Looking back on 2022

I started the year with a dark outlook on the world. Here's what I wrote in January but never posted because it felt too dark and I didn't know where to go from there: 

 I'm feeling less inspired to write this than I usually am. The world just feels so... dark. For most of my life, I've thought I was looking back on history from a better place, where there are still so many problems but objectively more peaceful and prosperous than the previous 100 years.

Now I don't feel such optimism about our current state or path ahead. I'm afraid that we're well on a trajectory towards measurably worse lives: lower life expectancy, more trauma, greater inequality. These last 5 years have been traumatizing for so many people in so many ways—illness, displacement, discrimination, disasters. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February epitomized that darkness. I feel like I was right, and the name for this is sentinel intelligence. 

But I am mentally in a better place because I've let go of the expectation that we are on this inevitable upward trajectory. Clearly, I can't take that for granted. 

It can be easy for me to get overwhelmed by the world (it's like my default state of being). I'm the kind of person who wants to do so much, to help so much. But overcommitting and trying to boil the ocean leads me to be both unhappy and ineffective. So, in the last couple of years I've gotten better at at least asking myself what is the most important thing that I need to do? It means letting go of a lot of things and being more realistic and gracious with myself about what is possible for one human to hold.

So with that macro-reflection on 2022, here's the micro-reflection on my most immediate sphere of influence.

Home & Gardening

The big thing since I wrote my goals in early February was finishing the kitchen, which was already 80% done. By the end of February, we got it to about 95% and did the last finishing touches in time to host Christmas with Jon's family. We're loving it! 

The basement renovation has some issues and the contractor is going to revisit them in January.

Unfortunately, I did not get my garden motivation back this year and it has mostly been a wreck that I feel guilty about. 

Family

We did several small family trips and a big one. I saw all of my cousins this year for the first time in ages. Adele got to use her passport for the first time! We hosted a great Christmas meal. 

Adele is 9 now, in 4th grade, and so much fun. What a great little person. 

Unfortunately, one of my aunts passed away. An old family friend who was close with my sister also died from pulmonary embolisms, like my sister did. Both sad events.

Covid

After avoiding it for 2 years, it made it to our household. First Jon got it in the spring. A friend came over feeling a little under the weather but not thinking much of it. Adele and I didn't hang out with him, but Jon spent the whole evening playing a game with him and 2 other friends. The next day, the friend tested positive and thankfully told everyone. Jon was definitely going to get it. Thankfully, he started isolating in our room, we ran air filters, he wore a mask whenever he left the room, and he tested daily until it was negative. Neither Adele nor I got it from him, and he recovered in about 8 days. That one friend infected most people in Jon's friend group.

Then Adele came home from sleep away camp with it. Near the end of her session, we were notified of an outbreak. We had her test the night she came home, but I forgot to check it promptly. I looked at it an hour later and saw the faintest line. She tested again in the morning and it was more clearly positive. This was particularly stressful because I was about to travel for work and we were just a week away from our big family trip. Thankfully, Adele had a fairly mild case and tested negative the day before our trip, and I managed to avoid covid again thanks to filters, masks, ventilation, and isolation. 

We're all up to date on boosters and got them very soon after they were approved. Adele was boosted about 6 weeks before she got covid, and again this fall. We all got our flu shots, too. I continue to wear a mask indoors in public settings. We have eaten in restaurants several times now, which I don't love, but they mostly haven't been crowded and have been fairly well ventilated (see below). Jon isn't wearing a mask much anymore. Adele is wearing a mask sometimes at school, though often comments that few or no other kids are. The whole class is supposed to mask for the next week when someone in the class gets covid, but apparently that has been a bit lax. She likes these small KN-95 masks so I just try to make sure she always has one available. 

I also bought myself a few things for assessing and mitigating risk, especially while flying:
- Travel air purifier. I loop a rubber band around the handle and hang it from the arm of the airplane seat to point more filtered air towards my face.
- FloMask: I got this for wearing on the plane because it has a tight face seal (as long as I don't have to talk). 
- Aranet4 Carbon Dioxide Meter: This lets me easily get a sense of how well ventilated a space is because poorly ventilated spaces accumulate high levels of CO2. Turns out some of the most poorly ventilated spaces I was in this year were cars recirculating air. Use that outdoor air setting. 

I had quite a few "close calls" for covid exposure, even beyond Jon and Adele. There were several times when I hung out with someone who tested positive the next day. However, in most cases, people were testing in advance (i.e. they had tested negative earlier in the day even though they were positive the next day) and usually we were doing lower-risk activities like being outdoors or inside with masks (or at least I was wearing a mask).

 Travel

After 0 flights in 2021, I ended up flying six times this year, and four of those were cross-country flights for work. By the fourth trip, the mask mandate was gone so I bought the FloMask and CO2 monitor to better protect myself. On that trip, I was seated next to an incredibly talkative unmasked woman who didn't pick up very well on my cues. I had my headphones in listening to an audiobook on negotiation with my eyes closed and I only occasionally opened them to take notes. She still wanted to talk to me. I said as little as I could. 

We drove quite a bit to visit family this year, and Jon & Adele did a train trip while I had a glorious long weekend alone.

Career

In February I wrote:

I think it's going to be an intense year.

And indeed, my work this year has been dominated by a Very Hard Thing. What distinguished the intensity from other intense periods of work in my life was the sheer amount of strategy and tactics it required. For several months, I spent hours each week in conversation with my boss/colleague about our next steps. It's a special kind of exhausting to contemplate existential decisions for months on end and then navigate political landmines for months more in pursuit of this Very Hard Thing—all behind the scenes while also keeping up with the day-to-day.

Most of the pieces of fallen into place, some from luck and some from very careful effort and hard work. But we've made some missteps and miscalculations along the way, too. I should have read those negotiation books sooner. Trying to move quickly on some things might have backfired and cost us more time in the end. And we should have tried to even more in parallel rather than in series. But we'll never know how things might have gone differently.

As ever, one of the most frustrating parts of my job is when my boss/colleague and I aren't on the same page. In this high-stakes process, there has been a lot of that. We have agreement about the destination, but sometimes very different ideas about the best path to get us there. At our worst, we exhaust and frustrate each other going around in circles. But at our best, our different approaches and strengths are complimentary and we're a dynamic duo. 

What feels great is knowing I am making huge, positive contributions in my work, for my team, and in pursuit of our life-affirming mission. I was central to two particularly pivotal efforts in pursuit of the Very Hard Thing. First, I extensively researched and documented some numbers to make the case for the Very Hard Thing (and uncovered some dirt along the way). Then, I was able to confidently and calmly field most of the questions in a high-stakes meeting that unblocked a months-long stalemate. On top of that, I introduced a new organizing model that I think can scale with us as the team grows.

Frankly, I am kicking ass at my job. I've been here almost 5 years now and the metaphorical trees I planted and nurtured are fucking fruiting. 

While working on the Very Hard Thing behind the scenes, we've also had some clear successes this year. We finally added two people to the team! Unfortunately, neither of them is doing the kind of work that takes a load off of me, but I'm confident we'll get there next year. I did manage to minimize my effort in some areas that have required a lot of time but aren't the most important right now compare to the Very Hard Thing. I said no a lot, but in (I hope) relationship-affirming ways. 

Since I'm still keeping track of my working hours, I can quantifiably say I've worked hard. I logged 2084 working hours this year, which works out to 41.7 hours/week for 50 weeks of the year. That's 77 more hours than last year. Thankfully, it's nothing like the hours I worked in grad school. I'm working hard, but I also think I'm smarter about it. The Very Hard Thing took up 20% of my work time this year. 

In the process of playing catch-up on one part of my job that I somewhat neglected for most of the year, I realized that I find some of that work quite addicting. It means I'm really motivated to do it well (and I'm doing a great job), but I do have to be mindful of how that kind of work impacts my overall mental health and stress level. A less addicting companion to that work is data analysis. I don't get to spend a lot of time doing data analysis, but I do really love getting immersed in it and visualizing data. My foundational R skills from grad school are still useful. I had no idea I'd be using them like this! I just have to be mindful to stop at "good enough." I'm not publishing any papers, just looking for insights that will allow us to do things differently. 

Shaping the World I Want To See

Aside from my career, what else have I done this year to shape the future I want to see instead of just eating popcorn at the horror film? I should probably do a better job of tracking these things and be more strategic about it, but here's a few:

- Brought leftover meals from school to a local mutual aid group ("food rescue")
- Donated to a pro-choice mother running for office
- Donated to medical expenses for an international student
- Purchased items for a mutual aid group responding to the urgent needs of recent immigrants
- Submitted a statement against proposed anti-trans school policies
- Submitted a statement in support of creating a new hiking trail in a neighborhood with few trails
- Donated to local environmental organizations doing restoration and environmental justice work
- Helped with tree planting at Adele's school
- Volunteered with a habitat restoration project
- Donated to our local food pantry and nonviolence organizations

2022 overall

I really can't complain about our lot in life. We are financially secure, working satisfying jobs, loving school, spending time with friends and family, and reasonably healthy. More so than a year ago, I'm excited about the year ahead and I look forward to writing about it soon. Tonight we'll ring in the New Year with just the three of us hanging out and playing games. We are so fortunate.

Happy New Year!

How to show appreciation for help with a Very Hard Thing

For most of the last year, I have been working on a Very Hard Thing at work. So very hard. So hard that it prompted me to read or listen to several books on negotiation. So hard that Jon and Adele can summarize it more succinctly than I can because I've spent hours talking with them about the ups and downs. So hard that I have at times exhausted the willing ears of my friends and family to hear about it.

This Very Hard Thing has a clear goal. I have been working on it very closely with one of my colleagues and a handful of other people who believe in this Very Hard Thing. 

At the beginning of the year, the idea for this Very Hard Thing existed, but it was just beginning to take shape as a real possibility, and we had no idea just how hard it would become. 

We are far from finished, but we did just have a major success. We're hopefully now at a point where we thought we'd be in June (laugh/sob). 

There are a few people in particular who have gone above and beyond for this Very Hard Thing. They have strained some of their own professional relationships and moved mountains in support of this. I am so, so grateful for their efforts. We've bonded through adversity. When I think about all they have done, I like to imagine how we might thank them at the end of this. I feel like I did during the hard parts of field work and my dissertation when I could visualize the destination and overflowed with gratitude for the people who made it possible in so many ways. This feels like that. My favorite part of my dissertation was the acknowledgments.

I imagine personally sending them enormous flower arrangements or boxes of chocolate and taking them out to dinner to celebrate the completion of this Very Hard Thing when it finally happens. There may be some opportunities to thank them more publicly, but mostly these are behind-the-scenes things that could never be fully acknowledged for political reasons. 

Flowers, chocolate, and dinner seem so generic; maybe I'll come up with a less conventional idea by the time this Very Hard Thing is finished. At the end of this difficult path, I just don't want to forget to celebrate everyone—generic or not. 

Looking ahead to (the rest of) 2022

I started to write this in January but I was just feeling so dark about the state of the world that I didn't even want to post what I'd written. I guess I still feel dark, but I'm momentarily a little more inspired to write down some expectations and goals. I'm intentionally focusing most on the things over which I have most control.

Home

Our basement renovation with the contractor just finished last week. It's a huge improvement. There are many smaller things that we plan to do ourselves over the next couple of months. We were able to refinance last month which helped consolidate the costs.

While things were still out of sorts anyways, we decided to renovate the kitchen ourselves. The kitchen had 20+ year old oddly configured low-end cabinets. Replacing those and changing to an under counter fridge with our existing fridge in the basement would give us a lot more useful space for a modest investment. It was only about a month from when we seriously discussed the idea to when we started the work. I hustled on planning and acquiring everything we needed, and we did most of the work in one very focused weekend so we already have a more functional kitchen space. However, the tiling turned out to be beyond our capacity to DIY so we're hiring someone to do that. We also took a risk on a craigslist fridge that turned out to be a total lemon so we've just ordered a new one. 

We have some other ideas for home improvement projects but I'm not sure we'll get to them this year. Finishing the basement and doing the kitchen is probably plenty. The kitchen so far has basically been my main hobby this year.

Gardening

The basement renovation really messed up the backyard. I've got some serious repair to do there. It mostly makes me sad and overwhelmed to think about but I'm hoping that come spring I'll feel more inspired.

Family

We've got a few fun family trips planned this year: Jon & Adele, me & Jon, me & Adele, all of us with Jon's family, and all of us with my parents & some extended family. It's been great to see family more often again in person. 

Career

I think it's going to be an intense year. It's started off with some good and exciting events and in a lot of ways I feel like the seeds I planted years ago are coming to fruition, but it also feels like a fragile time. Things have finally come together to grow the team which should increase our resilience but there are key ways in which we remain very vulnerable. 

I read on Twitter at some point last year, "You accept the work/life balance you think you deserve." I've been thinking about that a lot and setting boundaries on my work hours. I got more strict about the speaking invitations I'll accept and I won't do more than one per month as a general rule. I might even need to be more strict than that, e.g. no more talks until September. I should probably finish a separate post I started about saying no to things and the questions I'm asking myself when I'm asked to do something.

I am trying to embrace the idea of experimentation when I spend time on something for work that doesn't pan out and I think we've got a pretty good culture of that now. I find it more liberating than beating myself up over "time wasted". 

The breadth of things I do for my job is kind of ridiculous. No one would ever advertise a job this way. It's like I have about 4 different jobs, so at any given time I am probably completely neglecting at least one part of it which doesn't feel great, but I think I've managed ok to focus on what's most important. I hope that some of this will change when we hire new staff. 

I wrote quite a bit about navigating "high conflict people" in 2019 in the context of emotional labor at work. Unfortunately, that continues to be a major obstacle. We're trying to be better at heading them off and setting boundaries and expectations. 

Travel

I've got a couple of work-related trips coming up that involve flying, which I still feel weird and anxious about but at least the omicron wave is subsiding. I haven't flown in 2 years. Then we've got a handful of family trips planned via planes, trains, and automobiles later this year. 

Covid

I'm glad that under 5s will hopefully be able to be vaccinated soon. My not particularly educated guesses on other things:

• Our immediate family will continue to wear KN95 masks in indoor public spaces for the rest of the year
  
• We'll generally continue to spend time unmasked indoors with friends and family who we know are up to date with their covid shots, as we have for the last few months. 
• A second booster will be recommended at least for adults
• Kids 5+ will get a booster too
• There will be 1 or 2 more disruptive variants (like delta or omicron) and during those times we'll do more rapid testing and/or limit our indoor unmasked time outside our pod. 

Everything else

I hope I find some inspiration for some later in the year, but I don't have any monthly goals for the time being. I'm just going to wrap this up now before I think too hard and then don't post it for weeks or months. 

Here's hoping that 2022 ends brighter than it began.