Today was a snapping point for me at work. External teams were not doing their workload and it was effecting my team for way too long. I have restructured everyone’s job duties and their time schedules. It was all over the place and it didn’t make sense on how the company operates today. I had a very long discussion with the director on specific issues and how I was going to resolve them. He gave me some pointers and also some angles that I didn’t see that can affect the metrics negatively. I went back to my desk with his input and put together a better plan. I executed it at the end of the day. Tomorrow we will see if it all works. At the end, everyone will be responsible for their workload. If I see any deviation, I will be contacting them for a report. They had too much leeway for almost two years. It ends today.  

The picture below was from 4 am this morning.

🌦️ 53°F – 41°F 🙂 | Seattle 

I started work at 6 am. Due to the winter storm the Office was closed by 8 am. So, it was just me the CEO, Director, and a hand full of techs. The office was pretty empty. I told the other techs to go home during their lunch. I stayed with management. I drove to CostCo for cake that we ordered for everyone that was born this month. I put it in the fridge for tomorrow if anyone comes to work. On the way home there were 3 accidents spread down the freeway. Luckily, I found out how bad it was from my phone and to a detour that saved me 20 minutes. After picking up the kids we ordered out for Japanese food. We didn’t feel like cooking on this cold wet snowy day.

🌨️ 37°F – 30°F 😐 | Seattle 

I was awakened in the middle of the night by my wife indicating that the ceiling in the bathroom was leaking. I spent 35 minutes locating the leak. It was coming from a sewage vent pipe from the roof. The rainwater ran down the pipe and into the bathroom. Once the wind died down the water stopped coming in. There was some water that came in, but not very much. I dried the area and left the ceiling in the bathroom open to dry what is left. I will place the board back up tomorrow. Work was hectic. A lot of things to do. Once I was off work, I relaxed and watched tv before I made dinner. I did more laundry to end the day. I am very tired and can’t wait to go to sleep.

 🌧️ 44°F – 36°F 🥱 | Seattle 

I had a good day at work. The team is doing well, and I got all my tasks completed today. The house is ready for the upcoming storm. I worry about the high winds and heavy rain. The roof doesn’t do well in high winds. I am hopeful that it will keep the water out.

 🌧️ 40°F – 39°F 🙂 | Seattle 

I did another full day at work. I can see the progress I have made with the Wiki and the Presentation Slides. I am introducing more information in my weekly meeting to be sure everyone is on the same page and up to date with the goings on at the company. I am testing out a new text expander software called aText. It looks better than what the company is using but I am not able to import/export between them. I will need to spend time manually copying everything over. It should take about 2 hours to do.

In the evening I started a new after dinner routine. Instead of watching tv or playing video games, we do something else. Each night is something different.  Tonight, we played a board game and on Sunday will be Baking something. It was nice to have the TV off and no music. Just use talking and having fun. This year I am making big changes to what we do or what we purchase. I want more experiences and less watching TV. We are going to start to get out of the house more like we did before Covid. I still need to figure out something to go to this Sunday. Tomorrow I am going shopping and getting the house ready for the below freezing temperatures coming this coming week. I am expecting power outages.

🌧️ 47°F – 40°F 🙂 | Seattle 

Work went well. I am really pushing to get more stuff done at work. The Wiki is coming together nicely, and all the little pieces are grouped up and ready to be put together. For dinner I made Lentil Soup from scratch. I forgot how easy it is to make. It came out great and the kids loved it.

 🌧️ 47°F – 43°F 🥱 | Seattle 

Last day of work for this year. I get a 4-day weekend and am going to use it to clean the house, plan the family goals, and simplify our daily tasks. We will travel more this year. We used to do weekend travel around Washington and Oregon but stopped during the Pandemic. I am going to start doing it again. Keeping the budget tight will allow us to travel multiple times a month. It will be exciting to get out more and see the town off the beaten track. With the minivan it will be much easier to do this, and the kids are excited.

I am putting a plan into place to lower the travel costs so we can do more travel at a lower cost.

 🌧️ 55°F – 45°F 🙂 | Seattle

Today is the last day to come into the office this year. It was a rough start. That car wouldn’t start, and I had to jump the car this morning. I only spent 6 hours at work and headed home. Since I was the only manager here, I had quite a few questions from all the agents. I worked on formatting the SOP Wiki page, so it is visually pleasing. The Wiki is an outdated version of Doku Wiki and is quite simple.

I left early to get home so I can do a brain dump for all the work items that need to be done next month. There was too many distractions at work.

Spending a lot of time planning my weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. I’m really trying to do everything I can do this coming year. I have health, travel, and education goals this year. I feel that I have more time now and it is time to use it for personal development and do fun things I always wanted to do every day.

 ☁️ 51°F – 40°F 🥱 | Seattle