The Quick Brown Fox

I've had a very nice vacation, saw a lot of family. Still thinking about what I want 2019 to look like, where I want to put my energy. I do know that I want it to be a much more analog year. I feel like things have gotten a little out of whack that way for me.

Missed quite a few weeks here -- been putting my energy into a different project for a while as frustration becomes a challenge here. These things tend to go in cycles.

This was, of course, last  week now. Things are finally feeling back under control in terms of my personal task list, but I feel distinctly disengaged. 100% of my creative energy is going to other projects. The culture of work we have is so weird . I don't know if it's an American thing, a software thing, or what, but I am increasingly disturbed by what seem to be expectations of a non-reciprocal emotional connection with one's workplace.

It's Thursday, and this week has been a blur of catching up on documentation work after two weeks of mostly not being here. I have the sense that things are not going particularly well, but no data, and I feel a bit cut off from my team. In good news, I got one of my Scrum teams to try something fun (a communication exercise, which is what I'm calling things instead of "games," because God forbid we do anything that isn't deadly serious here). It seems to have been well-received, or at least didn't annoy anyone. There is only so much of me to go around.

Last week was spent volunteering at the Agile Games/Mob Programming conference here in Boston, and this week has been spent catching up on documentation tasks + taking a couple of vacation days to visit family, so this is a placeholder entry. I will see you next week, and hopefully start having more Things to Say now that I've had the conference experience.

Total fail this week as far as keeping track of what I've been doing. It was a sprint boundary week, and I feel like I spent most of it running. The good news is that I finally feeling physically better, which has been a boost in terms of the energy I can bring to my work. I'm trying to sell people on some practices I believe in, like team charters; we'll see how it goes.

How to Take an Idea from Good to Great Why I Quit Google - This post may actually change my life.  You Can Count on Me - A Team Exercise Change Fatigue - An oldie but goodie on the subject of why change often fails