Sunday, February 15, 2015

Ups and Downs

Chinese New Year is this upcoming Thursday. A former colleague of my husband threw a party to celebrate, so we spent this afternoon and evening enjoying the chance to see some wonderful people we don't see very often these days and eating delicious food. We even got to help make some dumplings, although our technique was nowhere near the standard set by our hostess and the other Chinese people at the party. They were gracious about our ineptitude.

It was delightful... until Petunia announced that her "throat hurt" (her word for feeling like she's going to throw up). It was almost time to go, anyway, so I hurriedly got the kids ready to leave while Mr. Snarky said good-bye to everyone. I even dug a plastic bag out of my purse for the car ride home. Just in case. It wasn't needed, and Petunia is sleeping now. We'll see what the night holds.

The party was at a beautiful house in one of the nicest nearby parts of San Diego, up on a hill with a 180-degree view out to the ocean. Mr. Snarky and I used to live in the flatlands near the bottom of this particular hill (not that I'm complaining- that was when we lived walking distance to the beach!) and we would sometimes go for long walks over the hill and around the neighborhoods at the top of the hill, enjoying the view and gawking at the beautiful houses. This was obviously before we had kids, although Mr. Snarky would sometimes push Pumpkin in our jogging stroller around the same route, since she would only nap when in motion or on a person, and I was almost always desperate for a nap myself.

I remember walking past this house when it was getting renovated, so it was sort of surreal to be inside it. We spent some time out on the deck, enjoying a view of the marine layer that had rolled in. This was still beautiful. It was hard not to feel a little bit jealous.

Early in the festivities, we all walked to a nearby viewpoint. On the way back, Petunia told me that she liked the fancy house, but that she liked our house better, because that was where we played games and slept. It was sweet to hear. I actually like our house and our neighborhood a lot, and while I would love to have a deck with that view, I am reasonably content with our nice backyard with the big avocado tree.

We are, however, looking to add on to our house. We want a bigger office, and to move Petunia from her little room to the bigger room that is currently our guest room and office. I almost started that sentence as "we need..." but that is bunk. We don't need more space. We just want it. It will make our lives better, but our lives are pretty damn good as they are.

Anyway, we have been working with a design firm and have a design we like and think we can afford. We need to do our taxes to be sure. 2014 was an unusual year for us and we have pretty much no idea what to expect when we get our tax return completed.

Meanwhile, I really want the new office, so I can sit and work at a desk with a keyboard tray again. I legitimately need this bit to happen, as my current set up is not doing good things for my old repetitive strain injury. If we cannot afford the remodel, I will have to find a way to make this happen in our current office.

The uncertainty is frustrating, even more so because there is a voice in my head telling me that this would not be a problem if I hadn't quit my full time job. This may or may not be true, but it is irrelevant. Thankfully, I was reminded of this at the party today, too. One of the other guests was telling me about why his wife had quit her job at my husband's company- a company that my husband likes and thinks is full of good people. I recognized something about the story. Sometimes, a good company full of good people can still be all wrong for you. My former work situation was wrong for me, and the wrongness was overflowing to impact the rest of my family. Things are better now, whether or not we end up being able to afford the new office.

Still. I'm feeling a little extra motivation to get things moving. This morning, I finally wrote up and posted instructions for how to buy an ebook some place other than Amazon and load it onto your Kindle. This has been on my list of things to do at Tungsten Hippo since the beginning of the year. I sent an email about a potential contract. It would be small, but it would be a new client and that would be a good thing. I sent an email about a potential review of Navigating the Path to Industry. I also set up a trial Google AdWords campaign for the book. I have some good, specific keywords so I am cautiously optimistic that this will at least be an informative experiment.

As I was telling someone at the party, sometimes I am full of optimism about my new work goals. Other times, I wonder what the hell I've done. The trick, I think, is to write my to do lists during the optimistic times, and just keep trucking through them regardless of the ups and downs of my mood. So that's my goal for the next little bit: just keep on truckin'.

A decorated Pakistani truck. I found the photo via wikipedia.

1 comment:

  1. Funny - I'm writing a post on this very subject right now!

    ReplyDelete

Sorry for the CAPTCHA, folks. The spammers were stealing too much of my time.