Tag: work-life balance

Flying Back And How Did This Week Go

Flying back from Brussels was equally interesting. Since I had three separate reservations, I still had to fly back through Helsinki, but I also could not have a short connection in London because the next flight wouldn’t wait for me, and I didn’t want to lose one more day in transit. We took the last Sunday flight from Brussels, which arrived in Helsinki at 10:30 PM, which meant going to bed at midnight and getting up at 4 AM to get to the first flight to London.

It turned out that the border control in the Helsinki airport didn’t open till 6 AM, so I had to wait for about 20 min, which I could spend sleeping :). Also, British Airways didn’t issue me a boarding pass online, which meant I had to get it in Terminal 5 at Heathrow, just before the security checkpoint, and then I had to wait for my flight to Chicago for six hours.

Fortunately, the lounges in Heathrow are great, so that was not a problem. That was the first time I took a shower in the airport., and I found out that they had absolutely everything; there was no need to unpack. I will know for the next time!

That’s a picture from the Brussels Finnair lounge – they had a real mushroom soup!

Now, a short review of what was going on during the last four days. My flight landed ahead of time, but then we couldn’t get to the gate for 40 minutes, and the line for passport control was very long, so I ended up coming home at 9-30 PM, and I had to get my mail from my neighbor, unpack, and on Tuesday at 7-30 AM I was already in the office. On Tuesday evening, I was at the Opera (I will write about this performance separately), and my neighbor and I had dinner before the opera to celebrate her birthday. So once again, at home at 10-45 PM.

On Wednesday, I attended a meetup after work (good, productive, great networking, but once again … late night). On Thursday, I finally went to see my mom after work, attended an online yoga class, and made a couple of phone calls. And on Friday – a Valentine’s Day musical, “Twisted Love,” at Above the Law Theater.

Don’t take me wrong, it’s all great; just trying to catch up with life! Oh, and also, I am about to leave to another opera!

Weekend Working

I am leaving to ORD in less than 30 minutes, and all my weekend was work – all the things I didn’t have time to finish during the workdays. That’ not like somebody asked me, that’s what I felt I needed to finish, because it was important to show this work to others.

I think I am hopeless like this, and also, I can’t work as fast as I could before.

On Monday, my workday will start at 8-30 AM London time, so my weekend is gone entirely. And most likely, I will need to sleep on the plane, otherwise, I won’t be able to work. I actually feel better than it might seem from that post, because I was able to tight most of the loose ends both at work and otherwise, and I knew I won’t be able to address all of the outstanding things.

My New Year Resolution is not working 🙂

***

Anna’s surgery #2 went well; at least, we are hopeful. For some reason, I thought it would be shorter (it wasn’t), and I thought that I would have time to finish the unfinished parts of my presentations, which I was hoping to finish last weekend (and the one before last).

It didn’t happen either, and although I (sort of) took time off work today, I ended up working and finishing something work-related later in the evening. There is a lot going on with the conference, but the same as with work, this is confidential information, so I can’t rant about what’s going on.

All I can say is that I have many reasons to be upset, but I am not, and I am trying to figure out how I can use my internal resources in the best possible way.

Employee Spotlight

My company featured me internally at the Employee Spotlight and externally :). Those who know me can tell that this interview was extensively polished (not only from the grammar perspective) to the extent that I was ready to call it off. However, we finally agreed on the edits :).

The DRW Blog post is here

What I Liked About My Night Out

Same as my last weekend, I liked that I didn’t have to rush through the evening. My workdays are such that I am completely focused on what I am doing, and I often need to literally solve several problems in parallel. I love the excitement of chasing the problem and fixing it, and I also like these intense sessions of design when you go through several solutions, try one, go through code building, find design flaws, discard and start over. However, this leaves you completely drained even if you do not work long hours.

I like to fit a lot in my day, but it also takes an ingenuity to take a day (or night) as it goes, having an agenda, but not necessarily a timeline.

The last weekend was good, and the week that followed was also good, but now I am facing a challenge of making it through the rest of the year without a crisis.

The Floral Workshop

Yesterday, we had a “Women’s Night Out” in our firm: we had a floral workshop with Flowers for Dreams at the Riverfront Terrace of Beatnik on the River. I thought from the start that this would be a great activity, and it was even better than I thought! Also, I didn’t like Beatnik that much before because they always have very loud music, but when you are down in the Terrace, you do not hear the music from the street level, and being right there by the water feels like magic!

Continue reading “The Floral Workshop” →

What People Do When They Retire

While waiting for a morning train, I overheard the conversation on the platform. The conversation was about when each person planned to retire, whether they wanted to retire at all, and what they would do when they retired. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, I was surprised that people who participated in the conversation talked only about leisure, whether they will do cruises, golfing, or something else, and how the years of retirement should be the years of having fun.

Then, one of them commented on someone he knew who “didn’t want to retire because he would have to spend all the time with his wife at home.”

I can relate to that:). With all my love and everything, you need to be out of the house doing something else for a good part of the day. And you need to do something. I am sure I will have lots of fun traveling, doing cultural things, and such, but I am also anticipating all the possibilities of doing more volunteering, such as escorting on the weekdays and going to ODS at least once a week. Too often, I feel like I can’t drop any activity I am participating in (or want to participate in), and then I am not doing any of them well enough. So, I often think that I should limit the things I do even more and then return to them when I retire. 

Possibly the reason others don’t believe me when I say that I will retire at 67 is that they can’t imagine me not doing something. But I have plans!

This Weekend

it was, in some sense, a “getting my life back” weekend, although I guess one weekend is not enough at the moment. I had a chance to have breakfast outside, which didn’t happen much this summer.

I biked a lot, although since the sun is not out until 6-45AM, I could not do a really long bike ride.

I went to the CSO Symphony Ball for the first time in my life. It’s not like I do not go to fundraising events, but if I go, it’s for more socially-oriented events. I think there are enough well-off people who would be happy to fundraise for CSO and other cultural institutions.

This year, I received two free tickets to the Symphony Ball for participating in the CSO for Kids Ambassadors program. I didn’t expect it :), and I am not going to lie, it was nice! I took my mom there, and because of that, I skipped a pre-concert champagne toast: I knew that mom wouldn’t be comfortable there, and also, I also wanted to make sure she ate something before we went.

The concert was amazing, and also it was a spectacular view of women in evening gowns and men in tails and white ties.

Other than that, it was mostly finishing writing multiple things I had to write or promised to write and planning my cultural activities for the next two months. Also, I baked an experimental version of my favorite blueberry pie, using strained skyr on place of rahka, and this is much better than using ricotta)

And now – diving into the new work week.

How This Week Goes

Monday: Work + taking mom to the DHS

Tuesday: Work + hosting Chicago PostgreSQL User Group after work

Wednesday: Work + discussion on our book + recording a session for P99 conference + dinner with a co-worker visiting from Texas + three-and-a-half hours long show, not especially interesting, and a very cold venue, but it was a part of the subscription, and I was there with my neighbor, so no way out

Thursday: Work + volunteering in the youth shelter

Friday (projected): Work + dinner with the same co-worker.

And “work” this week is twice as intense as usual; not like I have it light any other week. But this week, we want to do as much as possible with my visiting co-worker, so we discuss things and work on documentation. Also, this week happens to be high on customer communications and explaining what I am doing :), and convincing them that I am not their enemy :).
And our dinners are also full of work discussions because we do not have enough time at work to discuss everything we want to discuss.

Small Things

Several small “fixes” in different parts of my life, nothing special, but feel nice.

  • Installed a new light fixture in the living room using the same electric company. That was the only one that I didn’t replace when I was replacing “everything.” The usual effect: OMG, how much better it feels now!
  • Renewed Siskel membership. I forgot to renew it almost a year ago, and they changed the system and everything, so I could not even renew online. I went there just before I got COVID, and now I have an online account and everything, and I can even put my tickets into my Apple wallet. Hurray! And I already started using this membership again!
  • Emailed OMD and told them I decided against participation this year. I told them I realized I did not have time, but the real reason was that I sat through the orientation and realized that nothing changed. All the issues I observed several years ago, the ones which prompted me to leave, are still there.
  • It looks like two other mentoring organizations that I applied for and was accepted to are going to do better and more meaningful jobs. I am giving it a try, and we’ll see.

It is going to be a very intense week. I was planning for Labor Day to be a fresh start, but the Universe decided differently. Well, I guess Rosh Hashanah is an even better start :).