Decisions

Dear J-

It has been a while since I tried writing on the road and I’m pleasantly surprised to discover the keyboard still works, well, at least as well as it ever did which is to say with a sticky ‘o’ key and everything. I’ll give it some more time to warm up, I suppose. Good. Awkward preamble done.

As it turns out maybe this — trying and failing spectacularly at getting the units returned to service — maybe this is the impetus I need to shake off the momentum that’s kept me driving a hundred miles every day to work. We have yet to see what jobs everyone will end up getting but I’m contemplating three choices. There’s a local job as a procurement engineer, doing stuff I did every day for five years and that I’m sure I could do in my sleep. What it has to recommend itself is familiarity and comfort, no need to move, shorter commute, I know I can do that work. I’ve done it. But on the other hand it’s a very substantial drop in pay, especially once the bonus or results-sharing payout is figured in, probably close to 40% and is that going to be enough to keep us in San Diego and not struggling check to check?

Then there’s potential job number two, in the Bay Area. Probably involves some travel. definitely a relocation. There, though, the work is interesting — much more in line with what I’ve been doing for the past year and a half or so. Very technical, too, and that’s something my mind wants. So far no interview and no discussion of salary, but I have good hopes there, so we’ll see I guess.

And also, there’s potential job number three, a cross-country relocation to Charlotte, North Carolina. This is even less certain given that I’ve only just applied, but they called me and asked me to submit a resume, so that’s a good sign, right? But still, Charlotte? Yes, Charlotte, and with lower costs of living and the heat, and the South, there is also the satisfaction of working a pan-industry job, meaning it’s something they’d need if any nuclear plant is working. Anywhere. is that a huge appeal, stability?

That’s the crux of it, I’m afraid. if I had no family I’d have no problems shrugging off a relocation anywhere, anytime. Thus concludes the Southern California adventure. We’ve had a good run. I look at what my dad had — the same job for thirty-five years, and they had to push him out the door — and I know that isn’t going to happen for me, unless I want to switch gears completely or work into my mid-70s. it’s a source of envy and regret, we’ve spent so many years here and we’ve just gotten to sample the joy of its potential: Disneyland, beaches, sunshine. every place has its upsides, though, and part of the joy of relocation (oh yeah, I went there) is is finding those things that work well for you.

And yet I’m not alone in this. Leaving now means pulling figgy out of her current school program — a pretty unique opportunity to learn Mandarin in a public immersion program — with no guarantees that we’d be able to jump into another one in time for this fall. I keep having faith that we will but, y’know, wish in one hand and spit in the other, and you’ll know which one fills up faster. Ultimately I don’t know if that’s the trump card that should cover everything else. It should be. But I’m also not sure if this is a case of work to live, we need something to enable this, what we have, what we need.

Mike

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Hard Spot

Dear J-

As much time as I spend at work you’d think I’d start to get something done, but the truth is I end up getting sucked into meeting after meeting and the paralysis of groupthink starts to set in: well, what if they don’t like the way this is phrased? theVet is driven bonkers by my need to parse words to their final meaning when I’m at home, but it’s all I do at work — write, edit, parse — that it inevitably spills over into the rest of my life. For instance, when we went to buy a new mattress a couple of weeks ago, she insisted on calling it a bed, which sounds like we’re getting a frame and boxspring too; by the time I was done with parsing the difference between mattress and bed, she was ready to tear my hair out.

I suppose that’s the crux of the problem lately; the way that I can no longer keep things neatly compartmentalized between work and home, separated as they are by the long buffer of distance and commute time. I get email at home now, and email prompts me to write a few words or draft a response or … but then again, I often choose to ignore it and set my planes in motion on Pocket Planes instead while at home, hoping to get some kind of a refuge from that time at work, time at work, ticking away like a metronome in my head. Our boss has said that he wants us to wake up at night worried about the issues we have happening, and that much is true, but the worries I have are less technical and more managerial.

Deadlines, when they told us to take the time we need to make sure things are correct. Schedule dates. Legal aspects. Word choices, phrasing, careful summarization to show what you know and only what you know, not implying that you’ve got a speculative bone in your body. I suppose the enforced discipline is good for me, as I would otherwise write what I want off the top of my head with little concern to whether I’m right or not. Because, y’know, I’m always right. Does that even make sense? There is a lot left to do, and no time left to do it wrong, which means that time has become the most limitingly precious commodity once again. Such is the wonder of the world.

Mike

Catch Up

Dear J-

There are a thousand loose ends to wrap up before Friday afternoon and only a few hours left to get them done. My plan is to bring along a laptop along with company access to email to try to get things done on the road; whether or not that happens or indeed if I even have the inclination to keep working after a full day of training will be another matter entirely. I had hoped to make a clean break between work and travel, but when you’re traveling for work with unresolved projects then there’s a lot that they’ll ask while you’re out. Welcome, telecommuter.

I’m bringing along an ancient IBM X31 with hopefully a not-too-corrupted installation of Arch Linux; with any luck the program will copy over nicely and I can use WINE to run it on the laptop. Otherwise it’s too late to scrounge up a copy of XP and do a clean install. Breathe. The more important things are happening tomorrow night: figgy is ‘graduating’ from pre-K and I need to get home a little earlier if possible, which probably means driving but I may be selfish and do one last bike ride before the four weeks off. Make sure the batteries are charged and the sound checks out okay; new life, new tools, new world order. Between now and her first day of school just after Labor day I’m going to be gone for a third of that time.

I try to convince myself that it really doesn’t matter, that there’s always be more chances later, but the longer we keep to our strange schedules and commitments, the more they expect. I’ve somehow gotten tangled up with an industry initiative to overhaul a computer model, and improbably, I may be the only one who can run the predecessor program on-site. How did this happen? If all I wanted was to draw a paycheck and breathe I wouldn’t have left my old job. This is exactly what I was asking for, I suppose, and maybe it’s what I deserve. It just feels like I’m always out of breath, though.

Mike

Three Things

Dear J-

I wonder if I should make up new traveling rules or just stick with the ones I’ve got: local restaurants when possible (no chain franchised comforts, some regional franchises allowed), something new every night, sight-wise, and back in time to chat, which reminds me that I need to set up FaceTime on theVet’s iPad again. I remember wanting to travel when I didn’t have the chance, and now that my life looks full of trips I’m not looking forward to the remainder of my stint in this project, which oh by the way seems to be headed towards a long-term affair.occasional travel I suspect is nice, but the concentrated travel that awaits us (three weeks of the next four I’m out of town) will be decidedly less so.

Our ex-CEO made headlines yesterday for erratic driving, which was later linked to a seizure he may have suffered, but it made for juicy gossip around the office yesterday. Mind you there’s at least ten thousand employees and the portion of them that he regularly met with and who knew him well is probably vanishingly small in that population, yet here we are thinking that we can quarterback on Monday morning, saying what he should have done and what might have happened, fruitless exercises that kept us talking and chatting beyond measure.

I think it might be smart to bring in some music again, as it would give me an excuse to ignore everyone else, right? I profess that I don’t understand the particular appeal of selfishness but there I am taking time away from my family, taking time away from the vanpool folks from a sense of duty to work and plant, which for all its steam and heat doesn’t warm my heart like its people do. After four years of being semi-competnet in accounting and then five years of proficient procurement engineering, I like to think that I genuinely like what I do because I’m a valuable contributor at it, and that includes being good at what I do and liking the people I work with, making the day go by faster than ever. Ten already, noon already? Time to go?? I need to sit down and get this under control, my lack of organizational skills.

Mike

Take Away

Dear J-

Has everythng been prepared? Am I forgetting something? Paranoia does not take a vacation, and I always seem to forget one thing or another by the time I’m ready to start time off. For instance, yesterday I rode the whole way to work in relative peace until we got close to the plant and I realized that I’d forgotten my site badge, meaning half an hour of delay by going up and getting a temporary badge (and that’s when the office is open; if it wasn’t I’d be looking at the wrong end of two hours back and forth to home to retrieve it).

When I started the outage shifts I was on time and never missed a beat; after four months of odd hours and long hours I’m missing a certain attention to detail, let’s say. There’s a thousand instances where I could have done better or something more and I suspect that we’re having a two-hour meeting in the middle of the day as punishment (I suspect for my own sins) and recalibration. Either you’re amused by the leadership craft and set a good example or you’re cynical and bitter about it, guarding everything jealously and fiercely.

A couple of my cousins went to this wedding alone: no spouse, no kid(s). I understand that rationally: the kids are too young to travel on such a long flight (though Calcifer did much better than we expected, except when he was tired and refused to nap, but that’s just me probably tooting my horn: paranoia takes no breaks) and the wedding is a long thing to sit through, coupled with the ceremony, but I think I still had way more fun — with kids and taking fewer pictures — than without them would have been. And besides, I would have missed them like crazy the whole time we were gone. Maybe that’s what I can’t prepare for knowing I’m heading into the last six, er, five weeks at home. When did I become important enough to be busy? Yeah, like my ego needs fluffing.

Mike

Pride Ego and Assumptions

Dear J-

The guy I used to carpool with back when we were young cost engineers, he’s now a manager and more power to him: he works hard, his people respect him, and his bosses trust him. This is less about him than it is about me, as usual: I like to tell myself that he’s made choices that I don’t think I would or could to get to where he is now but I know that’s just an excuse in my mind. That’s my ego telling me that I’m still better, or, bluntly, that I’m never wrong. How else could I explain it? Then I remember how hard he’s workked and the sacrifices he’s made and it’s not so easy to judge him. More successful? Undoubtedly. I remember how he used to fight tooth-and-nail for our raises, and I benefitted more from his tenacity than my passivity.

There’s a difference, I think, between pride and ego; if you assume pride to be constructive (take pride in your work) then I’ll call ego something more pejorative it’s that impulse that tells you hey, you did this so it’s more than good enough. It’s the overwhelming assumption that you’re right. It’s the part of you that refuses to back down from a losing argument, it’s the prickly beast inside that wounds easily and recovers slowly. I have a lot of pride but I also have a ton of ego which over the years I’ve confused with pride via the same definitions above.

There’s a board at work with all kinds of slogans that people have come up with over the past few months working on this project. One of my favorites so far is “If you’re in deep $h!+ it’s best to keep your mouth shut.” I want to add something along the lines of “Check your baggage at the door: we don’t have room for you and your ego here.” I’ve been proven time and time again that that’s true; this particular project is so much bigger than me or even my overinflated head that the benefit of working on it has been less in the skills and contacts I’ve made (though those have been valuable/invaluable, too) as it is the deflating sense of self I feel when walking in that door and understanding where I am.

Mike

A Question of When

Dear J-

The steady rain all weekend has been our accompaniment today as well, informing all our actions and investing them with perilous consequence. I woke to the steady drumbeat on the roof and immediately resolved to drive to the vanpool, but changed my mind what seemed like a thousand times between the half dreaming state I couldn’t break from and actually walking out the door. I started off on the bike but turned back at the top of the hill before the rain had soaked me completely through, before it was too late. Start out early enough and you have that luxury; lie in bed any longer and you reap that harvest.

My schedule continues to be consistently erratic; last week I spent less time than ever under the pace set by the seventy hour guys and so of course I spent the whole weekend wracked with the sort of guilt that accompanies it, no longer sure that I’m doing much good at home or work. It’s a funny feeling to convince yourself that you owe work, the mobster that demands all the time and love you have and asks for more. Worse yet is the day to day nature of things, schedule shifting fluidly from days to nights and back again, leaving my family wondering if now would be a good time to talk, or eat, or call. Answer is probably not.

Eventually the storms pass and we return to our normally scheduled programming of sun and fun, of regular hours and no more secrets to keep, no surprises waiting to ambush the unprepared. Looking forward to days that will come but for now I don’t mind weathering the storm on the doorstep, snuff together with people I trust.

Mike

Ready or Not

Dear J-

Well, here it is: from now I become a night shift vampire. The next two weeks I’m working from five to hive the first half of the week. Catch the sun where I can and treasure what I can catch.

Mike

End of the Year Whirlwind

Dear J-

Call it luck or call it an unfortunate circumstance but it seems that I’ve stumbled on a way to lock myself out of doing useful work: the account on my work computer has been disabled (cryptic message that I think is related to me installing Chrome at some point last week, which doesn’t seem like such a big deal until you consider that we’ve been on an antiquated version of Internet Explorer that causes virtually every vendor website I go to to panic and ask me to upgrade to a newer version of something. Thus despite driving in this morning (the regular vanpool driver is on vacation and I’m picking up those duties) and looking forward to missing the necessary nap in the afternoon, I have some time to write.

The other thing is that whoever had this cubicle before me was a bit of a hoarder — sure, there’s lots of places to put stuff, but the point is probably that the need to keep this much stuff is questionable at best. I walk in and I get a feeling of claustrophobia, as I can’t stretch out my legs (thank you, low cabinet in the knee space) and I’m in imminent danger of being crushed by the tall unsecured cabinet directly behind me should an actual emergency occur. Gift horses and mouths, I know. At least I have someplace to hang my coat and roll around aimlessly in my chair while I wait for computer service and the inevitable chastening.

I suppose I should pay more attention to the clock: nearly missed a meeting there as I whine about how things are going for me. Well, as a liveblog goes of how my day goes at work this is pretty unspectacular. I’ve already taken the time to walk into the plant to see if some of the sump pumps have stopped running and I can take readings (answer: yes to at least one set), I’ve read over the scanty printed materials I have on hand, and I’m about to launch into more cleaning up of the files and folders that I’ve inherited here (there are two replacement parts catalogs for diesel generators, which I probably don’t need; everything else needs to be pored over at least a little). It’s a Tuesday that feels like a Monday that everything’s going wrong. At any rate the problem seems to be temporarily resolved.

Mike

Everything Comes in Threes

Dear J-

The sky lately has been all kinds of interesting colors and filled with incredible cloud shapes but overall it has been bone-crispingly dry. I feel it in the way my helmet strap crunches as I swing it over my chin; I know it from the coughs and sniffles that have arisen in our family. Cooler weather is finally here although the need for a jacket is blunted by the bike ride: it’s nice when you’re going downhill, but if you’re warm going downhill that always means you’ll be hot going uphill and I’d rather freeze a little first.

Today was the first day this week I haven’t woken up too early from the time change — you’d think that it wouldn’t take this long to adjust to the one hours’s difference but while I would go to bed at the same tim eon the clock I’d keep waking up the same hour earlier every morning until today, when between the snooze bar and the warm cat digging his claws into me every so often my sleep was punctuated enuogh to wake me up around the time I should have left. It is a surprisingly cozy feeling luxuriating under warm covers and reading a book in the dark, but I give in to that temptation too often and have spent many late nights lately as a result.

What else? We’re heading into the weekend and I’m contemplating mutinous thoughts of not coming in at all versus going in on two of the three days we have off from work. That’ll come soon enough, though, having the full weekend back again, and next weekend will be a three-day weekend anyway if I play my cards right. There’s only so much that can be done to help with extra time, but now I think I’ll look back on the luxury of geting paid for the hours I work with a kind of bitter regret. The posting to replace me closed yesterday and though it’s not going to happen I think it would be interesting to see the list of candidates and be able to interview them, although it’s hard to see me riding this train any longer.

Mike