LA trip, Fluevogs, Cixin Liu
Nov. 2nd, 2019 09:04 pmI went to LA (the Venice part of LA, if you know the area) and that was a first for me. My hotel was a 20-minute walk to the office, along Venice beach, which I'm told is peak SoCal and is certainly peak something. I've never seen a beach so wide and nice, or so many people living outside in tents (I wasn't sketched out by the latter at all, just amazed at a place whose benevolent weather allows it). I looked at sunsets over the ocean, and walked with a few others to Muscle Beach just to hang from the rings there and say we did it. Was going to have dinner with my ex Smitten, but she flaked on me.
I also cried a lot, missed about half the summit because I was having intense 1:1s instead, and probably figured out a huge part of why my skip-level director is so unhappy with me. ( Sigh, work )
Now for a broader observation: the level I'm at objectively sucks. It's very much halfway between two better-understood levels, and I know three women at my level, in my office, with my score. All of us are blazingly unhappy. So some of this is baked in, and can't be helped. The obvious solution is to get to the next level but I don't even want to anymore, and the other one is to lower my expectations. Or at least go back to first principles: my career has already gotten me the one thing I wanted most out of it. The rest is extra credit. As it happens, I'm going to spend my next six months playing hard for that extra credit, but maybe I'll be able to keep some perspective as I do that? We'll see.
Work did bring a litter of kittens to the office last week, and also gave me a flower (an insane rainbow-colored rose) so there was that, too: the bizarre and occasionally delightful perks.
For my fellow Fluevoggers, a shout-out to the new Soft Rock lace-up platform boot. Yes, I know they're weird. They're weird and 100% me, they have the right toe-box shape (same as the Axe 2.0 and at least one other pair that I have), and they give a nice ankle snuggle. I am going to wear these puppies with EVERYTHING.
I also spent a few days inserting my nose into the Dark Forest trilogy, aka Remembrance of Earth's Past, by Cixin Liu. It started off slowly, but each book went faster than the last and, damn, I love it when the world ends. Not every science fiction author has the nerve, but nerve is not Cixin's problem. And reading is good for me.
I also watched a lecture on the biological underpinnings of religiosity. Some of it is stuff I was familiar with, but not all. For instance, I hadn't noticed that the four most typical focuses of OCD are also the four most typical focuses of religious rituals: in particular the cleansing of the body, ritualized preparation/consumption of food, entering and exiting places (typically churches; many folks with OCD have trouble with doorways); and numbers/numerology, like things coming in threes and tens. There is also a form of epilepsy (temporal lobe epilepsy) whose giveaway symptom is extreme interest in religion and philosophy, along with a reduced sense of humor and a manic desire to write... wow. Kind of gives you an idea how religious tracts and books might get written in the first place.
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heisenbug is now officially more stressed about work than I am, or at least surpassed me for a while earlier this week, so that's a thing.
I also cried a lot, missed about half the summit because I was having intense 1:1s instead, and probably figured out a huge part of why my skip-level director is so unhappy with me. ( Sigh, work )
Now for a broader observation: the level I'm at objectively sucks. It's very much halfway between two better-understood levels, and I know three women at my level, in my office, with my score. All of us are blazingly unhappy. So some of this is baked in, and can't be helped. The obvious solution is to get to the next level but I don't even want to anymore, and the other one is to lower my expectations. Or at least go back to first principles: my career has already gotten me the one thing I wanted most out of it. The rest is extra credit. As it happens, I'm going to spend my next six months playing hard for that extra credit, but maybe I'll be able to keep some perspective as I do that? We'll see.
Work did bring a litter of kittens to the office last week, and also gave me a flower (an insane rainbow-colored rose) so there was that, too: the bizarre and occasionally delightful perks.
For my fellow Fluevoggers, a shout-out to the new Soft Rock lace-up platform boot. Yes, I know they're weird. They're weird and 100% me, they have the right toe-box shape (same as the Axe 2.0 and at least one other pair that I have), and they give a nice ankle snuggle. I am going to wear these puppies with EVERYTHING.
I also spent a few days inserting my nose into the Dark Forest trilogy, aka Remembrance of Earth's Past, by Cixin Liu. It started off slowly, but each book went faster than the last and, damn, I love it when the world ends. Not every science fiction author has the nerve, but nerve is not Cixin's problem. And reading is good for me.
I also watched a lecture on the biological underpinnings of religiosity. Some of it is stuff I was familiar with, but not all. For instance, I hadn't noticed that the four most typical focuses of OCD are also the four most typical focuses of religious rituals: in particular the cleansing of the body, ritualized preparation/consumption of food, entering and exiting places (typically churches; many folks with OCD have trouble with doorways); and numbers/numerology, like things coming in threes and tens. There is also a form of epilepsy (temporal lobe epilepsy) whose giveaway symptom is extreme interest in religion and philosophy, along with a reduced sense of humor and a manic desire to write... wow. Kind of gives you an idea how religious tracts and books might get written in the first place.
heisenbug is now officially more stressed about work than I am, or at least surpassed me for a while earlier this week, so that's a thing.
