VOICES OF INSANITY

What a week this has been. It has been insightful and this is why – I have never been all in. I always hedge my bets. I play both sides of everything and while I am not going to make excuses about it, I have always been sacred of failure. What’s life without a fall back plan – that is how I lived. I have played one against another, and adeptly at that, long enough to survive and thrive.

One of those things in which I never went all in, is becoming a citizen. This meant renouncing my original one and I was not sold on the idea and nor was I sold on the idea that the unites states presented. The more and more the layers of veneer get stripped away the uglier the reality became. There may be no true utopia I yearn for, there may be no place that I would want to commit to – but if my sister in her bubble like view of the world brings my parents over I will have to commit. There is no turning back, and while the US may be well on its path to being in a praetorian guard phase of the decaying roman empire, I will have to go all in and succeed. I think the time has come, once the planets align I will apply for citizenship.

Another thing I have not gone all in is at work – I have played my director against the staff and the staff against whoever I have had to play them to so that I can hold on to my post as I learn the minutiae of the inner dealings of what I need to do to be successful. It has been akin to playing with fire while doused in gasoline and while the pure chaos and absurdity of it has been exhilarating it has also been tiring. Once Mars is off retrograde on June 29th (not May 29th as I previously stated) I will have to reassess what it is I want to do. At this point, I will have completed a year at my current position and the record of the most years at the post is my current manager at 8. Knowing what I know now, I am impressed by her tenacity, but then again,  I do not see myself doing this much longer. I will need to last 5 years, with this firm, another 2.5 are due but in what capacity I am not sure. Only time will tell.

I am rambling now, I should stop. I need to do this more often for it to be therapeutic so I dont go down rabbit holes , like I have tonight.

~voi

PS: For me in my birth chart Mars is in Aquarius

Darn bugs, they seem, to be everywhere. While moving 2 larger pots I managed to find some black weevil larvae at the bottom of one of the pots. Cant blame the bugs it was nice and cool down there, and I can see why they were chillin’ like a villain down there. Anyhoo this means now I have to deal with it. I think I will have to call in the nematodes and hope that this kills the darn thing. I also got the Scanmask which had a lot of positive reviews on Amazon. I did go thru most of the pot, and mind you this is a big cloth sack I call a pot kinda thing, and has more dirt in it than I care to start thinking about, and managed to get about 6-7 of them. This was fortuitous since this would have been a huge problem had they all hit maturity and decided to have little bug families of their own.

The good part is , thanks to Amazon, it will be in here tomorrow and well, the bugs have started this war by attacking my plants and so this is theirs to lose ! You know with Mercury in retrograde and all that ! Speaking of bugs, today is make it rain for your doc’ day and I have a few doctors appointments. How fun! On the bright side, I do get the day off and get to finish up a few things around the house before the darn prolotherapy puts me in misery.

~voi

Its the weekend. I did nothing.. well almost nothing. I managed to install a drip irrigation line from a hose outside which was not used and then connect them to all the external pots that was not getting water all along. This was quite an undertaking for me and while it was simple in itself given the basic work I did, it was time consuming. I could not believe that the amount that someone would charge to do this while it can be done in no time if I had someone to help me and I had done this before. I ran the hose along the periphery of the wall and used a feeder tube to supply water to the pots that needed it. I also managed to move some rather giant pots I had around and in the process found more bugs than I could have wanted.

While the task was easy it literally took all morning and went well into the afternoon. On the bright side I got all the vitamin D that I need and that will be the most I will be going out anytime in the immediate future. It was nice to be outside as opposed to being cooped up inside the office under the unflattering glow of cfls staring at a screen.

I also managed to tape up some trees to prevent sun damage, and  as I reflect back on the day, the irony of not wearing any sun screen is not lost upon me  ! I also managed to stake back a rose tree/bush which had been drooping over for way too long and this actually spruced up the front of the house as well.

Now to actually run the system for a few days and see how it works out. There is one little quirk where a point drains out into nowhere which I have yet to try and duct tape or find another solution but so far that is the only little glitch in the overall effort.

On the bright side, I think it is the bright side, Mercury  goes off retrograde today and on May 29th Mars goes off retrograde. Mercury in retrograde normally means communications go haywire but isnt that always true. Anyway, this done, and well, Mars, the God of War <sex, whatever> is going to be going to be intense. Starting off in Saggitaruis, a fire sign to Scorpio, a sign it rules should be interesting. I’m told that it is unwise to start a war when Mars is in retrograde but that doesn’t mean one does not defend oneself. If nothing else I guess I can lay the foundation of  the next strike.

~voi

I was trying to get into the habit of typing out 250 words daily. Yesterday, I did not quite make it that far. I thought of knocking something out but I was too tired for it. On the bright side, I realized something, I cant juggle too many things all of which take up the same finite resource – Time. There is a limit to the number of things that demand exclusive attention that I can squeeze into a 24 hr time period.

I think it would be best if I could curtail the number of hours I sleep but before I get to doing that I think it is best if I optimize my workflow and minimize my distractions around tasks that I work on. Normally I have noticed that I tend to be too involved in the work of my direct reports and I need to step away from it. I think I need to find a way to empower them so that I can not deal with this anymore. The scheduling is the biggest burden of the work week and there should be a way to automate this to a certain extent.

Regardless, I need to be able to approach this in a mutli dimensional way. I understand that the schedule is a time suck and I should be able to find a way to automate this and more importantly there are other things that can be done while working on the schedule part simultaneously. I need to learn to block times out so that i can accomplish tasks without waiting till the last minute and I should also be able to ask for more help. I do think that at this point I am doing much more than I need to. I need to able to find a way to communicate this to my leader but for this I will need to categorize the extent of the work that I do and then see what I wish to off load from my plate

So here’s to an exciting week ahead !

~voi

PS:Another thing I have learned is that you can get whatever you want but you have to be willing to give up everything else for it. So it is now incumbent upon to me to prioritie things I want and let the rest drop off on to the wayside.

I am slowly getting in the habit of staying in the office space we converted the bedroom into. The Murphy bed is great for when you need guests and I’ve been trying to spend more and more time up here. I managed to finish one of the online training  I have been putting away forever. It was not without its moments but I think completing it has been a good start all things considered.

I also managed to move some books around and make the office space more office looking like. I would like to eventually  move the cameras and lenses in here as well. But for now this will have to do. I did managed to make a mess of the desktop but I hope to clear it out in due course and get things situated.

Today has not been a bad day. I managed to install the new wireless router we got in today. We got the ASUS RT-AC88U and while it was pricey, the last ASUS router we had brought was about 3 years ago if not more. I did not get the modem we had ordered, the last time we got a modem was in 2011(!!),  but that should be in Monday and then the wireless upgrading for the house will be done. The installation and set up of the wireless router was a breeze and ASUS has made it real easy with their user interface to get this done. I was rather garish looking if you listened to my partner but I thought it looked kinda cool ! Maybe I should take out the macro lens and maybe take some pictures, that could be fun.

I think once I get the monitor I wanted to get which will most likely have to be next month or so , I think the office evolution will move closer to what I want. I think the LG Ultrawide is the one that will fit with the murphy bed so I will be getting it eventually.

Given that I am trying to stay indoors more and focus more on reading and working on what needs to be done and has been long overdue this is a move in the right direction.  Besides this beats spending money on clothes and other junk like I normally do. More so it behooves me to use the home office space more given that I am investing more in this that I normally would.

Actually the part about buying clothes is not true, I have not purchased clothing in a long time, I keep putting it in my cart and walking away from them more than anything else.

Up next I will try and review some excel training online via Udemy  I did find one of their classes on excel shortcuts useful and I really think I should get to doing more of them.

Time to get my lazy rear off the seat and walk around a bit !

~voi

PS: Did I mention that if I could marry SnagIt I would !!

In retrospect, yesterday’s unmitigated cluster that tried masquerade as a day was a wonderful learning moment. I’m not quite done blaming people  (although I will be in due course) but I have opened up to realizing the beautiful learning opportunity that it was. You could not find a better example of making a hospital wide change under duress if you tried looking for one.

So for the next time I do this or any other change process, and I know that there will be many more to come, I know to include the people I did not include in on the discussions and considering all the aspects that I needed to consider for each change process. (See I am taking responsibility for some parts of it, and some of others as well..)

I know this sounds like the change has been successfully completed but there is so much more to do and so much more learning to be had. Overall I think this is a positive thing, and the outcome will be a useful lesson to remember for a long time.

Did I mention that in the middle of the chaos I managed to figure out how to generate a custom report from scratch in 10 minutes or less in DA ? Sure I had some help but it was minimal at best and I think I tried harder because I did not want to be seen as incompetent by the person I reached out to . Now that was impressive for myself as well ! I feel like I do so much better under pressure, no matter how much I tend to complain about it .

~voi

PS: I would have rather learned from others mistakes !

And I thought yesterday was bad. 6 call outs, incompetent people leaving work they should have done yesterday in a timely manner for me to deal with and the joy in knowing that they get paid more than I do. That was today. I looked visibly beat up, so much so I had someone come in and tell me they thought I needed to go for a walk or take a break so that I don’t fall apart. I didn’t think I did but I  sure did come close.

So what does one do after a day like that, go to happy hour with the same people he should not be socializing with according to HR. Well I have some choice words to say to them but the last HR liaison we had was one of the nicest people I’ve met in a while and so I really cannot hate on them just as much as I used to. On the bright side in about 15 days I start my photography course at the local community college and I am looking forward to it.

And for the nth month in a row I get to be on call. I think this is month 9 maybe we are on. Just great. Monday should be fun, asking for more money always is more entertaining than people think. Its not incumbent upon me to make the case for lesser pay, its on them and all I have to do is prove them wrong. Nothing could be more fun than taking 3 -4 weeks off and leaving to India and getting back and asking them how it worked out for them.

Ah one can only dream. .. ~ voi

I think .. I think, I have had enough of my work. It has been a long grueling day full of what can only be kindly described as challenges. I remember of the six sigma types preaching that one had to plan 80% the day, and I have diligently tried this. I have come up with what has to be the most incorrect way to do this. I plan, and very correctly so, that 80% of my day will be filled with unmitigated chaos. Not just the mild, harmless chaos of a preschool full of kids at lunch time, but the unimaginable nerve-racking chaos of a war zone in Somalia kind of chaos.

While that may be a slight exaggeration of the facts it is the closest I can get to describing my work. Everyday, without fail, something goes wrong. What piece of equipment that is mission critical breaks down, when I need staff the most, not one but 3-4 call out. When you scurry and cover those , then something that used to be a one email process breaks down into a 30 email chain with everyone and their mother giving you an explanation of why things will not work.

Today marked the epitome of that day, I felt like I had been beat down from every angle possible for the longest time and each time I crawled back up, something new dropped. And I found my self in this oddly familiar spot of wanting to leave no matter who said what. That no matter who, in this matter is my astrologer.. I understand that not everyone believes in it, or has even consulted one in their life times. But when you have them predict an accident years ahead of time, to the year and month give or take a few months, and also tell you how severe it will be then you start to believe in it.

I am at that cross roads again, wondering where to now. This too shall pass, I tell myself. The real question however is what will be of me when this has passed if I am to persist in the same spot.

Because I cannot talk to anyone at work, I am not allowed to have any friends and my friends , so called, have found a way to somehow hurt me I guess I will come back to the blog. I have wanted to write everyday and well, I have also wanted to go to the gym every day this year but that just started yesterday so I guess this is where we are at. Almost mid year, doing that mid life thing well past mid life.

I do not know anymore where things are going. Looking back, I always thought I had time to correct my flow and steer my ship in the right direction. Now I am looking back and wondering what the hell just happened in the past few years.

Since 2007 life has been a blur. Grad school was a blur, I don’t remember much of it. The subsequent program and few years, don’t remember anything significant either. Then there is this past 7 years. I really don’t know where any of it has gone. It has all been a haze. I feel like i have been dragged into a foggy marsh and I am unable to wade out of this. It feels like I have been walking for miles but then at the same time it feels like I haven’t moved.

Maybe I have, maybe I am not self aware. I do not know anymore. I feel like I need to escape and I am not sure where or now. I know I have said this before but I feel like I have never been so lost in my life.

One day at a time , I will get thru this. Now if I can pass thru the junction I am in then it will be better.