Scarlett's First Thanksgiving / Work Headaches / Six Week Vacation
Ugh, I'm starting to slip when it comes to making these journal updates before the month ends. It's now six days into December but I'll cover November.
Scarlett is at eight months now and still thriving. She's eating solid foods well and although she makes quite the mess every day, it's progress and she's an animated character throughout. She's days-to-weeks away from walking so it's just such a special time. We had her first Thanksgiving here at our home. Unfortunately, it was just the three of us, but Nicole made it special and even cooked a whole turkey! We've been having conversations about how to make our lives easier as Scarlett really does keep us busy all day every day, and one of the things we walked about was to make meals easier. Nicole loves to cook and can easily spend several hours making wonderful and healthy meals for us from scratch. Although I handle Scarlett for her in these times, it's not perfect and often times Scarlett will demand to nurse and interrupt things. So yea, it's all a work in progress but things are going well!
What's not going well is my job. As I've been writing about for several months now, I was offered to move to a new factory back in August and do software engineering for them. I said yes and was looking forward to the change of atmosphere. Unfortunately, the actual job hasn't been a strong opportunity for me at all. Once I got in, it was clear that the job role they had waiting for me was actually just project management with no coding at all unless I somehow magically found the time to do it. And they didn't need me anyway as they already had project managers and a team of coders who didn't need help. The role itself was poorly defined, too, and I was continually strung along and told to wait longer for more details. In November, things kind of came to a head after some painful misalignments with my new coworkers. I've been miserable, apprehensive, and stressed out and although it's not exactly a hostile work environment, I feel unsupported by my new coworkers and that we're just trying to avoid each other. It sucks feeling alone like this. I told my management that it was a mistake to have moved me, that I'm not yet ready to take on a management role, and that I would like to return to my old job so I can continue my career as an engineer. I had several tense meetings with my bosses and although they seemed sympathetic, they weren't really interested in solving the problem to my satisfaction. Worse, they instead gave me more work to make me feel like I was working on something. Typical of corporate management, right? So yea, moving back to the programming job I've had for the last four years doesn't appear to be an option, so I've begun asking around the rest of the factory looking for a completely new assignment to get away from my current situation. I have a lead and in January, I'll be exploring that. I really hope it pans out and that I get to keep my work-remote status but we'll see how that goes. At this point, I'm ready to get back to what I should be doing with my career. Fingers crossed!
One thing that's making things better right now is that I still have paternity leave to use and right now, I'm using it to create a long nearly-six-week stretch of time away. This block of leave started on Thanksgiving and will go all the way to the day after New Years. It's been wonderful looking forward to having forty days away from work and I'm thankful that I've had this opportunity. Every day has been filled with hanging out with Nicole and Scarlett and helping around the house and getting projects and chores done. It's been awesome. We've done some decorating for Scarlett's first Christmas but we can't have a tree this year because Scarlett would probably grab it or try to eat it or something. We're making it festive, though, and along with some Christmas music playing most days, it's really starting to feel like the holidays around here!
Scarlett is at eight months now and still thriving. She's eating solid foods well and although she makes quite the mess every day, it's progress and she's an animated character throughout. She's days-to-weeks away from walking so it's just such a special time. We had her first Thanksgiving here at our home. Unfortunately, it was just the three of us, but Nicole made it special and even cooked a whole turkey! We've been having conversations about how to make our lives easier as Scarlett really does keep us busy all day every day, and one of the things we walked about was to make meals easier. Nicole loves to cook and can easily spend several hours making wonderful and healthy meals for us from scratch. Although I handle Scarlett for her in these times, it's not perfect and often times Scarlett will demand to nurse and interrupt things. So yea, it's all a work in progress but things are going well!
What's not going well is my job. As I've been writing about for several months now, I was offered to move to a new factory back in August and do software engineering for them. I said yes and was looking forward to the change of atmosphere. Unfortunately, the actual job hasn't been a strong opportunity for me at all. Once I got in, it was clear that the job role they had waiting for me was actually just project management with no coding at all unless I somehow magically found the time to do it. And they didn't need me anyway as they already had project managers and a team of coders who didn't need help. The role itself was poorly defined, too, and I was continually strung along and told to wait longer for more details. In November, things kind of came to a head after some painful misalignments with my new coworkers. I've been miserable, apprehensive, and stressed out and although it's not exactly a hostile work environment, I feel unsupported by my new coworkers and that we're just trying to avoid each other. It sucks feeling alone like this. I told my management that it was a mistake to have moved me, that I'm not yet ready to take on a management role, and that I would like to return to my old job so I can continue my career as an engineer. I had several tense meetings with my bosses and although they seemed sympathetic, they weren't really interested in solving the problem to my satisfaction. Worse, they instead gave me more work to make me feel like I was working on something. Typical of corporate management, right? So yea, moving back to the programming job I've had for the last four years doesn't appear to be an option, so I've begun asking around the rest of the factory looking for a completely new assignment to get away from my current situation. I have a lead and in January, I'll be exploring that. I really hope it pans out and that I get to keep my work-remote status but we'll see how that goes. At this point, I'm ready to get back to what I should be doing with my career. Fingers crossed!
One thing that's making things better right now is that I still have paternity leave to use and right now, I'm using it to create a long nearly-six-week stretch of time away. This block of leave started on Thanksgiving and will go all the way to the day after New Years. It's been wonderful looking forward to having forty days away from work and I'm thankful that I've had this opportunity. Every day has been filled with hanging out with Nicole and Scarlett and helping around the house and getting projects and chores done. It's been awesome. We've done some decorating for Scarlett's first Christmas but we can't have a tree this year because Scarlett would probably grab it or try to eat it or something. We're making it festive, though, and along with some Christmas music playing most days, it's really starting to feel like the holidays around here!