Tag: work-life balance

“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 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

Late Night…

I’ve been very good this year about sleeping my six hours and going to bed by 10-30, no matter what:). It was not the case only when I had too much work. And yes, today is one of these days.

In EDB, almost all I am doing is new to me. I could never imagine there were so many things I didn’t know about Postgres :). To be fair, I just never needed to know them! So what happens often is that although I am full-time on a project, I spend half of the time learning things I need to know to complete this assignment, and then half of my work hours are non-billable. 

I know it will be better, but at the moment, I am still new to EDB 🙂

I mentioned the visa thing… Boris decided he wanted to use the last opportunity to enter the US on the visa, which is about to expire, and so he came yesterday. It was a very sudden decision. I didn’t mind; actually, I felt very loved when he said he was coming :). It’s just for a few days, and we both have work, but it still feels incredibly good. 

About New Year Resolutions

Speaking about my New Year resolutions, I am very determined to put them into action and have already made multiple changes to my daily activities. For one week, I did what I hadn’t done for a while – recorded all my activities through the day and what I spent time on, including things I do in parallel, like exercising and listening to an audiobook.

Another thing I am trying to be consistent with is going to bed before 11 PM, preferably at 10:30 PM. I am up around 4-30 AM regardless of the day of the week, and I know that although for a while, five and a half hours was enough sleep for me, now it is six hours. I didn’t sleep enough in December, and it negatively affected everything in my life. There are still only a few days when I go to bed at 10:30, but at least it’s always before 11.

And yet another thing I am trying to be more aware of is the time I spend on social media. Funny story – most people think they should do less of it, while I know I need to do more :). There was not enough of my professional presence at the end of 2021. I am allocating enough time to do meaningful things on LinkedIn and my professional blog. Also, I started using Twitter because it is professionally required. I am still struggling to do it in a meaningful way :).

Also, I am working really hard on not abanding relationships I have with many people, in real life and virtually. It’s easy to say, “I have no time for this,” but it goes both ways: people need me, and I need them. I am trying to reach out to those from whom I didn’t hear for a while because I understand that sometimes they also feel uneasy to contact me because they think it was “too long” and “I am busy.” So far, it proved working 🙂