An irritable period
May. 12th, 2017 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcI have been quieter lately through feeling tired and irritable. I am usually at my desk by 8h or so and, in fasting, I don't take time for lunch, but I don't want to leave too weirdly early so I usually stay until 16h30 or so. Sometimes I stay later, for example on Tuesday I stayed beyond 17h because, as I was wrapping up, a series of three people came to ask me things. This is okay, I like to be helpful, but it did mean a longer workday.
Unfortunately, I awoke rather prematurely on Wednesday. I do not make much use at home of unexpected morning time because I am distracted by knowing that I have to leave the house so I just head to work unusually early. Over the afternoon I had a migraine, though not quite bad enough to prevent me from working, and on the way home I had a detour via the doctor's office which added maybe a half-hour to my trip, so that became a long day indeed. Yesterday I again awoke well before the alarm and started my workday correspondingly early.
I like an earlier workday partly to better match my time out of the house with when the children are out at school and also so that I can actually park near my office. Many of my colleagues drift in between 9h15 and 9h30; last night my sleep was better but this morning I still got over an hour's work in before being joined in the office by anybody else. A couple of remote workers start early so I am not wholly alone online and some of my colleagues continue working long after I am home and exercising. Getting into work early also allows me to better prepare for our regular 9h30 meeting; the agenda is meant to be largely fixed by 9h15. Before that I can check what has gone on with the many continuous integration jobs overnight, etc., and adjust the agenda, rerun jobs, whatever accordingly. Sometimes it is my job to prepare the agenda: for instance, noting questions from the wider community requiring our response.
I have wondered if, though I do not eat at lunchtime, I could instead use the time well for some other personal task. I am not sure what that might be, though. Especially, I like to keep my own work separate from my paid work, on different computers, but I do not want to risk routinely bringing my own laptop into work. I do at least sometimes take a brief walk, as I did today to the mailbox.
Some of my work has been difficult lately. I had previously mentioned difficulty figuring out an approach to the model graph operations. More recently in working on extending our server's permissions system and especially in then fixing the performance issues I thus caused, I have not been at all sure how many weeks the work would take nor how possible I would find it at all, which of course is a stressful uncertainty. It is all now looking rather better at least. In trying to get things working, at times I have understood the code poorly enough that my approach was largely to make a speculative change, see which integration tests broke, then incrementally work to satisfy them again. I was not reassured that a few of my mistakes were caught by few of our many tests; I imagine that I may have made other mistakes that go undetected. At least there is also code review.
I have also been unusually busy at home. For example, last Saturday one of my children needed to be in Dundee all day and tomorrow they both need to be. So, that is basically a day of the weekend rather perturbed. I thus wonder if everything has added up to push me a little over a tipping point lately.
Feeling myself to be much inclined to utter
Unfortunately, I awoke rather prematurely on Wednesday. I do not make much use at home of unexpected morning time because I am distracted by knowing that I have to leave the house so I just head to work unusually early. Over the afternoon I had a migraine, though not quite bad enough to prevent me from working, and on the way home I had a detour via the doctor's office which added maybe a half-hour to my trip, so that became a long day indeed. Yesterday I again awoke well before the alarm and started my workday correspondingly early.
I like an earlier workday partly to better match my time out of the house with when the children are out at school and also so that I can actually park near my office. Many of my colleagues drift in between 9h15 and 9h30; last night my sleep was better but this morning I still got over an hour's work in before being joined in the office by anybody else. A couple of remote workers start early so I am not wholly alone online and some of my colleagues continue working long after I am home and exercising. Getting into work early also allows me to better prepare for our regular 9h30 meeting; the agenda is meant to be largely fixed by 9h15. Before that I can check what has gone on with the many continuous integration jobs overnight, etc., and adjust the agenda, rerun jobs, whatever accordingly. Sometimes it is my job to prepare the agenda: for instance, noting questions from the wider community requiring our response.
I have wondered if, though I do not eat at lunchtime, I could instead use the time well for some other personal task. I am not sure what that might be, though. Especially, I like to keep my own work separate from my paid work, on different computers, but I do not want to risk routinely bringing my own laptop into work. I do at least sometimes take a brief walk, as I did today to the mailbox.
Some of my work has been difficult lately. I had previously mentioned difficulty figuring out an approach to the model graph operations. More recently in working on extending our server's permissions system and especially in then fixing the performance issues I thus caused, I have not been at all sure how many weeks the work would take nor how possible I would find it at all, which of course is a stressful uncertainty. It is all now looking rather better at least. In trying to get things working, at times I have understood the code poorly enough that my approach was largely to make a speculative change, see which integration tests broke, then incrementally work to satisfy them again. I was not reassured that a few of my mistakes were caught by few of our many tests; I imagine that I may have made other mistakes that go undetected. At least there is also code review.
I have also been unusually busy at home. For example, last Saturday one of my children needed to be in Dundee all day and tomorrow they both need to be. So, that is basically a day of the weekend rather perturbed. I thus wonder if everything has added up to push me a little over a tipping point lately.
Feeling myself to be much inclined to utter
screw thisand let chips fall, I skipped exercising for a couple of days and have instead treated myself a little: for instance, after exercising yesterday I took a bath instead of a quick shower. Today I felt somewhat better. Not only did I sleep for longer but I also felt a little more enthusiastic. I did well in my exercising. Perhaps I am returning to a more tolerable state of mind but I will try not to push it too far.
