50 Words - Opportunity vs Life

In my business, opportunity is an eleven letter word for "the shit no one wants to do but you are the sap that cannot opt out of it." Opportunity has brought me a higher paycheck, but at what cost? I'm ready to abandon this opportunity. I'm ready for life!

Moving Down But Up

My responsibilities at work will be decreasing over the next few weeks to months, so I am determined to get back down to one planner. Honestly, I can't bear to put down my Gillio during the day so the best way to be able to pet it is to use it all day.  The planner geeks out there will know exactly what I mean.

Since I need to print more chronodex pages for my time tracking, I also took time to reprint my expenses pages for a full planner refresh. I have paid off a couple of bills recently and printing a new, smaller budget is a big incentive for me.

I have a rather large handwriting and I write down a lot so it's going to take some getting used to. 

I also like carrying a full year calendar at a time.  With just a personal calendar (week + notes) that is possible, but I need daily tracking for work. I plan to keep a week of work pages sandwiched between the weekly personal layout. Once a month, I will purge the work pages and archive using Evernote. I had considered doing that in the past but seeing this video from Carrie Harling finally made the decision firm for me.

I'll update you on my layout when I get it organized.

Martha Home and Office

I was finally able to get my hand on a pack of the tear drop shaped color coding dots from the Avery Martha Stewart office supply line. They were on clearance for a dollar so I couldn't pass them up. I probably won't use them much in my planner itself but I am finding them useful in my project/to do tracking notebook.

I needed a quick reference page for charge codes when I'm doing my time sheets and that gives me an easy visual listing that is pleasing and truly a quick reference.

I just wish it could improve my ability to get my time sheets done on time.

Snow and Snow and More Snow

This was the view from my work window last week during the big snow storm. I brought lunch in with me and didn't dare leave out until the end of the day. So much for having my first Kansas winter be a mild one.

Chained To The Desk

I don't talk much on this blog about work place issues. My main reason for writing in this space is to get away from the stress of the job that I have. I am an engineer and I keep my sanity by crafting, creating and writing.

With that said, I feel compelled to weigh in on the hubbub around the decision that Marissa Mayer has made that all Yahoo employees are to work in the office.

Don't let the title of this post fool you, I am in complete agreement with the decision she has made. As someone that has worked both in the office,  from home and remotely from other locations, I can tell you I prefer to work in the office. There are high distraction days when I wish I was working from home but overall, working from home doesn't work for me.

As many distractions as there are at work, there are many more at home.  I don't have the ability to work away for 8 hours without wanting to do a load of laundry, do the dishes or check the mail.  For some, this is the main reason to work from home, but for me it doesn't work. I do tend to be more productive at home, but I am also a procrastinator and I know how I am.

But, this is a personal preference.  Not everyone is the same and I would never presume to think that all people can work the same. With that said, Yahoo is a company that needs to change. They have dealt with some serious professional ethics issues over the last few years and those stemmed from the top of the food chain. What inspiration or motivation do the worker bees have to draw from when CEOs have been shown the door for dishonesty? Who's to say the employees aren't following the examples that have been set before them. What Marissa needs to do is clean house and the most effective way to do that is to get everyone in the office. Let's get everyone together, work out the bits that don't work and then we can look at bringing the flexibility back. 

For now, I think the Yahoos need to get into the office and prove they can turn the company around. Prove that first and fight for additional benefits later.

This is my opinion.  What's yours?

Motivation

I'm trying my best to stay motivated at work. Today, I needed to map out some steps that need to be taken in a project I'm working on. Rather than write a list, which I started to do, I pulled out the sticky notes,  post-it label roll, and washing tape for a bit of creative organizing. What better surface is there than the bland, grey, cold metal desk I'm strapped to?

It's sad when this is the only bit of fun I get to have in a day.

How Are You?

This weekend has been a mix of disappointments and confusion but I’m still moving on…or trying to.

 

I’m spending a little time with my planner trying to decide how I am going to make it through the week. Tomorrow starts 9 weeks of 6 work days, 13 hours a day. I’m determined to get through the other side with my sanity in tact. So, how are you, my dear readers?

Slow Down and Enjoy

I am one of those people that likes to feel useful and likes to be productive. Even when I’m not moving, I like to be constantly thinking through my schedule, my meal plans, my leisure time, my crafts, my life and making plans. I don’t enjoy excessive down time and I don’t enjoy work that keeps me busy but un-engaged. I don’t like feeling useless.

And this is exactly how I feel when starting a new job. There is always that amount of time that needs to pass while everyone tries to figure out if you really know the things you claimed on your resume. And you always have those situations where you have to be re-trained before you are allowed to perform the tasks you’ve been doing the last 11 years. I know! Training is necessary and I respect its place. But I want to rush through it all and become an active, productive member of the team.

I’m ready to show what I know and to prove that I really am worth six figures. I don’t know why I always think someone is in the background comparing my hourly rate to my production but I always do. Anyway, there are definite benefits to going into a new place and hitting the ground running, but there is also value in just taking a step back and observing.

The last three jobs I’ve had were a bit of a whirlwind. I learned a lot very quickly and I traveled a little too much for my taste, working crazy hours when needed so I was always showing my value in the most tangible and visible ways possible. My productivity was high but that came at a cost--I burned out quickly and often. When I mastered something, I was ready to move to the next thing. The enjoyment I once found in working and learning was fading more quickly with each new task that landed before me.

But my life is changing and my priorities are changing. I want to slow things down. I want to focus the passion I still have in my work and foster it into something new and exciting. I simply just want to slow down and enjoy what God has blessed me with.

There are so many changes coming at me all at once--new job, new city, selling my first home, getting married! I don’t want to rush through any of them. They all are bringing a certain amount of stress into my life, but they are also bringing me these incredible experiences that are blowing my mind. I want to savor each and every moment of this journey and show some gratitude for it all.

I am not one for making new year’s resolutions, but I am compelled to stop mid-year and resolve to slow down and enjoy.

Everyday is Saturday

Today was my first day of unemployment and so far this is the best weekday I have had in quite some time. I didn’t fight with the alarm clock this morning. I did hit the snooze out of habit, but then I realized that I didn’t want to go back to sleep. For the first time in more time than I can remember, I did not dread where I had to go and what I had to do today.

For over a month, I have been under constant threat of layoff due to lack of billable work but also complete lack of good business practice. There are ways to weather the storm when facing a downturn in work, but not everyone has the presence of mind in a crisis to fall back onto these methods and not be thrown into chaos. The atmosphere at the company was that of fear and chaos and I could not take it anymore. I decided the best thing to do for me and my growing family (okay it’s just +1 but that counts) was to walk away and start anew.

So my next few weeks will be spent looking for a new job, but also doing all the things that I enjoy. I will read, I will write, I will blog, I will knit and crochet, I will make jewelry and use the rhinestones I have left to bling all the tech in my path. Okay, I’ll try not to get to crazy with it. I’ll experiment a little with my hair since I don’t have to be in an office and I will finally, FINALLY, make a little progress with the wedding planning.

Don’t get me wrong, even though I’m happy as can be to be out of such a stressful situation, I am still quite nervous and apprehensive about what is to come. My poor fiancé has bought into this crazy lifestyle of mine and no part of that included me being without a job. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, but we are together and we are forever prayerful.



I got something new. Can you guess what it is?

GBE #34--Work

This is actually a late post for last week’s GBE, but I really wanted to talk about work. Actually, I have a question to ask to all of you readers.

Have you ever hesitated quitting a job because you didn’t want to give up the space or location? This is the dilemma I am facing now. For the first time since being an engineer, I work in a really nice space. I’m not sure what the building was used for before, but it has exposed brick and wood beams and the cubicle layout added by my company is actually quite appealing.

We get tons of light and the location is close enough to all the downtown restaurants without being so close that the area is distracting. There are some negatives--the temperature controls are never quite right, it’s going to be noisy if we ever get to fill it with people and it’s next door to a chicken processing plant so coming in and out can be stinky at times. But, it’s such a pretty space and that says a lot for an engineering firm. I’ve been hesitating sending my resume out because I don’t want to leave such a nice office space.

What do you think? Crazy? Tell me you’d do the same.

Happy New Year?

My 2012 has truly started in an interesting way…and by interesting, I mean it sucks already. Here are the highlights.

1. I spent the first week of the year wondering if the job I have would be over at the end of the week. On Friday I was informed I still need to come to work on Monday so I guess I should be happy about that. I’ll see if I make it through this next week. It’s the nature of the work that I’m in but it doesn’t get any easier to deal with.


2. When starting to put out feelers for jobs with other places in the city, I was politely informed that one company does not look on it highly that I quit working for them at one point. Seeing as everyone there are “friends” that I’ve worked with, I’m taking that to mean that someONE did not appreciate me taking better job opportunities over staying there to work with them. The reasons I left had to do with taking a better, more interesting and more risky job opportunity. It had nothing to do with the company or it’s employees that I thought were my friends. Oh well.


3. Distance does not always make the heart grow fonder and it definitely won’t help people think of you more fondly.


4. An 800 square foot apartment can accumulate a lot of stuff. Incorporating that stuff into an already full house can be a bit much. As such, the charity pile is growing.


5. Just the thought of being positive is depressing me, so bah humbug to the new year.

Kanban Followup

Since I’m stuck at work waiting for a meeting to start (I started this post on Monday night), I figured I would update you on how the Kanban productivity system was working out for me.

For tasks that are repetitive or have very distinctive sections or parts, this system is a great aid. In the middle of using this system to produce a report, I got sick and needed to be out of the office for a couple of days. Upon returning, my Kanban was on my desk giving me a visual clue of exactly where I left off. I was able to quickly get back to my report with little time lost in trying to figure out exactly where I was in the process. Adding the HOLD box allowed me to delay portions that were causing me problems. The extra box under the Done column was added to allow me to quickly answer questions from my manager on a subset of items that fit a specific criteria.

The green post-it tags are inputs to the report that I am writing. The blue tags are sections of the report itself that need to be completed. I put the Kanban in a plastic document sleeve to keep from loosing my tags. As I moved items into the DONE column, I started to tape them down as the tags at this point were starting to loose their stickiness.

For regular usage, I would…

• use the super sticky line of post-its so there is better hold
• always use a plastic document sleeve
• color code the task types to add to the visual value of the Kanban

And I do need to add that it is definitely a positive to have such a visual progress chart for coworkers and managers to fully understand your workload. I can verbally tell you that I am working on generating a report, but that doesn’t fully relay all the input documents that need to be produced and reviewed to generate the report as the Kanban above does.

All in all, the Kanban is an excellent tool for those job tasks with repetitive or distinctive sections. My next step is to evaluate using a Kanban for following a procedure flowchart.

Abandon The Place of Secrets

I am not a fan of secrets. I can never remember what I’m supposed to tell and what I’m not. This also make me incapable of telling lies (big ones at least). :)

But I seem to be surrounded right now by people that keep secrets. Sometimes it’s done for “protection”, sometimes to minimize business impacts and sometimes to just be deceitful. Whatever the reason, keeping a secret sends the same message, I DON’T TRUST YOU!

If you are in a relationship and you are holding secrets because you feel like you need to protect your significant other or you want to avoid drama you’ve experienced in the past, YOU DON’T TRUST YOUR PARTNER. You don’t trust them to communicate effectively and you don’t trust them to be understanding.

If you are a business keeping secrets and you are trying to protect your intellectual property or you are trying to minimize business impacts, YOU ARE SHOWING A LACK OF TRUST IN YOUR BUSINESS SETUP. Intellectual property is protected through good contracts and through choosing good business partners. And if you are operating in a place where there is no transparency, you may want to evaluate the goals and mission of your company.

It goes without saying that if you being purposefully deceitful, then you trust no one. More than that, I think a deceitful person can not trust themselves. You can not trust yourself to obtain what you want in life without truth.

I encourage us all to abandon the act of keeping secrets. It’s a much healthier way to live. But do what you think is best for you but please don’t tell me secrets you want me to keep because I WON’T. (Please note that privacy and secrecy are not the same--maybe I’ll go into that in another post).

If you are keeping a secret from me, I suggest you reevaluate our “ship” because you obviously don’t trust me.

October #5--Catching up

Catching up, a photo by aldorris105 on Flickr.

When I look at the lanscape of my life and assess the clutter that has accumulated, most of that clutter turns out to be paper related.

I'm terrible about going through my mail. I had a stack of magazines, professional and otherwise, that I needed to go through and read/purge. I flipped through quickly and yanked out the articles I wanted to read later and the rest is on it's way to the recycle bin.

Next up is the rest of the mail. I have about 3 months to go through. I'm a terrible procrastinator, but I'm able to do this because all of my regular bills are on automatic payment directly out of my checking account. I do get tripped up when I use a credit card. I don't use them often and I tend to forget that I used it and need to watch out for the bill. I must improve on that. As much as I detest the credit industry, I still do need to maintain good credit for any future large purchases, like real estate.

So, this is the call to you to join me in clearing some of the clutter of your life. How much mail do you have laying around waiting to get your attention?

October #3--Lazy Sunday

I’m just sitting here enjoying and wasting away my Sunday afternoon when I start to think about all the things I should be doing. Instead of watching the last episode of Project Runway on the DVR, I should be catching up on work or sewing or finishing the shrug I am crocheting for my grandma. If nothing else, I SHOULD BE WRITING. I had a couple of hiccups this week in my professional life and it has me a little miffed about what is to come next. And that in turn is zapping away all of my creativity.

For the past year and a half, my life has been moving along and I’m not quite keeping up. I am quite uneasy when there is too much change in my life. It’s been so difficult for me to put into words but in church today, the pastor did just that for me. He spoke of the storms that rage in our lives that we don’t quite deal with. BUT, we concentrate so much on the external storms of our lives that we forget to speak peace to the internal storms that rage within us. The external storms come and go but those internal storms stick with us long term and really impact us so much.

Yes, I am in a uncomfortable position right now, but that is an external storm that will pass. More than anything I need to deal with the internal storm that causes me to be so uncomfortable. Not to mention I have some other internal storms that need speaking to, but those are hurricanes for another day in time.

Hello To All

Sorry for being away so long. I’ve been on temporary assignment for work and since I’ve been here all of my regular activities have been neglected. I’m getting back to normal and hoping to get back into the swing of all things that I love, including blogging. I will be sharing lots of things in the future, including the new life that is waiting for me.

This is Michael. The love of my life. My future husband. Yay! More on that later. For now, I wish you all well and will be talking to you soon.
Take care!
AL

What Are You Reading

IMG00035-20091208-0919.jpg
Originally uploaded by aldorris105

I am trying to get back into reading. I had slowed down as I went through the job change. Now that Nanowrimo is over, I am more inspired to get back to it. Today, I spent a little time loading my kindle with some book samples to look into. I am probably most excited about Omar Tyree's new title, "Dirty Old Men". Just hearing the title makes me think of the men around when I was growing up. Ha! You just ignore them and laugh them off as the dirty old men you know them to be.

I am also very happy with the progress I made during Nanowrimo. I have started developing what I think will be a really great novel. I wrote a total of 26,253 words. My 2008 total was a little over 14,00 so I saw a vast improvement. My dialogue has improved greatly and I am much better at story development. I am looking into increasing my writing over the next year. My first step was starting the blog and I have done quite well with it I think. Look for more general writing from me in the next year as well as a lot more crafting. I am in the process of developing more classes to teach at my local quilt shop and I'm looking at picking up a lot of those kitchen skills that I have been avoiding, like bread making and canning.

TwentyTen is going to be a fabulous year and I hope you all will continue to follow me on this journey.

That Bad Mood

I’ve never been to New Jersey before and I was looking forward to starting my new job in a new place. Now that I have arrived, the bottom has dropped out of my optimism. I flew in a day early to give myself some time to get around and figure out my way around this place. About four hours after stepping off the plane at Newark Liberty Airport, my attitude became quite foul. The traffic is atrocious and I’m not one for getting road rage. I can usually turn up the music and sing my way through the traffic jams. Not here. It could take awhile to get used to the way the exits and U-turns are arranged. And just so you know, a U-turn here is not really a U-turn. It’s a loop. Where I’m from, a U-turn is actually shaped like a U.

I got here on yesterday (Saturday) and had dinner at the hotel. After finally finding this hotel, I was not about to venture back out into the unknown, but as the hotel is right next to a mall I figured all would be good for the rest of the weekend. To my surprise this morning, I found the mall and just about everything else around here CLOSED. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a mall closed on a Sunday. It’s been years, probably over a decade. What century have I gotten pulled into? I drove around for over an hour today before I found a Boston Market open where I could get food. I’m waiting for the hotel to bring me a fridge before I venture into the one grocery store that I saw. I found it shortly before I found that Boston Market. I was happy to find a CVS were I could pick up a couple of things that I forgot but I have to say the staff there was a little on the rude side. So far, there have been no random smiles. I don’t like to get into comparing the North and South, but when someone makes eye contact with you on the street, we typically smile in the South. Not here.

I wasn’t able to fit any knitting in my suitcase so I was hoping to find somewhere (like a Michael’s or Hobby Lobby) to buy some needles and sock yarn. No luck. If I had, it would probably have been a Hobby Lobby since they are closed on Sunday. Fits the apparent theme of this place.

I’m assuming this place will come to life tomorrow when the mall is opened and everyone heads to work. I hope the people I’ll be working with are nice and pleasant and can point me to some eating places around here, because right now I’m not seeing many choices. The hotel has a nice restaurant which I absolutely love, but if you’ve ever been to a Bone Fish Grill then you know it’s not the most economical place to eat every day for a 14 day hotel stay.

Pray for me people! I’m in need of an attitude turn-around. And to all of you living in a place that is turning your mood foul, please move. Just pack up right now and move. The world could be a much better place for us all if we weren’t living in places that made us miserable.

Wouldn't You Know It

My month of unemployment is coming to an end and wouldn’t you know, at the end of it I start to get sick. My throat is sore, my sinuses are draining on overdrive and I am constantly freezing. I’m getting on a plane in 4 days. I would like to do so without being sick. I’m hoping it won’t last long.

It’s time to go back to work as last week I made a serious impulse purchase. It wasn’t much of an impulse because I’ve been looking at getting a new one for about two years. I just wouldn’t have expected it to be this one.



But I love it and sad as I was to see my Jeep go, it was time for us to part.

Looking for Inspiration

I’m looking for a new project to take on. Work has been so crazy and stressful lately that I have not been able to think straight. So what are you working on these days? Give me some information on your latest projects and links to relevant pages if you know any. Inspiration from anywhere would be great. I hope you all are using your crafts to keep the stress down.