Entries Tagged 'Random thoughts' ↓

I wrote myself a list in 2000 of what I like in a job, most to least. I think it related to the job I had at the time but suspect it was one of those reflective times when I was thinking about what motivated me with a view to finding the perfect job, rather than seeking to fix something in the one I currently had. Wonder how it maps to what I do today?

1. focussed work on one project
2. control, central knowledge of project – specialist position
3. some hands on e.g. enough to know basic workings of a system
4. technical involvement even if at a high level
5. writing specs/guidelines
6. control of work and workload
7. implementation work – client side i.e. working with clients as they understand and use a new system and feedback/suggest modifications to development company
8. self-delegation and responsibility
9. processing feedback and requirements
10. flexible work hours and telework environment

A process or system gives a sense of expectation.

20 March 2000

At the time I was working at Innovus which had recently bought out Extrados/Spunk Media so having our small web services company swallowed up by a larger corporate probably brought on my evaluation.

Now, as the Community Manager at Xero I’d say this list if applied practically is flipped on its head – I probably still value all these things but in reality:

• I don’t have focussed work on one project, in fact my work is not a project
• My days are interrupt driven by whatever comes my way from a selection of social media sites so in any day I could do one thing or a hundred things. I have no control over my workload in that sense but I also have a manager in a different location and not much contact so am totally autonomous in that regard
• I do work remotely quite a lot but always feel terribly guilty about it
• My entire days are filled with processing feedback and requirements with a certain amount of helping our customers understand how to use Xero and interpreting/translating/feeding modifications back to our own product and development teams
• I don’t have control at a project level or control over my day but I do feel in control (mostly) of Xero’s social media – I am totally responsible for Twitter and other means of responding to customers using social media sites
• I’m getting less and less hands on but I still know the product. I don’t write much any more, let alone specs and guidelines
• My work is all public now like it’s never been before, public and attributable, not just content on a website
• I’m developing a thicker skin – everyone’s watching, colleagues are questioning, the CEO sees what I do

Interesting. Would be good to see this again in another 10 years.

Fancied myself as a bit of a poet in 1988 – here’s one of the not-so-depressing ones I found when cleaning out the storage locker.

Once upon a shadow
upon the pavement.
Dark but no -
Transparent.
Sometimes life and sometimes
Solid.

But never stands as a barrier -
to any
But the tiny creature
afraid of the night.

1988

This time last year we were almost at the end of our fabulous 4 months in New York. It was really hot and muggy and we went on board the Intrepid to watch the 4th of July fireworks with hundreds of others. A really great experience.

Packing, shuffling, recycling, shredding, documenting and shipping is almost complete for the move to San Francisco.

I don’t think I have any maternal, sentimental or genealogical genes, although perhaps by my age you’d expect I might, so it means this move is going to be a great cleansing for me. Everyone knows you collect up a lot of stuff when you settle somewhere for a few years and as well as the stuff in this house, I’m still trundling about with stuff from my whole life, and despite your gasps of horror, I’m up for a new start, so out it goes! It’s liberating. If I haven’t cared for it all these years then here’s hoping those genes don’t fill me with regret in a few years – I’m moving to the other side of the world after all. I’ve rifled through everything, crying and laughing over memories in the decision to keep stuff or just let it go.

However, some stuff I wouldn’t mind immortalising on my blog (if today’s electronic means of publishing could be considered immortalising) so will reproduce various items in the days to come in a kind of keepsake series, and perhaps raw look into my psyche! #keepsake

Today’s exercise was going through some very old paperwork, stuff that The Mister hadn’t seen – those old reports and testimonials from high school – so he got a good look into the freckly, brace-faced, surly, girlie-swat teenager that I once was. Amidst my tears of laughter as he read things out and him roaring with amusement at some stuff he discovered, I took down a couple of choice quotes:

“Oh god, you failed Grade 6 [music] theory pretty badly – you were shit at ornaments!!” and some time later “Ha ha ha and when you sat it again you would’ve got distinction except you were STILL shit at ornaments!!!”

On reading the examiners notes from my Grade 5 piano exam – he laughed hysterically “Oh my god, check this out “Try to enter into the spirit of the pieces and convey it. You seem reluctant to relax and let yourself go.” God your personality hasn’t changed much in almost 30 years!!” Errr, thanks loving husband!

“Ha ha ha ha!!! “Catherine is a fit healthy sportswoman. She belongs to a tennis club and enjoys jazzercise.” – ha ha ha!” Can’t believe how much he laughed over that one.

“Oh, you studied accounting principles for a term – really?”

A week ago, a moment that everyone will remember where they were in my lifetime happened when a devastating earthquake struck Christchurch.

Tuesday 22 February 2010 at 12.51 6.3 5km deep

I was at my desk. Switching between an email I was writing and our internal system to look something up to put in the email and I saw a few tweets scrolling by about an earthquake, then photos began to appear and that’s when I realised it was a big one.

I was not expecting the effect it would have on me. I was distracted by the news coverage and got to the point where I had to stop watching and reading the news because I became quite upset by it. I don’t have any particular ties to Christchurch, I don’t know the city particularly well. The one personal connection at the time was that my sister-in-law was visiting her parents with her daughters – we heard pretty quickly that they were OK. Seeing the crushed people emerging from the rubble, the broken buildings, the people crying on television brought tears to my eyes.

I wouldn’t call myself a shallow person but I have to shamefully admit that I don’t watch the news much and I’m fairly immune to the destruction and death from war, terrorists and natural disasters. 9/11 is the only other time I’ve looked at the news and cried. But the earthquake in Christchurch put people on the television crying and talking and devastated in New Zealand accents, they were from my own country, and I just felt sick with the horror of what they were going through. I felt compelled to rush and donate rather a lot more than the $10 or $20 I give to the Cancer Society each year after having cancer take my best friend 7 years ago. I had to ban myself from watching the news.

Also, I’ve never felt particularly patriotic or really felt anything when hearing our national anthem. Of course I’m proud to be a kiwi but the anthem’s always been a rather droning courtesy. But when the low rumble of the anthem grew out of the stone silent crowd in Wellington’s Civic Square after 2 minutes silence as we stood to signal support for Christchurch I could actually feel the hearts of the whole country joining together. And as more and more of the broken city is uncovered, bodies are found and the people of Christchurch and New Zealand link arms and get back on their feet, that anthem makes tears come to my eyes every time and will mean New Zealand to me from now on.

You may recall that a lot of my coffee reviews from New York drew the conclusion that if a guy in a trilby hat is making the coffee, then it’s going to be good – like the guy we spotted when we went into RBC on Worth St.

However, thanks to this article in the New York Times it seems that baristas are required to wear a hair restraint. So if we judge a barista purely by the fact that they wear a hat we may be disappointed although thankfully all our hat-wearing baristas were pretty good!

This week the old Manners Mall has really been transformed into a road and now on our way to work we’re using the new footpaths and crossing at the new pedestrian crossways and lights.

Today on our walk home a guide dog had arrived at one of the new pedestrian ramps off the footpath to take his owner across the road using one of the new pedestrian routes. It got me wondering how the dog knew what to do. This must happen all the time. Has the dog been trained to know that the ramp is the only place you can cross? And then what does he do if he gets to an intersection that doesn’t have one? As he’s approaching the road he wants to cross does he scan up and down to find a safe crossing place? Or does someone get in touch with all people with guide dogs to let them know of new pedestrian crossing areas? Take the person or dog out to run them through the new approach and crossing? Guide dogs are amazing.

What is it about a large group of people that makes it harder to keep a kitchen as clean as you would at home? In the last few days at work a growing number of those ‘corporate’ kitchen-type signs have appeared in our work kitchen … ’scrub your coffee cups’, ‘dishwasher is on’, ‘empty when done’, ‘keep bench tidy’ … I know I’m at the clean-freak end of the scale but really, are there that many people in an office-full of people who don’t or haven’t lived with someone else and know what it’s like to share filth, or don’t have or don’t have the observation skills to figure out if dishes in a dishwasher are clean or dirty? I guess in an individual family people might let dishes pile up on the bench and clear them away all at once at night, and this doesn’t work when 50 people are doing the same thing or leaving their cups and bowls soaking in the sink preventing others from easily using the tap. I only go in there for the cold water tap.

It’s just a social behaviour pattern than fascinates me – that individually people may have common sense but in a crowd perhaps not so much.

Why am I so allergic to clothes shopping? I’d quite like to enjoy it but I just don’t. I really have to prepare myself for a wander around the shops and as soon as I’m pounced on by 1 (or even 3 as occurred recently) assistants asking if I’m just happy browsing or looking for something specific (what do you think lady? if there was something specific I’ll come and ask you) or making some comment on my current outfit or showing me something new, it’s over. Whatever grain of good mood I had fortified myself with leaves my body with such propulsion that I’m left drained. You probably think this sounds overly dramatic but it’s what happens! Sometimes I have to ball up my fists and hold back tears!! I am stumped by this repulsion of attention given that I love it when I go into a restaurant or cafe and I’m greeted like an old friend and the staff there know what I like. It’s just clothes stores that I want to be completely anonymous in. Which is probably why I have the biggest problem in Wellington. And that’s not all, if I manage to stay in the store long enough to see a couple of things I quite like I immediately spiral into a confusing loop about what I’ve already got that’s similar, or that would go with it, or just know instantly it won’t look good on, or note that the store is fairly quiet so get put off trying anything on because the ladies with nothing to do will gather around offering opinions and this and that to go with it so I leave without trying, and without anything. Then realise half way home that I do in fact have a pair of tights, jacket, shoes or whatever to go with it, but I can’t go back and try it or get it for fear the assistant will recognise me and so that whole cycle starts again. And if I do buy something, I don’t want that to get any attention either so end up not wearing it for months to avoid the “is that new?” question!

God, do I need counselling? This is way at the other end of the shopaholic problem spectrum!

I had a bizzare and quite realistic dream last night that in order to overcome my fear and sickening nerves when it comes to speaking to a group that I decided to read a book out loud at work in the training room for as long as it took to read the book. I wasn’t sure what book to read, a novel, one that I knew wouldn’t have any rude bits in it, and that every day I stood in the corner and read aloud and people started to bring their lunch in to take a break and I ended up with quite a following including some hardcore stayers who listened to the whole story. I did it every day and it took months. Was obviously quite relieved when I woke up and looked at my book beside the bed and realised it had been a dream!