Lunaya Pravda

Yes, I know I’ve been quiet.  It’s been a busy couple of months: between a heavy work schedule, work upheaval, and social activities, I just haven’t felt the presence of the muse overlap with a precious few hours of uninterrupted time.

Work has been going well.  Really well.  But being this busy for this long—I think it started in March or April—is taking its toll, and I’m suffering from a growing amount of burnout.

Plus my groove has been thrown off by the announcement of an impending merger which will be officially concluded on January 2nd.  My firm is the larger of the two, which is more comforting, and as time progresses, I’m adjusting and getting more excited about what this will mean for my career and work opportunities.  But it’s taken some weeks to feel any excitement at all, after my boss presented the merger in such a way that it sounded more like the company just gained all these employees who are “better” than me and have been hired over me.  Medium fish, smaller pond to small fish, very large pond.  My carpe diem had seized in a pit of fear of the unknown.

But the more I find my feet again and have conversations with people about my career goals post-merger, the more doors I see opening for me.  I’ve been receiving quite a bit of encouragement from my mentors, along with quite a bit of positive commentary as to my professional skills and value.  In short, all this adds up to a very, very busy start to 2009, as I’m one of a few people tapped to travel to each of the offices of the other firm, plus I’ll be one of the first to start training on some advanced 3-D modeling software with its own programming interface.  In addition, I’m voluntarily taking on the task of integrating the two companies’ graphic standards.  And somewhere in there, I’m supposed to give two presentations of a Python-based analysis tool I’ve designed to perform some geostatistical analysis of contaminant models I’ve built.

On the social side, in November I had a blast at two concerts I attended with one of my favorite people.  The first, however, made me realize how much I detest standing up for concerts.  Hello, age.  The second concert, in comparison, was heavenly.  It was on the exquisite main stage at the trendy Triple Door here in Seattle, where you have a complete sit-down dining experience while you listen to great music.  If only the artist from the first concert would perform at the Triple Door.  Now that would be perfection!

I can’t really work up any commentary on the whole economic mess, either.  The absolute stupidity and ignorance that precipitated all these financial bailouts causes me nothing but heartburn as I shake my head in disgust.  I’m watching a few friends cope with layoffs, but in general this area hasn’t yet been hit as hard as other parts of the country, and I still have many reasons for optimism.  I feel pretty blessed in that respect.

I’ve been dining with friends, visiting family, and I have a trip to Montana tentatively scheduled for February.  So, yeah, don’t expect posting silence to get any better.

Not that I’m the worst offender here or anything, though.