What a week this was.
As I type this I am sitting at my dining room table, a cat snoozing on my lap. I took a sick day today, after working 43 hours in four days. I originally planned to work today, but yesterday morning I logged in for work at 6:00 am in order to put together a presentation for a 9:30 meeting, only to have the meeting cancelled at 9:25. I worked the rest of my 10-hour day, then walked downtown to a happy hour to commemorate the closing of the Grand Rapids office. I am now, permanently, fully remote.
When I returned home I took a shower and went to bed.
When I woke up I logged in at work, let people know I was out sick, logged out, and went to a cafe for a couple of hours.
For the first four months of this year, I worked between 48 and 56 hours each week. My average work day was ten hours, and frequently as long as twelve.
Well, I’m not doing that any more. I let the Powers That Be know I was dialing back to no more than 45 hours a week, and on any given day no more than nine hours. Life is too short, and my pay has not kept up with my productivity in a very long time.
(For anyone in the consulting biz, or anyone in the Professional Managerial Class who feels the need to tell me that this is just the nature of the job, my response will always be “What? I can’t hear you over all the boots you’re licking!”)
Reading
I had very little time to read during the week, though I did make a little progress through Foucault’s Pendulum. At this rate I will probably be done by Labor Day.
Writing
During my cafe time today I transcribed a few poems from my journal to a notepad. I am now caught up through the first week of May, 2025. That is writing, of a sort.
Weekly Writing Prompt
Subject: Death, Undead
Setting: Outpost
Genre: Steampunk
Listening
“Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book,” by Dead Can Dance, from their 1990 album Aion. I listened to this album obsessively in the early years of my career. This song, in particular, has lived rent-free in my head for decades. Its lyrics come from the poem “Da bienes Fortuna” by the Spanish Baroque poet Luis de Góngora.
And as a lagniappe to this post, here is the original poem, sung in Spanish.
Interesting Links
- “Iran War: Israel Strikes Lebanon, Trump’s Negotiations Rug Pull, the View from the UAE” (Naked Capitalism, 2026.05.26)
What distinguishes a journal from a notepad??
Hi Shannon! Yes, that was kind of vague. In this case, a “notepad” is a legal pad. In my mind the distinction is that a notepad or a notebook is something less permanent than a journal. Something not meant to be an ongoing record.
To the extent that I have a process, the notepad is the intermediary step where I puzzle out my terrible handwriting, and see if what I copied out of the journal is worth saving. If so, then I will type it into a Google doc and begin the editing process.
Gotcha! Keep up the brave work, friend.