Tag: work-life balance

Life Gets On The Way

I can’t catch up with life. I returned a ticket for today’s Baroque concert so that I could catch up on my emails, personal obligations, and to finally finish the example for my bitemporal presentation (there was a bug which I could not figure out).

And life kept getting on my way! Yes, I found a bug, and I found a couple of emails which I forgot to answer, but it’s so little in comparison with what I need to do! And in the middle of me doing all this work, I heard a bang on my door, and my neighbor stormed in with a whole bunch of technical problems (her phone is not working, her facebook is hacked, and more). I do not think I fixed any of that, but at least she walked out being less upset and with some Austrian chocolates.

Oh, and guess what – I found my Bavarian witch, and she’s hanging out on my balcony!

Accomplishments

I am very tired at the moment, but I am overjoyed because in the past two days, I have had two big accomplishments..

First, I finally finished the build of a new bitemporal example for my October presentations. This is going to be my new bitemporal talk, and it’s for the first time that I built a full-size example (the data is forked from postgres_air and not published yet.

Boris helped me a lot with data cleansing, but I also invested many-many hours in this process. And when it was finally built, everything else was easy to add. I still need to work on the actual presentation, but now I have all material!

Second, I made a major improvement in my first project at the new job. I was able to optimize it to the maximum, and now I am confident that the performance will be stable for future growth. Friends, I know that all of this does not make any sense to most of you, but trust me, I have a reason to be happy!

“You Have Everything In Your Life!”

That’s what I was told yesterday: you have everything in your life! I know that I am incredibly fortunate, that everything is going my way, and yea, from any imaginable angle, I am lucky. But I always add: now, the only thing I need for my life to be complete is a victory in Ukraine.

I spent three hours on the phone and other means of communication tonight, completely unplanned. Trying to explain to some people that there is a war in the world, listening to others saying that I do not understand their sufferings. Do you know what I am wondering? None of my Ukrainian friends ever told me I do not understand their suffering!

Also, mom had a dental emergency (she does not have a dentist since we moved). Igor was a hero and found a place where they took her Medicaid and had an opening today. On top of that, and all the calls, and a working session with a coauthor of one of my PG Conf EU talks, it’s a miracle I was able to do actual work.

What I am trying to say to myself is that I have no right to be unhappy, and I have no right to be upset. All problems which I have in my life are solvable. And I have enough energy to help others in solving their problems. I will try to stick to it 🙂

My New Life

I didn’t blog after returning from NYC, as if nothing was happening. But in reality, I have an amazing time. Every day at work is both learning and sharing my knowledge and finding more ways to collaborate with people and contribute.

People here are incredibly smart. I also worked with smart people in EDB, but the difference is that people are more collaborative, more open, and more diverse in terms of skill sets here. There is a multitude of problems I can work on, so I am never idle.

I like that I am in the office, but at the same time, the flexibility is endless. Some people work from home all the time, some come to the office several times a week, and some are in the office every day. Everybody feels comfortable taking a couple of hours here and there to address personal matters, and the rest of the team works around that.

I also like that life in the city is returning to what it used to be before the pandemic. I didn’t believe it when many people said employees would be back in the office after Labor Day, but it looks like it. I hope that with more traffic in the city, more places will reopen.

I was at the CSO on Tuesday, then on Wednesday, Igor and I went to a sushi place and then to Siskel Center to celebrate his birthday. Today, there was a Fall party at work, which was also fun.
My new company agreed to host Chicago PUG, and the first meetup will happen on October 18. I am happy, nervous, and excited!

The only thing which does not exactly go as planned is that I have absolutely no time to work on my next conference presentations, so I will have to have a working weekend to accomplish his task, or at least to get it closer to accomplishment:)

Things Are Going My Way

I am so glad that everything with mom got resolved, at least for now, and I can leave for my European conferences! As it usually happens, too many little things had to be done/fixed/completed, plus the new job and new responsibilities… 

I cooked and frozen as much of the vegetables as I could and gave the rest to my neighbor, Igor, and mom (local grapes are to die for! I never tasted anything like that!) 

I found a nail salon very close to mom’s apartment and as an extra bonus – with Russian-speaking owners, so now she can do her nails without having to go to the Loop with me. I picked up my new bike (turquoise blue with disc brakes)

I baked a plum cake because I didn’t want to throw away the remaining plums.

I am almost packed.

I worry about the state of my two October talks, especially about my new bitemporal talk, and I am not quite sure how to find time to bring it to the point where I want it to be.

I am not tired. I am happy with my work, and there are so many interesting things to do that I want to start everything at once. 

And I still found time to go to the beach today; most likely, the last time this season (unless I find some time tomorrow!)

Work-Work Balance

Once again, I am trying to maintain a “work-work balance” as professional activities of different kinds continue to multiply. 

The things which are on my radar in addition to work are

  • getting ready for all of September conferences: only half is done
  • one completely new presentation for October – not even started
  • another presentation for October together with my co-worker: it was started only because both of us pushed each other, but there is still a lot to do (about 25% done)
  • interviews for each of the conferences (only one left, but it’s a huge one)
  • a user reported a bug in pg_bitemporal
  • we just merged a new iteration of NORM, but Boris wants to rework several things, and I agree
  • all things related to PG Day Chicago
  • to build an example for my not-yet-started presentation in October, I need to create tons of new things in postgres_air
  • educational video, which got stalled back in May

You know what I want to say? If not for The Lake, I won’t survive! The daily beach breaks for the past two weeks (along with very beach weather) helped me to relax and recharge, and some days I felt like I was on summer break (although other days, I would be so tired that I would drop dead at 9:30 PM).

As I did before, I am taking some days off to do some work 🙂

Approaching The End Of Summer

The days are busy but in a good way. I liked a lot how productively we spent time with Boris, especially the last three days when he was here when we went kayaking, to a concert, and to the Art Institute, and found a new gelato place, and did the bike shopping, and went for a long bike ride just before it started raining.

And now, when he left, I am still doing something interesting every day, and my work days are full. Even though I know that I am missing a lot of summer events, I do not feel like I am “missing out.” I feel like I am living this summer to the fullest.

Today I managed to go on an hour-long bike ride in the morning, even though the sun was rising later these days, and then worked with my current customer with no unproductive interruptions and went to the beach for my lunch break. And after work, I had a friend over – we didn’t see each other in person since before the pandemic.

I have something planned for almost every day until the end of the month, and it feels very good 🙂

I Said I Was Not Fast Enough…

I guess, not anymore since now I have three customers at the same time, and sort of covering all three full time. Do not ask :).

I am running around the house to fit in some minor chores and take 15-min lunch breaks. No lunch breaks at the beach for some time 🙂

I Want To Skip These Days

I had a really exciting day on Saturday, I took tons of pictures, and I wanted to share all about it. But after the shooting, I can’t make myself write.

On Sunday, I made a huge effort to deliver the first segments of my educational video. I successfully submitted them, but now I am waiting for feedback, and I do not want to proceed with more segments until I receive it.

Today was way more productive. Not only a very good day at work, but I finally submitted one of the four talk proposals which I promised to submit. Also, I released some new code to NORM_GEN. Although I have an accepted talk for Swiss PG Day, I need to make sure I have enough of this new material to present.

And the weather was outstanding – just another gift from Nature.

How Was The Week

There has been a lot of work at my actual work in recent days – one of these weeks when you can’t lift your but off the chair. In addition, I started to resume some activities which got off my radar during the previous week. I remembered that I didn’t finish several professional-non-work-related things and put them back into my plans. I went to see the “Hadestown” in the CIBC Theater – great production, but I could not get fully engaged being in the state of mind I was. I am much better today, though. 

On Thursday, I went to the Shelter: the volunteers are finally back in March, so it was my second time after another pandemic break, and I sincerely hope it was the last one! We did a “make your own pizza” activity. The crusts were pre-baked, so the youth just had to assemble the toppings. Only about half of the residents participated, but this is a pretty good turnout! One more time, I am developing new relationships, and I hope that not everybody will disappear when I am back in April. 

And it was a great week at work! I can’t stop smiling, recalling some conversations with my co-workers; these conversations helped me get back to reality and the problems I was trying to solve three weeks ago. This week, the client I had was a true dream client, a pleasure to work with, so I am finishing the week more energized than tired. 

I hope to keep the same level of energy all weekend long :). It will not be easy having the upcoming cold spell, but I will do my best. 

Tulips from my neighbor