the trick is to keep breathing

Are you ready for this? Cause buckle up, chucklefucks, I’m about to tell you the fuckin’ comedy of errors that was my life last week.

Spoiler: this was only supposed to be about a faucet.

Background:

• my old faucet dripped. It was a small drip, and I got into the habit of leaving a pitcher underneath when I went to work, and then using the water for my plants, which I personally thought was a great fuckin’ idea. I want to redo the entire kitchen in the next year or two, so my mindset has been basically “live with it now, fix it later.”
• my mother, on the other hand, just could not get over the goddamn fact that a faucet somewhere three hours away from her own kitchen, in a different state, was occasionally dripping. This should tell you a lot about my mother.
• so it turns out that I get a new faucet for Christmas. Just a plan, average, nothing-exciting faucet. Mum was so pleased with herself. She thought it was hilarious. Spoiler: it was not.
• My husband (Crown Royal himself) and I don’t live together, but he does me a lot of favors around the house when I have fibro days.
• My husband is incapable of stopping at anything less than what HE considers perfect.
• My husband, Crown Royal himself, is almost as much of a disaster as I am.

Story: ( “Here.” )

well, it's 11 January; I've mourned 2017; I've tentatively dipped a few toes into the water of 2018; and I have a plan.

I've set some goals for myself: I have some that will be goals for the year, but with all of the shit going on right now, I've decided to run my life like I ran the pilot plant: quarterly goals, evaluation, and adjustment of said goals, with monthly check-ins.

I had a great set of plans for January, but then we decided to get fucking married and now I really need to reevaluate larger goals in that light. The wedding is 14 April, which means that - even though we are going for the most informal wedding ever - we still need to get information out to people who need to travel as soon as possible.

As I am a nerd who loves symbolism, I have decided that the theme of this year is 5H: Home, Health, Hobbies, Habits, and [some H word that really means Vocation] (i haven't picked the last one so I am open to suggestions):
- Home means the continuation of reclaiming my house from the Black Hole disaster, and working towards floor replacement, kitchen remodel, new bedroom set, basement setup, and porch renovation.
- Health means continuing work to get control of my fibro, eat better and drink less, add exercise back into my routine, and lose weight.
- Hobbies means creating spaces in my time where I can pursue my creative (and noncreative) hobbies: writing, doodling, knitting, gaming, anything else I decide to pursue; it means giving them priority space in my schedule.
- Habits means consistency. I need to build it. It means finding what works. My word for 2018 will probably be sustainability because that's the core of what I need to figure out.
- Vocation (or whatever word) means finding satisfaction in my work; figuring out what it is about this kind of work that I love doing, figuring out if this new position can become something fulfilling or if it is, after 13 years, time to move on from this company.

So let's have a minute or two and talk about what I want to establish the beginning of this year, and some of the yearly goals overall...

---

( and i'm good at being uncomfortable )

As for resolutions, those seem bigger and broader, so after reflection those need to be in a different post. One thing I can say is that I am devoting these first three months of work in the honor of:

• Emma Swan
• Avatar Korra
• Carrie Fisher / General Princess Leia

yes, i'm an old, but may these badasses guide me through the beginning of this year.

You may have noticed I seem to have vanished off of the map. This is because my new job is absolutely batshit fucking crazy. I think I've only posted like three times in all of July?, and I send far fewer text- and email- based daily communications than I used to (it's funny how long my phone battery lasts when I am not using it!), and this is because my new job is absolutely batshit fucking crazy.

There are days my employees catch me before I have even entered the building; I swear to god they're timing their smoke breaks since they know I pull in at 7:55am every morning, because they flag me down walking from my car to the door with whatever the day's update is. There are days I don't log into my own computer until 10; there are days I don't start my own actual work day until 4-5pm when everything else has calmed down. There have been evenings I am there until 6, 6:30 pm; there are nights I bring work home (tonight being one of them). There have been absolutely zero days where I leave at 4:45pm like I am supposed to. I use my mobile so much for work the company has started subsidizing it.

Did I mention things are absolutely batshit fucking crazy?

I have no time for anything anymore. I'm basically now working the same 10-hr days I was working beforehand, with added bonus 8+ days on Fridays. Becky is joking that I didn't actually get a raise, I'm now just being paid for epic overtime; it's actually truer than it should be.

It's a common joke among the management team (who I think I shall nickname after summons, because it pleases me to think of us all as a team of eidolons), because on those days where shit has been flying off the fan at intense and disastrous rates and we don't sit down at our own desks actually alone until 4:30pm it's actually nice to stay until 6:00pm because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow but it's quiet now and we can focus. Ditto on Fridays; Fridays have become a blessing, the one day a week I know I will be minimally interrupted and can make a reasonable attempt to churn through all of the work I meant to do during the week and was pulled away from: 40 hours in one 8hr day, that's doable, right. Siren (the manager focused more on products and projects) and I mourn the loss of our ability to tell everyone to fuck off (Siren is also new to her position) and complain about the intense upkeep we need to do to stay targeted on our underperformers; Golem (the manager focused more on mechanical aspects) and I are already planning late-night office pizza parties as we are forced into a software update we weren't consulted on and weren't a part of but are still expected to launch into our maintenance program by some ridiculously unwieldy date like September. I am lucky to be surrounded by amazing people who understand and desperately want me to succeed (although in Golem's case I think that is mainly so that he can stop working on Saturdays); I adore them immensely, even as we all joke about using and abusing each other. (I, as Operations, am the cross-sectional point where Siren's research & development & troubleshooting projects intersect with Golem's preventative maintenance & plant improvement work; this makes my life difficult but also means that they both have to be nice to me, ha.)

I am overwhelmingly, bizzarely, incomprehensibly in love with this job.

This is what I was made for. I have already, after a month-and-change: dealt with a problem underperforming employee in a way that promises to either make progress or GTFO after basically 20 years of experience and 5+ years of not seeming able to do the job; sent nastygram after nastygram until the two worst communicators in the plant specifically come to me to let me know what they are doing before anyone else even knows; solved scheduling mishaps; yelled at the EPA; called our safety director's work stupid and dumb in the same meeting (although that was inadvertant and accidental), to her face (which I realize is tactless; here's the fucks I give, because incompetence is the match that lights this stubborn Taurean fire); defended my own employees against attacks and slander and bullshit they shouldn't have to put up with from other people and been specifically thanked for doing so; learnt how to buy things within our online file management system and promptly spent $300 on hard hats to play with; improved the attitude of a supervisor who has been a negative vendetta-hound for 8+ years; redone the old lab where I used to sit into what will be usable office cubicles (although I can't take full credit for that one); made my boss say the phrase "you are right, he/she/that is fucking clueless" half a dozen times; made my boss either grin maniacally or put his head down when I walk into his office; made my boss regret his decision to hire me probably four hundred times; made people actually run from me; made changes, made improvements, made an impact. I've revamped systems and redone OPSs and made demands of our alarm management system that no one has made until now. I've let out my inner asshole, my inner control freak, my inner perfectionist: they're all running around rampant making decisions and giving orders and frightening bystanders everywhere. I'm not sorry; I was not hired into this position to be good and play along.

I am absolutely loving it which is good because right now this is my only life, my highest priority, the shit I eat and breathe.

It will not last forever. I will not last forever in this: canceling PT because I have to stay until 6 because there's work due tomorrow, not scheduling doctor appointments because I don't have the time, not working on my thesis because fuck more work; this level of intensity will eventually fade as all of the plant becomes used to this position's existence and my presence. I will burn out, the initial activation energy will be met, the workload will become manageable even if I have to light half of it on fire. It's not forever.

But right now all things Sev are absolutely batshit fucking crazy, so please forgive me if I take a while to reply to an email or respond to a comment or do anything I have told you I would do because I am running on fumes and adrenaline and caffeine and stubbornness at the mo.



HOW ARE YOU ALL

Weekend with lassarina in Chicago: Excellent!

Friday night I made really good time... until I made a lazy stop for food and put myself directly in the beginning of rush-hour traffic. Note to self: YOU ARE AN IDIOT; when making good time on the road, don't ruin it! Anyway, after fighting the mobs of traffic, I got the Meglet, we got the Natalie, and then hit Chipotle. We then returned and basically denned for the night weekend, save a trip out to the Cheesecake Factory, because there is not one near me which means I like to go whenever possible (as I am trying to eat every delicious-looking item on their menu one by one!).

We watched the cutscenes from Lost Odyssey; while I'm not sure I have a really firm grasp on the entire game/plotline from the cutscenes, I can probably pick it up with an FAQ or game script. It was pretty and shiny, and had a lot of pretty awesome characters. I also got Persona 3! We started it but didn't get far at all -- I'm looking forward to picking that one up at home.

Edited to add: Also, Meg's cat molested me in my sleep. Trufax!!

Other than that, there was various fic-writing and lots of delicious drinks to be had. Meg and Nat introduced me to raspberry lambic, and as I am just getting involved in the brewing process here (a beginning brewmistress, to be sure) I'm now kind of curiously poking at recipes.

In other news, apparently when there is no traffic, the drive from me to Chicago actually only takes 5.5 hours, including a stop for food and gas. This probably means that I drive WAY too fast*. I blame hilldo for distracting me on the phone for the last hour of the drive, which pretty much flew by. Stay tuned for our awesome future projects, guys. After we beat Secret of Mana, of course. There are vampires and wigs and crime-solving. stfu.

In other news, I am a bit ahead for JanNoWriMo; as I've already failed at the write-every-day goal, it looks like my new goal is just to write as many words as freaking possible. I wrote over 1000 words of Seifer/Irvine at Meglet's alone; as it was over the course of an evening I actually split it up to cover Saturday/Sunday (we were up pretty late on Sunday!) to be fairer.

NOW comes the fun of getting ready for Ohayocon! It looks like I will be unable to join drakonlily this weekend for prep so I am trying to make a list of all the things I need to remember to bring and/or buy myself this weekend in whatever spare time I have. Help me out here, guys (esp Jana, Katy, Drakon, Becky):

( OHAYOCON )

I'm pretty excited for this convention, and also excited to be bringing people back home for the always-awesome Super Bowl party!

Anyway. Another totally crammed beginning-of-the-week for me. I hate my new Mon-Tues-Wed schedule, but hey, what can you do. Other than bitch about it a bit and then just man up.



* meaning 50 miles per hour AND SAFE, of course

( This was supposed to be me venting about a horrible test and it has somehow turned into a rant on higher education and why I hate that professors are often such fucking assholes who refuse to take responsibility for their own goddam jobs. An actual rant, with a point and all. )

So, yes, I am going to go drown my sorrows in the Trick or Treat Meme and in Pirate AUs. Be alert, because Pirates may be appearing in your LJs in the future.

[ETA] - I actually didn't realize I'd made a "studying sucks a nut" tag before trying to tag this entry. Sometimes I make myself laugh.

[ETA #2] THIS IS IMPORTANT, GUYS! This week's cockeyed_art challenge is FF characters in Halloween costumes. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO DO IT, DON'T LIE.