Tag: work-life balance

This Week

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!

Not related – today’s breakfast at work:

Work And More Work

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!

Another Crazy Week

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!

It’s 11:30 (Almost)

Beach weather on Tuesday:

Crazy winds on Tuesday night,

Crazy work week, and “four in five” never goes well. Somehow, I am all packed for a trip, and ready for the official start of summer. Whether I will have time to sleep or now, I am still not 100% sure 🙂

TIME Magazine: How To Get A Real Rest

The funny story is that although the title of that article is the one I mentioned in this post header, the URL reads “how-to-rest-more-effectively,” which sounds like a joke in relation to what this article is about. It says that not everything has to be “effective” and that one should learn just to rest, period.

I am glad that Boris didn’t see this article because he keeps telling me that I should sometimes “do nothing.” To be fare, I “do nothing” when he is around more often than at other times, but then, of course, I have to compensate for that!

I reread this article several times. Fine, rest should be enjoyable. What if the thing I enjoy most is crossing the things off my list? What if I do not feel good if I haven’t done anything meaningful during the day? Would you agree with what this article says?

Continue reading “TIME Magazine: How To Get A Real Rest” →

After The Conference

It has been four days since the conference. After a complete relaxation on Saturday, I started to return back to reality, which included going through three hundred non-work emails and dozens of work requests.

A huge portion of my non-work emails was Postgres-related, conferences-related, or otherwise not-really-personal. I am still not through all of them, although I hope that I didn’t miss anything really urgent. Here is what I’ve done so far:

  • Posted the questions for PG Day Chicago feedback
  • Discussed “lessons learned” from the conference day with other organizers
  • Collected feedback from room hosts
  • Emailed several people with whom I talked at the conference and promised to email
  • Scheduled May meetup
  • Published a blog about PG Day Chicago
  • Checked all bills that have accumulated during the past two weeks
  • Paid everything that was due 🙂
  • Emailed the dates when I can volunteer at the Night Ministry
  • Decided on the dates when I can do several shows I want to attend in May and June
  • Figured out most of my May-June schedule
  • Ordered a new dishwasher

The things I still didn’t do and need to do in the next couple of days:

  • Schedule the rest of the conversations I’ve promised to schedule
  • Record a sample video for an online conference where I will present in June
  • Prepare the actual presentation for this conference
  • Submit proposals to three conferences which will be happening this fall and which I want to attend
  • Write two professional blog posts
  • Write a LinkedIn recommendation I’ve promised
  • Find time to meet with three more people with whom I want to meet

Plus, lots of biking (the sunrise is finally early enough!), lots of shows to see, and the full Chicago summer ahead!

4-day Work Week

I am absolutely sure that the work week has to be shorter than 40 hours. Whether that’s fewer hours in a day or fewer days in a week – I am not so sure. This TIME Magazine article says it’s not always as good as you may think…

Continue reading “4-day Work Week” →

How My Days Look Like

The things that I need to decide/figure out with the conference keep piling up on top of the work things, which are piling up on their own.

For the past two weeks, I get up at 4-30 and go to bed at 11-30 every day (plus/minus 15 minutes). I am genuinely happy that I am still able to produce something meaningful at work – I figured out a couple of non-trivial things in the course of the past two weeks, which makes me feel good in terms that I am not completely neglecting my work 🙂

I am going out way less than I usually do, but I still go out sometimes, and I am trying not to abandon my volunteering. Once again, it’s not easy, but I am doing my best.

One more time: meals at work are huge time savers. Since I also do not need to do dishes or brew my coffee, it’s at least 1.5 hours a day, and I know how to use them for more important things 🙂 I even stopped baking at home (the last time I baked something was for Easter), and I am planning to hold off baking until after the conference (help me God!)

No time to get into details, it’s just that life is very intense!

*** (the last one)

I said this twice on Friday: I never do what I “have to,” I always do what I want to do. The first time I said it was when Anna was planning to take the train to Chicago, and I realized I would need to go home first and then back to the Loop. A couple hours later, I repeated the same thing to my mom when she said that I was very busy and that I should skip some things, including coming to see her so often. That one was funny because when it happens that I do not stop by her for three days in a row, she says that she hasn’t seen me for such a long time! I told her the same thing: when I can’t, I don’t, but if I stop by, it means I can and I want.

Interestingly, that’s true. I keep repeating it, and I am surprised myself to realize how true it is. And just to prove my point, when on Friday I felt that I was really tired and could not work productively, I packed and left at 3 PM:)

When Nothing Happens

I can’t write about work most of the time, and, in general, most of my professional dramas do not make it to this blog. Yesterday I thought that I had a couple of extremely emotionally loaded days, but “there is nothing to write about.” I still want to find a way to share my emotional experiences, but for now, I can’t think of anything better than this picture of a fortune cookie that I got yesterday as a part of my lunch in the office (we had an external vendor):