This morning’s title, plus a maybe a few choice obscenities, were some of my first words yesterday morning when the shower definitively confirmed the suspicion underlying much of the previous week: The hot water heater died. Yes, “hot water heater” is rather redundant, but that’s what said device is indeed called on all the websites […]

On Friday I spent some time talking about “The Six Month Wall”, and how the way to get past it, according to experts, is to just give yourself permission to be less productive and take a bit of a break. So, this weekend, that’s what I did. The weather was mostly crap, so I stuck […]

Earlier this week, a friend shared a series of posts on social media from a disaster response expert about “The Six Month Wall,” a point in any ongoing crisis where a person is just done, tired of the grind, of coping, and has just lost all semblance of enthusiasm, motivation, and productivity. I’m there. We’re […]

SBCL (Separated by a Common Language, or any of these things). I work in public sector information technology, which means that TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) run rampant; it’s one of this career path’s joys. I’m pretty sure if I felt like putting in the effort, I could probably knock out a paragraph or three in […]

Apparently I pushed myself very hard this weekend in terms of physical activity. I did almost 70 miles on the bike over 4 days this week/weekend. Felt really good while I was doing it. I woke up Sunday morning unable to move without wincing. I am not 20 anymore; I’m in better baseline physical health […]

That really about sums up my outlook at the moment. I’d much rather be positive, of course, and I try to make that choice as often as I can, but so far this week, I’ve had a hard time summoning energy to be productive, and am honestly relying on inertia and sufficiently distant deadlines to […]

Can’t really put it any other way. Not that there wasn’t some good (my tunes hit spotify, got some good biking done, etc), but largely, it was a hot, stressful slog that I struggled to push myself through. It is, however, Friday, and I’m going to keep plugging on the best I can, hoping that […]

As I indicated last week, I took myself a mental health day on Monday in order to try to cleanse some of the frustration, stress, and craziness of last week’s “rush to do all the acquisition things” theme. It mostly worked, and I got a bunch of stuff done, both for me, and around the […]

This week was the one during which I cracked. I struggled with all the stereotypical hallmarks of bureaucracy as seen through the filter of Gilliam’s Brazil this week, and it almost broke me. While the fiscal year ends with September, the fact that the acquisition shop needs time to actually buy the things means that […]

Remember, back an eternity ago (but actually only about 48 hours, since this is how the world works now) when I mentioned that the bubble wrap was better than the weeping and irritability? Yeah, that didn’t last long. Wednesday (and most of Thursday as I start writing this missive) were emotionally rough, for no particularly […]