Tag: work-life balance

Conferences

It’s a perfect storm of upcoming events.

  • One of my talks was accepted for the SCaLE conference (first week of March in Pasadena). This one is the easiest – I can reuse my September talk, I just need to refresh my memory regarding the examples, and as usual, I need to advertise it on social media
  • I was invited to give a short talk at the Chicago DevOps Day on March 27. They chose my security talk, but I need to create a “Lighting version” of it, which will be extremely challenging
  • I am (maybe) invited to a financial conference in Chicago on March 27, I will talk with them on Monday and hopefully figure out whether I am doing it or not.
  • I am invited to do a podcast on Data Bene. I am talking with them on Tuesday, and we will decide on a date.
  • My security talk was accepted for PG Day Chicago. The last time I gave it was a year ago, and many things have changed since then, so I need to prepare a new version of it
  • On top of that, I need to address all aspects of the conference itself (a list too long to put here) and even a longer list for DevDay, which will precede it.
  • None of my talks for PgCon.dev were accepted, but the Community Summit proposal to which I was last-minute invited was, and now we have a lot of work ahead!

  • And this has been all along with work and other aspects of life!

More Pictures Of Valo Coworking

I posted tons of pictures in October when I worked in Valo for the first time, here are more.

On Friday, I was in a room in a different wing, and it turned out that there are more coworking spaces which I didn’t see before:

A view from the first-floor coworking space into the cafe. I love that you can sit anywhere, and there are electric plugs everywhere!
On my short walk
In the gym
Breakfast:)

Work-Life Balance

The coworking space I use in Helsinki does not expect anyone to stay later than 6PM. Although the contract says that we can use the space if nobody else needs it, in reality, the cleaners usually start kicking you out closer to 6 PM. Last Friday, however, there was something new!

I went for a short walk outside, about a quarter to four, because it was the first day I could see some sun, and I wanted to catch it before the sunset. The next meeting was not until 4-30 PM. When I returned, I couldn’t open the door to my room, although my magic button was working on all the other doors. In panic, I rushed to reception, and they said: oh, that’s because you already worked for eight hours today! How much time do you need?

I told them that I had my things in the room, and I needed at least another hour, or better two, because I work for an American firm, so they gave me a separate one-time pass 🙂

When I told this story to my co-workers at the zoom meeting, they had a good laugh and said that our firm should introduce similar policies!

Back To Work (In Helsinki)

Resuming my work at Valo coworking space didn’t go smoothly. The app kept saying there were no rooms with extra displays available, and even a room without an extra display was not available until 9 a.m. I made a reservation, but the room number didn’t show up in the morning, so I decided to go to Valo and figure out everything while I was onsite.

I arrived five minutes before 7 AM, and nobody at reception could tell me why the rooms with displays were unavailable. I knew I couldn’t officially claim my room until nine, but I also knew it should have been assigned by that moment. The next thing I realized was that since the room was not assigned, my magic button did not work for anything, so I couldn’t go to the gym or close the locker. The morning reception shift came, but they still couldn’t tell me what was going on “until Jarkko comes.” I knew from the last time that Jarkko could fix anything in the system, but he is not a morning person, so I couldn’t expect him to be around at 7:15.

Suddenly, a room with an extra display popped up as available on the app, and I grabbed it, but nobody at reception could help me to cancel the previous reservation: “You need to wait for Jarkko!” But at least I had a room, and my button started to work, so I hurried up to drop my things, change, and go to the gym.

One more change since last time was that the breakfast price went up; however, it remained the same for the tenants, so I could still enjoy “all-you-can-eat” for 10 euros. Also, it turned out that they had several conferences going on, so many rooms were converted back to hotel rooms, and all the staff was busy servicing the conferences.

On my third trip upstairs, I finally found Jarkko at his desk, and everything started magically working: my canceled reservation was credited back to my account, I was able to book the rooms with an extra monitor for the remainder of the week (“Try now, I added five rooms!”)

I remembered how to make the magic button work on the elevators and realized I could pour cappuccino into a ceramic cup and take it back to my room. I found a fruit bowl in the cafeteria and grabbed a couple of pieces for later. Life is beautiful again 🙂

***

I managed to finish my training slidesyesterday, and I even did it relatively early in the day. I realized that I needed less than 210 slides because I will have a break in the middle and a quiz at the end. I need to come up with the quiz, and read through the whole thing one more time to make sure there are no stupid typos.

Also (how typical of me!) I realized that I double-scheduled myself for Tuesday and Wednesday (even more for Wednesday), but I must go with that since I made promises. The extra promise I made was for one more pizza-making at the ODS, and since, after almost a year of turbulence, things are finally working there, I am prioritizing these visits.

This week is, in some sense, experimental because I am trying not to stay late and not to rush but still do most of the things I want to.

My mom is still sorting all the presents she received. I showed her all the text messages I received from her party attendees and forwarded to her a lovely email from my two-floors-below neighbor, who admired my mom’s life accomplishments. I think, two days later, she appreciates the party even more 🙂

Mom’s Birthday

My mom turned 90 today. We are giving her a “semi-surprise party” tomorrow, and we have already had enough of disasters: Vlad couldn’t come because the earlier snowstorm in DC pushed the training he had to conduct to the weekend; both Anna and I had a work crisis (and Igor was super busy, too). We had to move to another venue two days before the party. Anna forgot the frame for our collective present at home; all the printing is done not at the last minute but one after the last, and so on.

After disassembling my Christmas tree, I realized I needed new boxes for ornaments. I ordered them, and they arrived, but I didn’t have time even to unpack them until today, so i was repacking ornaments when Anna’s family arrived.

BTW the boxes are great, and I feel like I always feel when I replace something old with a newer model – why didn’t I do it earlier?! It’s so much better!

How The New Year Started

Obviously, it’s a new year – a new crisis at work, but in addition, I realized about a week ago that I need to rework the training I am doing in Prague at the end of January. When I submitted this training proposal, I knew “I had it,” but what I didn’t realize was that :

  • It has been two years since the last time I ran this training, and all examples are from the book’s first edition and from the year 2020
  • I need to apply different template/different formatting
  • I have almost three times more material than the training time, so I needed to decide what to keep!

And… that all takes time! And it’s about 220 slides!

TIME Magazine: Questions To Ask Yourself

One more New Year’s article from Time Magazine. I agree with pretty much everything it says. People often don’t believe me when I say I do only those things I want to do, but that’s the driver of my life. When I decide that I “need” to do something, it always means that I “want” to do this to achieve something :). I understand that there is a fine line, but that’s how I think about it, and that’s the most important/ I never think that someone or something “makes” me to do certain things – it’s only me who decides.

I asked myself most of the questions which are listed in this article during the quiet time of the past two weeks, and there are some changes I want to make – because I want some things to change:)

The full text is below.

Continue reading “TIME Magazine: Questions To Ask Yourself” →

Life Is Happening

Once again, a million things at the same time!

One hand is doing work, another hand is testing the website for PGDay Chicago, another hand is making sure we have all things we need for Prairie Postgres, another hand is packing presents. Some other hands are submitting Amazon Fresh orders for the remaining cookie ingredients and booking three different hotels for three different trips.

Presents for Secret Santa, presents for the Night Ministry, Amazon returns, returning boots which turned out to be too tight even though the size is right. Work. Going to Chriskindlmarket, buying roasted nuts and chocolate. Finding time for meetings with friends and out-ouf town peers. Boxes for cookies. Christmas bubble mailers. Tissue paper. Work. Going to the show. Finding the right presents for half of the family who are still without presents. New Christmas tree stand.

Work. PGDay Chicago new Volunteer form. Checking the dates on the form. FInding cost allocations to close the support ticket. Schedule an email to my mom for 10-30 PM saying we are going home from the show.

And it’s actually time to go, just need to refresh my makeup!

And Things Being Done

Slowly and surely (knock on wood), things are moving forward. At least at that moment, I am not paralyzed with fear that I am behind on all my promises – just about one-third of them 🙂

Work:  pushing a couple of big projects forward and finalizing documentation (the hardest part).

Conference: moving. I wish I would know how much longer it will take until all formalities are finalized and how much longer it will be until the website is up, but at least things are not stalled.

PUG: had the last meetup of 2024, and the emergency speaker replacement worked great

NFP: problems are getting resolved at a speed that makes me nervous: when everything goes so smoothly, I am afraid that “I didn’t notice something”

I am catching up with all of the Christmas planning: cookies/supplies/addresses/cookie boxes/cards/ordered a tree delivery and a tree removal/about half of the presents is purchased.

The Thanksgiving food is all purchased (unless I forgot something, as usual!)