Recently, I’ve been doing a bunch of pre-planning work for my preparations related to retirement in three years, and that was going pretty well. In addition to my new list of rituals to add to my “execution”, I have a list of about 12 topics that I want to work through one per month over the next year. In effect, figuring out what I need to figure out before I retire. The obvious one is finances, but I also combine that with legal, and it encompasses things like wills, powers of attorney, and even some end-of-life planning. That one may seem more like health, but I’ve lumped it with legal. More like long-term health and what I need to put in place legally to support those outcomes. And that is generally going well. In typical PolyWogg fashion, it’s a plan on how to pre-plan my retirement plan. 🙂 My happy place.
Which is good as the rest of my life is going bonkers.
On the positive side, I managed to start my 3D printer up yesterday. Printed two small test prints, didn’t turn out perfect, but they printed at least. Now I just need to dial it in more. I felt like I needed a win or at least a break-through for trying it. I didn’t even know where to start, to be honest. I bought the printer 28 months ago, and paid someone 20 months ago to set it up for me, get it all going. It has sat in my basement ever since. I knew generally how to print stuff, but I had no idea how to get it to the point of actually being ready to print. No manual, no instructions. Apparently, there was an SD card that came with it (I did know there was one but just thought it was for transferring files from computer to printer) and that little SD card has all the instructions on it, as well as the software I need. Found out from the vendor, opened the SD card, and voila! There are the instructions in nice little folders named 1-17 for different “stages” of using the printer. 1-2 were for the initial setup and testing, 3 was a test file you could print directly, and 4-6 were different software options to try. 7 and beyond deal with various aspects of maintenance and more advanced setup options. I followed 1-3 and printed two test prints! 4-6 gave me the software to do new stuff of my own! It’s not rocking and rolling fully, but I’m lightyears ahead of where I was. Which feels like the end of the positive side.
In the meh category, work is fine, nothing exciting. I’m finding it hard to establish a good rhythm for work, and it has been this way for months. Between some short-term leave, summer holidays, acting, etc., I haven’t felt like I was doing my normal job since May and it’s taking a bit of a toll. I have a French test at the start of November, and while I am normally nervous going into the tests, my confidence is really low at the moment.
I was really stressed back in May trying to juggle working at the office, my schedule, Andrea’s schedule and Jacob’s day-to-day schedule changes for his concussion stuff. We found a scheduling solution, he got through June, and I really thought we would have some improvements for September. They even seemed to be working. Jacob did more classes last week than almost the entire second semester last year, annnnd this week he’s back to missing 3 days out of 4 so far. So frustrating.
I’ve been trying to adjust to the new schedule and found an option to ask for an extension for some extra flex right now, as I thought he would be back to a normal or regular schedule in a couple of weeks. But this week was nothing resembling a promising sign.
I’m generally copacetic about return-to-office changes for me at work. We all have to upgrade from 2d/week to 3d/week, with some extra rigour attached, and that was generally okay with me. It’s a challenge to adapt, sure, but better than 5d/week, and most of the complaints I see are of the “suck it up, buttercup” variety. Whether we like it or not is irrelevant. It could be worse, could be better.
But then Andrea took over an hour to get home from a local office from which she could have walked and made it home faster. Stupid transit delays, which is just a nightmare for everyone. And with the unreliability, more people are driving. For me, it will be a challenge. The offices are more packed, and we don’t have assigned seating at the local office, so you reserve in advance to have a guaranteed space, but which space is open depends on when you get there. If you’re there at 6:00 a.m., like a colleague, she can sit anywhere she wants. If you’re there up to 8:00, lots of choice. After 8:00 a.m., it gets decidedly less and less flexible. But I can sit almost anywhere, just annoying to worry about. And for me, if I’m driving Jacob to school still, then I won’t get to the building until close to 9:00 a.m. Not great.
Every other week, we are supposed to go into the mother ship. Which was fine. When I was there 5d/week, I had indoor parking. Expensive, but with Andrea and I usually commuting together, the convenience balanced out the cost. They switched to daily parking which was perfect. But as of today, they announced that they’re cancelling all daily parking and going back to monthly only. The problem with this is that for anyone who is not going into that building at least 3d / week, it’s not worth it. $200 to park once or twice a month? I don’t think so. Sooo, no problem, just park in a nearby lot. Except if you get there at 9:00, there are no spots anywhere. Over the last 7 years, they’ve removed about 50% of the parking spots in the area. People trying to park after 8:30 this week have already said, “all the lots were full”, and they ended up going back home. With the building parking switching back to monthly, this means another 1500 commuters vying for the lots that were full by 8:30, and will now be full by 7:30. In other words, I literally will have no option to drop Jacob at school and go to the office unless I can drop him by 7:15 at the latest.
On band days, that might work. If he can stay in band. If he can attend regularly. If we can find something that will f***ing help him. Cuz we thought we had some stuff working and it’s stopped.
Then, just for fun, my health has sucked this week. Monday was the start of my big plan to fix my back, get it back in proper functioning order, and I started with osteo & massage treatment at 9:00 a.m. Great. Except it wasn’t great. He did some work on my stomach which has been upset of late, and it messed me up royally for Monday and Tuesday. He worked on my legs and the joints hated it later. I did chiro last night, and it helped my upper back, but my lower back was screaming at me most of the day.
Today? My mental health took a giant dump on my body. I’m really stressed about the RTO stuff suddenly, as I’m going to have to adapt my work times considerably just to comply, which is fine generally. I don’t care about that much. I care that it means I have to adjust my support for Jacob quite a bit. Some of the flex that I had that was working for him is gone now. I don’t know what to do about it, and I don’t know how to help him.
I took 3d sick earlier this week with the osteo impact, and today I’m taking a personal day. Great. So much for getting a routine going.
I’m considering just taking 3m sick leave for mental stuff, but the problem with that is that it just delays the problem. 3m from now looks no different than today does. There’s no indication it will be any different. I don’t have a solution, or to be blunt with myself, I don’t have any solutions I like much.
The likely solution is that I’ll have to start going into work for 7:00 a.m. or so to get a parking spot and be able to leave on time to get Jacob from school. Which means Jacob will have to get himself to school which will add a lot of friction to him going at all and increase his absences. Great. But I don’t have an option to handle getting him there and still have any options for commuting. On days in the mothership, I’ll likely have to switch to transit and Jacob will just be on his own for commuting, which again means he likely won’t go.
FML right now. It’ll get better, but it’s annoying me a lot today.
