Terra incognita

[flexagon]

I know what I said but I do know where I am in my leave, too, because I know this week stepped into new territory with my fifth week of not working. I'm just about done with the stairwell-improving project I mentioned on 11/28... the carpet is gone, the risers have been spackled and painted, the treads have been sanded and wood-fillered and are soon to be varnished. Working on this for an hour or two every day has kept me cognizant of progress on a thing, and also hyper-aware of when useful levels of light go out of the sky, which is around 4pm. Damn you, Eastern timezone, for being so wide and sticking me out on the very edge of you.

Mostly I'm still finishing things. heisenbug and I finished Myst IV; I finished reading all the physical books on my to-read shelf, and found one more hiding behind other books where it had fallen; and we're shockingly close to finishing all the cryptic crosswords in the GAMES magazines that had been stacked up by the bed (the issues stop about a year ago, when I apparently unsubscribed).

I thought a bit more about work this week than I have in a while, partly from finally reading A Manager's Path and partly because my boss texted me to say that comp letters had been released. So I logged in to take a peek at that. My bonus is quite a bit lower than last year, completely as expected, but equity is up, and both my boss and VP apparently used discretionary budget on me. Translation: for reasons not entirely clear to me after the last year and a half of crashing and burning, they are hoping I'll stay. I feel weird about that. And the book made me feel some twinges about my time of managing managers; I thought I was good at that but I'm not exactly doing it anymore, am I? Maybe I wasn't good. Or maybe I was, but middle management was where I wasn't able to handle corporate bullshit anymore. A person can be more honest with a smaller team. To the extent that I'm looking forward to returning to work at all, I'm looking forward to that.

Oh, and we also all apparently got a $1600 "wellness bonus", including people on leave, so that's unexpected and nice.

I did good handstands this week, and took Helios to the ICA to see glowing polka-dotted tentacles. Although I have brain-weasels that try to get going occasionally, the days remain pretty excellent. I think taking leave instead of quitting entirely was a pretty good strategy for handling the weasels and breaking down the project of... *waves hand at midlife in general*... into more manageable chunks.

Comments

[coraline]

I didn’t know the tentacles were still there! ivy and i went to see them the month before pandemic started :}

[flexagon]

Wow, and I had no idea they'd been there for so long. I hadn't been to the ICA in ages, not since the choreographic objects exhibit a couple of years ago.

[silentq]

Heh, I had to log into our payroll system to see why I had a bit more than expected this month - turns out that I hadn't adjusted my retirement savings contribution percent when I got a raise, so they capped it last month and I get surprise money this month as well. :-) I was reminded of your tracking of contributions at the start of the year, and I won't adjust it down next year so I'll front load a bit again.
We were offered an opportunity to get a $300 wellness bonus, but it came with extra doctor stuff so I passed on it. I can get reimbursed for my BKB ten passes though, so that's nice.