Burnout fuel: appeals, seating. But, hey, Toki Pona!

[flexagon]

In follow-up from last time, the in-law visit went okay. There's a curious sort of cabin fever that can set in when one feels stuck at home but without one's whole house actually available to one (say, if a husband is sleeping in one bedroom and the in-laws have taken over the other), and it set in and I had to escape to do workouts. Nothing went wrong, though.

Work does nothing but get worse. I really thought last week would be a desperately needed catch-up week, but Monday started off with the news that my best engineer was denied his promotion; I spent the rest of the week digging up evidence to address the committee's concerns so that I could file an appeal (due Friday). On Tuesday I found out that my team was physically moving to a new area (seating assignments ALSO due Friday), which kicked off a round of team-wide shuffling and angsting and horse-trading over that. I was dragged off in corners and made aware by this person and that person how much it drives them crazy when people walk behind them, or sit behind them, or this, or that... and while I take such things seriously, and thank people for telling me, and do my very best to accommodate, it makes me feel like they are all very young (or have PTSD, but I don't think they can all have PTSD). I used to care about that stuff too, and the manner in which I stopped caring feels a lot like "grew up and got the fuck over it".

Anyway, here I am hitting the weekend with a list of 26 unreplied emails that need a reply, 388 completely unread emails, interview notes to write up, and a weekly rotation yet to finish up. That last will take just over an hour, so maybe I'll start there? I slept almost 12 hours last night, and am resigned to the fact that I won't really wake up today, no matter what I do... I'll just stumble around, get as much useful done as I can, and sleep again. (I'd go to the gym next, but Honkfest is in full noisy swing out there and it was hard to get home from the mall earlier with my new towels. Hoping to let the riot disperse.)

For respite, and to be learning something fun and easy, I've been picking up Toki Pona over the last week. It's a cute little language whose full dictionary is only 120 words, and whose best tutorial is 19 lessons long. So adorable, so approachable! Thus far I'm on lesson 6 and can say just a few things, some very relevant to work: "I fight the many strange tools. I want to destroy the tools!"

mi utala e ilo nasa mute. mi wile pakala e ilo mute!

Also, I possess many cats... mi jo e sowali mute.

I don't suppose anyone else here speaks it, do they?

Comments

[randysmith]

I'll put a pebble on the side of the young'uns; at least, I haven't gotten over it yet. I've been pining for my cubicle since I got this job, and the move really looks like it's to an even worse layout than what I used to have. (Though I've gotten lucky and I think I'll be able to make my spot work for me.)

[flexagon]

Pebble noted, and I'm glad you've gotten lucky (though a part of me is ruefully wondering how many of my peeps think they got lucky... when you spend hours on something but a lot of it's confidential, there's every chance of not getting credit for the work).

I honestly don't know how much of it is a sort of immaturity / "focus on silly things that aren't work" phenomenon, and how much of it is hardwired, innate sensitivity that ultimately falls more under the umbrella of health/medical stuff. And I'm not even making judgments on what's "healthy"... it could well be incredibly nonadaptive to not care who walks behind you, making me and other senior peeps in my team the broken ones who just happen to do okay in this age. I do know that thirteen people's varying issues are a lot to deal with all at once though. :)

[randysmith]

Yeah to all that :-J. I've come to the conclusion recently (before this move blew up in our faces) that part of the differential between how effective I was at my last job and how effective I am at this one is the open seating layout. But that doesn't address the question you raise, and I don't really know how to address that question.

I don't think "nonadaptive" is a particularly useful frame; what's adaptive or not totally depends on the environment, which makes not caring about who walks behind you *very* adaptive in our context :-}.

I did explicitly check with ${MY_MANAGER}, and they said that it was completely luck. Which sorta makes sense to me--how are they going to figure out whose needs are stronger or weaker? They randomized and then let us horse trade (I had offered money for a better seat, partially seriously, partially just signalling how much I cared, but I got the lucky spot and didn't need to do anything with it). Getting in to take a look and confirm I could make it work was *not* luck, and I am very grateful to the people responsible for that. And now that I'm not freaking out as much, I can feel quite a bit of sympathy for ${MY_MANAGER}, who had this sprung on him with very little notice and was fielding a lot of complaints from his team. You're easier to sympathize with, since your situation is more distant :-}; I don't envy you having to do all this balancing.

[melebeth]

Tiny adorable language!

[flexagon]

toki lili!

That means "small language" but I don't know how to say "adorable". Oh, I looked it up:

toki suwi lili! :)

[melebeth]

:)

[triesticity.livejournal.com]

Toki Pona, exciting! I should remind B that he was saying we should learn it together - we never got around to it but that sounds like fun.

[flexagon]

Yay! I seem to actually be doing it, in no small part because I have two people who will practice with me (norwoodbridge and my direct report at work who turned me on to it). If you learn it, I'd practice with you also!