Management in Trichotomy

I feel like I really have to force myself to write these days. I used to have a text file open somewhere where I would write down entry ideas… stuff I wanted to get off my chest. Now, nothing.

The entry feels like a dump of my activities. Which is useful, I suppose.

No management

We had our last monthly concert with the amateur musician group last weekend for a while. They are going to ‘pause’ their monthly concerts. I guess it’s a logical progression, because they had already changed their ‘monthly’ concerts to once every two months this season, and then each concert only put on 7 or 8 performances rather than the 10. At first I thought it was because not enough people are volunteering, but this was not the case - I volunteered to play at this last concert but I didn’t get picked. Actually I was not the only one either.

I think the organizer is burning out. From talking to the board members (the Violist, the Ex-Chamber Music Group organizer), it seems like they, and the organizer, are viewing the running of the group as a chore now. Plus, the organizer started a new job, with more responsibility, it’s natural to expect they won’t be able to spend time on the group.

However, I don’t know why they wouldn’t hand it off to other people who have more time and inclination. The art song group’s founder stepped down as the main organizer; Panamanian Mezzo-Soprano, who was his first right-hand woman, also stepped down when she went back to school, and the people who took over organizing duties are doing a great job and organizing stuff. Maybe there just aren’t many people to hand the amateur group to?

In any case, it’s a bit unfortunate because there were many good musicians who had just started getting involved with the group performing last weekend, including the Shepherdess, whom I had introduced to the group 5 years (has it been that long???) ago. Shepherdess, being a singer, still has the art song group performance outlet, but others will not. So I hope they get their monthly concerts together.

• S

Management

My company finished a round of performance review last week and I find that I am not going to get fired any time soon, so that is a relief. As I’ve been there for almost 2 years now (one week to the day!) I find myself taking on a more and more senior role. And I have always been uncomfortable with that.

But now, since I had done it several times already with various projects in my previous jobs, I feel like I know what to expect when I slip into the role of the “dude who knows stuff”. So it is less of shock to my system when I realize the new guys are just as clueless as I was when I started.

At least our project is still making progress; I hope it will get done right - I’ve given up on getting it done on time.

• D

Grass is Greener

La Professeure had some of her work friends over for an afternoon last weekend. They spent some time talking about work, and at the end La Professeure apologized to me because they talked about work.

So I had to assure her that, hearing stories from ‘the other side’ is actually helpful to me. From time to time I wonder whether I made the right choice leaving academia, especially on days when I had to wake up with only 4 or 5 hours of sleep to catch a train to get into the office for work (which happened last week), or when I get paged by work on weekends and at night half an hour after I fell asleep (which happened two weeks ago), but after spending time with her work friends, I often felt better.

Being married to an academic has its benefits.

• N