You are. You will. You can. You do.

If you want to know what your priorities are, look at what you're doing.

I defined six areas for personal development during 2012*, and then, when Megaupload died, I noticed that so far in January I've spent precious little time on any of them.

So I set up a new Google Calendar and color-coded it for my six areas, and roughed in a time budget. If you squint at it, a week looks like this:



The big pale areas are "Non-goal basics," notably work and sleep. What's left is all the time I have for accomplishing my personal goals. That alone was an eye opener. Look at all that time I have to spend doing a job that gives me an income but nothing else.

What became immediately apparent was the power of doubling up. That narrow yellow band before and after work each day represents ten half-hours of what could have been the "non-goal basic" of commuting. But because I commute by bike, it counts as "health and fitness."

Maybe I can use the job as platform for more mental development! What a concept.

The calendar also made it very plain that I already spend plenty of time exercising. There really isn't room for more--not if I want to give similar weight to other goals. So that let me off the guilt hook about washboard abs and stuff.

Now if I could find an app that lets me track what I'm actually doing over the course of a few weeks, I'd have some data.

*If I write them down often enough, I'm sure I can start remembering them: Health and fitness improvements, creativity and craft, mental development, emotional/spiritual growth, new sources of income, and social improvement. There are specific goals under each of these headings.

A meeting with the Big Head Honcho this morning confirmed my belief that yesterday's dismissal of my boss was politically motivated. But I was wrong about their giving the position to some Friend of People In High Places. The new guy is a surprisingly good choice.

In fact, he applied for the job five years ago. I was on the evaluation committee, and my current boss edged him out by a very slim margin. He would have been an excellent choice then, and he's had five more years of very relevant experience since. He knows the region, he knows public sector, he knows technology management in general, and he knows our technology in particular. I'm no longer distressed about who my new boss will be.

The actual presentation of the news, however, was some of the most inarticulate, waffling, verbal-tic-filled political probably-lying I've heard around here in ages. Very uncomfortable meeting. I escaped immediately afterwards to eggs and bacon and a good conversation with my pal Todd, which helped put everything into perspective.

That perspective is "Two more years and it will all be irrelevant."

Oddly, as we were sitting there at breakfast, another old friend of mine in another department strode up and said, "I've been laid off. I had two years til retirement and they cut my position."

So IDK. IDEFK.

They fired my boss today.

He called us into an all hands meeting and dropped the bomb into a shocked silence. Only a couple of people in the room had the faintest idea that this was coming, and I certainly wasn't one of them. There were tears. It's possible that a couple of them even sprang to my own eyes.

Now, I've had my quibbles with him, notably around the steady, unspoken pressure to work extra hours. But he's been an extraordinary manager in many ways. Under his leadership, I've probably stretched to more achievement and knowledge than I have in any other job. He's been instrumental in shifting the fossilized bureaucracy I work for towards 21st century technology and management standards. It's been exciting to be part of that.

His dismissal seems to be of the honorable bailout variety, rather than the "take your hands off the keyboard and come with us, sir" kind. Nevertheless, it was not voluntary and not happy. He announced at 3:00 and was gone by 5:00. It's pretty clear that this is political pissing-in-the-corners by some of the new brass. Scapegoating. Something like that.

He wasn't free to say who's been appointed in his place (and NOBODY on my longstanding grapevine around the place had a clue), but "appointed" is the key word. They're going to use the position as a political favor to someone, and it's obvious from the short timeline that they haven't gone hunting for expertise in the field of high-tech project management.

We'll Meet The New Boss at a 9:00 tomorrow. Gonna be an interesting day.

Today I'm knitting. Knitting is part of my Big Plan For Self-Improvement In 2012.

It's taken years, but I've finally accepted that "self-improvement" doesn't mean changing what I am. It means being better at what I am.

Well, what I am, among other things, is a craftswoman, and I like knitting. So I've decided that 2012 is the year I become as good a knitter in reality as I am in my imagination

( This is only nominally a post about knitting. )

"So if these ass-fucks in DC decide to ruin the internet, here’s how to access your favorite sites in the event of a DNS takedown."

Spread the word. (And Dreamwidth is on there! \o/)

My doctor--who is young and hip and up on the latest in nutrition--says that a woman my age (presumably with my particular body makeup and health history) should be aiming to get 75% of her calories from fat.*

( Say what? )

*I hope I don't need to emphasize that this is specific advice from my doctor to me, and not a recommendation to others. But just in case: this is specific advice from my doctor to me, and not a recommendation to others.

There's a psycho-physical phenomenon called ego depletion which, brain scientists speculate, is caused by over-use of the will. It happens when you have to concentrate on something, or control your reactions, or generally over-apply your conscious mind.

I'm paraphrasing a bit. Anyway, people seem to have a tank of this mental willpower stuff, and ego depletion is when the tank runs dry. When that happens, you don't have much will to spare for the next thing that requires it--like making a decision, resisting temptation, or controlling your temper.

( Depleting and refilling )

Ravelry is a fantastic internet resource, and I spend inordinate amounts of time there, but it lacks the space to ruminate on knitting in general. So excuse me, non-crafters, while I do that here.

( Seams, madam? )

No, it's not irony. But it's...I dunno. Kind of cool and implode-y. (I spent some time in a handbook of rhetorical devices trying to figure out what this is and I got bored.)

Anyway, a couple of days ago I posted some thoughts about Jeff Jarvis's Public Parts. Inspired to greater public-ness by the book, I also tweeted about it.

There aren't any direct links between my @darkemeralds Twitter account and my DW journal except the semi-unique name.

A few minutes ago, Jeff Jarvis posted a comment on my DW entry.

My immediate reaction? "Eeek! I've been seen."

LOL.

In the last few days I've been indulging what seems to have been a pent-up appetite for mainstream media.

( Books, shows, movies... )