Back the Truck Up

I don't write for you, I write for me and if I don't publish it means I can't articulate past bullet points.

Here's a thing I know:

If your bandwidth is sapped in one place, it is sapped everywhere. 

Solution:

Back the truck up, reevaluate, and choose another route/approach. That generally requires alignment with everything else on your plate unless you abandon the task entirely. Sometimes that's an option, but only a temporary fix. 

I'm thinking out loud. The following list is going to look and feel random, but I don't think it will be. Here is the too much too much:

1. The state of the universe
   1.  I don't know anyone who's got their arms wrapped around this shit and if think you do, you're probably going to get blindsided by something that may not seem important when in fact it is.
2. Noise. You don't have time for it.
   1. Nadal has pulled out of the game
   2. Brittny is looking at 10 years in penal colony
   3. Boris threw in the towel
   4. The list is endless...
3. My job. You don't care, but I do.
4. My living arrangements. You don't care, but if I don't triage this soon, item 3 is at risk.
5. The rise of Fascism in the United States. It's already here. Now what?
6. Roe v Wade. I have a card/sign on my dash (because I didn't know what else to do with it) that reads as follows:
   
   WHAT
   - AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH-
   THE FUCK
   
   The sentiment is marketed to the Roe v Wade debacle but it's a broad stroke question. Apply liberally to just about everything.

That's it. That's the list as it came to me at 2am this morning. I had to cut it off there because I'd reached capacity and anything beyond capacity, no matter how relevant, is noise.

I don't have answers this morning. Just thoughts. My first task this morning, before I'd had a mouthful of the coffee chilling to the right of my mousepad, was to reschedule a meeting into six packed schedules. I spent five entire minutes fretting and then just did it. The team will have to prioritize and work it out. I need to drink the coffee, eat something, and walk three fast miles to clear my head.

So that's it, right? Clear my head. Self-care has nothing to do with a massage and two pounds of chocolate. Self-care is about the overall state of the brain. If the brain's not functioning, NOTHING is functioning.

For you project managers out there:

Stop trying to shovel an agile project into a waterfall plan. It won't work. Maybe you have to work a little differently to bring your world into alignment but here it comes. A picture's worth 1,000 words, right?

What you can't see in this photo is the top shelf. There's a small whiteboard that reads: BREATHE and a small Buddha just to the right. It's a collaboration of what might look, sound, and taste like platitudes but are in fact, life requirements. 

That's it. If I don't stop now, I won't publish and that would be bad in the long term.

Peace Out 
   - Starlog Something or Other - July 8, 2022, 7:16am ET