It's been a howling sort of day, literally rather than metaphorically, as a storm swept (this time literally) over Germany. There was a constant roaring or whistling in the stovepipe, rain from time to time, and at times rattling of the panes in the windows. In the daylight, road signs vibrated on their stalks, and the broom-like trees were being shaken from trunk to twig-tip. The sky was largely grey.
I found it difficult to sleep past 8 a.m. with all the weather excitement, therefore had bags under the bags under my eyes as usual, in all my video calls.
***
It was a pleasant day on the whole.
Yesterday an HR colleague and the managing director kindly sacrificed one of their time slots to give me advice about something, and it was another one of those times where the managing director was helpfully calm and lent me a bit of inner security.
I had two '1 on 1 meetings' today. My direct manager (someone different) is blunt, but it makes conversations with him reasonably satisfying as long as he doesn't go too far. We had almost an hour-long conversation where we openly but politely disagreed on some things, and agreed on others.
Besides I also had a long conversation with the colleague who co-leads my team, always enjoyable except insofar as she is currently working and being worked too hard.
During lunch, I fried an 'egg in the nest,' tended my plants, dusted part of a bookshelf, played more Bach on the piano, and generally felt quite pleased with developments.
Earlier in the day a teammate and I went over a mySQL query, which was fun too; and then three colleagues joined me to take a look at how we monitor things that go wrong with our client service.
At the end of the day we had two meetings: One was a work-related meeting with over forty guests that began well enough but later made me so anxious at times that I purposely multitasked and checked messages until my breathing was back to its normal steady pace. Then there was another meeting where the teammates and I were just chatting.
(Before the meeting, the news had spread in the company that Google is planning to change its privacy policy on Android appliances, which (it is no great secret) is not likely to be particularly great for the company I work for. And I thought somewhat wistfully that our old days of not working for a stock-listed company were less exciting, in a good way.)
Lastly I did my usual evening data quality checks, spent time going through my notes of the day to make sure that everything I promised people I'd do was done as far as possible, booked an evening for our next team event, answered a few final direct messages, checked my email inboxes, and shut down the computer.
***
Having caught up on a few YouTube videos (one of them a ballet video), Twitter, and the Guardian, I have been working on one of the Open University's free introductory mathematics courses and soon plan to catch up on Duolingo lessons. Besides I want to keep listening to two audiobooks: Jimmy Carter's biography and A Knock on the Door, a report about Canada's residential schools.
Jimmy Carter's biography is also funny to read for me personally as a satire on my current persona in the workplace: tactless and overly honest at maladroit times, courageous in a way that closely resembles stupidity, irritatingly convinced of my own moral high ground, and effective but without appearing to be effective.
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