So I’ve been concocting a plan – come December 2nd, I will be based in London. And October and November are devoted to Adventures. First the Grace Hopper Conference (which was awesome), and then California for an internal leadership course, and as of today… officially non-work-related-adventures.
I’m going to relax in Bali, roam around Barcelona, catch up with friends in Kitchener-Waterloo, see the Northern Lights in Reykjavik, and look for some kind of inner peace on a yoga retreat in Faro (Portugal).
Shorter explanations:
“I’m exploring my alternate career as a travel blogger”
“I’m an international fuckwit of no fixed address”
What do I hope to get out of this?
First up, I just need a break, a chance to reconnect with what I think is important. There’s a freedom that comes from not having to answer to anyone, and weekends and short breaks have not been long enough for me to really connect with and hold onto that.
Secondly, I need to remind myself why I love to make things. This means more time to make things for fun, learn the things that I want to learn just because they are interesting, rather than because they’ll help my career or team or whatever.
Thirdly, I want some distance from this industry, and the appalling treatment of women within it. Every week I encounter new pieces of data, and new stories, and they are not abstract to me, this is the world I live in. I’m hoping a break from this world will help me not connect with these stories and data as much for a while.
Finally, this is my time to explore what I would do if I wasn’t afraid.
I said goodbye to someone special recently, and after a long walk and brunch with a friend, I threw myself a little pity-party. I bought myself flowers and two delicious artisan cupcakes from a farmers market, and blew my $100/month Amazon budget on novels, one of which I devoured whole.
Basically it was, “I’m going to be miserable today, let’s do it right.”
I find there’s nothing like a long walk for perspective and I thought about and I kept telling myself that joy and misery are two sides of the same coin. I’m miserable now, because of all the happy moments we shared. They were worth it, I think. Given time, I’ll know so.
That is the thing about loving someone – they get the power to make or ruin your day. Hopefully the person you love uses that power well, and you use that power well, but sometimes it might just be things neither of you can control.
Really, the same can be said of anything. But especially, work. Being passionate about what you do, means you will sometimes be really stressed out/upset/angry about it.
I know that is true for me. But lately, I’ve been too stressed out by it. And so I tried to give myself some perspective with this mantra I repeated to myself.
I not building rockets. I’m not curing cancer. I’m just building apps.
Which kind of worked. Well, it made me less stressed about work, but shortly after more stressed in another way.
I’m just building apps? What am I doing with my life?
This actually prompted me to think more deeply about what it is that I am doing with my life, where my priorities lie, what my values are. What would I do, if I wasn’t afraid?
Turns out, I’m still too afraid to post the answer to that.
But, what I did do – was pack away all my work-branded clothing, hoping that it would help me actualise more as an independent entity rather than defining myself so much by what I do, and where I do it.
Two weeks on, it’s helping. I was going to cheat and put my flowers in the branded water bottle I have previously used as a vase, figuring it wasn’t like I was wearing them but then I found a plastic jug instead.
And, pity party over, I’m still sad… but I’m rejoining the world.
Today, I wore a mini-skirt (gray) over leggings (black) with ballet flats (gray) and a plain tshirt and cardi (both black). I wore my hair down, and (naturally) curly.
I know, I don’t normally share the details of my wardrobe, but bear with me – I have a point.
It was an ideal outfit for today – I just wore the leggings and tshirt when I was working from home in the morning and chilling out in the evening, the flats were fine to drive in, and when I went out to Girl Geek Dinners in the evening I didn’t feel under-dressed. Oh, and my friend totally loved my skirt.
And… it’s an outfit that I love. I got the skirt in San Francisco. The tshirt on a shopping trip with a friend in Ottawa, and the cardi when I was in Winnipeg for a women in Science and Engineering conference with the other girls from WISE.
The other week, I was at a panel about life as a woman in technology. And I was not wild about how it started with “you earn a LOT of money” (yes, I like nice handbags and tend to buy expensive jeans, but that’s not why I love my job), but then the woman said, here’s some advice – don’t wear a skirt.
Not – don’t wear a skirt to interview. Good advice, I spent much of my first round interviews sitting on the floor to reach the low whiteboard.
Not – don’t wear a skirt at first. My extremely scruffy friend was wearing flipflops and had wild hair… and was still asked if she was a PM. Someone asked me if I was a PM last week. I think it happens more if you’re dressed better. As you’re finding your way, dress more plainly? I can see some sense in that. It was definitely something that I – consciously or unconsciously – did.
But the advice that – pick this career ‘cos it pays well but you better subsume the part of yourself that likes pretty clothes, and fabulous shoes and charming handbags and accessories. That sucks. A lot of the time I wear jeans and tshirts, and tie my hair back, but a couple of times a week I want to not do that, and it’s important to me that I’m comfortable experimenting with clothes and wearing something fun.
The other week I wore wedge boots with this fluffy cuff. They are adorable. Only my female colleagues appeared to notice, although one of them did start stroking them.
Last winter I came into work wearing a white fluffy hat with two dangling pompoms, and bright pink snow boots. No-one commented. The following day I wore brown boots and a (still beautiful, but less noticeable hat – I do love winter hats) and one of my teammates said “you’re wearing different boots today”.
I don’t meet customers. I’m not presenting an image. I’m just being myself. I might worry about what I’m wearing for the thing that happens after work, but aside from not wanting to wear heels on days when I’m running around a lot, I don’t really think about what I wear at work. I’m Cate, Software Engineer on ___, not that girl, you know? The one with the curly hair.
I’m on board with don’t wear a skirt to an interview. I see the sense in dress plainly at first. But, I’d say, wear a skirt if you want to. Don’t feel like you have to check part of yourself at the door in order to be accepted. Some of my colleagues no doubt don’t get my choices of outfit, but y’know, I don’t get their love of board games. It’s not about being one of the guys, it’s about being one of the engineers. And that, I find, has sod-all to do with what you wear.
I have had a pretty appalling week in terms of the difference between what I wanted to achieve, and what I did achieve.
Things outside my control:
Re-aggravating shoulder injury. So much pain. Increased sleeping due to pain killers. Two trips to chiro (feeling a lot better now – finally).
Car is broken and needs a bunch of work, so we have to decide – do we buy a new one?
Server issue on something I was working on sent me down a rabbit hole where I assumed it was my fault.
Hotel sent me away with someone else’s bill (turns out, you can’t use that to do your expense report).
Things I planned/did badly:
Did not plan for a 4-day week (supposed to be on holiday today. Instead I will try and do a couple of hours work whilst packing).
Did not plan for sorting things out in order to go away. Including – checking everything for an event we’re running the week I return.
Did not plan for coming back after a week away.
Agreed – in fact, suggested – that I should go back to New York for two days, the week I get back.
Got overwhelmed and panicked.
Did not break what I was doing up well.
Did not say no. The biggest stress has come from working on something for my old team. A series of events have meant that I wasn’t able to make much progress on this until Monday afternoon. I’ve been stressed by and resenting that what I’m doing is some way away from the circumstances I agreed to. Could also have postponed a couple of meetings.
Prioritized that over the one thing that I really hoped to achieve for myself and my new team this week – getting readability.
Broke my email once a day as I tried to get through the backlog before I go away. Probably necessary, but could have structured it better rather than just going to email “between” things or instead of thinking about what to do next.
Things that worked well:
Broke things up better once it was apparently that someone else was going to have to finish what I started.
Was transparent about what I wasn’t going to get done to my new team.
Have amazing colleagues who are taking control of the event stuff whilst I’m gone.
Spoke to another amazing colleague so she can finish the feature I’ve been working on. Outlining what was happening and how it was working made me feel more capable of doing it myself in the short amount of time left!
Very lucky that my chiro was willing to be flexible and fit me in.
When working through the evening, (9pm Wednesday, 11pm Thursday) took a break for dinner. Wednesday was just a sandwich and some time with my book, Thursday I went out with work colleagues. Reminded me how much I love my job and how awesome most of the people I work with are.
I really enjoyed my 6 weeks of going nowhere. I know, I don’t get to complain because my life sounds so glamorous – but reality is different.
Oh New York! You’re so lucky.
I know, the hotel was wonderful, the office fantastic, and the three blocks in between? Just fabulous.
This was the trip I struggled most with. In part because I’m exhausted and overdue the holiday (yay! another plane!) that I will leave on at the end of the week. Also because of a series of unfortunate events:
My flight out was delayed by 8 hours (thankfully the upgrade had been very cheap – most that day $4 over economy – when I booked, so I was in the lounge), causing me to arrive at nearly 2am.
On the afternoon that I planned to go early to see MOMA, it was tipping it down. As I was looking forward to the walk across town as much as the museum itself, I decided to wait for the rain to stop. Engrossed in what I was doing, I didn’t notice the time (or that it was no longer raining) until it was too late.
My flight to Ottawa boarded just-about on time, but then after we’d turned off our electronic devices for takeoff just sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes, with no announcement, nothing. After some time, it just suddenly took off.
My flight back to Toronto was massively oversold and I had to hang about by the gate hoping for a seat it seemed unlikely I’d get, thinking if they would just tell me I’d be fine with an hours delay – I could just go to a restaurant and get something to eat. I did get on the plane, very last row. The woman in the seat next to me told me she’d been observing the girl at the gate – who’d been really snotty when I went to see what was going on, and to her as well – but was being charming to all the men. Urgh.
After arriving in Toronto I went to get the shuttle to KW. The guy told me it would be there in <15 minutes… actually it was about 45.
Normally I manage to roll with these kind of things more easily, it’s just how it is when you travel. I think that I was lucky to get on the oversold flight, and definitely very fortunate to get out of New York before the hurricane. Normally I’d find it funny that the receptionist at the fancy Ottawa hotel told me “Internet is extra, $15 a day, but it is wifi” – like that’s impressive? It’s 2011, of course it’s wifi.
But – not when I’m exhausted and fed up of flitting about. The trip was so useful and I got so much done that I will definitely be going back, so I need to find a way to make this work. I did two weeks away in August, and expect to do the same in September (albeit, one week holiday) and October. I can’t have each trip make me this unhappy.
Some things to think about:
Flight time. Flights later in the day are more likely to be delayed.
Distance from hotel to office: a 20 minute walk might mean I see more of the city and get some exercise.
Set an alarm: normally I don’t, but several days I woke up about 30 minutes after I needed to if I wanted to work out before whatever I was doing.
Snacks: need something to eat or a protein shake if I want to work out in the morning.
Water: travel is so dehydrating, need to make more of a point of drinking lots of water after my flight gets in.
Doing something cultural is a must, if leaving early is too hard then leaving a day later would be better (not an option this time, as I had to get to Ottawa).
Do you have any strategies for dealing with work travel? Please share!
I discovered something new about where I live at the weekend. The nearby drugmart doesn’t sell bagels. I’d always assumed that they would, but when I tested that theory I found it lacking. Living in a small place, there wasn’t anywhere I could continue on to and so I ended up at my boyfriend’s apartment practically in tears saying “I hate it here”.
Something of an overreaction. To be fair, I was a little strung out because after nearly two months of deliberation my paper got accepted (yay) and I was given… two and a half weeks to make edits. Of course I get this news last thing on the Sunday night of a long weekend, and it hangs over me all week. My earlier paper was invited to be extended as a journal paper (something I’ve been ignoring with everything else that has been going on) but I should be able to put some of the stuff that is being cut from the second paper into that… Meanwhile, I discover that my work permit has come through and I can leave the country again (!), making tentative plans of New York next week and MTV the week after into reality.
Except MTV is infeasible because I have to do these papers – the timing of that trip is more flexible than my attitude on travelling with two laptops. But, what better motivation to get cracking on Saturday morning than a trip to NYC?
And instead I’m having a crisis on where I live. There are so many things that I love about KW – my job, the people at work, the office, the people in the community and the amount of stuff happening. It is, in so many ways, an awesome place to live.
The problem, for me as a city girl, is not things to do, but when I’m not doing things. Going to the grocery store is such a palaver because it’s so far away (although I did end up trying a closer one that I’d been nervous of because it looked sketchy. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought). I’ve finally found a tasty Lebanese place that will do lamb kebab sandwiches (perfect post spinning – protein, and just enough carbs so stop me from keeling over), but it’s a 10 minute drive away in the middle of an industrial park. There is nowhere within walking distance to pick up Asian food (there is one really good pizza place, but I try not to eat that kind of stuff) and there is only one place we will order in from (tried others, with varying degrees of fail). The result – for me – is that whilst it’s easy to go out, it’s actually really quite stressful to try and have a night curled up in my apartment with a book. I flit about enough, that doing a weekly grocery shop and stocking up on stuff just seems to end up being wasteful – I never know how much I’ll be home. Mostly I shop for clothes etc when I travel, in the US, Toronto or Ottawa, but I ended up doing some shopping the other week, and it involved going to two malls – at either end of KW – because they are both small and don’t have a huge selection of shops.
To come back to the work I was supposed to be doing when I was instead having a crisis… I don’t enjoy writing papers. It’s a lot of work, in a very rigid structure, for what? A trip to Switzerland – the best part of which was the date in Geneva with my boyfriend and the train ride to and from the conference through the stunning country. The new paper is in Singapore, somewhere I’ve long wanted to go, and we’re likely going to make it a holiday. Unfortunately the timing of it means I’m supposed to simultaneously be in Singapore and Seattle. Thankfully the time-zone difference makes that almost possible! I know, I’m lucky to get to go to these places, but the reality is – and anyone who travels for work says this – mostly it’s not fun, and you barely see anything. In California, I just end up at work 8-8 and yes, the campus is amazing, and it’s much warmer in winter, but unless I’m somewhere for the weekend as well I barely get to see anything. It seems that I spend ages on a paper, send it away, wait for ages, have to make the changes they request in a hurry, wait some more, travel, and I get to list one more thing that is somehow supposed to be an “achievement” but really just feels like a chore.
So – the question I have to ask is, why am I doing this if I hate it? Why am I more likely to be doing something that I feel “obliged” to do than something I actually want to do? Because I don’t like to let people down, and because I feel that I need to prove that I was smart, talented, and hard-working enough that me escaping rather than graduating from grad school is not completely my failure. That I didn’t just learn about things that make a terrible manager, and walking away from a sucky situation – that I also learned how to play the publications game. With this latest paper, I met the goal I set myself – of two on-topic publications – that would prove that if I had been willing to pay thousands of dollars to bang my head against a brick wall for a while longer, I’d have an MSc. Comparing this to working on products that get used by an unfathomable number of people, it seems like I shouldn’t care. But I do.
Meanwhile, why do I live here, if I hate it? Because it’s not for ever, and because mostly the good outweighs the bad. It just didn’t seem that way, that morning. It’s rare that you don’t end up having a trade-off between where you live, and what you do. Pick the city, or be tied there by your partner’s career, and you’re constrained by what’s available and how far you’ll commute – and of course, often these constraints limit your career, and I refuse to to let that be me. Pick the company, decide that the opportunity is more important than the location and you end up living where the opportunity you follow is.
When I started work, I set myself a simple rule – one that I’d less deliberately followed last summer. At the end of the day, leave work computer at work. Do not put work email on phone.
It works. I enjoy my evenings and weekends. I wake up excited to go to the office. I have insights about how to solve problems when I’m away and focusing on other things. Most recently whilst out with a friend at the KW Symphony, I realized that I needed to redesign (and what the design should look like) the interface to the component I’d spent the day fighting with.
If work-life balance is the problem, then I seem to be doing OK. But, with just two variables, that makes it sound like a seesaw. I.e. if you’re balancing “life” and “work” then everything’s OK.
That seems like a vast over-simplification to me. I prefer to think about sustainability – to me, that means that the pieces that make up your life have an arrangement, and a quantity, such that if this is how life is going to look like for the next 3 months – 6 months – a year – that’s okay.
I’m inching towards sustainability. Helped by the fact that I can’t leave the country. But also because I’m working at it. Prioritizing the things that might not be concrete achievements, but that I need to make me happy. More novels. More time at the gym. More video games. More time hanging out with friends.
Of course, more of some things means less of others. Life is not a seesaw, it’s more like balancing a non-uniform disk. I’m trying to find the spot where I can stand without sliding off, but it’s hard. It’s hard because we all get the same 24 hours in the day, and we all get to choose how we spend them. And, it turns out, we can’t do more with less sleep (it’s good to be vindicated, I’ve long refused to compromise sleep!).
My problem is not, how do I divide my time between work, and not-work, because that’s been pretty easy. It’s how do I prioritize all the not-work things I’d like to do? The paper I’d like to finish. The project I’d like to build. The apartment I’ve still not quite finished arranging and organizing. The books I’d like to read. The blog posts I’d like to write. I’ve lost the habit of working late into the night, or at the evenings, and I have a hard time sitting down and doing anything much on the computer after work.
I wonder if it’s in part due to not having my “work spot” that I had in my old apartment, on my old sofa – a corner that I’d curl up with my laptop on and hours would pass, and stuff would be produced. My current sofa is pretty uncomfortable to work on. But maybe I just need the mental downtime outside the office.
My friend Tammy once told me the secret to her productivity was “incremental progress”. I think an evening a week and a space where I could focus might help. But I also enjoy doing whatever takes my fancy in my off-time. It’s new having freedom, and not feeling “the guilt” (a term I use to describe the constant feeling of “I should be working” that plagued me through university).
So, perhaps things are in balance, it’s just that I think I should be achieving more than I am. Nothing new there! Perhaps I should set aside “project time”, but for now I might just keep enjoying living, rather than waiting for things to be over in the hope of eventually enjoying life.
Achieving things is good. But, so is a killer workout followed by 10 hours sleep. A good novel. An evening of Lego Harry Potter (Amazon). Or martinis and food with friends.
Credit: Chris / http://www.rudecactus.com/2010/09/
I hate what I’m working on lately. That’s probably been apparent from the moaning on Twitter and somewhat angsty blogposts. It’s nearly done… but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels endless.
What I’ve noticed, is how much of a struggle it is to be in the moment, working on whatever it is that I should be doing. My mind wonders – email, twitter, RSS feeds – but also to new, brilliant ideas, that I could work on… if only I didn’t have to work on whatever it is I’m doing right now. Maybe later. Then there will be time.
I get frustrated with myself, if I could just concentrate I could get this thing done in a day, two tops. But I hit the point beyond which I can’t concentrate… and it takes longer than I think it should.
Credit: Christopher / http://www.thisischris.com/2006_06_01_archive.html
When I’m stressed, it’s obvious, because I do things that I don’t normally do. Like, read novels, or watch TV. Reading a novel, I get absorbed. The things I should be doing – what I wish I was doing but might get to next month, fades away. Watching the season opening for Brothers and Sisters – tears are streaming down my face, and, for once, I’m not wishing I was anywhere else.
Credit: flickr / Sara. Nel
Living in the future, thinking about what will be next rather than what is now, is exhausting. I don’t find it easy to be fully in the moment, at peace, even at the best of times, but lately it’s worse than usual.
When I was in China, on Thursday mornings we used to go into the national park and do Qi Gong. You do a series of movements and are meant to reach a meditative state. I never found it. I never felt anything other than cold. The closest I come to that kind of state is skiing – at 30kmph your mind better be where you physically are right now; ditto on a mogul field. Kickboxing is good for that too, as is spinning, you reach a certain level of exhaustion and you have to be present, to force yourself to keep going.
Perhaps the answer is to find other ways to be present – sports, or a novel, or a great TV show. And then, when I’m supposed to be working, acknowledge when my mind goes wondering, think, yes, I hate this, but I have to keep going because the future where I have time to do the stuff that inspires me? That doesn’t happen until this stuff is DONE.
My friend Maggie tells me I’m an introvert. Not because I’m shy, or because large groups make me nervous, but because I don’t get my energy from being around people. I was surprised by this, because I guess I’ve always considered myself to be extroverted and so I asked another close friend and he said that was nonsense because I’m happy to be the center of attention and the life of a party.
It doesn’t really matter which of them is right – introvert, extrovert – it’s is just a label. Thinking about it, I’ve decided that I need to be both. Too much time alone makes me angsty, but I don’t think someone who was truly an extrovert would love living alone as much as I do.
When my life is very social, though, I do get to these points where I desperately need to be alone. Too much stuff going on, too many people makes me stressed. When I get to about a week without any “Cate-time” I will literally block off time in my calendar to make sure I get it. I got to that point last week.
Perhaps it’s not really about introvert vs. extrovert. Perhaps the real problem I’m having, is being a maker living on a manager schedule. Hour by hour blocks and lots of meetings and jamming about pitches and posters might be manageable, but then my personal life is on manager-time as well… and it’s too much. It means that I get to the point where it’s mid-afternoon on a day when we’ve spent all that day working on our pitch and I feel strongly that if I have about half an hour before I’m going to crack from too many people, too much talking. From the article linked above (emphasis mine):
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
My whole team was overloaded like this, and so we called it quits and I escaped and – bliss – had a whole evening of maker time, which I spent coding. It’s interesting that most of the technical people find the pitching stressful.
I would have thought I would be OK, since I do a fair amount of public speaking. However, there are two things that make giving talks by myself different:
It’s one aspect of what I do where I do my best at the time and try and improve for next time, sure, but good enough is fine. Because I won’t teach that exact same class again any time soon, or give that same talk.
The talks I give alone are either are made in maker time – in fact, require maker time to create because it’s all about connecting the dots and inspiring.
In what we’re working on, we give the same pitch nearly every day. Each time we have something new to work on. We have thrown out my section and started over on it more times that I can count. It’s exhausting. The idea might need maker time, but the pitching and the discussions and the hammering away at it until it shines – that’s manager time.
So I’m going to make a conscious decision that as my work-schedule moves to manager-time, I’m going to shift my personal life to maker-time. It satisfies my need to be alone, and my need for unstructured time in which to create. Coding distracts me from the stress of pitch-pitch-pitch.
Strange that the final stretch and living on manager-time is the biggest stress I have. But good to know.
How about you? Do you live on maker-time or manager-time? How do you cope when you’re on the wrong one?
Cookie Consent
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using our site, you consent to cookies.
