I love my job. I dig being on vacation. in Everyday life

I’ve been meaning to write for a while, but you know how that goes. Now that I’m on vacation, I’m searching for things to do and writing here is a good time-killer.

The past couple months have been busier than I’ve experienced in my two years at this job. The work at times has been at a journalism-like pace. It’s been a nice change, because I do enjoy the chill atmosphere of this place — but a deadline-like rush is a helluva drug.

We finally flipped the switch in the last couple days on a system switch that was supposed to go live at the end of January — really, at the end of 2020, but who’s counting. It got pushed back to the first week of February, then mid-February, then an absolute drop-dead date of early March, then for another week, then for another absolutely drop-dead date a day later. It was out of our team’s hands, yet it was still frustrating. When things like this happen there always are going to be things you need to fix, and quickly, no matter how much you try and say you’ll have everything perfect beforehand.

I worked over a couple weekends. I probably put in 20 to 30 hours off the clock — I’m salaried — so we could get the thing out the door. I didn’t mind one damn bit. There were some of us who surely went the extra mile, but in general everyone in our group worked their asses off. We knew the stakes, and I think we met the challenge.

What was complicating all of this was a vacation I’d planned for this week. My mom was visiting her sister and her sister’s wife in Arizona, and at this point it’s better if I go along with her on plane trips. Not totally altruistic, of course — I wanted to enjoy some warmer weather at the tail end of winter. I said I’d go.

As the go-live timeline kept getting pushed back, I worked hard to make sure I was doing enough. If this thing did go live after I left town, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t leaving anyone in the lurch.

We were supposed to go live last Thursday — we actually did go live last Thursday, but we immediately had to roll back. The absolutely final we-must-get-this-live date was moved back to this week, and I felt kinda bad. I wanted to be there to help.

Stuff went live earlier in the week and I wasn’t there to lend a hand, but I think I chipped in a fair bit. I offered to jump on when I saw that we actually went live, but my pregnant boss — she goes on maternity leave next week! — nicely told me to go away and enjoy my trip. After my last boss, who was a Napoleonic shithead who I’d still today punch in the face after he died in a fire after he was run over by a train, I feel good about for whom I work. She always takes bullets for us, and I get the feeling her boss does the same, and me saying these folks saved my career, and my sanity, is not an overstatement.

(Despite her insistence on me enjoying my trip, I’ve signed on today for a couple hours… I wanted a break from the folks, even though they’ve done nothing wrong… I’m antsy and like changes of pace.)

The vacation itself is good. We flew into Phoenix and spent a couple days at the Grand Canyon. We didn’t do it hardcore, but we did it. I’d never been and my mom had never been. Like everywhere, photos don’t do it justice. I didn’t take many, either. What’s the point? I saw it, and I know what I saw. The end. Not trying to be flippant about it, just saying. Now we’re in Tucson. It’s nice and warm and I’m gonna wear shorts this afternoon for the first time in forever and folks are going to have to look at my pasty-white legs and be ok with it.