Yep – it’s that time of year again where we all start reflecting and seeing how we measure up. Well, I’d say it’s that time of year again, except lately I feel that’s all the time. It’s like we’re in a constant state of reflecting because there are so many times that lend themselves to this. The end of the calendar year. Annual reviews. Some anniversary, real or made up like a “blogiversary”. Birthdays. The Jewish New Year for some of us. (My birthday is around that time of year so it’s like I get two for the price of one!) I’m beginning to feel like if I do any more reflecting, I’ll have to start calling myself Narcissus and stay away from all bodies of water.
Putting all of that reflection into action seems to be the bigger problem. Lately, whenever someone asks “how are you?” the answer seems to be “Busy.” Doesn’t seem to matter if you’re the one asking the question or answering. A friend and I had a conversation where they said that “Busy is the new ‘OK’ “. I would have to agree with that. I know Jess Borland (b|t) has a great talk about “Busy is a Four-Letter Word“. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found the time to watch it. <insert sad trombone or rim shot here> I have heard great things about it and I really do want to watch it. But it just seems like everyone is just so busy these days. Who doesn’t have too much to do or isn’t over-scheduled? I want to do nothing during my downtime because I know it’s so rare. This means it’s more time that I’m not getting things done and I’m allowing all of that to add up so then I’m right back to being too busy again.
So how am I going to move from reflecting on all the things I need to do and work on turning them into actions? I have no clue. Well, maybe some ideas…
For starters, I need to do is to not to overbook myself. But to be more specific, I need to make sure I’m committing myself to activities that give me energy and not drain it. It’s also making the time for things I want to do. The recurring Wednesday night appointment with reminder to write a blog post clearly isn’t working so now it’s time to delete it and start again. It’s sad to admit it but I may need to start scheduling time for practicing guitar and mandolin or going to the gym, which I keep saying I want to do more of. More importantly with all of these changes, I also need to stick to those schedules or change them to times that do work.
2018 brought a lot of change, the biggest being a new job with a new daily commute. This was a good change for me and much needed one at that. It’s definitely been an adjustment that I’ve been happy to make. On the other hand, I’m still not 100% sure what happened this fall but all semblance of a daily routine seemed to go right out the window. I’d love to reclaim a little bit of that over the next year.
I am hoping to start 2019 off right and start acting rather than just reflecting. By the year end, when someone asks me how I’m doing, i want to be able to answer “Great” instead of “Busy.”
PS. If you really want a technical analogy for this since this is a DBA blog after all, I feel more and more like my life has become a series of backlog groomings and sprint reviews rather than actually completing items. I’m hoping to kick the “scrum master” (aka me!) into doing her job and making sure things get done so the burndown chart starts moving in the correct direction.
There you go! I would build on this analogy but I got things to do. Feel free to add to this or share your own analogy in the comments.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Deb the DBA 
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