Tag Archives: vacation

I’d be there by now…

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As I sat down at my laptop this morning at 6:15, it occurred to me that if telework were a thing we could do on a regular basis, I’d be at work by now rather than just sitting here waiting for the body shop to open at 8AM. I could have worked for two hours, taken an early lunch to deal with the truck, and still gotten in a full 8 hours before my usual quitting time. Instead, I’ll do a little writing, drop of the truck, take a few hours of vacation time, and work about half as much as I would on a normal day.

As a former supervisor, I’m well acquainted with the challenges of working with people spread out all over the countryside. It’s tough, but with the right people it’s eminently doable – where there’s the will to make the extra effort. Of course where there isn’t the will, you end up with a lot of arcane rules that make telework something you have to beg for once a year rather than a regular part of your workweek… and I’m sure you can all guess how I feel about begging for anything, let alone begging for something that would make me a better, more productive employee. I’ll lead the horse to water, but it’s going to have to decide to drink all on it’s own.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Customer service. On Tuesday morning, I drove an hour towards Baltimore expecting to transact a not insignificant amount of business with a well reviewed small local retailer. I originally planned to go in on Monday, but noted on their website that they were closed Sundays and Mondays. No harm no foul. Of course their site didn’t make any mention of the fact that they were also going to be closed on Tuesday this week. So I wasted two hours and burned half a tank of gas driving around north eastern Maryland on Tuesday for no apparent reason. As much as I’ll be the first to tell you that keeping up with a website is a pain in the ass, it seems to me if you’re going to bother to have one, it’s probably worth keeping the information up to date. Otherwise, as in this case, you’ve thoroughly annoyed a cash customer before they even walk through the door. I’ll probably still do business with this outfit because they’ve been recommended to me so highly, but it wouldn’t take much in the way of less than excellent service at this point to send me down the road to the next closest competitor.

2. Email. If anyone is wondering how I spent my first day at work after almost two weeks off, it was largely dedicated to reading, responding to, filing, or deleting 127 emails that rolled in over the Christmas-to-New-Years window. That’s not an exceptionally heavy load – it would have been far worse if I had taken off two weeks in say the middle of the spring. Look, I think it’s cute that there were a few people out there trying to get something done over the last two weeks, but since I wasn’t one of them, it’s going to take me a day or two to get back up to speed. Especially since I wasn’t exactly spending a lot of time pondering what important bit of email I was missing while I was away. Trust me when I tell you that sending me a follow up email the day I get back isn’t going to improve the response you’ll get. In fact it’s just going to make the process work more slowly for both of us. Now that I’m back in the saddle, it’s safe to assume I’ll work your issue in whatever priority it’s given by those elevated to positions higher than mine. In the meantime, have a cookie and get off my ass.

3. Attention span. I don’t know if it’s me or my surroundings, but lately my attention span feels like it’s all of about 37 seconds. That’s great for some things, I suppose, but I’d have a hard time listing what any of those might be. For purposes of reading, writing, or really trying to get anything done with any semblance of speed, it’s really kind of a hassle. I’d hoped that the new year would bring some kind of renewed focus. Unfortunately, it feels a lot like 2013: Part Two in that regard. As always, I’ll muddle through until the glitch works itself out.

Two rooms…

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Having been back for almost a day, I have exactly two clean-ish rooms to show for it. I say clean-ish because with Maggie and Winston around nothing is really ever what some might call actually clean. At best, you can say they majority of the hair, dust, and random crud has been removed… but that’s not really the point of this post.

The point? It’s simply that after less than a week away from the office I’ve been reduced to bitching and complaining about household dust and dirt. I have no idea what’s going on in the world – and what’s more, for the most part I really don’t care. I wouldn’t have known it was even Sunday today if my phone hadn’t made a point of telling me that when I woke up this morning. Maybe I’m too much the cynic, but I think there might be a life lesson in there somewhere.

I’m sure some people have a hard time adjusting to the unstructured life of not punching a clock twice a day. As I’ve long suspected, that’s not going to be a problem I’ll suffer when the time comes. For some reason a clean kitchen fills me with a greater sense of accomplishment than all the powerpoint briefings I’ve ever built. That’s one of those fun facts I’ll file away in the “good to know” file.

The voyage home…

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My regularly scheduled Christmas voyage home has come to an end. I’m sitting at my own keyboard, at my own kitchen table, listening to my own television at a reasonable volume. George is happily munching on a couple of handsfull of fresh greens and the pups are already laid in for a good night’s sleep. For the first time in six days I can shed the feeling of needing to be “on”… and that’s a good for the ISTJ soul.

As always, the retreat back to my own domicile of record is a combination of joy at being able to throw on a pair of shorts and a tee shirt with holes in it and guilt at not spending enough time visiting and being seen. It’s a balancing act at the best of times and the mad dash that is always Christmas doesn’t make it any easier. So, I’ll be doing my best to suppress my natural sensation of guilt about carving off the last few days of the holiday just for me. Whether I’ll be able to tick off the items on the inevitable list I make when I have free time remains to be seen, of course, but getting a few thinks into the “done” column would certainly help assuage the feeling that I should have done more with my time off.

Now if you’ll excuse me, having a giant pile of “stuff” I just brought in from the truck sitting in the middle of the living room floor is about to drive me to distraction, so it all needs put away or there will be no rest tonight.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Sure it might be a touch unseemly to throw together a post about the week’s annoyances the day after Christmas, but it’s Thursday and that’s just how I roll. Since I value consistency above almost all other things, not posting today would be pretty damned hypocritical of me. Of all the things you can call me, I’d like to at least avoid that one. With that said, here’s the final installment of WAJTW for 2013:

1. Reaching halfway. Realizing that you’ve reached the halfway point of your vacation sucks. Knowing that from here on out every new day brings you one sunrise closer to the drudgery of the workweek hangs as an unfortunate reminder over the time you have left to do what you will. Sure, it’s not a march to the gallows, but it’s still uniquely unpleasant in its own way.

2. Expectations. Since I know a little something about logistics, reading articles about how major delivery services like UPS and FedEx “screwed up” the holidays is always vaguely amusing. I’m pretty sure what people mean is that they didn’t order some key critical piece of Christmas swag until late in the day on December 23rd and then expect the shipping company to temporarily rescind the laws of physics in order to deliver this precious package “on time.” I know the sheer level of effort and mountain of technology that goes into moving a cardboard box from one side of the continent to another, but I’m not saying the transportation outfits are blameless. Still, I have to think if Mr. and Mrs. Christmas Shopper bothered to order even a day or two earlier, they could have saved themselves some angst. Then again, expecting a touch of personal responsibility at this festive time of year is probably a bridge too far.

3. Sitting around. I’m not a social butterfly by any stretch of the imagination. Still, somehow I manage to keep myself busy from morning until night most of the time. At the moment, I’m beginning to feel like I’ve radically under-planned this Christmas vacation. Once you’ve gotten accustomed from long years of practice to running your own show, calling your own shots, and dealing with life’s daily ephemera, there’s something vaguely unsettling about sitting around with nothing planned, nothing that needs immediate attention, and nothing that’s even close to routine.

Preparations for getting underway…

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You’d think after spending four Christmases fighting my way home across 900 miles, a quick hop from on side of a small mid-Atlantic state to the other could be accomplished with a minimum of fuss. If you thought that, however, you would be exactly wrong. Traveling with Maggie and Winston in tow is a task table_3_supply_classesso complex that it makes even the planning for Normandy look like amateur hour. Beds, food, fuel, clothes, sundries, health and welfare items, medication – if I added barrier material and ammo I could cover down on all the classes of supply getting loaded into the truck in preparation for getting underway.

There’s a fair percentage – maybe 30% – of what’s getting packed that I won’t actually use or need. Still, I like knowing that I have it. You could fill warehouses with things I like having along “just in case.” For me, apparently it’s just in case I need to rebuild my life from the ground up starting only with what I have on hand with me in the truck. Almost disturbingly, that’s only a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t travel as much as I use to, but when I do, I travel heavy. After all, you never know what just in case might pop up requiring you to rebuild civilization using only contents of your luggage.

Already…

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Well, I’m almost two full days into my version of Christmas Vacation and I’ve forgotten that today was Sunday. You know I forgot it was sunday because I wasn’t blogging over coffee in the early hours of the morning. Since there’s really no schedule to keep, I hope you’ll forgive the oversight… and if you don’t, just send me an email, I’ll add you as a contributing writer, and you can drag out of bed before the crack of dawn to try being witty and charming first thing next Sunday morning.

I’m sure there are some incredibly important things going on in the world right now just crying out for me to comment on them, but I have no idea what they might be. Honestly, I’ve mostly tuned out. Sure the TV is still humming along providing background noise, but so far today I’ve studiously avoided tuning in to anything remotely resembling news. Judging from the sounds coming from the living room, the History Channel (or maybe one of the science-y channels) is running a program on geology from the earth’s crust to its core. That’s plenty good for background chatter.

Past that, there’s nothing particularly interesting to report. A quiet day, few interruptions, dank, and rainy. Sort of the misanthrope’s perfect day. I’ll do my best to keep that trend going tomorrow, but with the inevitable pack out, load up, and pre-trip spazzing, having that kind of success two days in a row seems pretty unlikely.

Off to the races…

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Unless something incredibly stupid happens between now and the 31st, I’ve worked my last day for 2013… and that feels incredibly good. Maybe I should modify that statement a bit, though. What I really mean is I’ve finished working for wages this year. I’ll still be doing plenty of work – giving the house a good mid-winter scrub, bringing order to the piles of random junk in the basement, a few days of dashing hither and yon across the state, and finally ending up back where I started from a few days of legitimate R&R and maybe, if I’m lucky, a little bit of writing.

My 12-days of vacation aren’t exactly off to a slow start, having closed on a new mortgage for the Condo de Jeff this afternoon and then promptly dragging Maggie to the vet for half-priced Friday evening vaccinations before even getting to my first official day of vacation. It should get better from here on out, though. If nothing else, the timing will matter less.

Sure, I’ll probably still reflexively wake up before dawn, but I’m going to do my level best to turn off the little voice in my head that’s constantly screaming at me to hurry up, do one more thing, and stop wasting time. That will probably last about three days before I make myself crazy trying to “just relax”… and after that I’ll be off to the races.

My twelve days of Christmas…

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As of the close of business this afternoon, there are 10 working days standing between me and the a year ending 12-day weekend. Sure, some people are all friends, family, Christmas, Jesus, whatever… but for me, it’s the nearly two weeks of uninterrupted time off that gets my motor running. All the other stuff feels more or less incidental to having such an expanse stretching out before me where I’m the only one dictating how I spend my time. OK, maybe it misses the point of the season, but being the non-conforming traditionalist I am, that doesn’t bother me much.

After the past season of professional discontent in service to the arbitrary and capricious whims of the dysfunctional legislative and executive branches of government, the most joyous and celebratory thing I can think of doing is ignoring the whole shitshow for my twelve days of Christmas.

Open wide…

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Life is full of ironies. When I was a young careerist just starting out you, I barely had two hours of vacation time to rub together. What I did have were almost limitless invitations to go places, do things, and generally raise hell while I was young and stupid. Since I never seemed to have the vacation time, I took a pass on most of those opportunities and hoped against hope that I wouldn’t get sick and need to burn off any of my limited reserve of days off.

Now, after a a decade or so of experience, I’m sitting on a pretty respectable war chest of paid time off. What I seem to be lacking are the invitations to raise hell and be stupid. While that’s probably for the best, there’s something disheartening about taking the vast majority of days off over the course of the year to do things like having bloodwork done and going to the dentist. I’m sure this is not how 25-year-old-Jeff planned to spend his days off when he was 35, but there you have it.

Sure, it’s a four day weekend, but I’ll be spending a big part of the first day with my mouth hanging wide open letting complete strangers poke, prod, drill, and fill. If I can manage not to spend the afternoon drooling all over myself, I’ll consider it a victory.