I realized yesterday that just being home doesn’t qualify as time I need to recharge my battery. I need time alone. There’s a big difference between me being home while everyone goes off to work and school when I can get down with my own intentions and plans and parting ways after breakfast where I’m still on the hook for every little thing that comes up.

I’m going to resist complaining too much about dishes, but my struggle is real. And believe me, I recognize the privilege in that, but I’ll just leave it by saying, I don’t really get a day off from my other job duties as assigned.

Yesterday my writing goal consisted of two things: 1.) Not bringing Covid into the picture and 2.) Writing a poem.

I did both so.. yay me!

I’m coming into today feeling like it’s ok if this wanders into thoughts about being quarantined for like 15 days. Yeah, 15 days ago was the last time I left the house to meet a friend or do anything that didn’t involve getting last minute supplies for the house.

It could be worse. We could be in California or New York or somewhere else in the world where it’s turning from disaster into nightmare. Here in Nebraska I feel like there were restrictions and recommendations that started to happen super-early and watching the rest of the world, it feels like a good call.

My kids were on spring break last week and so this is technically their first day of “remote learning”. For my school system that means that I’ve now got to be super involved in what they are doing with their days, continuing to use the resources we have to continue to be engaged in all subjects. Yup, they are putting it on the parents more than the teachers at this point so just add teacher to the list of my “other duties as assigned”. Whatever.

Right now I’m up and the whole house is still sleeping and I’ve got lots of my own stuff to do: school, work, reading for workshop, and lit mag stuff. I’m going to have to really work on navigating this “alone together” scenario. Even Jim is home today when normally he’d also be going to work.

In a non-Covid world he would be in Denver for a work conference and I’d either be there too visiting family or here with just the kids. And the kids would be in school of course. So today Jim has the day off and won’t go back until tomorrow. And being in healthcare, the picture of what that looks like is changing daily.

They are shifting to a tele-health model to continue to provide patient care for non-emergent cases that can be handled by video conference. It’s likely that by the end of the week, the in-office visits will be limited and that means they only need some of the staff. Of course, this could turn on a dime and get worse. Or, it could stay this way for 4 weeks and then start to get better.

I mean, if they lock down domestic travel and keep the community spread case numbers down, it could have that curve flattening effect everyone keeps talking about. Best case would be that they do get to re-open school in May. A girl can dream right??!!

My priority today is probably work stuff. At least that’s the direction my mind wants to go now. The last few weeks things have gone wild and I’ve worked more than I have in months. On one hand it’s been great but on the other it’s really cut into my schedule. I apparently don’t have a good handle on balance. No surprise there I guess.

Things this week will probably not be as crazy cuz the real project manager / scrum master is starting and she’s going to take some of the pressure off. She’s actually a friend of mine who lives in San Diego. It’s a crazy small world and the fact that we worked together 20 years ago at Methodist Hospital in Omaha and are now back together at a consulting company / dev shop that employs less than 25 people is wild.

It just so happens that we’ve both have connections back to one of the founders of our company through different channels. Me from a job I had in Omaha at a software dev company for 5 years and her from working at a hospital in California about 4 years ago. So her and I go way back and I’m excited to get to work with her again. I also know she’s a tough cookie with high standards so she’s gonna keep those devs in line!

My role on the team will start to shift this week from PM to project support. Working on organizing Jira tickets, adding the Epics, filling in fields and helping to prepare for our formal project kickoff with the customer. It’s a greenfield project which is super exciting for all the members of the team. And so far the interaction with the customer had been really good so it’s full speed ahead.

That’s probably a good place to stop and do the mic drop. 🎤

Welcome to the New Monday,

~Miss SugarCookie