You’d think as a project manager and system administrator and lover of google calendar that I’d be better at spacing things out, but no, they still all want to collide at the same time.
This morning I had to drive 90 min to my dentist office for a cleaning. I do this because I love my dentist and so even after moving from Davis to Oakland 12 years ago, I still keep going back to her. I’ll keep going back till she closes. Anyway.
On the drive, I expected to do mostly nothing. Listen to KQED, maybe day dream some, but most just driving. Instead, I did the following
- Sent a lengthy email to check in on a project that has somehow fallen off my weekly check ins (which I prep Monday night to go out Tuesday morning). Thankfully I had to get gas so while the gas was pumping I copied last week’s check in, updated for the changes, and sent it off. That’s a lot harder to do on phone than on a computer, but it was managable.
- Checked emails, sent a couple quick and/or canned replies, archived some, and saved a few to check when I got home.
- While back on the road, I got an SOS email that needed immediate tech support because two OWL cameras at work weren’t pairing properly so a very important meeting was getting an echo effect. I called the meeting host and luckily over the phone (along side the troubleshooting doc that I wrote and printed out and taped to the cabinet that the OWL camera is in) we worked it out.
- Checked a few more emails, replied where I could if it only took a glance, archived, saved some for later.
- Got a text that I needed to check Slack about some website updates that needed my attention. Checked slack and saw I definitely could not do what was needed while driving so I sent a quick message saying I’d tackle it when I was parked.
- Decided I had time to make a detour to the court in Woodland (about 12 min from Davis) to drop off some paperwork. Long story, but working with the court is just way easier in person than over the phone, and I had gotten an early start, so I thought I could fit it in (I ended up being 6 min later for my cleaning but I called the office and told them I was running late so no one was put out).
- While out front of the court house, I opened Slack and saw there were 45+ messages in the thread and I didn’t have time to read them all, so I called the person in charge and got a quick confirmation that the DNS update I thought I needed to do was correct. It was, so I did the DNS update (also hard to don the phone because our registrar is not particularly mobile optimized) and sent a screenshot of the changes on Slack before hopping back in the car.
- Checked a few more emails, replied, archived, saved, etc.
- At the dentist office I got a calendar reminder to send payment to a few people. I tried to do it in Wise but before I could complete the transaction my hygienist was ready, so I headed in for my cleaning.
- I headed home and decided I could squeeze in a haircut (my hairdresser is in Berkeley which is on the way home).
- Outside my hairdresser I grabbed a boba from a nearby boba shop, and finally looked for real at my emails. There were 47 since this morning. Most were archivable but a couple more needed a direct reply, including one all-staff email I had to resend which was pretty long. Again, hard to do from the phone but since it was mostly an email I sent two weeks ago, I was able to copy/paste/update enough to get it done.
- Just as I got in my car I saw an email that I needed to respond to ASAP otherwise it might have spun out of control (HR asking a question about using some technology that I just knew was going to cause confusion if it didn’t get an immediate answer).
- I drove home, send out the payments that were due, plus I got an email about another payment and so I paid that too. The vendor said they accepted PayPal but didn’t list their PayPal address on the invoice so I had to call and confirm it was the email the sent from (it was, but making that assumption in the past has caused me some grief so I’m glad a double checked).
- As soon as that was done I dove into the mountain of emails that built up since this morning that needed more than a cursory reply. I’m mostly through with them now, but I wanted to write this post while it was all still fresh in my head (the remaining emails can wait a minute). Notably they included an HR inquiry (I love being part of a union, but it means a lot of interaction with HR that I’m not used to), follow ups on my weekly check ins, making an offer for a translation deal, planning for a meeting tomorrow, checking on pricing for some crowdfunding rewards, cancelled an order on backordered projector for BBC, and a few more cursory “yeah, looks good” emails.
That was my trip to the dentist and back. I wish I could say it was atypical, but I feel like this is my life right now. Yesterday was Labor day and I was working till 10:15 PM to get the Big Bad Con schedule published. Feels like I’m playing whack-a-mole and the game keeps speeding up (or I keep slowing down).
