day thirty-two

[10:28] this week I want to give another chance to more committed journaling , mainly to check back on our schedule. we’re past our first month working from home and self-isolating: it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. [minor rabbit hole here: I wrote one sentence, then went away for about 8mins, then essentially had to rewrite this first sentence — not a very efficient way of writing]

• up at 7:00
• dog fed, coffee ready, bed made by 7:30; managed to read a few pages from a book before taking the dog out
• [11:34] back from walking the dog at around 8:35 (we stopped by at the nearest grocery store: we’re getting better at doing two big shopping rounds a week, but still do a quick round also once or twice); gave me just enough time to do a 10-minute morning yoga session and a 5-minute Headspace meditation. these somehow fell out of our joint routine, so I insist on doing them by myself. one of the realisations of the past month is that I actually need more “me time” than I thought I do: I want to become better at communicating and claiming this. for the yoga, I’m at day 8 of a 30 days challenge: this format creates a bit of additional pressure to do it daily. the instructor incorporates “daily affirmations” and the one today was “I am filled with creative energy”
• 9:03 — logged in at work, sent a few messages on Slack to show activity, then went for a quick shower before my first call, because that was the one thing that I still couldn’t squeeze properly into the schedule
• 9:30 — daily standup. my direct boss mentioned in front of the team that the two of us ended last week with “a very unique call”, but didn’t go into detail. I suppose he wanted to clear the air somewhat, without telling everyone that he hung up the phone on me. in other news, it seems like our company is still in complete chaos-mode about what we are doing next. this is a perfect reminder for me to invest less time in work: none of what we are supposed to be doing right now may have any relevance in a month or two
• 10:00 — catching up on tasks and messages, misc. conversations over Slack
• 10:30 — made a milky coffee
• 11:15 — had porridge for breakfast (N prepared it)
• 11:35–11:55 — caught up with journalling and will get back to work now (focus time!) [as for the time stamps, the focus is on the activity log, but I’m also adding in “[]” when I do note taking/journalling so later I know how I often I got back to it, how much time I spent on it during the day]
• [13:44] 12:00–13:00 — I had a useful 1:1 call and made good progress with tasks up until the moment when an urgent topic landed on my desk that has the potential of messing up the rest of my week
• [15:51] 13:00–16:00— done with a bunch of calls (mostly planned) and a shorter than usual lunch break in between (13:15–13:45). long story short: I cannot work in health tech and think that I can entirely exclude myself from a situation where most of humankind is expecting technology firms to do some magic to fix COVID-19. I guess that’s called a reality check. the bit that still agitates me is that our organisation is making way too many changes all at once, and I don’t see a conscious effort from top down to manage the change (or even just admit that it’s happening). we seem to be simply sliding into things and then justify lack of communication and structure by saying “it’s an emergency, people are dying”. given how far removed our (incomplete) solution really is from the rooms of hospitals where people are actually suffering, to me all this still just feels like a convenient excuse or even false pretence. one could say I’m just very lazy myself that I’m ruminating on philosophical questions where in reality I should just “get my hands dirty” with work — problem is that I’ve seen so many twists and turns in this company in over a year, that I’m now very cautious about investing time and hard work in yet another new idea, work stream, task force or product: it’s just unlikely to go anywhere, so why bother? (also, it’s not that I don’t want to work at all: if I can keep the team out of the crazy, we can still keep ourselves reasonably busy with topics that contribute to internal processes and improved overall maturity)
• 16:50 — I roll one for the end of the day. I somewhat reduced my weed consumption for the past two weeks, and now decided to just go ahead and fuel my addiction until the 20th April, then stay abstinent until the end of May at least. yes, drugs are just an escape from reality, but in a sense this is the best possible time to escape… (I still aim to stay fully functional — if possible, more focused. and I don’t mean to escape from responsibilities) [oh, wow, rolling this one joint took me 15mins. and I thought I was faster than my average]
• 17:25 — hmm. I smoked about half of the joint and now I just feel more confused and hazy than high. I’ll smoke the rest, let’s see what happens
• 17:35 — feels better, but let’s see how it pans out. I realise from two paragraphs above, this now turns more into a marijuana diary rather than a general rundown of my day and reconstruction of my schedule. oh well
• [23:05] 17:40–18:40 — workout with N (HIIT). always more intense when I’m high. which I actually enjoy: I’m not a huge fan of physical exercise and it helps me to get into it
• 18:45–19:00 — shower after workout
• 19:00–20:00 — N had a physio appointment (they aren’t closed, I guess medical services). I also went downstairs for about half an hour so that the dog has to be home by herself. I walked a bit and mostly spent the time with my eyes glued to the screen of my mobile (still catching up with messages from the weekend after I was offline for most of the four days). then I made the table for dinner (leftover ham and hard boiled eggs from Easter)
• I’m not sure when we finished dinner, I suppose around 20:45, or maybe even 21:00 including washing the dishes. I felt “slightly elevated” for most of the evening and lost a bit track of time (also, I now really need to focus to remember some of the details — thinking about it, at least some of the “time lost” was time spent on my mobile)
• I spent maybe 15mins reading/answering Slack messages. I try to avoid (visibly) working in the evening, but I felt it helped preparing for tomorrow. and that I “accomplished more” today (problem with stopping work at a pre-determined time sharp is that I often do not pick up the open threads and topics the next morning, either because I simply forget or something else just lands on my desk and takes priority)
• 21:30–22:30 — worked on completing the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle we started maybe two weeks ago (N gets more satisfaction out of it than I do and that’s great)
• 22:30–23:00 — went downstairs with the dog. washed my teeth. turned the sofa into my bed. will read may 10–15mins before going to sleep [23:34]