Life |
Posted by fidget
Jun
01
2010
I’m currently unemployed, which means that all the time I spend working on stuff for all my unpaid jobs is now spent at home. Usually, my work environment includes some combination of two to three cats, a laptop, and a bed/futon. This working environment can become very unstable if anything disrupts the cats. A disruption of sufficient scale can lead to up to an hour of renegotiating our positions in the room.
I have discovered that nothing disrupts the peace and quite like a delivery truck. The cats take note of any noises in the area, but they usually just twitch their ears and wait for the sound to end; this is their reaction to cars, sirens, trains, lawn care equipment, etc. The one exception is delivery trucks, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. As soon at a truck enters the 300 block of my street, the cats are on high alert. They stop whatever they were doing and run to a window to monitor the situation. If the back door is open, they are out there in a flash to sit motionless until the truck vacates the area.
I live in a complex at the end of a dead end street, so every truck that passes the last intersection before the dead end, drives through my apartment complex to turn around. Between FedEx and UPS, I go through this at least twice a day. While the cats have the same reaction to delivery trucks, regardless of their corporate affiliation, the FedEx truck is by far the most annoying. At some point in the company’s history, they hired a bunch of engineers to determine the most efficient way to deliver packages. One of their findings was that drivers should leave the truck running almost all the time. They leave the truck on while they deliver a package. They leave the truck on while they prepare for their next delivery. They even leave the truck running while they park behind my apartment and upload the delivery data for their recent deliveries. As far as I can tell, the cats think a parked, running, delivery truck is a national security threat.
I like getting packages as much as anyone else, I just don’t want my day disrupted by anyone in my neighborhood getting a package.
Life |
Posted by fidget
Mar
03
2010
For at least the last month, I’ve felt like I’m constantly playing catch-up or already behind. Work has been eating 12+ hours a day at least 5 days week. Last week, I had a minor car accident, taught 4 days of training, and then jumped into a 3 1/2 day belly dance convention that I helped organize, so I’m obviously physically and mentally exhausted.
Most of the stress is over (other than a complaint filed against me by a coworker), but I still feel like I’m behind. I’ve spent the morning reading my friends’ blogs, but I’m only about half way through. I feel like I’ve missed such important events, and had no idea. I also postponed a lot of medical stuff that should have happened last month, so this week I have to start physical therapy, go to the chiropractor, and have my annual physical.
Over the last couple months, I’ve tried to make time for a social life, but I feel like I’ve been neglecting everyone, including myself. There have been several evenings when I’ve tried to hang out with all of my social groups and attend everyone’s events. I love all my friends and these whirlwind nights are definitely fun, but exhausting.
The Plan:
I’m going to work on balance. Starting Saturday, I’m going to start viewing my large diverse social groups as the precious treasures that they are. I’m going to socialize with ALL of my friends, but I’m not going to keep track of who I’ve seen more or less. I’m going to decide what I want to do on any given day/night and do that, but without flaking on my commitments.
Lastly, I’m going to make time for me. Sometimes, I just need to spend sometime drinking coffee and petting the cats.
So work has been less than wonderful lately and I’m sure most of my friends are tired of hearing me whine about it. Everyone has told me that I should update my resume and start looking for a new job if I’m really that unhappy. I kept putting it off and I wasn’t really sure why.
I finally sat down today and decided to figure out why I’m determined to stick with a job that is making me depressed, cranky, and just generally miserable on a fairly regular basis. Here are my finding:
- There are still good days when I enjoy what I’m doing and feel like I’ve accomplished something worthwhile.
- In general, I work for a fairly nice company and I could pursue other opportunities within the organization.
- I’ve actually started to make friends with some of my coworkers and I would miss them.
- I’ve been trying to change things and make improvements on the departmental, company, and inter-operating company level and failing horribly (Well, very very rarely succeeding is more accurate) . These efforts, failures, and the impact they’ve had on my work relationships are a major part of the source of my current misery. If I just stop trying to fix everything and just do the stuff in my job description, I would probably be happier.
- There are still rumors of a major reorganization on the horizon and that could significantly improve things, or make it all worse. I feel like I should wait around and see what happens.
- I’ve only been at this job for about 22 mouths and I really feel like I should stay with a company for longer. I think this is the biggest reason that I’m reluctant to try to move on.
My father worked for Chrysler for more than 30 years and I admire that kind of career. In the era when most companies had pension programs, it was in your best interest to stay with a company for your whole career if possible. When I graduated college, I really expected to find a company that I would stay with for a really long time. My first job wasn’t really with a long term kind of company, but my second job is. My current company has a pension program and many of my coworkers have been with the company for 20+ years. I’m not sure if I want to work somewhere for the rest of my career, but I don’t think I should bounce from company to company either.
The length of time spent at a job impacts your future job prospects. Managers and reciters look at your job history when considering you for an interview. They look at not only what you have done, but how long you did it. I wasn’t sure what the rule of thumb was for how long you should stay at a particular company or in a position, so I did some research. It looks like 2 years is the minimum amount of time to stay with a company and 3 years looks better on a resume. Within a company 1 year is the minimum to stay in a position and 5 years is the maximum. Changing roles less than 1 year after starting your current role looks flighty, but staying in a role for more than 5 years points to someone without motivation. I can’t find any information about how long is too long to stay at with a company. If you aren’t planning to stay until retirement, where is the point of no return?
It is Saturday night and I’m at home. I spent last night at home, too. I’m starting to think this is a downward trend. I’m 25 years old. I should be able to find something fun to do every night.
I guess I need to stop expecting plans to just make themselves and start being proactive. I just got so used to being overbooked, I stopped planning anything.
Next Saturday is the first Dragon*Con staff meeting, so I should have something fun to do after that. I should talk to Monet about Friday night. Well, that’s progress for next weekend.
So, the last two weeks have been a little crazy.
TribalCon went well, at least from the attendees’ point of view. I ended up standing next to the sound table in costume interpreting the stage manager’s instructions for the sound and lights guys. She gave me insufficient information about the next act over a radio that was occasionally picked up by the speakers and I tried to give the techs instructions that would result in a well lit performer with audible music. I ran back stage for my number, performed with 13 other dancers, and was back at the sound table before the next act got on stage. Very tiring weekend overall.
Work has been keeping me busy. I get a new “little task” to complete just about everyday. Unfortunately they seem to take more than a day to complete and eat up the time I should spend working on other things. I’m going to have to start staying late and working weekends. 
I also found a new apartment. It is has two bedrooms, one bathroom, and hardwood floors. I’ll be about a mile from the courthouse in downtown Decatur. I’m not moving till mid-April, but I’ve already started packing and I’m making good progress. I need to make a trip to Goodwill and the recycling center, but need to pull the usable pieces fo my old computer before I drop it off.
TribalCon officially starts tonight. I think we are pretty much ready, but I’m sure problems will continue to pop up until it officially ends on Sunday. I’m already tired and the weekend of excessive physical activity, partying and little sleep hasn’t even started yet.
I have one errand to run on my way to the hotel this evening and I need to not accidentally acquire a cat while I’m there.
Wish me luck!
Since I can’t find a theme that I really like, I’m just going to change the theme every time I visit the page. If this annoys you, you should probably stop reading right now.
<Rant>
So I work for a utility. Let’s just call it GPC. They recently announced a Voluntary Attrition Plan (VAP) which basically pays about 700 GPC employees to retire at the end of March. Today they announce that employees retiring as part of the VAP are not allowed to have retirement parties. The retirement policy is that GPC gives each retiree a budget of 1/3 of their monthly salary for their retirement party.
While any employee with more that 10 years of employment with GPC qualified for the VAP, most of the people who are choosing to retire have been with GPC for 30+ years. These people were planning to retire in the next year or two and now they can’t celebrate their years of dedicated service with their families and coworkers.
It seems to me that a company that has elliminated raises and is asking its employees to cut costs could at least afford to treat its most experienced employees a little better than, “Thanks for all your work, now get out!”
</Rant>
I have managed to procure several themes, but none of them are exactly what I want. I guess I am going to have to do some more searching. Several of the themes would be great, if I could change the fonts.
I promise that I will start posting about more interesting topics once I finish the setup stuff. 
So this is my brand new home. Need to do some decorating, but it’s mine.