After I returned from my October trip, it took me a while to catch up with life, mainly because I didn’t have much weekend time. I had a complete meltdown on Friday because I was so tired of putting things together and catching up on things that one trivial problem felt like a world crisis.
Since then, things have improved. 🙂 I was able to reschedule my January trip, write some documentation for my work project, resolve all major issues with the conference, and, as an extra bonus, receive the IRS tax-exempt letter for a new NFP I am setting up. There are still a couple of things with this NFP that are waiting for a resolution, so I do not want to talk much about them right now, but things are looking positive.
Forteen open tickets, actively working on four of them, all being more than one week long projects
Collaborate with people visiting from our Austin office
Mom:
Introducing a new caregiver
Scheduling somebody present for all days when there will be any medical worker present
Making sure all medical workers have Anna’s phone
Making sure Anna has all caregivers phones
Making sure Mom has an updates schedule on her whiteboard
Postgres business
October meetup: food, drinks, setting things up
Posting about October meetup, sending the video for processing
Scheduing November meetup: verifying the training center availability, submitting the service ticket, asking the speaker for talk description, actual scheduling
Created a new NFP
Applied for EIN
About a half of the tax-exempt application package is ready
ACM
Had a call about possible ways to collaborate
Sent a follow-up email to the ACM Chiago board
The Night Ministry
Scheduled one dinner at the shelter
Talked to several people about other ways to be involved
Other volunteering
Howard-Evanston community board meeting
Other
Doing my nails before departure
Packing (a total disaster this time)
Joffrey a night before departure
I was asked to review a book of my good friend, and I couldn’t say no!
This week feels like the Apple mental health survey(‘Have you ever felt that the difficulties are piling up so high that you can’t overcome them?”). I spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to schedule and reschedule things, and something pops up each time I squeeze things in. The worst part is that the work projects are moving at a slower speed than I would like them to move, which means I am leaving a lot of unfinished work right before going to a conference. I invested tons of effort to finish one of these “long-distance runners” last night, and it ended up being two and a half hours instead of twenty minutes, and not because of me. I am happy that I can put a checkmark and close the ticket, but I planned to finish packing last night, and I had no time for that, and now I am unsure when to finish except for right before the departure :).
Another “check” – I finally introduced another caregiver to mom. The positives about her are that she lives very close and is way more flexible. Mom at least didn’t dislike her and agreed to go for a walk with her a couple of times when I am away.
Also, I can’t believe it has been just a couple days since I was at the beach – it was heavily raining for the past two days, and yesterday it was sunny, but almost freezing in the morning. The good side is that I am more mentally prepared for Helsinki :).
I have too many projects at work that are “in progress,” and it’s extremely tiring. Despite the multiple thanks I receive every workday, I feel like I am not doing my best, not making enough progress, and overall doing too much of the “women’s work.” I do not mind doing it occasionally, but for a while now, it’s like “nothing but.” In addition, there are two community issues that really bother me, and I do not see any positive resolution in the near future. Strangely enough, I feel simultaneously too much invested in each of them and not doing enough for each of them.
Also, today, I took my mom for her third CT scan. The neurologist suggested doing it in the same hospital where he will see her for a follow-up, and he even mentioned it could be done on the same day. In reality, I was unable to schedule both appointments on the same day, so we had a CT scan today, and the doctor is scheduled for Friday. The hospital is located very inconveniently from where we live, and today I had to take Uber during the rush hour, and it was a living hell. The drive took an hour. Then we waited there for more than an hour. Then the drive back was extremely bumpy, and I was late for the time when I needed to do some production work. I chose today because I hoped to be home by 6-30PM, but I was there more than an hour later and tired and hungry.
Ultimately, I finished all my work, and both migrations went almost smoothly :), and I am not even staying late. I am just very tired.
Today, I was in the office for the whole day for the first time since last Thursday. The workday was a living hell: I had multiple open issues, and I had to act like a customer support chat, replying to multiple people simultaneously. Plus, scheduling a couple of mom’s follow-ups, a CT scan, etc. Working on multiple issues was the worst, though.
Still, it’s a first step toward returning to normal. I stayed at work a little bit late, but then I went straight home and talked to my mom only over the phone. And I actually browsed the internet for the first time in several days. I am not 100% sure what I did, but I didn’t have to go/do/watch, and for the first time in a week, I started to think about what I would be doing after work.
I have several posts that have been in drafts since my trip two weeks ago, so maybe I will finish them over the weekend.
The last three days were a non-stop sequence of events! I had an almost disastrous flight to London, then a very good conference in London, and another great day there, and now I am in Amsterdam, ready to give another talk tomorrow. I have a little bit of details on Instagram, and I hope I will fill in the blanks here in a couple of days!
I figured out that until the season is over, I should try to incorporate the early morning swimming into my schedule at least twice a week, and Monday was a very convenient day to try. I was out of the house as planned. It was cloudy, but there shouldn’t have been any problem with that. However, Just a couple of minutes after I started walking, I heard the thunder. There was not a drop of rain, but I thought it still didn’t sound like a good idea and returned home.
I took a shower, got dressed, and thought if wearing shorts to the office was a good idea (and decided against it). At the very last moment, I decided to take an umbrella with me, just in case.
When I was in the courtyard, some drops of rain fell, and five minutes later, it started raining for real. In two more minutes, it was a legit Chicago rain, and it made absolutely no difference whether I had an umbrella or not! I didn’t take my sandals off right away, and in a minute, it made no difference either – I walked in the water to my ankle level. By the time I reached the train station, the only dry piece of clothing I had was my underwater. When I got on a train, I didn’t even think I should sit down. A passenger in front of me was making space, and I told him: I am all wet! He said it was not a problem, so I sat down, trying to maintain the distance.
I pulled my reading glasses out of a wet backpack pocket, only to realize there was not a single piece of dry clothes on me or in my backpack to clean them. And then, I heard the sounds of raindrops on the car window, and it sounded like they were made of iron (and no, it was not hail!).
When I came to the office, I realized I had made a mistake not trying to dry myself up at the train station bathroom: we do not have dryers! Fortunately, I had a change of gym clothes in my drawer, so throughout the day, I changed different pieces of my clothes to activewear pieces and hung the wet pieces on my chair to dry them up. I also put some paper inside my sandals and changed them often before finally letting them air dry.
I thought that I still had time at least to dip myself into the lake after work (although I had a number of other things to do!) But when I came to the beach, there were high waves, and the red flag was up, and the lifeguards were on duty!
I still sat there on the beach, and I even walked into the water to meet the waves by the shore, and got myself as wet as it was possible! I am proud of myself that I didn’t get upset about things not turning us as planned:)
I barely saw my friends this week! On Tuesday, I hosted a Chicago PUG meetup, which meant a thirteen-hour workday. On Wednesday, we went to the Grant Park concert, but it was with only two of them and today, I have a Howard/Evanston Community Board meeting (and I had to stop to see my mom between my work and this meeting!). Everything is important, and I knew that week was going to be like that, but still…
My friends are leaving tomorrow, and I have a feeling that we didn’t have time to do at least a half of the things I wanted to do with them!
I took two more days off to spend time with my friends and to show them around. While I was off, I occasionally looked at work Slack and saw that work was accumulating and that several things required my attention. Still, I decided not to work and not to interfere until I was back.
As a result, today, I came to the office at 7 AM and left at 5:20 PM, and the only breaks I had were for breakfast and lunch in the cafeteria. One of these days when your butt hurts from sitting! And there were still more things to do.
And I believe I didn’t mention that my talk was accepted for PG Day UK! Actually, one talk was accepted, and another is on the reserve list, which means that I need to prepare both! I am excited and nervous :). And I do no know where I can find time for that!
Next week, I am hosting Chicago PUG, and I already have over fifty RSVPs, so it might be yet another eight RSVPs meetup, and once again, I am excited and scared. Life is good, but one life is definitely not enough!
Since there was almost no word from me this week, one can imagine that my life was pretty intense. And it was, indeed. It was rather bad for the previous two weeks as well, and this week, things at work continued to be crazy.
Tuesday was especially challenging because, in addition to work, I presented at an online conference. The talk was pre-recorded, but I needed to be there for Q&A, and I also made an effort to listen to other speakers. After work, I had a meetup with Chicago Open Source Data Infrastructure, and the RSVP list was over eighty people, so I had been panicking since the night before.
Also, I am leaving on vacation on Sunday, which is good, but the number of things to be done before I leave is unimaginable! Wish me luck!
Hettie's Reflections 