2017 New Year's Resolutions
Yes, I know this post is going up many months late, and yes, a lot has happened since then such that I can barely remember, but I want to record my new year's resolutions and you may be interested in what I've been up to.
The big story of 2016 for me was work. I spent the first 3.5 months as an intern at the same company I worked as a college intern and a fresh out of college grad. They are much more sophisticated these days: they doubled their work force and make a multiple more money. I think they doubled the work force mostly by adding support people and chiefs of staff, although based on some of my experiences at my next employer, maybe chief of staff is a thing in corporate america, whether they call it chief of staff or foo-assistant. Anyhow, I met a lot of very interesting people, including some who have since made it to some very high offices, but they started laying off while I was there and I wasn't a good fit for my group, so things ended mid-April.
I started interviewing elsewhere about a month before, came close to getting a VP position at the same company, and ended up getting another job at a slower-paced, but still well-known company. I love the work I do and the people are very nice, but I hate the bureaucracy, the stupid decisions our corporate overlords make, and feeling like I'm selling myself short. I've also found a lot of real personal challenges, as the work is very very different from any real job I've had, because it includes more collaboration, more clients, and much more people management. My biggest challenge is realizing I may be more intelligent than most of the people I interact with, but omg are my people skills sucktacular. Like, I could probably read Lifehacker on this topic and learn a lot. oh well.
I got to do some nice trips in 2016. We had a family Spring Break in Puerto Rico, where we got to visit Buzz Lightyear; Lexan and I visited 'belle and her husband in Charlotte in May; Lexan and I went to Cape Cod with my parents for a workmoon; Jon and I went to New Orleans with 'belle, et al. for an amazing trip; and then our blended family went on a cruise out of NYC (ftw!) to Florida (where Lucky met 'belle) and the Caribbean.
I took about a dozen golf lessons and played about as many times, but never really got good enough to play with anyone but Jon, even though I was practising twice a week. I'm still not sure why: my instructor was impressed with my strength and flexibility. I intended to give it up, as I never managed to play with Petite Fromage or OperaBoss and the girls from work turned out to be non-players as well. It even turned out to be something that could be contentious in my family, as my male relatives made assumptions about my sucking that vexed me, even if true, and excluded me. My last game with Jon was wonderful because of the nice couple we played with, but I went to the climbing gym a week or two later with GMac and realized I'd given up a sport I was okay at to make a shitty golfer. I'd planned to give it up, but it's not really working out that way.
I only read 60 books last year, but many were very good. 19 were non-fiction, a very high percentage for me, and only 8 were re-reads. The Substance of Civilization was the materials science-human history book I didn't know I wanted; I finally finished John Gardiner's The Art of Fiction and Steven Johnson's Where Great Ideas Come From and was so glad I started them; and Andy Grove's High Output Management was also quite good. I read Tolstoy, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Shirley Ann Grau. I liked the 2 Michael Lewis books and the new John Ringo series I read last year more than I expected; I was disappointed by the latest Vorkosigan book and Kavalier & Clay. I read 10 books set in or about New Orleans, 7 of which were new to me.
My New Year's resolutions for last year were to more frequently ask myself, "Does this make my life simpler or better?" and "What is the most positive way I could take this?" and to spend some time every day completely focused on my son. I tried on the first, but there's always more work to be done. Most of 2016, I tried every day to record a "moment of wonder" with my son: some new accomplishment he'd had or moment of adorableness I wanted to treasure. In other words, I found a way to enumerate daily parenting. I think it helped.
For 2017, my resolutions are (1) to think more about the effect my actions and choices have on my husband and son; (2) to try harder to live up to my potential (e.g. just how many hours of computer games do I need to defrag from work); and (3) to attend a Jewish event that isn't Saturday morning services. I almost accomplished (3) because they were having a charity trivia event at the nearby Conservative synagogue. I should work on this.
This post was made on dreamwidth & crossposted to LJ.
The dreamwidth post is here: http://katestine.dreamwidth.org/1378429.html and has
comments.
The big story of 2016 for me was work. I spent the first 3.5 months as an intern at the same company I worked as a college intern and a fresh out of college grad. They are much more sophisticated these days: they doubled their work force and make a multiple more money. I think they doubled the work force mostly by adding support people and chiefs of staff, although based on some of my experiences at my next employer, maybe chief of staff is a thing in corporate america, whether they call it chief of staff or foo-assistant. Anyhow, I met a lot of very interesting people, including some who have since made it to some very high offices, but they started laying off while I was there and I wasn't a good fit for my group, so things ended mid-April.
I started interviewing elsewhere about a month before, came close to getting a VP position at the same company, and ended up getting another job at a slower-paced, but still well-known company. I love the work I do and the people are very nice, but I hate the bureaucracy, the stupid decisions our corporate overlords make, and feeling like I'm selling myself short. I've also found a lot of real personal challenges, as the work is very very different from any real job I've had, because it includes more collaboration, more clients, and much more people management. My biggest challenge is realizing I may be more intelligent than most of the people I interact with, but omg are my people skills sucktacular. Like, I could probably read Lifehacker on this topic and learn a lot. oh well.
I got to do some nice trips in 2016. We had a family Spring Break in Puerto Rico, where we got to visit Buzz Lightyear; Lexan and I visited 'belle and her husband in Charlotte in May; Lexan and I went to Cape Cod with my parents for a workmoon; Jon and I went to New Orleans with 'belle, et al. for an amazing trip; and then our blended family went on a cruise out of NYC (ftw!) to Florida (where Lucky met 'belle) and the Caribbean.
I took about a dozen golf lessons and played about as many times, but never really got good enough to play with anyone but Jon, even though I was practising twice a week. I'm still not sure why: my instructor was impressed with my strength and flexibility. I intended to give it up, as I never managed to play with Petite Fromage or OperaBoss and the girls from work turned out to be non-players as well. It even turned out to be something that could be contentious in my family, as my male relatives made assumptions about my sucking that vexed me, even if true, and excluded me. My last game with Jon was wonderful because of the nice couple we played with, but I went to the climbing gym a week or two later with GMac and realized I'd given up a sport I was okay at to make a shitty golfer. I'd planned to give it up, but it's not really working out that way.
I only read 60 books last year, but many were very good. 19 were non-fiction, a very high percentage for me, and only 8 were re-reads. The Substance of Civilization was the materials science-human history book I didn't know I wanted; I finally finished John Gardiner's The Art of Fiction and Steven Johnson's Where Great Ideas Come From and was so glad I started them; and Andy Grove's High Output Management was also quite good. I read Tolstoy, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Shirley Ann Grau. I liked the 2 Michael Lewis books and the new John Ringo series I read last year more than I expected; I was disappointed by the latest Vorkosigan book and Kavalier & Clay. I read 10 books set in or about New Orleans, 7 of which were new to me.
My New Year's resolutions for last year were to more frequently ask myself, "Does this make my life simpler or better?" and "What is the most positive way I could take this?" and to spend some time every day completely focused on my son. I tried on the first, but there's always more work to be done. Most of 2016, I tried every day to record a "moment of wonder" with my son: some new accomplishment he'd had or moment of adorableness I wanted to treasure. In other words, I found a way to enumerate daily parenting. I think it helped.
For 2017, my resolutions are (1) to think more about the effect my actions and choices have on my husband and son; (2) to try harder to live up to my potential (e.g. just how many hours of computer games do I need to defrag from work); and (3) to attend a Jewish event that isn't Saturday morning services. I almost accomplished (3) because they were having a charity trivia event at the nearby Conservative synagogue. I should work on this.
This post was made on dreamwidth & crossposted to LJ.
The dreamwidth post is here: http://katestine.dreamwidth.org/1378429.html and has
comments.