[Weekly - F/Sa] Week In Review

A week in reflection

- Journaling is nice. It helps me to practice doing something on a regular basis. This forum is also a good self-accountability that I'm not giving up on it.
- Some wasteful days with little accomplishment, but overall, mood has been improving. Definitely an improvement over last week.
- Plan on taking vacation next week. Completely unplugging from work, but not going anywhere. ... What to do ... what to do ..
 
I survived the work week!

I was covering for another tech as well as covering my sites, which I expected to result in a flood of work. Instead, the week was surprisingly quiet, but there was still enough work to fill the hours. All things considered, it went much more smoothly than expected.

The fam is still healthy and virus-free. School starts in just over a week, so we're feeling that pressure. The younger child is very excited. The older child is nervouscited (to borrow a phrase from a popular children's show). @Ember and I are...as ready as we can be, I guess?

In short, we're still truckin' along and getting ready for the new school year.

Malohaut said:
- Journaling is nice. It helps me to practice doing something on a regular basis. This forum is also a good self-accountability that I'm not giving up on it.
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Much respect if you can maintain the discipline to write on a daily basis. I keep meaning to start, but, well, I haven't yet. :(
 
Huzzah! We survived the first week of school!

The kiddos are on a hybrid schedule (2 days in person, 3 days virtual) and I took 2 days off work (one to see my kids off on their first day of school and one to serve as family tech support for the first day of virtual learning at my wife's parents' house).

There were some bumps along the way with the virtual learning, but the kids loved the 2 days of in-person classes and we worked through the tech issues on the other days.

Work is okay and I expected to ramp up this week.

I'm definitely feeling the effects of not working out in a gym since late March more severely these last few weeks. I'm still not comfortable returning to a gym to work out and our membership is expiring soon, so I may explore some alternatives to return to a low-impact-friendly workout...
 
Made it to the weekend!

/cheer

We've settled in to a routine with the kiddos in class in person two days a week and virtual the other three. Extracurriculars are back in full swing, but they look a little different with COVID precautions.

Work is work. Pace is reasonable right now. That typically doesn't last very long, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Job market is still thpppbbbttt but checking the job sites regularly regardless.

Family is in good health. I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
 
I have spent weeks in unpleasant places learning unpleasant things. I am exhausted, but I think I've gone as far with it as God wants me to go, so hopefully I can break off and start de-stressing now.

I'm still struggling with the positivity issues mentioned before, and lately I think my spiritual walk has been more to meet personal needs rather than gaining much fit for public consumption, so I may still be restrained in posting for a while till I either feel better or feel strongly about something to contribute.

For now, my feelings are still much akin to "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" but I'm starting to gain some hope that the wreck is just a temporary, albeit greatly unpleasant, transition phase, and not a permanent destruction, which I suppose is more optimistic than I was feeling before.
 
Still alive.

Work is still relatively calm with short bursts of activity. I don't anticipate it will stay quiet for long, but it probably won't really ramp up until after the first of the year when my employer figures out which departments are going to keep working from home, who's moving back in to the office, and where they're going. Once those decisions are made, it will probably be a wild ride for a few months after.

Family is healthy and 'rona-free. We still don't feel at peace about going back to Sunday school and church services in-person, but we've been attending Sunday school virtually by way of Zoom meetings and watching the sermons after they livestream. (Our Sunday school class and the church service that gets streamed take place at the same time.) I've also been tuning in to the pastor's Wednesday night Bible study on livestream.

Trying my best to be productive around CGA and ToJ and stay focused on one or two tasks long enough to get them done. You may have noticed I tidied up the forums recently and finally published the "What We Believe" article that I was working on back in March. I've also been working with @Atown (who's been doing nearly all the work) on the WIP-but-coming-along-really-really-nicely ToJ web site.
 
Work is somehow still quiet and may remain relatively calm until after the start of the new year as mentioned in my previous post.

We (the family and I) are still healthy. The weather has started to change and the darker and colder mornings have made it more difficult to get moving in the mornings, but we're not sick and we're grateful for that.

I'm hoping to take advantage of the relative calm to get back to writing and exercise by playing Ring Fit more often.

@Ember and I took most of the last weekend and Monday to clean and organize the house. There's still a long way to go (and I shudder at the thought of cleaning the younger child's room to make it manageable going forward), but we made significant progress and our living room is looking great!

TL;DR: Cleaned like mad last weekend plus Monday, still health, work still calm.
 
Work is still quiet heading in to mid-November. We should have news on plans regarding co-workers returning to work sites over the next 6-12 months soon. I hope.

Family and I are still healthy, which is starting to feel like a miracle with every new story I hear about someone's relative or friend getting COVID-19. Case numbers are surging where we live, but we're continuing the same course of being cautious--not afraid--and exercising wisdom as best as we're able.

Tek7 said:
@Ember and I took most of the last weekend and Monday to clean and organize the house. There's still a long way to go (and I shudder at the thought of cleaning the younger child's room to make it manageable going forward), but we made significant progress and our living room is looking great!
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So cleaning the smaller human's room was as massive an undertaking as expected (if not moreso), but I survived and I daresay the sacrifice of time and energy was well worth it. We still struggle to get her to tidy up her room from time to time, but she gets in there and plays and cleans up more often now that it's not an overwhelming mess. Now we just need to keep it from getting to that point again...
 
Still alive. Still healthy. Work is still quiet.

Thanksgiving was a small and pleasant holiday. My dad drove up for the day, so it was just me, my wife, the kids, my wife's parents, my wife's brother, and my dad. We spent time together and ate tasty food. Good times.

@Ember and I did several hours of online shopping this last week to nearly complete our collecting of gifts to give for Christmas. We'll likely be getting Amazon packages daily for the next week or so.
 
Still alive. Still healthy.

Work has changed recently, but not for the better. Work relationships are still good, but, as of Wednesday, I no longer have a private work space available. Going 8 hours without an opportunity to withdraw to a quiet space, review digital "paperwork" (tickets and emails), and recharge a bit before heading back out in to the field is exhausting. I've stepped up the job search in response, but there aren't many opportunities out there right now.

I'm hoping to settle on a specialty by the end of the year and start pursuing a certification early next year. I have a few options in mind, but please pray that the Lord would lead me to the right choice. I'm no longer in a season of life where I can afford the time to study and get additional certifications just for fun, so I want to make whatever time and money I invest count.
 
So... one week into the new year and Congress gets zerged by dumb people...

So far, 2021 isn't looking to be an improvement over 2020
 
Krissa Lox said:
So... one week into the new year and Congress gets zerged by dumb people...

So far, 2021 isn't looking to be an improvement over 2020
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Alright, it appears that this week tactics have been upgraded to zerging Wall Street with mass coordination of disruptively strategic but legally placed stock trades. I can be more optimistic about this, and the conversations are much more interesting to watch to learn what people are struggling with when you're not having to worry about risks of violent harm.
 
Krissa Lox said:
Alright, it appears that this week tactics have been upgraded to zerging Wall Street with mass coordination of disruptively strategic but legally placed stock trades. I can be more optimistic about this, and the conversations are much more interesting to watch to learn what people are struggling with when you're not having to worry about risks of violent harm.
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This is actually getting to be quite fascinating to watch. People are finally starting to get that they're better off learning how power systems work to utilize their personal power more directly rather than transferring their power to (and being disappointed in) government representatives, which is definitely a development I'm happy to see although their learning curve is probably bound to be quite messy for a while.

And one of the results of this philosophical shift seems to be a large number of people becoming enraged at learning that hedge fund managers wanted to profit from short-selling Gamestop and AMC, so they've organized a massive rally to drive the stock prices up, which is upsetting a lot of career stock market people who are now offended at seeing such a mass influx of market participants wanting to wield their power for principles rather than quick, easy profits. And as a byproduct of this tug-of-war, Gamestop and AMC are now getting a windfall capital infusion to be able to invest in making necessary adaptations to better secure their futures.

This is how free markets are supposed to work. The best defense against centralized power structures like communism, socialism, oligarchy, corporatocracy, etc, is often to just enable individuals to do capitalism better. And it's a much more constructive way to deal with societal frustrations than physically attacking Congress.
 
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Krissa Lox said:
... People are finally starting to get that they're better off learning how power systems work to utilize their personal power more directly rather than transferring their power to (and being disappointed in) government representatives, which is definitely a development I'm happy to see although their learning curve is probably bound to be quite messy for a while. ... And it's a much more constructive way to deal with societal frustrations than physically attacking Congress.
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Anyways, now that the threat of further violent catastrophes seems to be passing, maybe now I can get back to the usual work of more normal, headache-inducing ministerial dilemmas to deal with: namely the perennial struggle to figure out how to deliver effective services to people in genuine need who will put them to good use while at the same time defending against obnoxious weirdos who are only interested in hostility or freeloading being able to camp out on my lawn.
 
Work is picking back up, which is a mixed bag. Feels like I've been working on this department move for a very long time and it's been less than a week (but I've known it was in the works for months).

Family is still 'rona-free, which is cause for praise. I'm over 7 days out from my second shot now, so I am 94.6% protected according to the clinical data. :D @Ember got her first shot recently. She got the Moderna shot and I got the Pfizer shot, so she has longer to wait between doses.

We still aren't back to in-person services at church yet, but the vaccine gets us closer to that goal, which is exciting!
 
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Had a very different change of pace this week, as I got totally showered in Valentines Day sentiments from people appreciating me. Which was really nice, but also really awkward in how the unexpectedness of it completely caught me off guard.

I guess when you've done unpaid ministry a long time, you get used to having to get your material and emotional support directly from the Lord because most other people tend to ignore you or take you for granted like you're some sort of beneficent NPC rather than a fellow human being. But it was nice to be surprised by the contrary.
 
I reached a huge milestone this week, as for the first time in years I've been able to set my finances to autopilot instead of having to survive by exhausting feats of daily micromanagement.

And also at the moment, I'm in between work projects so I think I'm going to take some real vacation time for a bit to do some recharging.
 
Work has been consistently inconsistent in terms of workload, with recent weeks shifting from eerily quiet to quite busy but still manageable.

@Ember and I have been fully vaccinated since February. We're still proceeding cautiously, but numbers in our community are trending the right way and we're getting closer to returning to returning to in-person church. In the meantime, we're streaming services and joining our Sunday school class every week there's class on Zoom.

Family is healthy except for the younger child coming down with a common cold yesterday. She's feeling better today, though that may be largely thanks to the children's ibuprofen. We'll see how things go after sundown.
 
Last week was a break from the norm as I spent the work week in training. The course was very informative and the labs, conducted in virtual machines and accessed by web browser, were very helpful in learning new-to-me tech. The course featured so much information that I described the class as "drinking from the fire hose" when telling co-workers about the experience.

So while it was a welcome change of pace to spend a week learning, I was ready to get back to my regular work duties--in no small part because sitting still for much longer periods than I'm used to took its toll.

The family is in good health, though the older child did, as expected, pick up the younger child's cold that I mentioned in my previous post. Her recovery took only slightly longer, but the timing meant she missed three days of school.

Aside from that, not much to report! Time marches onward.
 
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