Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

A quiet holiday week as my introduction to my new job.

Cons: bad commute25 minute walk wins hands down over 25 minute drive., bad monitorSGI Flatscreen vs. 21inch CRT, Aeron chairs are overrated, environment not yet set up yet we are expected to deliver (I blame this on Merrill), open plan, sun in my eyes, less impressive business cards / titleFrom Vice President, to no title on my business cards..

Pros: I’m employed, I’m still working with friends and people I respect, no outstandingly bad things yet, possibility of actual work, full kitchen, ping-pong, and new sarchasmthe gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn’t get it-fodder (I delivered a couple of lines with a straight face that Dina, Jim, and Tom were able to detect, but Katya & Dave were completely taken in… I’m betting on about a month before they tune their sarcasm filters).

Since a lot of my coworkers colleagues live within a mile of me, I have some choice when it comes to carpooling. There are many dimensions to my decision for the morning commute. In alphabetical order:

The T takes me well over an hour to get to and from work. Ick.

It’s been three days now. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like carpooling. The company is good, I don’t have to concentrate on driving, and none of the frustration that driving normally engenders in me is generated as a passenger.

Problem is that I am now beholden to the schedule of others in order to get to work, and, more importantly, to get home.

I miss being able to roll out of bed at any timeDina notes that pretty much any new job would entail me waking up on a more regular schedule than the last one. and walk to work. Sun to wake me up. Smell of leaves in the fall, spring in the spring, Central Square in the summer, and fresh snow in the winter. Oh well… paradise is slowly being paved over… I’m waiting for all the new parking spaces…

The storm has forced me to abandon plans for skiing today. Sucky. I’m pretty bored, and no one being around makes the situation worse. Not quite what I had in mind

<shrug />

About 8 years ago, a friend of mine, Christel, told me that I should listen to Pennywise.

I finally listened to her. She was right. Better late than never.

It seems like my new workplace has more conference rooms than offices (most of the employees sit in open-plan space (which is even worse than cubicles)).

The bubbling water background sounds in Octopus’s Garden by The Beatles sound like someone taking a bong hit.

Interestingly, with Dina away, part of my thinking the last few days has been “Ahhh, I’m alone now, so I can finally keep the house tidy.” The testosterone in me tells me that I should be living like a pig while I can. My tidiness fetish is winning.

Coming to the realization of the weird group of people I hang out with when you just look at one dimension of the person. One of them is a RepublicanIn Canada, even the mainstream conservative parties are further left than the Democrats are here… I’m a liberal at home.. One of them doesn’t eat red meatMmmmmm… red meat.. One of them is a veggieMmmmmm… meat. To this day I still don’t know how I managed to be a veggie for 2 years.. Some of them are quite religiousI’m athiest / agnostic.. Some of them, IMO, have boring / not-so-great SO’sDina is interesting and wonderful. (no, I’m not mentioning names… your opinions are your own). Some of them are motormouthsI am some{what|times} quiet, and even then, I still think I talk way too much..

The great thing is, most of these things don’t matter. I have good friends. It’s one of the things I’m thankful for. More importantly, the one thing they do have in common is they are willing to put up with me :)

Scary that my definition of a relaxing Sunday is cooking pasta sauce, doing the wash, and watching football.

If it weren’t for the football part, I’d really feel like a girl.

Yesterday was the first time anyone noticed how much weight I lost unprompted. Cool.

I’m actually falling a bit behind this month. I’m about four pounds over my target, and am having major problems breaking the 170 barrier. Hopefully, the absence of holiday gorging will help.

My blog entries lately have been a bit more introspective and personal than usual. They may not make much sense. I just have to work through a few things, mostly centered on work, some relating to other inner turmoils.

Your regularly scheduled blogging will return soon.

Yesterday was my last day at Merrill Lynch. For the past little while, I’ve been working at ITGIntelligent Technologies Group in Cambridge. Yesterday was my last day.

It was a weird feeling. Our fearless leader said goodbye. Some people were crying. There were a lot of last times for me.

The last time I’d log on to my PC at work at Merrill. The last time I’d check my Merrill mail. The last time I’d stand in my now empty office. The last time I’d be on the 5th floor, and yell “Goodbye everybody!” The last time I’d see some of my now ex-co-workers, despite promises to keep in touch.

Our offices have been a sad shell of themselves for the last little while. Office furniture has been sold off. Personal belongings were trucked home. Decorations were taken down. Shredded paper was all over.

It’s sad.

In some ways, the last time that I felt like this is when I came back home from my 2-year stint in London. One moment, I’m saying goodbye to my friends over there. The next moment, I get off a plane in Montreal. It was a demarcation of change. This is one too.

For kicks, last night, I tried to access my Merrill webmail account. Access denied. I proceeded to do something very satisfying… I took pliers and a hammer to my SecureID card that I need(ed) to log into my mail account.

There is some good in this. I can now mention the fact that I worked for Merrill. I’m off to something new and hopefully exciting. I’m leaving the bad, as well as the good behind.

Another realization yesterday… granted it happened after the 4 beer goodbye lunch that we had for work… but my mind still accepts the validity of the realization now that I am sober.

I’ve spent the past year and a bit being a good little worker. It’s my fault really… I messed up, and have been too cautious ever since. I think it’s hampered my performance. It has also made me feel wishy-washy, and unhappy with the image I have been presenting.

Time for a change.

I’m not going to be bad per se, but I’m not going to try to be good either. I’m going to be me… :) Even though I think I’ve slipped over the past few years, I still think I’m damn good at what I do. Hobbling myself by thinking that I have to present a certain image at work can only harm my performance. Time to let loose, have a bit of fun, and be edgy again. (This has to be the right thing to do, because I have a huge, shit-eating grin on my face as I write this. :)

For some reason, this surfaces a memory.

At a previous job, I was about 10 times more productive as John (my co-worker / lead developer) was, despite the fact that I frequently (4 days out of 5) arrived late, and frequently left early because of classes. My boss tried to impress on me the fact that I should be more punctual and put in more face time. I agreed that I could easily match both John’s output, and John’s hours if that was what my boss wanted. The topic was quickly dropped.

Anyway, hopefully, my new gig will be a company that values performance.

Time to really push myself. It’s been a while since I’ve really tried to, had to, or wanted to.

The gloves are coming off, and the websites are coming out.

Also, Dan, a now ex-co-worker, has been collecting quotes from around the office over the last 5 years…

The movie was pretty good. Too much romance. Some story elements re-arranged. Entertaining.

Points of note:

Other than the fact that I was playing Tichu in line, I felt like much less of a geek than I usually do.

For the second time, the line for the men’s room was longer than the line for the women’s.

I realize that I’ve been censoring my blog already due to the fact that some NeWCo employees have read my blog (I am assuming that they will read it again, they said it was interesting, and my ego is big enough to think they will go back to it).

I think that the happy medium for me is / should be:

• Anonymize blog entries that discuss co-workers directly. Others shouldn’t suffer because I’m on a writing trip.
• Censor things that are really not good. For example, you won’t see “A bunch of us NeWCo folk skipped work yesterday to go and hand some of NeWCo’s intellectual property over to the competition. After that, we discussed how much we each makeA fireable offense, at the last two companies I worked for, and now this one. This free market world we live is is sad. while smoking crack and injecting heroin.”
• The rest of the stuff, fuck it. If things happen at my job that make Dilbert look well adjusted, well, maybe it’s up to the company to fix things. I’m going to keep the name off these pages, but not the antics. If I’m going to spend at least 33% of my waking hours at work, I might as well talk about it.

I was walking to work the other day, thinking about what I could have done better over the past couple of years when it comes to work. A few pieces of information that I’ve come across the last few months have made me realize how much better I could have done. So I started thinking about the last little while, and about what I’d been doing.

… and I had another epiphany.

I understood / understand the concept of perception and experience as blinders. When I think about who I am, I think in words, experiences, and actions. These thoughts, especially the words, constrain me / my thinking.

When it comes to being me, I just have to do, I don’t really need to churn my brain. When it comes to accomplishing what I want, I just have to set out to accomplish it, ignoring any mental constraints that I’ve previously set myself.

Let’s see how well this epiphany combats my innate laziness.