Saved by the bell

I was settling down to do a long LJ update because here it is the end of Tuesday and I'm kind of mostly caught up on things my friends have written and I want to write my own BIG update but I look at the clock and it's nearly five so I'm not going to start that now. Instead a small thing here and there will have to do. Forgive me if I turn into Posty McPostALot.

I'm leaving at (near) 5 today for the first time in who-knows-how long. Most of the working late has been due to taking on a project attempting to teach the developers at my place of work something about design - what it is that I do. Note I did not say I was going to teach them to be designers. That's a lot harder. But right now we have a recognized situation where I am a bottleneck and one way to relieve that is to have more people with some of my skills around. Since we're not hiring more of those, we'll try to grow them organically.

I wrote and delivered six lectures in three weeks. Doing these things is mentally and physically exhausting for me. When I teach this kind of a course it's usually three hours a week over a semester (15 weeks or so). It is, as I explained, a very lossy compression.

Still, I think it has gone pretty well. Feedback is generally positive and I managed not to make an utter ass of myself more than twice. People reported being both informed and entertained, which is about as good a compliment as I'm likely to get. As to whether it'll have its intended effects of lightening my overall workload by having more people around here doing design things we shall see.

Now I just have to catch up on the backlog of work-things-that-were-not-on-fire I've semi-ignored for the last 2.5 weeks. I put out a couple of things this afternoon that had caught fire while I wasn't paying attention and now I'm going to LEAVE WORK after a mere eight hours.

I really appreciate the privilege I have in working this kind of job. I see so many people who don't have this kind of privilege, who have to work whatever hours their boss says, or who are working for themselves and "leave work" means "take home less money." I look back on the long road of privilege I've walked to get here and try to hold in my mind the idea that I couldn't do this without the privilege and yet I'm also busting my ass (my shirt is damp with sweat and I'm mentally drained). I think about this kind of stuff often as I'm pushing Thing 1 to try and get something like a realistic summer job this year.

I'm glad it's your birthday

Happy birthday to you!

Birthdays don't mean a lot to me, but they do to my sweetie, sweetmmeblue. I've been leaning on her to get through these recent weeks so I thought I'd break with tradition and note her natal event here.

Please join me in wishing her many joyous returns of the occasion.





P.S. goats!