[11 weeks] Starting to wrap it up
Dec. 15th, 2024 06:32 pmThe Ides of December. Time to start eyeing my usual end-of-year rituals with the suspicion that is due them; do I really want to bother with a video of training clips this year? Maybe I can do a quick one. As for my yearly retrospective, I write that whether I'm in the mood or not, but I don't currently know what I will say. A quiet year would have pleased me greatly and I didn't get one, but there also wasn't tragedy.
This week my own organization held an adorable virtual summit, at work, for the two teams to share viewpoints and problem spaces. I didn't do most of the planning, but as the eng lead I got to be the big cheese and give the kickoff talk -- it was very fun to tell everyone that YES they could have fidget toys in that long, long meeting (look, here is MY fidget toy) and it's fine with me if they play a game on their phone, just keep the verbal centers free for the summit; so nothing with words. Hell yes. Being the engineering leadership I want to see in the world. I had to stay up late one night making slides, but then the teams did all their talking and brainstorming, and it was honestly the most fun and positive summit. It almost makes me want to stick around to see all the work get done, but it also makes me more sure that these teams do belong together with or without me. And there's very little knowledge, now, that lives only in my head.
That little goth squirrel keeps coming around, and now I think it -- she? -- might be flirting with one of the greys. I'm getting pretty invested in this backyard soap opera, tbh. I bought almonds just for feeding the three of them.
On Monday I did a drop-in acro class with my new base, and he officiallyasked me out asked me if I'd like to do dynamic acro with him next session. Hell yes I would. So that will be a fun thing over January and February, when I could very much use some fun things. We ended up at his place on Saturday for a cookie swap party too. Rounding out my social life there was dinner with a co-worker (free, because the restaurant messed up) and dates that were all on different days than usual. December is a time of disruptions, holiday parties, visits. Oh but hey -- today I hung out for crafting and snacks with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apfelsingail and we didn't even need technology to see and hear each other! This is still exciting. Her move here feels recent.
I've been reading What Happened To You? and I'm finding it really helpful. Both in noticing when people are freezing up etc, and because of its guidance on how to proceed when someone is really upset. (In short: regulate them, then relate to them, and then eventually reason.) I've had reason to notice this week that it's very hard to get quickly from dysregulated all the way to "reasoning", but it's equally hard to be gracefully yanked back from reasoning and frontal-cortex land back to "re-regulating". Anyway. The audiobook has a bunch of clips from Oprah's various interviews over many years, and I'm finding it useful, so I guess that's a recommendation.
I've been slooowly listening through the official Coachella 2025 playlist on Spotify to see what the youths are listening to these days. And sloooowly learning handstands, as always. I learned a new cue for bending my spine this week, and it's truly remarkable that this sort of thing keeps happening because I've had this same spine for 47 years.
This week my own organization held an adorable virtual summit, at work, for the two teams to share viewpoints and problem spaces. I didn't do most of the planning, but as the eng lead I got to be the big cheese and give the kickoff talk -- it was very fun to tell everyone that YES they could have fidget toys in that long, long meeting (look, here is MY fidget toy) and it's fine with me if they play a game on their phone, just keep the verbal centers free for the summit; so nothing with words. Hell yes. Being the engineering leadership I want to see in the world. I had to stay up late one night making slides, but then the teams did all their talking and brainstorming, and it was honestly the most fun and positive summit. It almost makes me want to stick around to see all the work get done, but it also makes me more sure that these teams do belong together with or without me. And there's very little knowledge, now, that lives only in my head.
That little goth squirrel keeps coming around, and now I think it -- she? -- might be flirting with one of the greys. I'm getting pretty invested in this backyard soap opera, tbh. I bought almonds just for feeding the three of them.
On Monday I did a drop-in acro class with my new base, and he officially
apfelsingail and we didn't even need technology to see and hear each other! This is still exciting. Her move here feels recent.I've been reading What Happened To You? and I'm finding it really helpful. Both in noticing when people are freezing up etc, and because of its guidance on how to proceed when someone is really upset. (In short: regulate them, then relate to them, and then eventually reason.) I've had reason to notice this week that it's very hard to get quickly from dysregulated all the way to "reasoning", but it's equally hard to be gracefully yanked back from reasoning and frontal-cortex land back to "re-regulating". Anyway. The audiobook has a bunch of clips from Oprah's various interviews over many years, and I'm finding it useful, so I guess that's a recommendation.
I've been slooowly listening through the official Coachella 2025 playlist on Spotify to see what the youths are listening to these days. And sloooowly learning handstands, as always. I learned a new cue for bending my spine this week, and it's truly remarkable that this sort of thing keeps happening because I've had this same spine for 47 years.
