The Annoying
It has been a month for me.
Work was incredibly stressful and busy. The one other member of my DevOps team was in the hospital for over a week and then caught Covid right before they left the hospital. They were out of commission for a good while there. There were several third-party outages relating to the services I am responsible for during this time. We had issues with database performance which leaked over into almost all processes I needed to watch.
It was so nasty my boss gave me comp time -- that was nice.
The stress from work bled-out into other parts of my life. I stopped eating three meals a day, which compounds for me. I get hungry, have lower energy reserves, keep working, get hungrier, and become too tired to mentally prepare myself to cook.
Looking back and scrutinizing my chart, my habits did not fall as bad as my mind was thinking they were at the time. The biggest thing for me was the lack of showering - that week 4 days in a row must have been rough for me.
The one item that never failed was me walking my dog. The one exception is one day the wildfire smoke was bad at my house. I could have gone out, but I was lazy and the smoke was terrible.
The Awesome
Every day is a good day. Having those negative experiences I had does not mean all was lost during the month.
Chess, Lots Of Chess
I have been playing so much chess recently. I have gotten really into it. I have had to take a few short breaks to prevent myself from burning out.
Just this week I won a tournament on Lichess! It culminated with me checkmating someone about 80 rating points above me.
I love this game, and I fully expect myself to get much more into it. I may even start a small chess blog...which is what I need - another place to write!
Dog Is Getting A Healthy Weight
My dog was obese when I adopted her from the rescue.
I have been feeding my dog a veterinarian prescribed diet and her weight is getting good! We had originally tried a different diet but it made her have very uncomfortable bowel movements. She looks a bit funny with the extra skin right now, but that just adds to the joy.
Analog Writing
Oh yes. I rediscovered my love for handwriting.... I purchased Blackwing 602's for writing with Japanese made notebooks and it has been a joy.
Summary
Overall, life is good. I just need to decompress and work on a few things. Luckily I am back on track for my dailies :)
Cheers!
--Jeremy