As part of my plans for the year, I have been reading the latest tips and tricks articles on goals, time management, etc., and one thing that frequently happens is evident in my list for the year. I have too many commitments, in short. Almost 100 big and small ticket items for the year. Some are huge, like building an observatory; others are small, like doing a backup. But it’s a huge list for a year.

If they were all the same size, I would have to do one every three days to get through it all. And if I did them all? It would probably take me close to 2 years of solid work, assuming I wasn’t actually working for a living at the same time. They’re big and ambitious plans, deliberately so. “Unrealized potential” and all that.

One thing that has been niggling at me is that I also try to update things weekly, which is often too short a timeframe. I can parse out, say, 15 steps to building an observatory, and one of them might be the design phase which itself could take 2-3 weeks, with several sub-activities for it too. And thus, on a weekly basis, the pieces are too big and numerous, and the timeframe is likely too short. One of the tips articles talked about the difference between work goals and personal goals, particularly when you are balancing work/life on a daily basis. It noted that while work activities might break down into week-long or even daily progress tracking, personal goals might be better grouped around the month. And without over-committing. It got me thinking about the difference between larger projects (like an observatory), ongoing repetitive tasks (like exercise), or one-off tasks (like cleaning up the basement). Is there something in there that will help me plan more effectively on a monthly basis?

So what would happen if I picked a small subset of the 100 yearly goals to focus on in January? And then perhaps grouped them as I said above? Well, you’d end up with this list.

Hmm, a subset of 29 is probably too high a commitment. But I am off for another week. Some of them are also for delegation, like hanging stuff around the house — we’re using TaskRabbit to do that, not doing it ourselves. Plus 14 of them are virtual computer thingies.

I think it’s doable. And, not for nothing? Two of them are already done. 🙂 Happy January!

It’s almost midnight on January 1st, and I started this post almost 14 hours ago. Then a little cyber gremlin intervened, and I lost most of the day. Not an auspicious beginning to my year, but that is a topic for another day. Today, I’m writing about my plans for the year instead.

Last year, I created about 20 separate “mini to-do” list trackers in OneNote that I used for a few months before Andrea started chemo treatments. Then I kind of tossed them aside and only referred to them sporadically after that, but that’s about it. I played with tracking results, I played with trying to come up with separate “project” lists, but in the end, my priorities were elsewhere. Going back to them, let’s see where there are some ideas to inspire plans for this year.

Self-organization was a list of little things I could do to improve my life, and for the new year, I like the idea of stretching and making something from scratch. Two items, that’s all. They could probably fit under other categories, but they’ll suffice here for now.

Learning could be a huge category but I filed some of the directed learning under other headings. What remains at the top of the list is learning to use my 3D printer.

Reading is another category where I could have a huge list of individual books. But instead, one of my first commitments is to make a list of books to read in 2023! Starting with finishing Crime and Punishment and the Sleeping Car Porter.

I kind of dropped the Astronomy hobby in the last couple of years and it is time to pick it back up. I have 30+ “items” in my tracker for astronomy, and I’m committing to some big ones, including building an observatory this year.

For our Computers, I need to setup our smart devices and improve my backups with cloud saves. I also want to finish setting up some stuff in the basement (TV, music, video games).

I mentioned we had made some improvements on Finances this year, but I want to do some simple clean-up of accounts and files, do a pension buyback, and have some structured end-of-life discussions with Andrea and Jacob.

On the Family front, I’m hoping there is a LOT less work on the health front, even with some pending surgery for Jacob. We have some outings planned, maybe even a small trip, and some fun stuff with Jacob (remote control car, board game design, and Lego: Colosseum). Plus a large “classified” project around some Xmas gifts for next year.

We’ve been putting off some minor and major Home renovations in recent years, and we’ll knock some of them off the list over the course of the year. In the short term, there’s some stuff to get going in the basement.

Website Setup is a bit tricky and misleading. It is short but there are tons of other things that tie into and thus are listed elsewhere (like reviews and general writing). I’ll write about one aspect of that for the month of January, but I also have some new branding to figure out on the Astronomy Guide front.

Writing is a narrower category than it first appears, as it is mostly about “books” more so than blogs. So, I’ve got ideas for my HR Guide, an Astronomy Guide or 2, and a fiction title I’d like to do more on.

For my other writing, including Blogging – Reviews, I have plans for more movie reviews, recipes, TV season reviews, book reviews (of course), music reviews, quotes, jokes, and even restarting my PolyWogg gallery links from Flickr.

Beyond reviews, I also write about other topics, and I generally track it under the heading of Bloggables, aka topics based on my experiences or curation of good articles on the web.

I have a general heading for Photography but if I’m completely honest with myself, it is more like “managing photos”. I plan to learn how to use GIMP, which is a really long series of lessons that may take me more than a year. I want to upload more family and astrophotos to Flickr so I can cross-link them to my website and create some photobooks. And, I probably should wrap my head around the best place for long-term backups and storage of my photos.

My Volunteering hat is almost non-existent for the new year. AstroPontiac has had zero need for me in the last year, and I need to audit RASC Ottawa’s books, which is about an afternoon’s worth of work. I think I can handle both of those.

On the Health side, it’s a bit strange. While I have lots of things going on for health, almost all of it appears under a separate heading (fitness, which is next). In the narrow area of health, I’ll meet my new doctor and review medications and a potential need for the Shingles vaccine. However, I’ve also had a “weekend retreat” for myself as a mental health holiday on the planning list since before the pandemic started. I’m hoping to squeeze that in for the Spring.

For Fitness, I’ve already mentioned assembling the exercise bike, and stretching, but I also want to use my BowFlex, ride my exercise bike, and go walking three times a week each. I also want to start using my Scooter. And it’s about time I did a proper clothes purge too.

Each year, I have grand plans for Cooking more often through the year and trying out lots of new recipes. It almost never happens. This year, I want to do more with bread, crepes, ice cream, and 15 other recipes in general. It should be manageable.

At the end of the list, I created a catch-all called “Activities“. They tend to be things that don’t exactly fit the other categories, although some could be shoe-horned here and there. I want to learn to play a song on the piano. complete a memorization challenge, assemble some models including a Robot, and fix Andrea’s Xmas Carousel (it needs simple gluing to work). But I also want to figure out a big Raspberry Pi project that will likely involve the 3D printer too. That’s for later in the year when I have time to work on stuff while prints are going on. I doubt I’ll get to it, but it’s nice to dream.

So that’s my list of big items for the year…about 100 in total, give or take a few (depending on how you count). My list of “possibles” for the year. Now, let’s see tomorrow what I’m going to work on first.

Previously, I looked at my progress for the year and said it sucked canal water. Lots of things in there where my home life squeezed out other activities. What wasn’t really on my list at the start of the year was much about my career. I mentioned in the previous post that it’s hard to nuance it for context and perspective.

At the start of the year, life was normal-ish. I had accepted a new job starting in mid-January that was slated to run for six months. It would be an opportunity to fully assess if I wanted to be a Director while doing a job I had done most of before and while working on other files that I was ideally suited to lead. In short, it was almost the perfect foundation for a successful stint. While I didn’t and don’t have a burning desire to be an Executive, I did want THIS job. So I fully intended to do everything in my power to make it a success and to qualify in a pool somewhere so that they would have options to potentially appoint me when the opportunity was officially over. That was my plan.

Three weeks in, we got the news that Andrea would start chemo. And I realized that not only would I not have the time to really devote to qualify in a pool, but I also wouldn’t have the mental energy to complete applications, write exams, prepare for interviews, etc. My priorities shifted with no regret at all. I’ve tried explaining this before, and people see it as, “it’s unfortunate this health thing happened while you were doing that acting”.

Except, that isn’t how I see it. It’s not the right nuance. I feel more like the health events were fixed; this is when they happened. If anything, it’s mildly unfortunate that my acting assignment came up when it did. The acting preceded my wife’s chemo, but the only timing part is that the work opportunity came up when I needed to be committed to my family instead. There was no “choice” here.

If the events had happened in reverse order, I wouldn’t even have thought about applying. I would have known that I couldn’t do it full justice while supporting her, and I would have stayed in my previous job. No question, hands-down that would have been the choice. And I would have had no regret about passing on the opportunity.

My only real “regret”, if it can even be called that since I don’t believe in them, is that it would have been good to know up front that her chemo was going to be scheduled, so I could pass on the assignment and give someone else a chance to do it.

Don’t get me wrong. I did my job, and I did it well. But I did it with about 80% of my brain. I had three huge advantages. First, the team was relatively stable and knew their files. Second, I was working from home, and it was easier to adjust schedules to play chauffeur for appointments, run errands, etc.; if I was trying to do all that while going to the office five days a week? I would have had to end the acting early, there’s no way I could have handled it. And third, I had a huge advantage going in that I knew most of the files inside and out, so my learning curve was low.

Anyway.

It was a good assignment; I’m glad I had the experience; I only wish it was next year or two years ago, not this past year. It pulled me away more than I would have liked. I don’t care about not having flipped it into an EX position. I could still do all that if it was what I wanted. But I knew where I needed to be instead, and there were no regrets about that choice; it wasn’t a choice.

When the acting position ended, I had a choice of going back to my old directorate or looking for a new job. The easy solution would have been to go back, but I had been there for several years, so I looked around. Andrea had finished chemo, and life was easing off a bit on the home front. Or so I thought. I had a few job offers, but one stood out. I knew the types of files and how they worked, although not the specifics, and I believed it was a good job. The immediate boss was one that I knew informally from around the branch for a few years, I got along with her well enough for the limited direct interactions I have had with her, and she had a good rep. And her DG had an equally solid rep, although I didn’t know her as well personally. I didn’t know the team at all. So good files + good boss = worth a look, obviously. And my director and I clicked in the first two meetings.

Once I’m over the first hump of even considering a job, I frequently look for three things when I’m interviewing my boss. Yep, it’s an interview on my side too. I don’t have to work anywhere specific. It’s all about the best fit for me. First and foremost, I like transparency in how my boss approaches files. It makes life easier if I know WHY my boss is leaning one way or another, and transparency in management issues is pretty key. She was very open about the current situation, what she’d experienced over the last few years, and what she was looking for in the future. Second, I like openness in approaches. Some people mistake that for simple transparency, but it isn’t. They often go hand in hand, sure, but many people are transparent about files as long as you do it their way. The discussions showed we weren’t locked into a set approach. There were some pieces fixed, but there was also room to manoeuvre within that box. Third, and this is equally critical for me, I can’t work for an intentional squirrel. We can all get squirrelly from time to time, it goes with our jobs. And if there’s pressure on, ANY job can make someone squirrelly as a boss. But what I don’t want is someone who intentionally embraces their squirreldom. I want calm in the face of the storm, not a tempest brewing during calm seas. She’s not a squirrel, so all good.

I had one meeting with her for about 15 minutes and a second meeting for about 25 minutes the next day. And we realized we were both sold. I didn’t even pursue the other jobs in comparison. A solid job, a solid atmosphere, a solid boss. Sounds perfect, right?

I missed something

I did all the usual things I would do in planning a move, and like all job changes, I took my leap of faith only after mitigating whatever I could and deciding which were “dealbreakers” and which were mere “details”.

But as I did all that planning, I made a huge assumption that served me well for 30 years of my career without checking to see if my assumption still held. I assumed I was at full capacity. Or that even if I wasn’t, I would be able to function near full capacity without too much trouble.

That grandiose view of my own abilities is located somewhere between arrogance, hubris and simple self-confidence. I’ve been able to do just about everything that I’ve ever been assigned and to do it well unless there were specific reasons why it was doubtful anyone could make it work. And sometimes, even then, I succeeded. I have a lot of experience in different types of jobs, I can draw upon lots of different processes and work procedures to get things moving, and even though I was coming into a new job, I had a director who was in her job for at least a year, so I would have guidance.

But I miscalculated my ability to hit the ground running. Yes, I was feeling better after my wife had finished her chemo, and I had completed the previous big project in my old job with some flourish and success. Things were returning to “normal” and I was looking forward to the change in job. Yet I wasn’t at full capacity. As I mentioned above, I ran the previous shop at 80% of my brain power, and that was enough with a good team and lots of corporate knowledge to guide me in my actions.

For the new job? I thought I would go back up to 100% right away as Andrea’s treatments ended, but I didn’t, and 80% was NOT a good starting point. First and foremost, it’s a totally different type of job. I’ve done policy, planning, and operations before, but I’ve mostly done planning and horizontal jobs over the last few years. Most of my operational jobs are in the distant past. In some cases, 20+ years. But it’s not a pure Ops job. Or so I thought. To put it bluntly, I completely underestimated how much “ops” there was and, thus, how big a change it would be for me from my last job. I am normally able to adjust to new rhythms in about 4 weeks, or perhaps 6w at the outside. The new job took me closer to 12, and I’m not totally sure I’ve got the right handle on it.

My new team has fluctuated in size, hovering around the 8-person mark. It went as high as 11, down to 7 at the moment, but hovering around that 7-9 range. I’m used to that size of a team, but of the 7 currently, 4 of them are new to the team since I joined, and 2 more are only veterans by a month or two over me. I’m the third longest-serving member of the team. Which means very little corporate memory exists on a bunch of things. I tried using previous team members to cross-fertilize their knowledge as we onboarded the new people, but it didn’t take as well as I had hoped.

As a result, I came to a conclusion on Dec 1st or so that I needed to put in place a brand new training regime for the whole team to get us up to the same speed and on the same page, so to speak. Instead of the team working at capacity by January 1st, a bunch of the training will happen in January and February. I hope to be at full working capacity by April. But my training all of them is a bit crazy when you think about it. I’ve been in the job 3 months, and now I’m developing a whole new training regime to get them all doing their job the way that I want, and based on having figured their job out myself on the side of my own desk while I was doing my new job. In addition, of the new team, 3 are relatively new to the government. They’re all excellent, but some are a bit greener than others, and all are green to the area. I have a positive outlook on where we’ll be in another three months, but it will take a fair amount of work to get there.

The end result is I’m logging some overtime to compensate for my being new to the files, and everything takes a bit longer than I think it should, the first time through, anyway.

It’s better than it was. I put in some control structures I needed, rearranged a few agendas to work better for me, got some people working on things I could take off my own plate, etc. Yet I haven’t felt like I was really on top of my files for the last 13 weeks or so. I’m also trying to integrate back into the office 2 days a week, which has been an extra adjustment. I’m close to where I want to be, and I’m closer than I was, but it’s taken way longer than I expected.

Cuz I overestimated “me” in the equation. I have high standards for myself, sure, but I have seen myself dropping from 80% in September to probably 65-70% heading into the Christmas break. I haven’t been able to regenerate or regroup.

The fall has not been as easy as I had hoped on the home front. We have had a lot of appointments for Andrea and Jacob, which affected my schedule during the day. I time-shifted to accommodate them, but it can sometimes be a struggle if I have to go go go all day and then add an extra hour or two at night just to catch up because I’m slow or to time-shift breaks from earlier in the day. There have been a few nights where I’ve logged on after 10 or 11 and worked until 2 or 3 in the morning. On the positive side, there aren’t any interruptions then, but it’s not sustainable.

Yet, if I’m honest, work is going “fine”. My bosses are happy, and I’ve started to feel more comfortable with my role and decisions. I’m starting to take on more things that should be with me and off my boss’ shoulders. I’m fulfilling more of the complete manager’s role than I have been. A couple of files have gone off the rails, but as my executive coach says, cut myself some slack. If my bosses think I’m doing fine, and the only one questioning my performance is me, then perhaps I should sit down, take a break, and STFU.

The last two weeks have been hard, too, even though it’s the Christmas break. I have a file that we’re trying to get back on track, and we have a way forward, but it’s a bit “crunched” for time. We’ll get it done, not quite as well as I had hoped at the beginning, but good enough. But at home, I’ve been super stressed about Andrea. Yet nothing about cancer. This was something new and unexpected.

Most of our close friends know that Andrea has limitations in her eyesight. I don’t talk about it much as it is not my story to tell. If she chooses to share it, that is up to her. The challenge right now is that she has something going on that is causing the deterioration of her sight. It is likely temporary, a normal part of life, just something that can happen to all of us, but she is at higher risk, and it is happening earlier for her than most people. But if it’s not? There is a risk of a serious decrease in her sight. With the incumbent effects on her life, and thus the knock-on effects for Jacob and me as well.

She’s already faced some of those question marks this year. We thought her cancer would likely be relatively straightforward to treat; it’s not curable but highly treatable, but it could drop into remission for 10 years, all good. Instead, the treatments were highly debilitating for at least six months, she’s off work for most of a year, there are many side effects, and the remission period may be as low as 3 years. So instead of six months out of ten years dealing with treatment, she could, in theory, be looking at one year out of four. That is a different view of the rest of our lives, affecting all forms of retirement planning and even current living situations.

Finishing the year

As I said in the heading, the year sucked canal water. We started with dashed hopes, and our whole life shifted for the year. Ultimately, we have good outcomes. On a more superficial level, we have good jobs, strong medical coverage and support. We’re better off than 90% of the planet. But the year still felt like it sucked.

Some part of me feels like I’m whining. Most of what happened this year happened to Andrea. For Jacob and me, it is just knock-on effects. Andrea and I both worry about the impact on Jacob, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised to see his increased maturity for the year, along with decreased anxiety. It seems counter-intuitive, but he’s growing and maturing in real and impressive leaps. We’re hugely proud of him.

Yet this blog is about me. And the issues I’m dealing with throughout the year. Although it was “Andrea’s cancer”, the year affected me too. As does worrying about Jacob, and everything that goes with his medical conditions. On top of my own, and the stress of work.

The other night, I was trying to fall asleep, and I couldn’t stop thinking, “What if..?”. What if Andrea loses her eyesight or experiences a significant reduction? What if the cancer remission is shorter than we hope? What if she can’t go back to work? I couldn’t stop my damn brain from racing from one terrible outcome to another, feeling it was completely unfair. It doesn’t happen often, but I do experience those thoughts from time to time. In a moment like that, it is hard to find perspective.

As we head into 2023, there are more unknowns and uncertainties than I would like to be dealing with right now and I need perspective.

I want to find a different way of looking at things. A different way to view the year. And that will be my next post. Flipping the narrative from one of despair to one of success and hope.