"I'm just not happy, I'm just not happy. I'm just not happy because my life didn't turn out the way I thought it would." Hey, join the fucking club! I thought I was going to be the starting center fielder for the Boston Red Sox.
--Denis Leary
Quite a year it's been, eh? Any year that involves a promotion and a "separation" in less than six months is going to make one's head spin a bit, I suppose, and mine is probably spinning a bit less than I might have predicted. I'm finding that my biggest problem really is getting some kind of order established--but, then again, the holiday season probably isn't the best time to do that, either. Partly to give myself a handy excuse, and partly because it is, in fact, a time of year when things are closed and people are vacating and not a lot is going on, I've been cutting myself some slack.
But I've also tried to think a bit about what might work for me--ways to stay busy and productive, essentially, and ways to get regular exercise. If nothing else, perhaps I can get into some kind of decent shape again. None of that will happen by magic, of course, and I have well-documented motivation issues, which are exacerbated by not having any particular schedule, but it's something that's in my control, so it would behoove me to, you know, fucking DO it. Yes, I know that exercise, per se, is really fucking boring; that's why I much preferred playing an actual sport. Not an option now, so time to STFU and get off my ass. I'm currently planning on a yoga class tomorrow--my favorite teacher is actually teaching--so I'm going to drag my sorry ass over there in the hope that starting the year with a positive effort will somehow help. Yes, I know, that is magical thinking.
Food for the weekend planned so far: tonight we're having tuna steaks (frozen, vacuum sealed, purchased months ago by Friend, and we might as well use them up), and I'll probably do some kind of garlic spinach. There will also be fresh sourdough bread; a loaf just came out of the oven a little while ago, and it's pretty tasty. The leftovers will become Toast from France tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow there will be collard greens and black-eyed peas, along with a little pancetta to make the spirit of my grandmother happy. I'll probably make another loaf of some kind of bread, and possibly something sweet if I get really motivated, and we'll probably have some venison, too. Monday will involve pizza of some kind; I have broccoli rabe, two kinds of mozzarella (because, really, why not), and a variety of tomato products, including bolognese sauce in the freezer and multiple jars of roasted pureed tomatos from the CSA people; I'm sure I can make something out of that.
Anyway. Lots of la-di-dah-ing going on here, trying to pretend I'm not unemployed, but whatevs. I'll keep hacking away at it, and maybe I'll find a job.
As for you all, have a wonderful new year.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Great Wall of Vegetables
The final tally (in number of more-or-less-serving-size packages):
9 lettuce soup
10 curried carrot turnip soup
6 roasted Hakurai turnips
6 roasted purple-top turnips (half w/ garlic & ginger)
18 roasted butternut squash (some roasted w/ honey & ginger)
12 blanched spinach
6 blanched kale
2 blanched broccoli stems
7 blanched broccoli florets
5 sliced and blanched kohlrabi
10 roasted beets
4 blanched chard
The beets were roasted in a little water, but everything else was tossed with a little fat (olive oil, butter, or a combo), sometimes with honey, ginger, maple syrup, or garlic. The only things left in the fridge are cabbages and leeks; there are some potatos in the back closet, and a bag of onions from the store in the fridge as well, plus odds and ends of onions and garlic on the counter. So, with some grains--pasta, bread, rice, farro, barley--and some cheese (which I just bought in moderately mass quantity), I can get by with a very low grocery bill for at least three or four months, maybe more.
My stand-alone freezer is full to the gills, and I ended up having to use the freezer on top of the fridge as well (which I try to avoid, because it's frost-free and therefore wreaks havoc upon frozen foods). I still have half a bag or so of AP flour, plus whole wheat, white whole wheat, and a variety of specialty flours with which I will not bore you (spelt, anyone?), so I can bake, too. (Did I mention that sourdough is magic??)
I wouldn't say that I'm battling depression, because this time of year always sucks for me, for such a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the relative lack of sunlight. I'm beginning to recognize that I really do need a plan, or a Plan, for how to spend my days. The past three weeks have been a whirl of creating the above pile of packages in the freezer, plus doing long-overdue cleaning tasks, with the occasional social occasion thrown in, but there's no order to it. That's the thing about being unemployed that I hated last time and don't want to recreate this time: the long days that end up being filled with a lot of nothing much, each livend with a dash of fear and a pinch of anxiety. I can spend hours (no lie) thinking that I Should Really Go Work Out--and by "go" I mean "change clothes and walk to the back bedroom"--and never actually do that. I can berate myself off and on for a day about how I should just get on the yoga mat--and never actually do it.
And, frankly, that cycle annoys me more than anything else. I recognize that it comes from the acres of time that stretch in front of me at the moment; when I'm most busy is also when I get the most accomplished, because I make schedules and I stick to them. When I'm just hanging out, I don't have a specific time to accomplish something, so I just . . . don't. This will make me insane if I don't find a way around it.
That, however, will have to wait for another day. I need to pack my crap and head off to the land of cheese and Packers fans. Enjoy whatever holidays, friends, and family members cross your path.
9 lettuce soup
10 curried carrot turnip soup
6 roasted Hakurai turnips
6 roasted purple-top turnips (half w/ garlic & ginger)
18 roasted butternut squash (some roasted w/ honey & ginger)
12 blanched spinach
6 blanched kale
2 blanched broccoli stems
7 blanched broccoli florets
5 sliced and blanched kohlrabi
10 roasted beets
4 blanched chard
The beets were roasted in a little water, but everything else was tossed with a little fat (olive oil, butter, or a combo), sometimes with honey, ginger, maple syrup, or garlic. The only things left in the fridge are cabbages and leeks; there are some potatos in the back closet, and a bag of onions from the store in the fridge as well, plus odds and ends of onions and garlic on the counter. So, with some grains--pasta, bread, rice, farro, barley--and some cheese (which I just bought in moderately mass quantity), I can get by with a very low grocery bill for at least three or four months, maybe more.
My stand-alone freezer is full to the gills, and I ended up having to use the freezer on top of the fridge as well (which I try to avoid, because it's frost-free and therefore wreaks havoc upon frozen foods). I still have half a bag or so of AP flour, plus whole wheat, white whole wheat, and a variety of specialty flours with which I will not bore you (spelt, anyone?), so I can bake, too. (Did I mention that sourdough is magic??)
I wouldn't say that I'm battling depression, because this time of year always sucks for me, for such a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the relative lack of sunlight. I'm beginning to recognize that I really do need a plan, or a Plan, for how to spend my days. The past three weeks have been a whirl of creating the above pile of packages in the freezer, plus doing long-overdue cleaning tasks, with the occasional social occasion thrown in, but there's no order to it. That's the thing about being unemployed that I hated last time and don't want to recreate this time: the long days that end up being filled with a lot of nothing much, each livend with a dash of fear and a pinch of anxiety. I can spend hours (no lie) thinking that I Should Really Go Work Out--and by "go" I mean "change clothes and walk to the back bedroom"--and never actually do that. I can berate myself off and on for a day about how I should just get on the yoga mat--and never actually do it.
And, frankly, that cycle annoys me more than anything else. I recognize that it comes from the acres of time that stretch in front of me at the moment; when I'm most busy is also when I get the most accomplished, because I make schedules and I stick to them. When I'm just hanging out, I don't have a specific time to accomplish something, so I just . . . don't. This will make me insane if I don't find a way around it.
That, however, will have to wait for another day. I need to pack my crap and head off to the land of cheese and Packers fans. Enjoy whatever holidays, friends, and family members cross your path.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Reasons to Be Enjoying Unenjoyment
I spent the early part of last week cleaning and doing laundry and cleaning some more--plus going out to dinner with my furniture guy and with friends--and then . . . then I spent some time staring vacantly into space. I managed to get various small tasks accomplished, but I felt like I was doing them in a fog. Not surprising, I suppose. I even got a taste of schadenfreude on Friday, when I had lunch w/ an ex-coworker, who informed me that a proposal on which I did not work did not get re-funded (it's money the organization had been getting for multiple years). Yes, I know it's a little evil of me, but there it is. One of the advantages of the timing of my leaving is that there isn't anything due any time soon (except a big data report, about which I warned everyone), so it will be difficult--though, of course, not impossible--to blame me if there are issues with upcoming items.
As I vegetated last week, I realized a couple of things. First, this is the first time I've had two weeks off in a row since approximately 1994. Yes, seriously. I'm sure it will get old if it goes on too long (much the way it got old by the end of 1993, much less well into 1994), but a part of me was enjoying just being able to hang out. I will never be accused of being assiduous about housekeeping chores, but it was nice to be able to make a very long list of things to do and actually get them done, even while building in some baking and some slacking. There are still projects to be done--get more paint off of the sunroom brick; make curtains for the kitchen; clean up the desk in the back bedroom--but I accomplished a lot of crap.
Second, in case I have only mentioned this 472 times, sourdough is magic. It just kind of blows me away that I can use this goo to bake bread, with no added yeast. I've already gone through 10 pounds of flour, and I have resorted to giving away wads of stuff just to make room for more wads. Today, though, I made a batch of rolls that has extra fiber (in the form of barley flakes) and various fruity bits (cranberries, candied orange peel, date nuggets, dried apricots, and dried pears), and I glazed the rolls with a combination of ginger syrup and maple syrup. I'm thinking that these will become breakfast food; I haven't been eating well (or exercising, despite my resolutions to do so), and the Week of Slack has led to concrete strategies.
Third, the more I'm away from that job, and the more I think about the info I got on Friday, the more happy I am that I'm out of there. Yes, there is still a lot of fear and anxiety about finding a job, and yes, I realize this could be post hoc rationalization at its finest, but I think my gut is right about this one. The fundamental problem--and the problem at the core of my "separation" from the organization, I believe--is that the Head Honcho (my ex-boss) and his/her team don't know that they need to know things that they don't know. They think that they have it covered, and they cannot see beyond the bubble they've built. Personally, I think it's going to bite them, and the organization as a whole, in the ass, and I do not want to be around for that. When shit hits the fan, it splatters everyone in the vicinity, and there are people on that team who will do their level best to duck behind others when that happens. The thing is, if they manage to eliminate everyone outside the bubble, then they won't have anywhere to hide, or anyone to blame.
Don't get me wrong--I don't really wish for this to happen. For one thing, the bad karma generated by that kind of wish is not something I want to invoke. For another (much more important) thing, the people who are likely to suffer most, either in terms of reduced services or reduced staff, will be people who are way lower on the food chain. Even if the bubble team members lost their jobs (which I would be hard-pressed to predict), they will be better fixed, in terms of income and savings, for example, than line staff or program beneficiaries. And I think there's a very real risk here, because there are enormous changes in the works; many or most of those changes are systemic, i.e., outside of any given organization; and the changes will be centered around the part of the business that I was in but that the bubble team is not.
They could pull it off, of course; they are not stupid people, and they have at least a modest recognition that Things Must Change. But they are also systematically ignoring (or "separating" or reagarding as Negative Nellies) the people who know the most about the side of the business that will be changing the most and that will be the core of all the other changes. Bubble team members are doing a mediocre job transferring my knowledge and tasks to other people. And they are putting into moderately key positions people who do not know enough about the side of the business that will be the core of the new arrangements--but they are people who are subordinate to the bubble team, and are therefore Good & Knowledgable. There will be hiccups--as there always are--but the size and strength of those hiccups will be related, at least in part, to how much of the world outside the bubble they truly comprehend.
Here's another thing: there's no guarantee that, if I had been involved, the organization would have kept the contract that was lost--but I would have been Blamed, even if what was submitted was something that I did not fully support or something I did not think was what should be submitted. That's going to happen going forward, too. Contracts will be lost, or poorly managed, or whatever--it's a fact of life, particularly in an organization that now has no managers on my old side of the business (the other side is rife with them, but many are foot soldiers more than anything else, and no one has seen any urgency to get managers involved in my old side). It was one of the things that had become a serious challenge over the past year--not enough managers (and how often do you hear THAT said) to, well, manage.
My friend pointed out that I was doing three different jobs, with three different skill sets--not because I'm so spectacular, but because those tasks needed to be done. As we tried to mix our staffs and managers and directors and tasks together, I was increasingly being expected to follow a new set of rules (though finding out just what the relevant rule was remained an exercise in futility), hand off my tasks, and create a new job description/job for myself. No way is that going to work out well, unless the head person can communicate what s/he wants and the other members in the bubble are willing to break the bubble and build a new structure.
Yeah, as I said, failure of one kind or another was really the only thing that was going to come out of that, and I'm just as glad to be out of the way of the shrapnel. I'll figure out something, some way, somehow. I hope.
As I vegetated last week, I realized a couple of things. First, this is the first time I've had two weeks off in a row since approximately 1994. Yes, seriously. I'm sure it will get old if it goes on too long (much the way it got old by the end of 1993, much less well into 1994), but a part of me was enjoying just being able to hang out. I will never be accused of being assiduous about housekeeping chores, but it was nice to be able to make a very long list of things to do and actually get them done, even while building in some baking and some slacking. There are still projects to be done--get more paint off of the sunroom brick; make curtains for the kitchen; clean up the desk in the back bedroom--but I accomplished a lot of crap.
Second, in case I have only mentioned this 472 times, sourdough is magic. It just kind of blows me away that I can use this goo to bake bread, with no added yeast. I've already gone through 10 pounds of flour, and I have resorted to giving away wads of stuff just to make room for more wads. Today, though, I made a batch of rolls that has extra fiber (in the form of barley flakes) and various fruity bits (cranberries, candied orange peel, date nuggets, dried apricots, and dried pears), and I glazed the rolls with a combination of ginger syrup and maple syrup. I'm thinking that these will become breakfast food; I haven't been eating well (or exercising, despite my resolutions to do so), and the Week of Slack has led to concrete strategies.
Third, the more I'm away from that job, and the more I think about the info I got on Friday, the more happy I am that I'm out of there. Yes, there is still a lot of fear and anxiety about finding a job, and yes, I realize this could be post hoc rationalization at its finest, but I think my gut is right about this one. The fundamental problem--and the problem at the core of my "separation" from the organization, I believe--is that the Head Honcho (my ex-boss) and his/her team don't know that they need to know things that they don't know. They think that they have it covered, and they cannot see beyond the bubble they've built. Personally, I think it's going to bite them, and the organization as a whole, in the ass, and I do not want to be around for that. When shit hits the fan, it splatters everyone in the vicinity, and there are people on that team who will do their level best to duck behind others when that happens. The thing is, if they manage to eliminate everyone outside the bubble, then they won't have anywhere to hide, or anyone to blame.
Don't get me wrong--I don't really wish for this to happen. For one thing, the bad karma generated by that kind of wish is not something I want to invoke. For another (much more important) thing, the people who are likely to suffer most, either in terms of reduced services or reduced staff, will be people who are way lower on the food chain. Even if the bubble team members lost their jobs (which I would be hard-pressed to predict), they will be better fixed, in terms of income and savings, for example, than line staff or program beneficiaries. And I think there's a very real risk here, because there are enormous changes in the works; many or most of those changes are systemic, i.e., outside of any given organization; and the changes will be centered around the part of the business that I was in but that the bubble team is not.
They could pull it off, of course; they are not stupid people, and they have at least a modest recognition that Things Must Change. But they are also systematically ignoring (or "separating" or reagarding as Negative Nellies) the people who know the most about the side of the business that will be changing the most and that will be the core of all the other changes. Bubble team members are doing a mediocre job transferring my knowledge and tasks to other people. And they are putting into moderately key positions people who do not know enough about the side of the business that will be the core of the new arrangements--but they are people who are subordinate to the bubble team, and are therefore Good & Knowledgable. There will be hiccups--as there always are--but the size and strength of those hiccups will be related, at least in part, to how much of the world outside the bubble they truly comprehend.
Here's another thing: there's no guarantee that, if I had been involved, the organization would have kept the contract that was lost--but I would have been Blamed, even if what was submitted was something that I did not fully support or something I did not think was what should be submitted. That's going to happen going forward, too. Contracts will be lost, or poorly managed, or whatever--it's a fact of life, particularly in an organization that now has no managers on my old side of the business (the other side is rife with them, but many are foot soldiers more than anything else, and no one has seen any urgency to get managers involved in my old side). It was one of the things that had become a serious challenge over the past year--not enough managers (and how often do you hear THAT said) to, well, manage.
My friend pointed out that I was doing three different jobs, with three different skill sets--not because I'm so spectacular, but because those tasks needed to be done. As we tried to mix our staffs and managers and directors and tasks together, I was increasingly being expected to follow a new set of rules (though finding out just what the relevant rule was remained an exercise in futility), hand off my tasks, and create a new job description/job for myself. No way is that going to work out well, unless the head person can communicate what s/he wants and the other members in the bubble are willing to break the bubble and build a new structure.
Yeah, as I said, failure of one kind or another was really the only thing that was going to come out of that, and I'm just as glad to be out of the way of the shrapnel. I'll figure out something, some way, somehow. I hope.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Roasted
If Tuesday was about blanching, Wednesday was about roasting: three butternut squash; two different batches of turnips (one was large purple-top turnips, which I roasted with garlic and ginger and butter; and the others were Hakurai, which I roasted with butter, ginger, garlic, and maple syrup); and two batches of radishes (one regular, one watermelon, which are a lovely purple color, both with butter, oil, salt), which came out quite tasty.
I'm definitely bringing a salad on Saturday--with the radishes, and some carrots and some cheese, as well as some bread, which will help me get rid of the things I least want to eat myself. The things that remain in the fridge are a whole butt-load of cabbages, some kohlrabi, and some leeks, and I have potatos in the closet as well. I'm tempted to roast or braise the leeks and just freeze them as is; I'm not convinced that potato-leek soup would freeze all that well (even if I leave out the milk until I reheat), and I've seen a few recipes for potato-leek gratin, which also would not freeze well. The potatos should keep in the closet for awhile, as it's pretty cool back there, though I do want to try to make some gnocchi, which also could be frozen. Basically, I won't need to buy food, except for dairy, for months--which sounds like a fine plan to me. I do need to re-up for next year's farm share, but at least that major expense is coming early in the unenjoyment.
Anyway. I still need to work out today, and Friend and I are having dinner tonight, using a Groupon purchased before all this set in. Tomorrow I'll start planning the cleaning.
I'm definitely bringing a salad on Saturday--with the radishes, and some carrots and some cheese, as well as some bread, which will help me get rid of the things I least want to eat myself. The things that remain in the fridge are a whole butt-load of cabbages, some kohlrabi, and some leeks, and I have potatos in the closet as well. I'm tempted to roast or braise the leeks and just freeze them as is; I'm not convinced that potato-leek soup would freeze all that well (even if I leave out the milk until I reheat), and I've seen a few recipes for potato-leek gratin, which also would not freeze well. The potatos should keep in the closet for awhile, as it's pretty cool back there, though I do want to try to make some gnocchi, which also could be frozen. Basically, I won't need to buy food, except for dairy, for months--which sounds like a fine plan to me. I do need to re-up for next year's farm share, but at least that major expense is coming early in the unenjoyment.
Anyway. I still need to work out today, and Friend and I are having dinner tonight, using a Groupon purchased before all this set in. Tomorrow I'll start planning the cleaning.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Day 2: Enjoying the Unenjoyment
So now I'm officially unemployed. I'm not eligible to collect unemployment until the vacation pay runs out, I think, but I didn't go to a job yesterday or today, for the first time in awhile. Most of last week was just fine; I met with people, I provided information, I cleaned out my office. The business person kept asking me to try to take care of this and that before I left, and I basically made non-committal sounds and didn't do those things. You know what? I handed it off to you. I gave you the info I had so far, and the work I had done on those things, and they are now not my fucking problem. Seriously. I am not running around on my last couple of days to do tasks of any kind, but most especially not those tasks, because they're tedious and annoying and why the fuck should I do that? Bite me.
If you want to know the truth, I actually enjoyed ignoring the requests. Although I actually like this person in many ways (s/he is funny, for one thing), this person can be more than a little imperial, and it was delightful to just not do it. The other thing from which I took great joy was deleting files. The same person said, when I asked, oh, yeah, if you wouldn't mind, please do delete files and clean out your drive on the server. Certainly! With pleasure! Clearly you didn't value the work I did anyway, and clearly you assume that someone else knows what I knew about the various fiddly bits in the budget even though I've repeatedly said otherwise, so I'm sure you'll have no trouble at all, with either the various contract budgets or with the fiscal year budget.
I've ordered a case of schadenfreude, and I will be enjoying the consumption of it. It may need to age a bit, but that's okay; I have other things to do.
Meanwhile, though, I've realized that I need to find another topic of conversation, difficult though that task may be. It's time to settle into a routine that works--and that isn't about either my unemployed state or the complaints about the old job. The old job is a dead parrot, an ex-job, and there's no point in continuing to spend my time thinking about it. There are still some details to take care of: applying for unemployment; getting the cobra papers filled out; getting the final checks, which will happen in two weeks and then again after the first of the year, because I'm taking some of the income in 2012; transferring the retirement money. But that's all paperwork
Sunday I went to an exercise class (rowing) followed by a yoga class, and yesterday I got some exercise in the morning and then spent several hours with the hippy-dippy-restaurant folks. (I'm trying to help them figure out how to get out of the major hole they're in. Not clear i can do that, but it seems to be helpful to have them talk about it--I'm basically doing therapy with them, on some level.) Last evening I planned out the rest of the week a bit and watched the hockey game.
Today has been all about filling the freezer: chard, kale, and spinach are the items of the day, plus I made a batch of sourdough bread. I still have leeks, turnips, more turnips, lettuce, turnips, and potatos to address. And turnips. And lettuce. No matter; I'll think of something to make with all of it, or most of it, anyway. And I have to go to a pot luck on Saturday, so I might well take a salad, no matter what else I take.
If you want to know the truth, I actually enjoyed ignoring the requests. Although I actually like this person in many ways (s/he is funny, for one thing), this person can be more than a little imperial, and it was delightful to just not do it. The other thing from which I took great joy was deleting files. The same person said, when I asked, oh, yeah, if you wouldn't mind, please do delete files and clean out your drive on the server. Certainly! With pleasure! Clearly you didn't value the work I did anyway, and clearly you assume that someone else knows what I knew about the various fiddly bits in the budget even though I've repeatedly said otherwise, so I'm sure you'll have no trouble at all, with either the various contract budgets or with the fiscal year budget.
I've ordered a case of schadenfreude, and I will be enjoying the consumption of it. It may need to age a bit, but that's okay; I have other things to do.
Meanwhile, though, I've realized that I need to find another topic of conversation, difficult though that task may be. It's time to settle into a routine that works--and that isn't about either my unemployed state or the complaints about the old job. The old job is a dead parrot, an ex-job, and there's no point in continuing to spend my time thinking about it. There are still some details to take care of: applying for unemployment; getting the cobra papers filled out; getting the final checks, which will happen in two weeks and then again after the first of the year, because I'm taking some of the income in 2012; transferring the retirement money. But that's all paperwork
Sunday I went to an exercise class (rowing) followed by a yoga class, and yesterday I got some exercise in the morning and then spent several hours with the hippy-dippy-restaurant folks. (I'm trying to help them figure out how to get out of the major hole they're in. Not clear i can do that, but it seems to be helpful to have them talk about it--I'm basically doing therapy with them, on some level.) Last evening I planned out the rest of the week a bit and watched the hockey game.
Today has been all about filling the freezer: chard, kale, and spinach are the items of the day, plus I made a batch of sourdough bread. I still have leeks, turnips, more turnips, lettuce, turnips, and potatos to address. And turnips. And lettuce. No matter; I'll think of something to make with all of it, or most of it, anyway. And I have to go to a pot luck on Saturday, so I might well take a salad, no matter what else I take.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)