Tag: work-life balance

How This Week Goes

Monday: Work + taking mom to the DHS

Tuesday: Work + hosting Chicago PostgreSQL User Group after work

Wednesday: Work + discussion on our book + recording a session for P99 conference + dinner with a co-worker visiting from Texas + three-and-a-half hours long show, not especially interesting, and a very cold venue, but it was a part of the subscription, and I was there with my neighbor, so no way out

Thursday: Work + volunteering in the youth shelter

Friday (projected): Work + dinner with the same co-worker.

And “work” this week is twice as intense as usual; not like I have it light any other week. But this week, we want to do as much as possible with my visiting co-worker, so we discuss things and work on documentation. Also, this week happens to be high on customer communications and explaining what I am doing :), and convincing them that I am not their enemy :).
And our dinners are also full of work discussions because we do not have enough time at work to discuss everything we want to discuss.

Small Things

Several small “fixes” in different parts of my life, nothing special, but feel nice.

  • Installed a new light fixture in the living room using the same electric company. That was the only one that I didn’t replace when I was replacing “everything.” The usual effect: OMG, how much better it feels now!
  • Renewed Siskel membership. I forgot to renew it almost a year ago, and they changed the system and everything, so I could not even renew online. I went there just before I got COVID, and now I have an online account and everything, and I can even put my tickets into my Apple wallet. Hurray! And I already started using this membership again!
  • Emailed OMD and told them I decided against participation this year. I told them I realized I did not have time, but the real reason was that I sat through the orientation and realized that nothing changed. All the issues I observed several years ago, the ones which prompted me to leave, are still there.
  • It looks like two other mentoring organizations that I applied for and was accepted to are going to do better and more meaningful jobs. I am giving it a try, and we’ll see.

It is going to be a very intense week. I was planning for Labor Day to be a fresh start, but the Universe decided differently. Well, I guess Rosh Hashanah is an even better start :).

When You Stay At Home…

There are not that many things happening in your life.

COVID updates: My mom got it light; I’d say she didn’t have any symptoms, or they were so mild we didn’t register them. However, both she and I are still positive, and while I would expect it with her, I am really annoyed that nothing changes with me. I feel 100% fine; I go biking long distances, and I am not getting tired through the workday. But I really have to have this negative test! There are things happening next week for which I absolutely need to be in the office, not to mention a lot of other activities that are on hold at the moment. I am trying really hard not to be depressed by that.

As it always happens these days, a bulk of my emotions are work-related, and as always, I can say exactly zero about what’s going on. I did a couple of cool things I had never done before, which brought me aesthetic pleasure. Also, I happily resolved one personal conflict at work in the best possible way. Two more are in progress :). OK, I should stop even trying to talk about work here – it’s not much I can tell!

There was a ginormous effort with the book, and now submitting all the chapters by October 2 looks like a possibility.

And the last thing I wanted to mention is my volunteering activities. After long hesitations, I decided against returning to OMD and to try another mentoring program. Actually, two of them :). I will tell more about these programs when I actually start them, but I think both are better in terms I will be able to do more good.

Meanwhile – it smells like fall, the sunrise is later in the day, and I can barely catch it when I bike in the morning:

More Updates

I tried to stop by my mom today, explaining here in advance that I am just stopping by for five minutes (she is on day three of isolation). I have no idea whether reinfection may or may not happen, and I have no desire to experiment. She previously asked for Russian Rye bread, which meant that I had to wait until today to be able to go to the actual store. I didn’t find any Russian Rye, but I found a German Rye and some marmalade. When I came to her, I realized that she didn’t get the concept of “for a couple of minutes” and wanted me to look at what was not working on her phone and at the blood pressure monitor, and change the printer cartridge, and whatever else.

I yelled at her that this could wait until she was out of isolation, and she started to ask whether she would need a mask if she decided to go for a walk tomorrow morning. And she asked me at least twenty times whether she could use a KN95 mask more than once…

Also, it’s close to impossible to make her track her symptoms, and I am going to stop now because my rants won’t change anything.

The good part of today: I biked to the Mill and back. And there are going to be a couple more warm days. And I finished Chapter 13 🙂

Weekend Plans

The long weekend has started, and I have a lot of plans for it! I am finally not three weeks behind on everything, and I want to make the most out of it.

In some sense, it feels like the beginning of the new year: one more time, I want to make an effort and be more assertive about which things are really important to me and make sure I have time for them. And not to let things drop.

At The End Of The Week

I do not think I have ever had a work week as challenging as this one since I joined my current company. There was a lot of everything.

Nothing bad, just the discussions, which I had been trying to facilitate for a long time, finally started to happen. Several people came to me with problems that I could solve and at the same time, teach them some good practices. Nobody dumped extra work on me – I took it over myself:).

The backlog of outside-work items kept growing at an alarming speed, and that’s what worried me the most – I hate to be non-responsive, and I knew that most of the responses would take from five to ten minutes, not more, but there were dozens of them.

On Thursday, i pulled all my willpower and said to myself that I needed to finish as much work as possible because I will have several hours on the train to visit Lena, and I could catch up on almost all of my non-work items then. My “work-life integration” didn’t work this week at all – on most days, I didn’t take time even to pull out my personal laptop.

Now, being on the train, I believe, it was a good decision – knowing that I am detached form work until Monday afternoon, allowed me to focus on other overdue non-personal things: the book, conference submissions, Postgres User Goup, PG Day Chicago, LinkedIn, and so on. And to drop a couple of paragraphs here 🙂

My Updates

We are leaving for Finland – finally for an actual vacation, which means, I am working like crazy to complete a couple of important projects before I leave. Otherwise, these projects won’t materialize at all. This leaves zero room for anything else during work hours, including book writing, professional blogs and other educational materials, PUG activities, and PG Day Chicago ongoing things, and I am not even mentioning my own conference submissions and life in general.

Nothing is packed for the trip; my emails remain unanswered for days and weeks, but I go for bike rides every morning and go to the beach at least three times a week. I guess, my priorities are clear!

Book Writing

I finally stopped procrastinating and started to work on the second edition of our optimization book. Before today, I struggled to update two paragraphs from the intro (and I am still unhappy with how they look, but I pushed myself to move forward with the promise to return to the intro later.

Only after I started I realized how much it bothered me that I was not moving! In my defense, all of mom’s immigration stuff which we dealt with this week, was more than enough to completely abandoned other activities. Hopefully, everything will be over tomorrow, and then I will write a complete report.

Another good thing about today was that I finally went to the beach in the evening and dipped myself into the lake, officially opening the swimming season. The water is cold! The way spring was this year, I think it will take a while for a lake to warm up. It’s still such a joy to be by the body of water, that I can’t complain!

Warm Weather Is Back, And Lots Of Work

I found one more biking opportunity – after the evening rush hour. Now, and for the next two months, there will be enough daylight to bike after 6 PM. Yesterday, I left the house at 6-15, and the traffic was much better than it is between 4 and 6, and probably even better than during lunchtime.

And today in the morning – the sunrise from the same place 🙂

I am almost sad that I have breakfast and lunch at work and do not have an opportunity to eat breakfast outside. The closest I can get to it – sit by the window at the cafeteria:

The weather is amazing, and the whole city seems to be outside. I took a stroll after lunch, and everywhere on the Riverwalk, there is people ]sitting, eating their lunches, and enjoying the weather.

And there are so many things I need and what to do that they hopelessly do not fit anywhere, and I do not even have time to write down my to-do lists :). So instead of blogging about what I didn’t do or do not have time to do, I should better tell what I’ve actually done!

And it was this beautiful morning bike ride, and an exceptionally productive day at work, and a walk along the river, and dinner at the ODS (only a partial success since most residents were somewhere outside :)).

My New To-Do List

  1. Work, wor,k and work
  2. Vlad’s wedding: menu for Family lunch, and all other details
  3. Chicago PUG meetup – less than ten days away, and I didn’t put any effort in organizing it
  4. Submit proposals for PG Conf NYC
  5. Performance book
  6. Next article for RedGate
  7. Plant the annuals
  8. Vegetable garden
  9. New fridge
  10. New oven
  11. Kitchen painting
  12. Windows washing
  13. Mom’s citizenship interview
  14. Mom’s occupational therapy
  15. … and live my life 🙂