3 Positive Things Part 7

[gooblax]

That's not the first time, is it?
One might almost think that other people have a much more positive view of you than you do.

This one doesn't feel as bad as the last nomination did. Luckily it caught me on a good self esteem day rather than a bad one... I did actually achieve something this time, even if it took a long time to eventuate. Although I still don't really meet the actual criteria so I don't have a strong application.

On the positive count, I did successfully run the team meeting today while my boss is away, although I accidentally went through it all in 10 minutes when the meeting usually goes for 30mins. Whoops.

 

[gooblax]

Bonus: first time cooking paella. Pleased with how it turned out.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Looks positively yummy.

 

[gooblax]

Luckily it caught me on a good self esteem day rather than a bad one...

This is really trying my patience. Five questions, 400 words each (limit). Two were straightforward, two I didn't have good answers for, one was an opinion that I had to semi-generate and articulate.
Optional video answer to another question (nope), and then just when I think I'm done - another question 25 words or less.

My nicely-written-bs-generator has maxed out. Even in high school, although I could write reasonable essays it started to pain me to get the words written in a persuasive flowery way. Last time I was throwing out old school assignments I came across a note from my English teacher saying it was good but "can you use some more delicious words?" 😂

These days I try to limit my words to "the margin of safety is >0 therefore the design has sufficient strength under all load cases" or similar.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I agree. I would hate those kinds of assignments. I'm still revving up my engine when I hit 25 words.

 

[Daniel E.]

Bonus: first time cooking paella. Pleased with how it turned out.

Excellent presentation as well. Would go well with a mojito or a nojito

 

[gooblax]

1. Made cheese and herb bread.
2. Ate slice of cheese and herb bread.
3. Ok, two slices. When it's supposed to be my bedtime. But that's better than not being able to get to sleep because I'm thinking about wanting to eat the cheese and herb bread.

 

[Daniel E.]

1. My baby guinea fowl are doing well.

2. Sister in law is having fun in Vegas.

3. Minivan (a.k.a. multi-dog transport vehicle) still driving well after having a transmission part (solenoid pack) replaced for relatively cheap.

 

[gooblax]

1. I got to (I volunteered for this one because I had to do one at some point) present a quick info session to my team and I handled the fact that the meeting room wifi connection dropped out halfway through so I had to go back to my desk and rejoin the meeting and find out where I'd dropped out. I think we got back on track although I still went too quickly.
2. My psych sent the link for today's appointment.
3. I have a meeting that should end right when I need to be getting changed to ride home to get to my appointment on time. It'll be good motivation to improve my cycling speed.

 

[gooblax]

1. I tried to convince myself that maybe my psych would care about how it went at the party since it's been the main thing we've been working on for the past 3 sessions. As a result, after a fair bit of internal debate, I decided to send him an update to let him know it went well (because otherwise it'll be 3 weeks until I tell him, and there's no accounting for how I'll feel about discussing it then). Before I decided to send it I tried to convince myself that it wouldn't matter if/when he didn't reply, that he could still care while not replying, but I was overly optimistic about how well I'd handle it. Thankfully he replied positively this morning so I can lay it to bed.
2. Speaking of bed, I had a good night's sleep last night to help with the only 3 hours the previous night.
3. My mum was being overly nosey - after I told her I'd been to the party, she started asking how much money I gave as a gift. I told her I wouldn't tell her because she was being too nosey

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Again, well done @gooblax. All in all, this has been a good week for you.

 

[Daniel E.]

1. Got exercise this weekend re-doing the chicken coops and moving the keets to their permanent home.

2. Adopted three fancy-looking Silkie adult chickens. They are very much like pets since they are more docile than most chickens. (And are relatively high maintenance.)



3. Went out to eat with the in-laws and had a good time.

BONUS: Got lots of rain this week.

 

[gooblax]

1. My dad paid me for the laptop I sold to him last month, and I gave him a bit of a discount that I'd wanted to give him.
2. Although I had a fairly annoying weekend in terms of groceries/food (I couldn't think of anything that I really wanted to make for dinner, so didn't get any compatible groceries, then this morning I managed to burn the meal I was going to be eating for most of the week's dinners and tonight I almost burned part of my replacement dinner... clearly not applying the right level of attention there), I didn't waste that much food or money and I haven't yet forced myself to eat all the burned stuff. I threw out the worst half of it and will see what I end up doing with the rest.
3. At least I cleaned my bike chain ready for the week ahead.

 

[Daniel E.]

then this morning I managed to burn the meal I was going to be eating for most of the week's dinners

Tips from America:

 

[gooblax]

1. Last night I was having lots of no-reason anxiety and noticed that I was telling myself that there was no time to go get the groceries I wanted, which was false. I managed to go get the groceries and felt a fair bit better after that.
2. I get to look at something from a project I haven't looked at before so it's a bit of exposure to something new.
3. Had a pretty good ride to work today and didn't get too spooked by an unexpected truck that took 2 lanes to turn.

 

[gooblax]

1. Felt a bit less sad about therapy stuff after watching some of Critical Role's D&D campaign.
2. Made dinner and washed dishes, and took out the garbage which is an unusual trifecta.
3. It's not cold today.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Made dinner and washed dishes, and took out the garbage which is an unusual trifecta.

This made me laugh. It's an unusual trifecta in my home, as well. I feel like I'm doing well if I get 1 of the 3 done with a mental note to schedule the other 2. 🤣

 

[gooblax]

1. Today at work was better than yesterday and my boss was there to help with the decisions which made things a lot less stressful.
2. I finished watching the first episode of that D&D campaign and have noticed some things I prefer about the play style of the other group that I listened to compared to this group, but overall it's not bad and I plan to continue watching. There are lots of episodes for me to watch - I started on their 2nd campaign from 2018 because a few months ago I'd tried the 1st one but wasn't enjoying the beginning (if I even got that far due to all their tedious ads and updates).
3. Also feeling a bit better about my therapist today. At least now when I go into a session I have over 50% confidence that I won't come out of it with urges to self injure etc. and am less worried about bad sessions wrecking my mood for days/weeks.

 

[gooblax]

1. I'm trying to remain curious and compassionate about why working from home is so difficult for me when the rest of lockdown isn't a problem. I'm back on a 20 minute timer but I can barely last 5 minutes before wanting to do something else, and the easiest way to concentrate seems to be if I sing while I'm reading. UGH. We're probably going to have the lockdown continue for the rest of the week too because there's COVID cases in a bunch of high schools.
2. I followed along with a beginner pilates video before starting work, since it was too foggy to go for a bike ride.
3. I sent the water meter stuff to my body corporate manager and volunteered to do a meter reading to check for leaks. Although I don't know how to coordinate to get everyone in the building to agree not to use water for an hour while we're all home in lockdown.

Bonus: We don't have to wait until tomorrow to find out that the lockdown is extended until Sunday. Dunno how I'm going to cope with the whole week working from home, because just these couple of hours have been torturous.

Bonus 2: After spending a few hours stuffing around trying to answer someone's question, I realised that it wasn't my job to do that. So I directed them to the people who might be able to help, rather than me trying to gather info from them and go to the people and come back to the original person with a nicely packaged answer. Better late than never to identify my work boundary I guess. It helped get through a few hours of the work day as well.

 

[gooblax]

1. I set myself some targets for getting a piece of work done today, and have met those targets for that task. Now to set myself some for the next part.
2. Yesterday I had to get myself re-added to an email distribution list, because I wasn't getting the workplace COVID safety announcements (unless someone happened to forward it to me, although with working from home they'd also been posting the updates in our chat group so I could still see them... but that still relies on a 2nd hand form of communication) - they'd sent them to building distribution lists rather than site-based distribution lists. I wasn't on any building distribution list for some reason. They added me yesterday but it didn't look like it had worked. But I checked today and now I'm on the list, so I should get the next announcement.
3. COVID numbers are still at 16 new cases / 50000 tests from yesterday which is pretty positive. I'm hoping that at this ratio we might get out of lockdown after another week... not that it's early enough to tell yet. I was trying to complete my Census data last night but the Census date is the 10th and it asks how I'll get to work on the 10th... which highly depends on whether we're still in lockdown or not.