Through the Wringer

It's been an exhausting week: 10 conversations with the teammates who report to me, about their job performance in 2021 and their salaries going forward, reports and feedback summaries, plus the usual workload and a slideshow presentation to 30+ colleagues.

For the presentation I originally did want to organize it jointly with my teammates, and feel residual guilt for not doing so. But in the end decided that it was such short notice that it would just have stressed out everyone. In a lovely gesture, teammates kindly interjected comments and questions during the presentation as appropriate; this helped greatly. They also offered kind compliments afterward.

I endured one 12-hour work day this week, because of the job performance process, and yesterday was also long.

The past weeks have been a Wild West film where a gang besieges a town, which has decided to arm itself and fight back. It was grueling shoot-outs, a few townspeople falling back to nurse their injuries (i.e. fellow team leads taking vacation days to recover) or lurking in the nearby countryside to regroup and return the next day (i.e. fellow people managers postponing part of their conversations to next week).

I was part of a small contingent that managed to keep up the battle all of this week, so now — all my shoot-outs over — I can rest in the hotel/saloon with a big tumbler of whisky.

Much to my surprise, I found out in my own employee review meeting that not only am I not being phased out of the company, I am actually being given a performance-based raise and evaluated as someone performing above average. So now I'm baffled that all the inter-company communication leading up to this point has been so misleading.

From an employment law standpoint I'm not 100% sure if complaining about this process on this blog is the same as disparaging the company I work for ... So legal disclaimer: no disparagement intended.

This Saturday will be the year 1952 in my historical experiment. But as I spent a week in the Fifties in 2015 (long ago, yet the impression remains vivid) and my family has nixed recreating the early post-war British rationing era, and the phantom of the past is looming over us so eerily anyway, I'm approaching it with a little less gusto. Next week I can do something fancy for the Queen's coronation ... although it's an example of the ghoulishness of the monarchy in my opinion, because the reason she was crowned and people were celebrating her in 1953 was that her father died the year before and left her head of state with enormous responsibilities at the age of 25.

***

I have been investigating coping methods for fuel rationing.

This was necessary during World War I and World War II in the UK, because imports were of course challenging.

But it also feels relevant again as Germany should not be importing natural gas, oil, and coal from the current Russian government as long as the invasion of Ukraine lasts.

Which is admittedly not just an altruistic impulse on my part. I also feel stubbornly perverse about it, as I do not like feeling coerced into propping up an amoral regime.

The bigger problem is the effects on German industry of 'turning off the tap'. I'm unwilling to be judgmental here as I do not live paycheck-to-paycheck and therefore don't have enough skin in the game to afford judgment.

But there's also an individual 'civilian' component:

As a family we've stopped heating with coal a little earlier this year. One of my uncles has turned down the temperature gauge on his gas-fuelled heater, which is a popular measure in Berlin.

I've gone masochistically further: eating cold food whenever possible, sipping cold water instead of boiling water for hot tea (this one is unpleasant; hot tea and substitute coffee have been two of my favourite creature comforts for months), turning the tap to cold when washing my hands...

In terms of computer use, I'm less certain about the relationship of activity to energy use. But I've been having fewer internet browser tabs open and watching YouTube videos in a lower resolution, in case that helps.

It's not fun.

But it's been easy to harden my resolve again: reading appalling news about Mariupol and other places in Ukraine, also worrying about sanctions rapidly undermining Russian civilians' quality of life as well as reading prognostications about missing wheat exports leading to hardship in countries like Turkey.

Besides I think it's easy to prove that at least on the household level these attempts to save energy aren't trivial: I could try to check our electricity counter and gas counter to gauge the actual impact.

While love of experimentation might be clouding my judgment, I also feel reasonably happy about using the World War I-era haybox principle for cooking again.

From the 'Daily Mail' cookery book [Hathi Trust archive] by Mrs. C.S. Peel:

How to make a Cooking Box.—Line a packing case (a Tate sugar box by preference) with two or three thicknesses of newspaper. Cover the paper with flannel or felting such as is used under stair carpets. Nail this on neatly. The lid must also be lined in the same manner. Make some balls of newspaper; pack tightly into the bottom of the box to a depth of 3 inches. Place the saucepan or casserole on this and pack tightly round with newspaper balls. When it is lifted out a nest is formed into which the pan is put each time it is used.

To test her instructions, yesterday I cooked rice by boiling briefly & putting it in a 'hay box.' It did keep warm for hours.

But that just tackles part of the problem. I use my laptop, desktop computer, etc. a lot, and I love hot showers and machine-washed laundry. Saving electrical energy to a meaningful degree is tough.