The hangover to my day of rock-stardom at work was that I discovered a bunch of errors in another engineer’s design that were not fixable, but nonetheless kept me at work until 2am Thursday morning attempting to do so. There was a lot of thrash on Thursday in back to the drawing board, but by Friday there was a plan that had everybody happy, other than the expense involved in starting over. It was a terribly convenient ending to what was a rather dramatic week of work.
I was out of the office all of last week. Two days were spent on a business trip and the other three days I spent at home decluttering and decompressing all by myself while Jennifer and the girls were away. I didn’t get around do doing much of the top-secret projects which will have to wait until another day, but it was a productive break nonetheless. I got some valuable things accomplished around the house, and I reminded myself of what it’s like to close down more than one bar in the same evening. As a bonus, I can’t imagine that there is much better in life than the rock-star greeting one gets as a husband and father reunited with his family. The girls were just giddy with excitement when I picked them up at the airport, and they came home and saw what I did with their rooms, they just about went out of their minds. Frigging awesome.
For a couple years I had “Bitslinger Extraordinaire” on my business cards, mostly for my own entertainment, but partly because I felt like I was at the top of my game; that is, until I switched disciplines from I.T. to firmware. Suddenly I was trying to remember the stuff I hadn’t done since college, cast among a handpicked crew of experienced engineers. Over the last couple months, I worked nights and weekends and times when I would otherwise be blogging and sleeping and parenting to find my way out of the weeds, and recently, I’m starting to feel like there’s a light at the end of the mixed metaphor. Today was one of those days when I was swamped from the minute I showed up to the minute I left, but during the course of the day, I used every tool, old and new, to solve every problem presented to me. It was the best and worst of times. I was very stressed for the whole day, I missed one of my few chances for exercise during the week, I skipped lunch, flaked on a personal appointment, and blew off more than one person seeking help, and drank a decidedly unhealthy amount of caffeine, but holy crap did I get a lot of engineering done.
Growing up, I remember my mother being very focused on advancing her career, and her motivation always seemed to provide a better life for my brothers and I. I hope she feels like she succeeded. As a parent, I want my girls to have a life at least as happy as mine, but I still don’t quite know what that is going to mean. I’m almost positive that making more money ceases to be helpful beyond a certain point. One thing that I think I can convey to them what it feels like to succeed, whether it’s at home or at work. I want my girls to know what a day like today feels like. I want my girls to grow up feeling like rock stars.
Regular readers of this blog are surely confused and reading some other blog that actually has new posts on a periodic basis. In any case, Jennifer and the girls have been gone for a week and I’ve been mostly been bacheloring around the house and hanging out with my friends. It has been a lot of fun, but I realize now that although I often feel like I can’t get much done because I have so many responsibilities to the family, I believe I have proven that when the responsibilities are gone, I’m less productive. I haven’t gotten nearly as much done around the house as I wanted to. I ended up doing a lot more work than I had planned originally. My girls will be pleasantly surprised, I think, at the changes to their rooms, but probably the most significant thing that has happened is that I am more aware than ever of how much I am driven by the challenges of having a family. I guess I should have learned this lesson before when I took two months off of work, and felt like I wasn’t doing a lot more around the house than before.
An hour ago, as my plane was taking off from Portland, I noticed from my seat just behind the plane’s left wing how the jet’s exhaust raised a fine mist from rain-soaked runway. I had arrived there about 24 hours prior, before driving two hours to the middle of nowhere so as to be ready for a morning meeting to which I had been invited at the last minute. The meeting proved to be very worthwhile, if for no other purpose than as a quick immersion into a topic which into which I’d have to jump sooner or later. On the two hour drive back from the middle of nowhere to the airport, I had a little time to talk to Jennifer and the kids, getting ready for bed some 2500 miles away in Florida.
I had planned (and still plan) to spend most of the week purging our house of excess junk, moving some furniture, and doing some other covert projects in the house which will be a surprise to Jennifer and the girls. After two long days at work on Thursday and Friday, coupled with the unexpected business trip and some new tasks which have surfaced as a result, I think I will have to pare down the scope of my original plans, but I’m hoping for productive few days at home nonetheless.
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