Love My Family

The week was as exhausting as I’d feared, since all the extra hours in traffic meant late nights to make sure my day job deadlines didn’t zip past with no work completed. On the plus side, hubs got confirmation that he will be the opening act on June 5 for his good friends, The Grand Slambovians. That’s meant that when I am at home, I get to hear full-on rehearsals. I’m so proud I could burst; I got a sneak peek listen to the first song of his set tonight and love the direction he’s grown to be able to tell a non-maudlin love story via the metaphor of the Japanese word kintsukuroi. His music is very different from anything you hear on the radio–melodic, complex, yet beautiful with even just him singing with his guitar. You’re in for a treat if you show up to the concert (which you will if you consider yourself a friend).

😀

At my day job, one of the things taking up my time is a class on leadership after regular work hours. It’s been developed in-house in conjunction with The Thayer Institute to review the work of Dr. Lee Thayer, whose theories about high-performing individuals and organizations form the basis of my company’s core principles. Some of his words read as coming from a privileged white male of a particular generation; on the other hand, his comments about DOING leading to BEING resonate strongly. What cracked me up, then, this week, was a blog post I found about management training. The spread between when people are trained versus when they assume leadership roles within their companies as highlighted in that post rang true for me in this case; the more-to-the-point advice about ensuring the people who are turning to you for leadership have context in which to ground their actions seems like the best management advice I’ve ever seen written. (Even though I’m still considering attending a different leadership class for PMP continuing education credit…) I may end up posting a review of The Competent Organization once class is over to encapsulate what I learn.

In other news, we’re coaxing our good habits back into the house: We walked 5 of 7 days this week for what my phone claims is a daily average of 1.26 miles–even though one of our 1.2-milers was not in the mix, so that’s a lower average than what we did. Still above goal though. For once. I also wrote four nights this week, adding another 550 words to The Builders. Not to plan, but getting back into the swing of things despite a lot of long days. Twice this week, too, my work obligations were opened up to include hubs–who therefore got to join me for game night (we got sucked into what we are told was an unusually long session of Fluxx–our game lasted over an hour, but was hugely fun) and for a talk by Chief Pitch about the experiences he outlines in the book I’ve linked to from his name. Not exactly our typical date nights, but I’m grateful my company encourages us to involve our families in what we do at the office, otherwise my schedule would have left me with only the bare minimum of time with hubs.

I’ve spent my weekend being almost completely non-productive. I read the Mercy Thompson book I had missed. And I will cop to having found an unusual puzzle game that has me entirely entranced: Secret Society. It’s been years since I lost a year to Myst, and I’ve been pretty careful to keep it that way… I seem to be making up for lost time now.

😛

Interestingly, both of those games rely heavily on back story conveyed through text bubbles to give context to exploring immersive images. I guess I’m a sucker for a good story whatever format it’s in.

Otherwise, I still have some obligations to catch up on (I know I owe Kait a blog post, for instance). But this week should be more personally productive. In the meantime, consider checking out how the other ROW80ers are doing with their goals until I return to report again next week.