flexagon | Has it verve? Wiles?

My last post feels impossibly long ago, so buckle up.

The workweek was dominated by promotion discussions on Weds and Thurs, this was technically a short week but the kind that feels like it ages a person a couple of years. Monday was a twelve-hour day for some variety of reasons now forgotten, but likely just a full load of meetings while trying to do a bunch of handover stuff and also prep for the annoyingly high-drama status update that I have to give every 2 weeks on Tuesday. I guess I did my promo pre-review for someone. Then Tuesday I somehow got sucked into working the morning, which I'm not supposed to do at all, and handled the high-pressure status update while also scraping together more supporting evidence for my direct report who was going up for L6. I hit send on the supporting evidence and then played hooky for the afternoon to help Perse organize a bathroom, which was very soothing for my brain even though I felt guilty for skipping a workout. Hell yeah sorting things and labeling bins, I say yeah.

Wednesday we discussed and promoted (or not) a batch of lower-level engineers. It went lightning-fast, was engrossing, and got me absolutely terrified for the L6s because the room was pretty harsh. But on Thursday my direct report (call him PK) and my ex-direct report who I plausibly cared about even more (call her Ana) wound up ranked #1 and #2 of the five L6 cases, and indeed the only two we were collectively recommending to promote with "high confidence". PK sailed right through, with higher votes than I could have dreamed of. And who was fast on her feet with answering questions about Ana's case, which was slightly nonstandard? Who knew right where a critical piece of evidence for strategic thinking was? Who was able to dig up wording from a peer review in realtime, despite not having access to it in official tooling anymore because she'd copied it into a 1:1 doc and remembered it? Do you think it was her manager, hmm? No, it was THIS LADY. And yes, I double-dipped on that case by pre-reviewing and then answering half the "manager questions", no, I wasn't totally objective, no I'm not sorry. I've been sponsoring her since the day I interviewed her, nearly 10 years ago now, and I think she deserves to lead a team, so let that be my swan song. Thus it was that I ended the day victorious beyond my wildest dreams (I'd been hoping for one of those two) and having won the last battle I really was trying to win at Zillian. Also completely wound up, and feeling like despite my exhaustion I might never sleep again.

Exactly right then, my biological daughter Birdie showed up for a weekend visit (!), and all three of us walked over to the squirrel's house for dinner. The walk felt crazy good after two days sitting tensely in a chair, and so did dinner with such a big version of my extended/chosen family, and so did the THC seltzer I brought over for myself. I got Birdie set up with the air mattress, started reading a fun new book, and almost slept through the night.

And then Birdie and I proceeded to have such a nice visit! She's 23 now, and flailing around regarding career as is appropriate at that age. Wanted to hear my career stories (the real version, not the polished version I tell), and I hope I at least managed to normalize some 20s career flail. I ended up showing her the results of last year's aptitude tests, at her request, and she also took away my copy of the Designing Your Life workbook (already written in by yours truly, but with nothing to stop another person from also doing the exercises). We also went to the gym, wandered around adorable Arlington stores with

apfelsingail -- the first time I had introduced them to each other -- and toured the Google offices, and visited a cat cafe. We untangled a hose from my yard and properly watered our adopted city-sidewalk tree. At some point we talked about sadder, darker things, as she's been pretty lonely on the west coast and working on a psych ward is messing with her mental health even more. She really wants to shake up her life. She's seriously considering moving here, to have a job for a while and maybe attend medical school in two years, and I would legitimately be really stoked to have her nearby. I think she's got an East Coast brain and will do better with the folks here than with where she is now. She remains a lovely young woman, still way more flexible than I am (grrrr!) and still crazy about all cats but especially Caltrop.

Oh, and Blue Man Group. I took her and the bug to Blue Man Group, and she had no idea what she was getting into so that was fun. I was personally disappointed that a lot of my favorite acts/numbers from the show were gone though -- the act with three simultaneous sets of storyboards all flipping down (theme being that one couldn't read all of them), the "Go Ask Alice" act, the act with them sitting at a table and waggling Twinkies at each other, and the video of fractals with the "God, I love the sound of my own voice" narrator. Yes, there were new things to replace these, including some clever fake commercials; I liked the unnamed medical product with side effects including wandering navel, spontaneous combustion and body dumplings. But overall I found it to be a less philosophical and thought-provoking show than it used to be, and there was less paper involved in the finale too.

Today I took photos of the earrings she liked but didn't buy, so I can go back and pick them up later, and fed her, and briefly got to see one of her college friends, and sent her off to the airplane.

Also good: on Friday the stupid ACLU finally located my wire transfer and sent me a receipt / thank-you, so that I could request the matching donation from Zillian. Which I have now done. And, very late on Thursday night (before the fun book), I tendered my official resignation in the Zillian system so that my last day is now well and truly April 4. And of course Severance Season 2 finally ended, which is where my title comes from.

It's a little bit late now, but I'll very likely sleep through the night, so that's fine.