I'm having the opposite experience. I have started a side business, and I'm getting to the point where I'm close to wanting to try to raise money. This has made me not care a wit about my paying job. And I like my paying job, but my boss is a pussy and my CEO is a moron, so it's sometimes a challenging environment. So I've taken to just speaking my mind basically all the time, since I don't give a fuck what happens. And it's weird, because I'm having an Office Space type of experience. I keep doing less and less, and keep acting like a bigger thorn in the side, and they're talking about promoting me. It's ridiculous. Corporate America is dumb. Really dumb. Everyone is a follower, so the leaders are all sociopaths. So while, yes, I put things off until the last minute, it's more because I'm off doing other things rather than paying attention to what I'm getting paid to pay attention to. Let's just say my wife is a bit ambivalent about it!
It's new, but often find it hard to begin. It's usually worse when I know it's handleable, but I invent reasons to the contrary. Sometimes the best cure is to jump in, but then there's a layer of hesitation about whether you're correctly distinguishing hesitation or healthy caution. How does it look in your case?
... add to that the fact that I am extremely good at what I do, and what should take me a week only takes a focused patch of about 3-4 hours ... so I know I can leave something until the absolute last minute, and still get it done. Which is a TERRIBLE stress-maker for me. I know I have this project. I know it will take me 2-4 hours to do it. I know I have three weeks to do it. So I will put it off - constantly beating myself up for not doing it - for two and a half weeks, then finally do it. Bleh. Terrible way to work.
I'm coming up on a year out of the military and have spent a bit of time reflecting. I always heard about guys getting out and feeling lost and without purpose. I always thought I'd have a little of that but it turns out it's been an overarching theme this entire year. The truth is nothing really feels like it matters. There's no sense of purpose, no stakes, no objective. Going to school is beyond bland and most dates I've been on just feel meh. I strongly dislike how much this sentiment is leaking into my life but I just can't seem to help it. The weeks I did in Ukraine were the closest I felt to satisfaction. The last thing I want to do is spend my life chasing more but it looks like it may happen anyways-I'm working through details of going back shortly. I'm meeting up with a Ranger Regiment guy who got out 10 years ago next week and am hoping he can provide a little guidance. I have a lot of decisions to make in the next couple months and am unsure on a lot of fronts. It looks like I may forego the medical school path in favor of nurse practitioner or physician assistant. Fortunately, there's a lot of good. This summer I worked as a camp counselor at a camp I went to as a kid. Despite being one of the oldest people there, older than most of my supervisors in-fact, I was able to settle into the role really well and had an extremely restorative summer. I'm thinking I'll go back to work there in the future, it's by far one of my favorite places on the planet with one of the best communities around. Trying to work out how I take a summer off from now until eternity and still have a career. I've recently moved to San Francisco and so far absolutely love the city. I'm living in a great area with fantastic roommates and have started to build a small community, something I often lacked with the constant moves of the military. Dating in a city is something I've never quite experienced to this level (at least in one where everyone speaks english). I've been on quite a few dates, it seems there are plenty of options. So far though most have fell fairly flat. I had drinks with a women a few or two ago who worked at Meta and spent a good 20 minutes talking about how the company wasn't really that bad. I do feel like I'm chasing the ghost of my ex and hope I can just move on from that eventually. I think I'm going to delete dating apps and take a break-they feel so hollow and 9/10 I come out with a bad taste in my mouth. All in all life is pretty dang good, just need to ponder some decisions. No place quite like the pub..ski
The dating apps are hell. They will make you hate yourself, especially in a city like San Francisco. I recommend trying to build up your community of friends, and pursuing some active hobbies. Both should give you opportunities to meet new people in a less soul-crushing way.
You're 100% right and I've known it for a while. For some reason it's harder to pull myself from them then it really should be.
It's because they're designed that way. They're designed to keep up a sense of "FOMO" and monthly active users, engagement, etc. etc. There is nothing but layers upon layers of an insidious nature to these things - especially when you consider that Match group owns like 25 dating apps/sites, including Match, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge - it's effectively a monopoly on online dating services...and where do they make their money... I recently deleted all the online dating profiles I have/apps/etc. in the last about 48 hours. Probably will end up back on one of them? But for now, pretty happy to really just be focusing on making friends through some of the groups I've recently joined. Fuck Match.
I feel like I'm one of the few who actually enjoyed my time on dating apps. Just had awesome dates over and over, good conversation and fun times. Then eventually met my now partner and pulled the plug on Tinder. I don't miss dating, because my partner is awesome, but I definitely enjoyed the experience while it lasted. Perhaps the era (2015-2017) and being in a smaller town (130k) helped?
Pre and post covid have been way the fuck different experiences, at least for me. I do think the scale of where a person lives also greatly affects the experience.
hi hubski: I'm sick with the flu or something not-covid that's made me lose my voice and be fevered and coughing. been sleeping a lot. my name is katherine. my family calls me kate. my boyfriend calls me kat. maybe hubski can call me Quatsrina
Fall happened in one day in Seattle, this year. Last Thursday it was 80 degrees F, with an Air Quality Index of 200 (or "harmful to most people") due to wildfires across the state. Friday it was raining and 55 degrees with an AQI of 10. The rain has continued on and off ever since, and the temps haven't gotten above 60 degrees F, and all forecasts show that we are now fully into Fall and heading into Winter. The trees are suddenly all changing colors very quickly, and leaves and falling everywhere. It's like fall landed with a big wet thump, all at once. And I love it. I love this time of year...
We are getting so much snow. If Mount Rainier National Park is open this weekend I'm going skiing on Sunday. Still plenty warm and bright east of the Cascades, too!
Seattle is on my list of places to visit. Probably the first in line for a USA trip. I suspect this time of year is exactly when I'd want to visit to maximize my "ohhh this is moody and hook it to my veins" experience. Wildfires though! Are they common in that state? New years day 2021 we in NZ woke to a sepia toned sky from the wildfires raging across Aus. The smoke crossed a small sea and freaked out a very hungover me.
Seattle is always a good place to visit. Yes, it rains a lot, but generally that means "it's raining this morning, but clears up in the afternoon, before beginning again at night", or similar on/off cadence. It's almost never just weeks of bleak and dreary. Wildfires are kinda a new thing. About 5 years ago(?) there was a big ole drought all up and down the West Coast. Lotsa stuff dried up. Lotsa stuff caught fire. And then budget cuts in forestry and COVID meant the regular fire mitigation stuff didn't happen, so there's a lot of stuff out there ready to burn. So we now have "smoke season", when the wildfires in the eastern part of the state cause major air quality issues for weeks at a time. Generally in August and September. Then the rains come and tamp everything down again, and replenish snow caps, and we are back to normal.... Ish. Climate change has been pretty sudden here, and very evident. It's like someone flipped a switch.
I'm fiddling with synths and Reaper again! I fell into a YouTube rabbit hole of modular synthesis, and while I don't see myself building a Eurorack anytime soon I learned just enough that I was able to build a few sounds with Reaktor 6 blocks, whereas I previously ran into a wall. I feel like Korg's DFAM could be a lot of fun; I really like to play with the DM1 drum sequencers to make beats, but haven't found a good sequencer from within Komplete Kontrol yet. I'm eyeing Sequis but I'm still in my Dunning-Kruger phase with sequencers.
Quick Updates: - Re-did the floors with my S/O's father. Been giving me great practice on my Spanish. Even better, I'm a certified Cuban coffee maker now - certified by a Cuban chef, mind you! Haven't been able to find a half-way decent cafe con leche since leaving Miami (though Orlando does have it's bright spots). - A soft job offer was rescinded due to me pushing my start date back for my parents anniversary. - Cumol hmu on discord when you can, buddy. - Meeting c_hawkthorne again this weekend. Very, very excited and grateful to him. Y'all gotta meet up more. People on here are super neat.
It's Pubski day! I've had a rough couple of weeks mental health wise. Just a lot of doubts about my climbing, my relationships, my work. Currently very, very unguided and I keep asking for what the company needs me and my team to be working on since I've been told "no" on multiple business cases for projects right now. The response has unilaterally been to wait until company strategy is released in the upcoming weeks. So I'm kind of checked out until that happens. The plus side is I'm getting some learning done on the side related to SQL and data engineering, and lots of running and climbing time. Dating sucks. That's been confirmed. My luck with dating is exclusively with people who do not live in Seattle, strangely enough. Seem to be the less flaky, more likely to actually go out and see what happens. Talking to friends, this seems to be a common theme across genders. Not quite sure what it is about Seattle on this one. Doing the math on housing and need housing prices to fall another $100k ish out here before it makes sense to pull the trigger on a purchase when considering the changes in interest rates. Not sure when that will happen but gives me the opportunity to build up more of a down payment, and worst case, I have more cash on hand. Yay.
What's the go too first date plan for you? Is climbing considered a good date option? I suppose it depends on the person but here in Dunedin it'd be drinks in the centre of town, or go to a play. Once I went to the little $5 outdoors mini-golf course for a second date and I wound up buying a house with that woman, so that proved lucrative for us. Emotionally at least.
I know quite a few people who do climbing as a first date but that is not something I enjoy. I am definitely more in the camp or lets go get a drink and figure out if we like each other before committing to spending time in a climbing gym, or a full day outside together. Or some other easy activity as a first date. But not climbing. Is climbing popular in NZ? I'm aware of some amazing climbing in Australia, but not so much in NZ.
That's very fair, committing a lengthy event with someone you don't know just yet! I know of a few people that get into climbing here, but only the indoors setups. Though that's likely more my social circles not including it than it not being popular, I suspect there are many people further inland with the mountains that like to scale things!
The week off work has been productive. Veggies all taken care of, lawns maintained, chapters pushed out on my projects, and a surprising amount of Overwatch 2 played. However. There's this one cat in my neighborhood, I'm pretty sure I know which one, who has been leaving a steaming pile of shit on the top of one of my raised beds each morning. I say on top of, because I anticipated cats treating them as a giant litter box, and fashioned a mesh covering to protect the veggies from any attacks, fecal or otherwise. This cat? He walks onto the mesh, lays a turd on it and leaves. So I wake to find a suspended pile of crap nestled above my potential potatoes. I even set the mesh up in such a way that it sags when touched, to hopefully startle the cat or make it feel uneven enough not to sit there. It doesn't care. Bombs away. So I'm scraping it off each morning considering other options. I can make proper hooped coverings with pipe and netting but every store nearby doesn't have what I need, for now. The war continues. During this week off, I checked my emails sporadically despite knowing I shouldn't. But I have a team and I want to make sure they're okay. They know what they're doing, shit they don't need a manager, but occasionally one panics and if I can help, even on leave, I will. I logged in to find a series of emails from an academic freaking out that I'm on leave, cc'ing my manager in (big fucking no no) and wondering where everything is for a clinical hire she was wanting to make. Suggesting that this is a poor time to take leave when she needs me there. The work was already done . It was done two weeks ago and I kept her appraised of everything. She just ignored every email and phone call until I was gone, it seemed. Thankfully my manager, in a rare moment of backing me up, explained that I was on top of it, here's their contract (that she also received) and that I have to take leave because I have accrued so much HR sees it as a massive liability, and I accrue so much because I tend to never take leave out of fear of an academic hurting themselves in their confusion. It's just past 8am here. Time to see what presents have been left amongst my spuds.
Ooooooh it would take me an immense amount of self-restraint to not tell this person to go fuck themselves. Good on you for taking the high road. Take the accruals. Nobody should work as much as they do.Suggesting that this is a poor time to take leave when she needs me there.
Exactly! She can be very nice. She's just... Woeful when it comes to anything administration related and seems to view professional staff as an extension of herself rather than another member of the team. I was kind of dreading taking it but my boss just pointed to the calendar and asked which week suits me best because I need to whittle the numbers down. I can only carry over 10 days each year (we get 5 weeks a year) and I have another 10 to knock off before Christmas! I now understand her point about setting expectations. If I answer things while on leave that tells people I'll continue to do so in the future. I never considered that and just did it wanting to keep on top of things but..Here we are with my out of office message more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule.
Yeah I don't know how helpful this is, but with my team and teams over the last few years my strategy has been to be transparent and say "here are my days off where, if something urgent happens, you can reach me by PHONE ONLY" and tell them if I don't communicate that for a given day off, that they will not be able to reach me under any circumstances.I now understand her point about setting expectations. If I answer things while on leave that tells people I'll continue to do so in the future. I never considered that and just did it wanting to keep on top of things but..Here we are with my out of office message more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule.
It's good advice! I do have a work phone and they're very good at only calling it if they need me urgently. I just worry. It's a me thing and I think I'm improving, but I'm sure it's partially down to the fact that I got promoted from being a member to being their manager, so I know quite intimately how much shit they have do deal with and I want to protect them from it. In time I've eased up, I hope! The academic whining is to be expected and thankfully my boss stepped in so I've not replied to much this week.
Haven't seen you in a while! Hope life has been treating you well.