It's a Stretch

A fairly good representation of how my shoulder feels ... 

I'm old. I'm going to whine about assorted aches and pains now. 

The sleepy period was absolutely not restful due to my shoulder demonstrating EXTRAnonordinary pain at what seemed to be regular 10 minute intervals. What. The. Actual. Fuck? 

In an attempt to sabotage myself, I bought another peanut butter cup, and some Rold Gold pretzel sticks and a Diet Dr. Pepper. I ate the candy. I ate a few pretzels. Drank the poppy-pop. I also ate some other junk cracker-type things that were in my drawer from last week's binge that I forgot about until yesterday. They're in the garbage. Not a good way to alleviate or NOT cause inflammation in things like SHOULDER joints. 

It was what it was, and today is a new day. 

What I learned about the calendar is that my timing has to be VERY flexible because sometimes, with work being what it is, I end up doing work stuff when other stuff is listed. This is what drove me nuts about paper calendars because once you write it, you're committed, and there's very little to NO room to adjust. Digitally, I can drag, drop, edit, or delete altogether, and still see a relatively organized span of time. 

I'm playing serious catch up with the backlog caused by the events in the first week or so of this year, which means extended periods of sitting in front of the screens (I have three) and getting shit done. 

Yesterday was kind of frustrating from a remote-work perspective. 

• When you have to explain something thrice or more, in writing, it's agitating. 
• When you can't just pick up the phone and say something, or yell across the cubicle maze, it feels a bit deserted
• When you go to work on a platform that's supposed to be 100% functional and you find that it's still only 20% functional, you wish they'd just stick with the old platform ... 

The rest was just actual work duties, and not troublesome.

I could always NOT look at every notification when it dings on the monitor and the phone. However, my role revolves around management and support, and so if I ghost for an hour or five, who am I supporting? It's up to me to be able to MANAGE my own workload so that I can handle the issues that arise throughout any given day. 

I also don't know how to manage when I feel like someone is taking advantage of (me, their position, the company, etc.). If someone ASKS for more work, and you give it to them, but then they end up being some four days late on that work, and don't bother to say anything until the fourth day, that feels like a problem to me. I can't force anyone to communicate responsibly, but DAMN, just send me a message or email and tell me straight up. Is that so hard? I'm not an ogre. 

But then I'm also not displaying punctual or fastidious accomplishment of my own work, either, so how can I expect any more of anyone else? I can't, really. 

So, the focus of this week is to get caught up on my own backlog and not worry about how anyone else chooses to do their own work. As long as the overarching issues are being solved, and tasks are being accomplished, there's not much else I can do at the moment. 

I know I need to become more effective at what I do, but I also don't want to go down the rabbit hole of management and organization advice either. I'll figure it out. 

I accomplished two of the three movement sessions on my calendar, so that's 10 minutes of active stretching, plus the bits of movement caused by doing laundry, and dishes. Stretching feels fabulous. I know eventually I want to do a bit more than that, but for right now, I think it's a good option. 

What really irks me is not having anything of substantive value to watch during my lunch break. Seriously, my biggest first-world problem ... I end up on Netflix in some garbage reality-show spiral, watching things that are completely useless, or lately, I've been watching A Chef's Life on PBS. I started to watch a documentary last week about a hatchet-wielding hitchhiker that I had never heard of until last week ... I'm so out of touch. It's really not worth the mental energy to worry about. It's less than an hour of my day. 

Other than all that, life is good. I'm digging the calendar thing. I'm digging not worry about my every move, as far as physical shape and diet are concerned. Yes, I'm going to have days where I make shitty choices, but I also have days where I don't, so it will balance out. 

Off I go then.