Have a Nice Weekend!

I certainly will! Yes I will be working Saturday morning, but compared to the barrage of activity my week has entailed, it's going to be so quiet and peaceful. Quite a things were wrapped up nicely this week, so less remains to be done than I might have imagined at the low points. I always over exaggerate.

After Everest

What do you do after going to Mt. Everest? I mean besides back to work, home, and the 24 hour running world championships. Learn to fly a helicopter? Skydiving lessons? Maybe buy a sports car? Deep sea wreck diving or cave diving? 

I feel after the decade long build up to Everest, and seeing the people who have summited many times I realize, there really are no limits. 

It is okay to be wrong.

We sure like to play the blame game. It's not our fault, it is that other person, that other group. The reality is usually more of a two way street. Often mistakes have been made on both sides. 

It is okay to be wrong. We all make mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes. And I feel owning up to my own mistakes is the right thing to do. How can I blame someone for something if I had the ability to avoid to problem in the first place and I didn't? It's okay to screw up and waste time, everyone does. If you were perfect, you wouldn't be where you are. We have forgiveness and we often can right the wrongs with a little more time and effort. 

A Low Stress Job

I would not say I have a low stress job. Not at all. Today I left my apartment at 4:45 AM and had a very full day before leaving the factory at 4:45 PM and getting home around 6 PM. Then I spent 15 minutes writing an email about the big issue of the afternoon and claiming responsibility for the problem and sending it to all the mangers. 

I leave on days like today, and today was probably the worst of the project for me so far, and I fear I will be fired, I feel like I should quit and go work someplace better, or perhaps I should just quit caring about my work as much. Work will take everything you give it. Companies do not have any emotion and are designed for profit. 

Strait up, it's overwhelming. I identified something like five new issues today for parts I am responsible for, and got bitten big time by an issues we as a group, and maybe me in particular, said was acceptable, and turned out to be nowhere near acceptable. I suppose it's like the stock market, you try to learn something from the losses, then shake them off and keep going. I just don't like failure. I really don't like it. 

I Live in Iowa: Week 188

Oof da. What a long week? My totals for the work week are going to be over 60 hours, and honestly I might hit that again this week. Hopefully the worst of it will be over by this week, but certainly 50+ for the next month and maybe two. Hopefully it's all calmed down by March and certainly April, but the truth is, we don't know what we don't know. Plus, related product experience tells us that things that are a big deal happen, which require people like me to work more at problems we just didn't know about before hand.

I woke up at 4:15 AM five time this week, once was Saturday. It will probably be five more times this week, and hopefully not Saturday.

Long term view, it's all minor problems that I'm dealing with at work at the moment. Some of the issues are like, 'seriously, we didn't catch this before now?' Other issues are like, 'it's wrong because it's hard and it will get better, in fact come look at this, it already is better.' Still other issues are like, 'If we don't catch this now, no one would ever know until it caused a problem, and cost a lot more money.' Not to say that it is all no big deal, in fact, the last couple weeks and next few weeks are probably going to be the most stressful of my career thus far, and for the foreseeable future. That's the positive side to this, I have to answer dozens of questions per day now, but in only a few weeks it will be the random few questions a week and working on the next big challenge, instead of hundreds of little ones.

The other cool side to this, no one could do exactly what I am doing at work. Oh I am certainly replaceable, and my colleagues could be brought up to speed quickly, but things go faster because I am there. It's nice to feel important to the project.

Running went well, I ran 46 miles, did my first workout in months, and took a day off. The workout I did was a little track workout with 2200 meter of quality work in 6:30, which is around 4:45 per mile pace. Nothing great, but after maybe 10 to 11 months not doing a workout on a track, it was nice to get after a little faster turnover. Frankly, it didn't even feel that bad. My ankles continue to heal, I think that it's some sort of bruising from the mountaineering boots, ski boots, and ice skating boots that I've worn over the past three weeks and it's just taking longer to heal. I mean, I ran a 12 mile run, a track workout, and then a faster 9 mile run, I'm not exactly injured, although I would still say I'm coming off an injury.

That's it. I went out to eat Saturday night at a hamburger place I didn't even know was a restaurant until I had been here two years. I'm tired.

One More Problem.

The good news, we are finding issues. The bad news, we have issues. It's hard to tell how serious something is sometimes. Most of the issues are problems of milimeters, but it can be like a 3 millimeter rock in your shoe, seems like a big deal. 

Solving problems, even in the short term, even theoretically, is quite satisfying. I mean, when you have a solution, something that can reasonably be implemented, you know it's a fixable problem. You would not believe the issues that escalate to the $1 million or even $10 million level. One in particular for me was so simple, yet as it was above my pay grade and out of my department so no one listened to me. Knowing a problem can be solved is such a nice feeling.

In My Anger...

...I took a walk. I could complain about a variety of things that upset me today, but it will only serve to harden animosity. Suffice to say at the daily group meeting today I felt defeated. As if errors, things we could have done better, were on me to fix. And I don't have the answers. I don't even feel like some of the questions are valid enough to answer. So I took a walk as soon as I could get out of the meeting... which was ten minutes after the meeting ended because three separate people talked to me individually after the end about issues from the meeting. 

Cooped up in a factory with fumes and terrible air quality, and the downstream effects of thousands of decisions made by dozens of people, I needed some air. 

Walking in the slightly foggy 31 degrees Fahrenheit weather along the parking lot I realized, it's easy to blame someone, it's difficult to fix a problem. And you know what, I'm going to fix problems. Not sure how I'm going to do that besides throw paperwork at people and talk to everyone. But you know what? This project is actually going really well. The quality is actually quite high already. We are making it better every day, and even when it feels like this is the worst piece of junk designed and manufactured by us who couldn't get a proper job, I realize that clearly I exaggerate things and this drama is all to be expected in a project of this scope. My lows can be a little low, but my highs can be a little high too. 

We are doing well. We will get there.