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Tag Archives: sugh

On spiders and coworkers

I think I found a new superpower.  I see spiders on coworkers.  Not like fake spiders.  I’m not hallucinating spiders on people.  I just seem to have a knack for seeing a spider crawling over my coworkers.  And by knack, I mean that I’ve seen it happen twice.  (Also, there are no pictures of spiders in this post.)

The second time happened just recently.  I was at lunch with my PM, whom I will call 💄 (yes there is a reason behind my choice in emoji, no I won’t explain what it is), inside a relatively nice restaurant.  He was talking to me about a project when I looked up and saw a small jumping spider crawling across his chest.  True to form, I didn’t say anything right away.  It was a jumping spider after all.  I thought maybe it would jump off.  But no, it continued on its merry way all the way up to his collar.  At that point, I decided that it would be a good idea to say something.  I figured my PM would probably start if he felt the spider crawl onto his neck and then maybe he’d fling the spider into someone’s food and cause a big commotion.  I try and avoid big commotions.

The thing was, he was talking and kept talking.  I don’t really like to interrupt people.  Also, it’s hard for me to interrupt people.  They generally don’t hear me.  But I figured I really needed to make an effort to let him know that there was a spider on his collar.

When I finally got his attention, as he didn’t really need to pay attention to me to tell me about the project, it took longer than I expected to convey the information that there was a spider on his collar.  First of all, it took a while for him to understand that there was a spider on his shirt.  Then it took longer for him to understand that it was on his collar.

Me: [💄], there’s a spider on your shirt.

💄: What?  Anyway, I think we will need the software—

Me: Really, there’s a spider on your shirt.  It’s on your collar.

💄: Huh?  About the software, have you used it before?

Me: Spider.  On your shirt.  Collar.  [points to collar]

💄: Oh, there’s a spider on me?  [brushes at shoulder]

Me: No, on your collar.  [points to collar]

💄: Huh?  [brushes at chest]

Me: Collar!  [points to collar]

💄: [brushes at sleeve]

Me: The spider is on your collar!

💄: Oh, my collar?  [looks at collar, sees spider, calmly brushes spider off]  It’s a jumping spider.

Me: Yes, it is a jumping spider. [secretly impressed 💄 knows it’s a jumping spider; immediately makes mental comparisons to previous spider-on-coworker incident]

Overall, I was quite amused by the incident. 💄’s demeanor was quite different from Mr. Arachnid’s.  There was no stiffening in surprise. 💄 was calm and relaxed and nonchalant about the whole ordeal.  But he also completely was not listening to me otherwise the incident would have been over much quicker.  Perhaps it was also slightly infuriating since he was listening but totally not listening to me at the same time.  At least Mr. Arachnid listened and then later told me that I should tell him such things sooner so that “we can plan a course of action.”  I am still very entertained by that line.

As it was, 💄 brushed the spider off into the aisle and there possibly was a waiter walking by at the time.  I don’t really remember.  The spider might have made it onto someone’s food despite all my effort.  Sugh.

On priorities and time management

Whaaaat?  It’s a Monday and I’m posting.  I haven’t posted on a Monday in months.  There’s a post scheduled for Friday too.  Indeed, that is two posts for this week.  And the goal is two posts per week at least until the end of the year.  Why?  Well, take a listen to what Michael Aranda has to say.  Yes, I know it’s a roundabout way of quoting sources, but I can’t find the original reddit post but I remembered he mentioned the post.  The relevant part is from 2:49-4:06.

So, priorities and the subsequent time management around those priorities.

I have been thinking about my priorities a lot recently.  Actually, not so recently.  I started thinking about them even before I saw that vlog I linked to and that was from April.  But the vlog and the reddit post mentioned did help crystallize how I felt about some things.

For a long time now, I’ve prioritized work and fulfilling all my responsibilities outside of work.  This is a good thing.  I have a reputation for being responsible and dependable and I’m not trying to change that.  I quite despise dealing with flaky people and I have no intention of becoming one.  But I’ve been considering lately if maybe I’ve allowed work to dictate too much on how I allocate my time and whether I’ve taken on too many responsibilities outside of work.

There are 24 hours in a day and a certain number of those hours are dedicated to fulfilling basic biological needs. Everything else needs to fit into the remaining hours.  But if the remaining hours are: 8 hours dedicated to work (on a good day and maybe 10-12 hours on not a good day), 4 hours commuting (also on a good day), 2 hours on sundry other responsibilities, you’ll note that on a bad day that’s already at least 18 hours.  That leaves maybe 6 hours in which to eat, shower, sleep, and all the other basic maintenance activities for sustaining life.  This does not leave time for other maintenance activities that do not tie into biological need but should probably still be considered necessities for mental health.

It doesn’t seem sustainable, does it?  It probably isn’t.

I’ve been considering that perhaps 16 hour days at work, counting the commute, is unreasonable when it ends up being the norm.  That’s already 2/3 of the day.  That’s every work day.  While I do realize that my compensation for work is what funds the rest of my life, it still seems unreasonable that it would be 2/3 of my day and at least 5/7 of my week.  So, I’m making an effort to take back some of my time so I can dedicate it to other things, one of them being the blog, which I had started because I wanted an outlet for…stuff.

So let’s see what happens for the rest of the year.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep up the two posts per week at least until the end of the year and maybe even through it.  But it’ll mean that I can’t prioritize complaining and wallowing in self-pity over getting other things accomplished, like committing whatever strange idea is in my head to a post.