Mercury in Retrograde or Something?
The day started off innocently enough. I did a reprise of yesterday morning breakfast with Johnnie, which was to say I made him breakfast and I walked him to school. EEzy pEEzy. I should have known something was happening at work. It had been way too quiet since the holidays. I got a text from Chad this morning that our HW site didn't have any internet connection. I come to find out later on it was because they did a fire test and didn't let us know and so the network equipment was out of sync booting up and we had to go there to reboot our gear. I thought that was that. But then I get another text while I was already on the way. Now our Bresee site was down. And no sooner had I gotten to work that our CMO was telling me his doctor over there was not happy. I was already dealing with 2 sites being down in the same morning and now a provider isn't happy? Hell, I'M not happy. Is Mercury in retrograde or something? And then I remembered something I said at the Leadership Summit yesterday. We were talking about CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS and how we tend to use other people as the villains. Sometimes other departments. "It's I.S.'s fault" I heard myself say. Did I just screw up my own department by giving the Universe a self-fulfilling prophecy? Not that we're the cause for our network going down. But we are sure to take some portion of the blame. And in the case of Bresee, my network engineer Noriel had been fucking with the VPN gear and hadn't gotten it right since Christmas Eve. So THAT irritated me. Fortunately, we cleaned up ok and got everyone up by 10 AM. An hour's worth of downtime. From an SLA standpoint that was more than acceptable. But when you have COO Chad in your face because apparently he's under pressure with the providers and the CMO was just in my face minutes before, it isn't something I can just ignore like business as usual. I can provide answers because my team IS competent. And I remind myself it is merely myself being irritated that people are not being patient. Merely another lesson in controlling my state isn't it? And then when my boss was looking for a mini-projector and I couldn't tell her where it was I really did get irritated. That's me irritated at ME not being so perfect. Sigh. Still with the "state" thing. Fortunately I made it through the rest of the morning relatively unscathed and I told myself it is merely my "turn". I had been pretty drama-free so far since the beginning of the year. I couldn't expect that to hold up all month of January now could I?
The afternoon turned out to be much easier and that was because I sat down and spent the whole afternoon updating my New Hire Orientation presentation that I was supposed to give in the morning. By the time I looked up it was alredy time to go home. Time to pick up Johnnie. And it was hand-off night. No pressure to get him food like it used to be when we had to be at Cornerstone by 6 PM though. Tonight I was just focusing on having fun with him the last night we're together this work week. THAT after all is what matters. Not the network being up or down, not some provider being upset, not about me. I wanted to make sure Johnnie had a good day at school, that we got some sort of math or reading lesson in (we did card counts tonight LOL) and that he ate dinner. Tonight I made him spaghetti. But before I even got that he made me get him a Happy Meal at McDonald's. That's ok, we hadn't eaten out the last couple of days. And then he was off to his happy playful, dancing, dinosaur-loving self. It was 7 PM by the time Lisa called to let us know she got done with her notes, 7:30 PM by the time I handed off Johnnie. He had HAD a good day and a good week, and we both can't wait to see him in his STAR show on Monday night. Mommy and son drove off and it was back to ALONE time for me. Got a chance to do my 11,000 steps. The thing is that when Johnnie isn't with me, I don't go to sleep at 10 PM. I go much later and I have to work on that. I don't even know what I ended up watching on TV but I know I didn't get to sleep until midnight. That's ok. I'll take it as a one-off. Better not do it again though...
The day started off innocently enough. I did a reprise of yesterday morning breakfast with Johnnie, which was to say I made him breakfast and I walked him to school. EEzy pEEzy. I should have known something was happening at work. It had been way too quiet since the holidays. I got a text from Chad this morning that our HW site didn't have any internet connection. I come to find out later on it was because they did a fire test and didn't let us know and so the network equipment was out of sync booting up and we had to go there to reboot our gear. I thought that was that. But then I get another text while I was already on the way. Now our Bresee site was down. And no sooner had I gotten to work that our CMO was telling me his doctor over there was not happy. I was already dealing with 2 sites being down in the same morning and now a provider isn't happy? Hell, I'M not happy. Is Mercury in retrograde or something? And then I remembered something I said at the Leadership Summit yesterday. We were talking about CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS and how we tend to use other people as the villains. Sometimes other departments. "It's I.S.'s fault" I heard myself say. Did I just screw up my own department by giving the Universe a self-fulfilling prophecy? Not that we're the cause for our network going down. But we are sure to take some portion of the blame. And in the case of Bresee, my network engineer Noriel had been fucking with the VPN gear and hadn't gotten it right since Christmas Eve. So THAT irritated me. Fortunately, we cleaned up ok and got everyone up by 10 AM. An hour's worth of downtime. From an SLA standpoint that was more than acceptable. But when you have COO Chad in your face because apparently he's under pressure with the providers and the CMO was just in my face minutes before, it isn't something I can just ignore like business as usual. I can provide answers because my team IS competent. And I remind myself it is merely myself being irritated that people are not being patient. Merely another lesson in controlling my state isn't it? And then when my boss was looking for a mini-projector and I couldn't tell her where it was I really did get irritated. That's me irritated at ME not being so perfect. Sigh. Still with the "state" thing. Fortunately I made it through the rest of the morning relatively unscathed and I told myself it is merely my "turn". I had been pretty drama-free so far since the beginning of the year. I couldn't expect that to hold up all month of January now could I?
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