I miss you hubski! Family I just spent eleven days with my wife and two of the kids in Florida and on a cruise. Weather-wise, it couldn't have been better. We missed two massive snow dumps at home. Otherwise it was nice. It's never FULL vacation when you have kids with you - too much planning, negotiating, scheduling etc. - but it's still nice to get away and have some fun. Work Career is in a good spot. I'm still feeling challenged and pushing for some new things. When I took this role fifteen months ago, it was an individual contributor. A year ago when leadership shuffled, I found myself interim leader of a whole department but after hiring my boss six months ago, I'm down to managing a smaller team. I do think I miss being an IC... but I don't mind managing. People are kinda my thing. Life Health experiment is still going well. I was down about 30 pounds at the start of the holiday season. Yes, I'm back up a little bit (intentionally - I wanted to enjoy some food), but interestingly, I really didn't eat to total excess and this week I'm craving the low calorie foods. The snow is putting a damper on my cycling plans, but I'll still find a way to get active. The mental/psychological/emotional piece is still so strange to me... what a bizarre connection I've built to food over the years... still hacking at that. Miscellaneous I've operated vehicles on four continents, in a dozen countries, and at least 30 of the states.... I've never experienced anything like driving in Miami, Florida. That place is BONKERS.
The Individual Contributor role is a double-edged sword; on one hand, almost complete autonomy while making a good salary. On the other hand, no growth path in the corporation. I'm an IC at my company: completely self-contained and self-managed. I write proposals/bids for government technology contracts, but I write the proposal for our salespeople. They put their name on my document once I am done with it. So they also make the commission. (Which is fine with me... I'd rather a good salary than a big commission any day!) But I do the job of 3 different people: researcher who finds the opportunities, writer who creates the content, and layout artist who creates the final document in InDesign. Replacing me would take a very unique person. But ... this is the first time in my life I have had a title/role that can be searched in job listings. So I'm looking around at other proposal writing/management roles, and realizing how little I'd need to do anywhere else... and in my current job I only have about 10 hours a week of real "work" to do. Bleh. I'd kinda like to have a job in an office again... but I'd have to be able to bring my dog to work. And set my own hours. And I've only got about 10 years to retirement, so why not just chill here in this easy job, and do more fun stuff outside of work? Like yoga. And exercise. And getting my knee right again with proper PT...