Charmed Life

This past week Melissa was in Chicago for some work training and so I had Grace all to myself from Sunday to Thursday. Let me tell you, I have a lot more respect for what she goes through when I'm out of town and I have no idea how single parents do it.

I mean everything went fine. She's only in day care twice a week so I had to take vacation one day and one day my mother in law watched her. No biggie. But waking up every day with her? Getting through everything at night? Not having anyone to tag-team with? It's tough. I found myself being much more tired, and much more likely to go to sleep near midnight, which is rare for me.

The other big thing I noticed? Commutes suck. In Austin I lived maybe five minutes away from work and since we've been in New Orleans I've worked from home so I haven't had a long commute since I guess high school. Getting Grace to day care and then back home to work took just under an hour. Now, I like me some NPR, and it's nice to catch up on the news, but losing two hours every day does not work for me. Here's hoping I can keep living the charmed life I have.

Other than that I'd like to thank everyone that kept me company this week, the family Monday at the zoo, Chad and Brandy for dinner Tuesday, Wayne for dinner Wednesday, and Richard for dinner Thursday. I'm not a huge fan of eating alone and with all those visits I barely had to.

The Executive Lounge

Traveled for work last week to Rochester, MN. Spent the weekend in Waveland doing some cleaning. Back in Waveland tonight for the start of Easter festivities. Melissa is traveling next week to Chicago for work training. Busy few weeks in the Dickey house.

This past work-travel was a little different than the usual in that it was a bunch of my co-workers getting together for training. More than two of us together in one place for any length of time is far from the norm. I imagine anyone eavesdropping on our conversations was entertained. We swapped travel/customer horror stories. Everyone bragged about what level of frequent flier status they had obtained. And we all tried to outdo each other by mentioning what fancy hotel perk we had been able to make use of. The hotel we all stayed in had an Executive Lounge on the top floor that only a few people had access to (they snuck the rest of us in). Our evenings were spent enjoying the free drinks, so much so that we drank them out of Crown Black. Good times.

One thing that didn't really occur to me before I started working from home was the lack of co-workers. Working in an office, I just got used to seeing people in the hall, going out to lunch, or just hanging out in their office to pass the time on slow days. None of that happens when you work from home. Sure I've tried to fill the void by going to lunch with friends regularly, even going so far as to find some other IBMers in town to lunch with, but it's not the same. Emails and instant messages and conference calls don't quite cut it either. Not only do I think I'm worse off socially, I also think the company is worse off due to the lack of information sharing that naturally would occur. With more and more people working from home, I'm thinking this is big challenge going forward. Curious to see what people come up with.

Interesting fun fact about hanging out with my co-workers in Rochester, I was the only white guy. One guy escaped from Vietnam. Another left Korea when he was a kid. The other two were Chinese and I'm unsure when they moved or if they are second generation. That's another thing I miss about hanging out with co-workers, the varied cultural backgrounds. I love being exposed to different ways of thinking and that's harder to find among friends. Our friends, generally, think similarly to the way we do, hence being friends, but co-workers are under no such restrictions. Of course, this can be horrible at times, but handled well I think it can be fascinating.

Maybe I should start some sort of work-at-home lunch club.

Oh never, oh never, oh never again

This past Saturday, I had what I will only describe as an "interesting" evening. If you weren't there and want more details, you'll have to find someone else to ask. For the purpose of this post, what you need to know is, I wound up in not the best of states due to no one's fault but my own (with a nice assist from circumstances). What has lingered for me since then, is not the sequence of events that lead up to what happened, though certainly there are lessons to be learned there, but more what happened after.

The guys I was riding on the float with took it upon themselves to make sure I was OK. Some of them literally carried me on their back. Then they did what needed to be done to make sure I would get better. Now, I'm sure some of them weren't thrilled about it. I have no doubt there was much grumbling. And you can be sure they'll make sure I don't forget anything about that day. But still, they were there for me. It's important to note here that theses guys aren't what I would call my best friends. Some are closer than others, and some are more so acquaintances, but on average we're talking right at the edge of "ask them to help me move furniture" level of friendship.

I now find myself in the unexpected position of both being indebted to someone (someones in this case) and also feeling a part of a large group. I wouldn't say I've been "Godfather" scared of owing people a favor, but I've certainly tried to avoid it when I can. "Atlas Shrugged" probably had more of an effect on me in that way than I care to admit. So it's certainly new for me, especially outside the realm of really close friends and family. The other new thing for me is the "belonging" feeling I take away from all of this. I'm not a rebel by any means, but I've often felt like an outsider in most things. With this group I've felt like that often. But after this, I'm not sure I can really feel that way anymore.

Well anyway, that's what's been on my mind the last few days. Sure it's a little navel-gaze-y, but, hey, it's my blog.

Other things of note: loving Castle and Psych proving that police shows with a dash/dump-truck of silly are for me, can't get enough of pop-culture references on TV shows regardless of format, when did lightbulbs get so complicated to buy?, why is booking travel to Rochester MN for work nearly impossible?

Efficient vs Lazy

I've come to the belief that there are three variables relating to success: talent, luck, and effort. It's hard to get by with just one. Getting by with two is pretty common. Really succeeding requires all three. Talent I'm using to describe traits you are born with and that aren't that alterable. Think of the physical attributes necessary for some sports (height, large hands, etc.) or how some people innately get things like math or music. Luck is self explanatory, and is by definition uncontrollable. Effort is the one variable you can control.

I'm horrible with effort.

This relates a good bit to the last post, and this post itself is a symptom, but at the heart of it, I'm lazy. I've been called lazy for most of my life and I've always defended it, or at times wore it like a badge of honor. Not my finest moment. I've procrastinated for most of my life. In high school I spent more time figuring out my needed grade on the final to get an A in the class than actually studying. In college I decided most classes it was easy to get a B in but an A would require a lot more work and so went for just the B. Sure I've had success at times. Variables one and two worked out well. And sometimes I've put in just enough effort to do really well. The open question is why?

Why do I usually only put in just the needed amount of effort to get by?

On my better days I tell myself it's the engineer in me, always calculating the efficient use of effort. Is the A really worth it? What does it matter? Why not take the B and do something else for the rest of the day? The phrase "Perfect is the enemy of the good enough" comes to mind. And certainly sometimes that is probably true. On my worst days however, another reason comes to mind.

I'm just scared.

I read something recently, I think it was in Nutureshock, that one of the downsides of praising a child for being smart is that they start to only do the things they think they will succeed in. They won't even attempt something where they think they might fail. While this may have not been the cause for me, who can say really, I do relate to the symptom. Doing things with a minimum amount of effort is a defense mechanism. It's the safe play. If whatever you do turns out really well, you can smugly tell yourself "I spent no time on that and it was awesome. I'm awesome!" And if whatever you do turns out not so good you can comfort yourself by saying "Well, I mean, I didn't spend much time on that anyway." It's an out, a way of always protecting yourself from failure.

It's a balancing act for sure. There is still an engineer's brain inside this skull and I have to keep myself from falling down the rabbit hole on one thing or another. But I think it's time to swing the pendulum of effort in the other direction for a while and see what happens.