I suddenly realized I had forgotten to run to the pharmacy and pick up my prescriptions.  So, the shoes went back on and out the door I went.

A fast errand later I found myself home, where I watched the latest episode of Castle, then turned the TV off to settle into a period of blissful silence before I head off to bed early, My work schedule tomorrow is fairly meeting light, so I plan on starting earlier and running as hard as I can through the day. I have a whole slew of stuff that I have to test and I am going to get settled in test my way through it.  The UAT covered a bit of ground today, which is not too bad.  I wish we had a dedicated test group, but if wishes were horses...

I've been reading a novel called "The Uncertain Places".  It was a good concept,but the execution was just not there.  The main character is inconsistent and there are often lesser characters that appear for no other reason then to show the author did her research.  I wondered if it was the authors first novel because the flow kind of goes "story...story...dump of research data...story...random but cool character...story...dump of research data".  Way more exposition then necessary to move the story along.  I wish I could recommend the book - but it is just to choppy and inconsistent for me to recommend. Go ahead and read it if you like, the overall concept is interesting - but be forewarned it is not particularly good.

Another Thirteen

Another thirteen hour day, with a serious mid-day battle with stress. We've entered what I am referring to as the imaginary UAT and while on a schedule meeting a variety of people kept making statements about UAT that I (as the person actually running the UAT) couldn't agree with - and so I wouldn't and came under a significant amount of pressure. So, after lunch and avoiding a few calls I managed to get things back on track.  Honestly, I cannot wait for this project to end. It is so stressful due to the incompetence and lack of process that have hounded it.  I might write more about it later, but tonight my plan is to go to bed, read a bit, and hopefully get a good night sleep.

Wish Me Luck

Today has been mostly a working day.  I slept in a bit, got up, sorted laundry, met Tony for breakfast, stopped at Fry's and picked up a new blue tooth (my Plantronics broke the other day), then came home, fired up the work laptop, and spent the the bulk of the day getting ready for the start of UAT tomorrow.  I am not quite as ready as I would like to be, but that is okay. I am as ready as I am going to be. Dinner was pizza at Patxi's, with an amusing over tipping incident - or at least amusing to me. Then, home again for the evening, a two mile walk through the neighborhood (body), futzing with my new blue tooth (which is charging right now), watching a bit of the Superbowl, and planning to do some more work email while I watch elementary, then early to bed and a quiet night reading.  Tomorrow is heavily loaded in the morning (five hours of meetings starting at 7:00 AM), and then a fairly clear afternoon. I am going to have plenty of opportunities for stress to get the best of me in the coming week, so I am going to try and enter it with the appropraite mindset and move as gracefully as I can through the week, trying my best not to let it get the best of me.  Wish me luck!

Seeking An Easy Evening

It is near the end of the day and I am thinking of it as a conflicted day.  The conflicted part arises because I was unable to get work out of my mind.  I dislike it when, no matter what I am doing, work is never far from my mind and never far from my imagination.  It is an unwarranted intrusion.

But, other than that particular conflict, it was a pretty nice day.  I slept later then usual, until about seven a.m.. I am sleeping late due to work, in my opinion.  The long hours have been taking it out of me and when I get a chance to sleep, I tend to sleep longer then usual.  I don't think I am sleeping deep enough, I think my mind is always spinning, trying to be overwhelmed with all the stuff going on. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I have to remind myself that it is the middle of the night and there is next to nothing I can do about work.  So much of what is going on in my current work world is completely out of my control.

Anyway, after waking, I showered, had a cup of coffee, and then met Tony for breakfast.  We actually had a plan for the day.  Tony is looking for a cheaper place to live - a tough challenge here in San Jose where the cost of living is rather high to start with.  After breakfast we drove up to Fremont to check out some lower cost apartments Tony had found online.  Since neither one of us is all that familiar with Fremont, it was a bit of an exploration.  I wasn't terribly impressed with what we saw, though I credit part of that to the fact that it was a gray and gloomy day. 

There was one apartment complex that I instantly like for the ambience. It was old, ratty, and run down - but it had character.  When it comes to apartments, character counts. The cost savings, to me, isn't that great - he'll add to his commute time and he may only make marginal savings.  Ultimately though, it is his call since he has to live there - and I definitely understand the urge to save money.

After a few hours of apartment scouting, we stopped in Union City and had lunch at Texas Roadhouse, then from there, drove down to the AMC theatres at Cupertino Square and saw the new Stallone movie (directed by a favorite of mine, the very talented Walter Hill).  It was entertaining and it was definitely a Walter Hill movie, which was kind of cool and unexpected.  There were a few false notes in casting, but other then that, it was a pretty entertaining bit of popcorn.

After Tony dropped me off I got in my car and drove up to a health food store in Mountain View to get some Paleo Bread (low carb or net zero carb bread) and a few other low carb treats - some cookies and some health bars.  With all the hours working I am spending too much time sitting and not watching my diet as closely as I should, consequently my blood sugar is creeping up. It is still in the excellent range, but it has been consistent ten to twenty percent higher that I like it. It is going to take a fair spot of discipline to pull it back in the very excellent range.

Then, back home, and I settled in for the evening and watched "Spartacus: War of the Damned" off the DVR.  A nice guilty pleasure that is.  After a simple dinner I took a short and brisk walk around the neighborhood, then slipped back inside to this moment, where I am sitting here writing in my blog.

My plan for the evening is, I think, a little correspondence. I am going to write to T.R., then to my sister and brother, and then, perhaps, watch another show off the DVR before curling up and reading.  I didn't work today, on purpose, because I figured the sixty one hours I worked last week was sufficient to earn me a day off.  I don't know if that was a mistake or not since I could never shake the work thoughts.  Tomorrow though, I am definitely going to have to feed the beast.  I've got what I am estimating is between six and eight hours of work that I want to have done prior to Monday.  Tonight though, I am going to continue just trying to relax and have an easy evening.

Three Reasons I'm Cranky

Today was mostly a wasted day.  Oh, it had some good moments, but they were few and far between. First, I woke up about 2:30 AM for an hour or so, thinking about work.  Then,  I had a series of four back to back meetings at work and they were each as contentious as the one before.  Of a particularly frustrating nature was the last meeting - I was attempting to have a meeting about the UAT testing, but one of the team members invited a person who had no business on an UAT meeting, and then spent the entire meeting with us trying to get through anything, but we couldn't because they spent the whole meeting trying to explain it to the person who shouldn't have even been there.  Totally frustrating.

Then I had a UPS incident - and this has actually happened to me before with UPS.  I wish, when you ordered things, the shippers let me decide which carrier to use, because my experience with UPS has not been good.  I'd ordered a jacket that was shipped via UPS, with an original scheduled date of the 28th.  It never made it. The UPS site said it would arrive today on 29th, so I was home all afternoon, waiting for the arrival.  It never showed - no knock on the door, no package delivered, nothing.  About six PM this evening I went online to check the status of the package - and it said it was delivered at 2:35 PM and left at the door.

Uh, not a chance.  I live in a small apartment and at 2:30 PM I was sitting in the spare bedroom/office specifically waiting for the arrival while writing on a work project.  Nothing was delivered.  So, who knows where the heck it was delivered too, but it certainly wasn't me.  I even took a walk through the apartment complex to see if it was accidentally sitting at someone else's door.  Nothing that I could see.  So, I suspect that the UPS driver probably dropped it at the wrong street address.  Which means, starting tomorrow, I have to go through the hassle of contacting the original shipper and having them file the claim with UPS.  Normally, it would be an irritant (and it is), but I have had this happen with UPS before - where they claimed to deliver something, but they never did - and it's not like I could have accidentally missed it - I was sitting at home specifically waiting for it.  Frustrating.  And what is going to frustrate me even more is, if the vendor ships a replacement - they're probably going to ship it by UPS again.  Okay, that was my UPS vent.  I personally have better service with the USPS and Federal Express.

Okay, so let me sum up the three parts of my cranky - UPS (grrrrr), Work (grrrrr), Thinking About Work When I Should Be Sleeping (grrrr).  I don't know what it is, but when it rains, it sure seems to pour in life.  All right, got that out of my system.

I am going to go back online hear and do a small spot of work (a pair of configuration requirements) and then call it an early night and maybe try relaxing into the evening with a little writing or a little reading, something to break the relatively stressful routine that I've found myself in.

Thirteen Hours

Thirteen hours today, two waves of frustration, both of which ebbed with sunlight, walking and zen.  It was a moderately productive day - too much time in meetings and, as usual, too many changes at the last possible minute. That seems to be par for this project, but now, as I slide into the scant hours of the evening that work is not intruding on, I am actually in a good mood.  Though it was a challenging day, I did accomplish some things and I ended the day strong.

Point one that frustrated me was, as usual, a last minute change to a set of requirements - and no real reason for the change that have been made at the last minute.  I didn't have a lot invested in it, so I will execute tomorrow.  Point two was a potential change in requirements that I did not agree too, so I protested fairly strongly.  We will see if anyone listens. I can implement, but I really think this particular set of requirements is a bad idea. Point three was a meeting about some upcoming testing and I got really frustrated because several of the people were not listening, they were simply talking over each other and not getting into the level of detail that we need to get into. All three are frustration points, but I am pretty zen today.

I will give credit to a nice sushi dinner and a meditative walk at about four in the afternoon. I worked from home all day, so that helped too.  In the office, I have no natural light (our work area is deep inside the building) and here at home I have nice big windows for the sun to shine through. It's a much nicer environment here.  When I find myself grasping at my job, I remind myself that there are many things that would be a nice change and one of them would be that our office space truly sucks. Almost any change would be a good change there.

So, tomorrow will be another day. And maybe another thirteen hours.