Week 48
So, Christmas season is in full swing now.
Work-wise, my focus was almost entirely on tying off a new and worrying loose end I spotted Monday morning. Is sorted. Reflection: it wasn’t what I’d planned to spend my time on, but it was absolutely the priority once it emerged. I’m lucky - that I’m quite good at dealing with this sort of thing, but also, that typically I do get to work on the things I’d planned to work on in any given week. I’d dislike a job that was almost all fire-fighting. I know I find it frustrating. Someone said to me once “it’s great to be pulling drowning people out of the water, but it would be better to have someone go upstream and figure out how to stop them falling in in the first place”. I flourish when I’m moving between upstream and downstream.
Antenatal group (from 13+ years ago) still going strong, with families meeting up every year. This year, bowling and pizza. I scored 72, I think. I’m comfortable being an inadequate bowler.
Christmas tree and some decorations are up. We haven’t finished though. And the giant bags of decorations from previous years are sitting on the floor in the living room and kitchen, abandoned since last Saturday. Everything has been too busy this week so far to finish it.
I think I mentioned that my eldest is in the panto - matinee and evening performances, all the way through December. It’s logistically challenging for us - but physically challenging for her, as she needs to keep herself healthy enough to keep up this pace until December 31st. She seems to be thriving though. I watched her yesterday and she was funny and amazing and oh-I-am-so-darned-proud.
We had the work Christmas do on Thursday. First part of the day was a mix of management team year-in-review updates and some interactive sessions. Second part of the day was the work social - bowling and karaoke. I had a lot of fun. Reflections: we’re at least twice the size we were when I joined, and these awaydays feel very different now. I miss the closeness I felt when we were a smaller firm - not just knowing everyone’s name and face and current projects, but also being able to learn from what they are learning, knowing what they’d be great at helping with, or what I can share with them that they’d find interesting and useful. I take some getting to know - I’m an introvert and can come across as aloof or intimidating to people who don’t know how to read me, something I’m trying to work on - but rapport building isn’t something that scales easily. And as I’ve been focused intensely on just one project for most of the year, I haven’t really had the exposure to others that I need in order to get to know my many, many new colleagues. I *have* made some awesome friends on this project though. I bloody love this team and I learn from each of them every single day.