24 February 2021
Context
Welcome to Day 55!
It was back at work. The day was full of surprises – some helpful, some pleasant, and some unhelpful. It’s my husband’s birthday tomorrow and a gift rocked up at the front door today. Please don’t be the one I ordered for him come early. Opened the door and phew! It was a parcel from his mother, which he’s conscientiously not opening until his actual birthday. Sheesh! Such an angel 😇.
Another pleasant surprise was realising that there were two work meetings organised for the same thing scheduled back to back, meaning one needed to get cancelled – yay. This freed me up to get something done that was on the todo list. Getting back time is such a bonus!
The next surprise was a frustrating one, it involved me making a mistake. To explain, because of the broken ankle I’ve been working from home. Working from home makes my life easier. Especially since I can keep the leg elevated and get to the bathroom more easily. However, on the odd occasion when I need to be in the office, I need to lug the laptop between the office and home. Although the docking station transports easily enough, with the broken ankle it’s more complicated fiddling around with cables and power outlets which are just out of comfortable reach. Simply taking the power pack avoids this complication.
Here I was in two minds about whether to take to pack home or leave it in the office. The benefit of leaving it in the office would be that once the power ran out on the laptop I would be forced back to the office. Alternately, taking the power pack home would save me the trip into the office and worrying unnecessary movement while my broken ankle needed to remain elevated.
For the record, I went with the take power pack home, but thought I left it at work. This meant that husband, at home on vacation got a surprise trip to my office. He took me to work to collect the power pack that wasn’t there, because I hadn’t checked the laptop bag thoroughly. Only when we got to work, did I realise my error! Yes, poor husband. Fortunately, he’s amazing!
Why didn’t memory serve or at the very least why didn’t I check the laptop bag? The majority of my work can be done on my home desktop. The laptop is there for timesheeting, recordkeeping and project scheduling. Also, I thought the laptop bag had been checked, several times at that! Turns out just not in the obvious compartment! Doh!
Then there was the surprise of my father-in-law and his wife arriving a couple of hours sooner than expected. That last minute cleaning up will just have to be crammed into 30 seconds instead! Just kidding – kinda, sorta. Father-in-law got lost, so got extra cleaning time – bonus. After all, you keep cleaning till the guests rock up at the door, right?
It was actually a pleasant surprise to have father-in-law and his wife visit. Beautiful people, easy going and wonderful to have around. The coronavirus events of last year had meant that catching up with them had been a challenge, and this opportunity to catch up physically was not one to be sneezed at or missed.
The next surprise arrived from left field in a meeting, when someone added something to to my scope which was not in it previously! Surprise, extra work. This bit of scope is heading back to where it came from, if I have anything to say about it – I hope.
Later a team meeting added more work to my growing list of responsibilities. This, however, was to be expected. There was a mention of getting time back – it wasn’t this much time! There’s still the need to handover the projects that I had started before I left my old role, which I am still doing in addition to the new activities in my new role.
Then came the surprise that shamed me 🙁! It was a part of a project that needed handing over. The hands that needed to accept some operational responsibility for support were unwilling to take it on. At the time, I thought the activities I had already done were good enough to hand into production – believing that the bits that didn’t have a place would find a natural home.
Since October 2020, things had hummed along without incident until six months down the track – surprise! The consequence of me not acting back in October, now meant that one of the IT support specialists was accused of not doing his job. The IT support specialist wore the brunt of my strategic laziness. I felt bad for the support person and the other support people that needed to rally to fix what should have had a safety net put in my me.
For all the good surprises, this last surprise was the one that stuck with me the most. My goal is to have the safety net in by the end of the week, even if it does have a few holes in it. There might need to be some creative wrangling to ensure support areas are aware of their responsibilities.
Let’s see what the cards have to say!
Today's Cards
The Cards - Analysis
1. Now – The Dream. The Dream is about romantic notions or idealistic thoughts. This I’m going to put down to the assumption/s I made that have caused the unpleasant surprises to appear in my life today. That is, the assumption of support finding its own home.
2. Influence – Politics. There is a chance that this has come to my attention because someone was trying to make a political point.
Look at it like this: The Dream represents my notions of if “I leave it alone”, support will find its home and everyone will live happily ever after. The Politics come into play around changing responsibilities in a COVID shrinking workforce. My workplace isn’t hiring people, to save money for the state. That extends to even replacing people who leave due to retirement, job movement, maternity or sick leave. This means teams are trying to ensure they do not have more work than the team can handle.
The repercussions of having too much work on your plate is: stressed staff, poor delivery to customers, and poor reputation with superiors. Hence, when a project finishes and needs to be handed over, support teams push back. With nowhere to hand a product over to and the next project chafing at the heels of the project manager, handovers get dropped to find their own way. Except, when teams are trying to make a point to show they’re understaffed; that’s when pushing back on a project manager might get traction. If the project manager let’s it slide then support failure or repercussions highlight the issue just as well. Ah… the frustrating joy of Politics!
3. Goal – Patience. Patience is about waiting for the right moment. If the ideal in The Dream is coming undone due to Politics, a Goal of knowing when the right time to act to resolve the issue might be displayed in the card of Patience. The way I’m reading this card right now, is that a period of time has passed for the situation to be resolved.
4. Distant Past – The Master. The Master is about being above and unaffected by the circumstances and taking an objective yet not dispassionate approach to the situation. It was stepping back to break the cycle of Politics and waiting.
5. Recent Past – Sharing. Sharing implies not giving to one but giving to many. When the situation arose with the IT Support person being abused, I made a commitment to get something in place. Instead of shifting support to one area I divvied up the work and shared it amongst a few groups. It would lesson the burden on any one group. An option that was not present six months ago. The trick is to do this without revealing my hand before I have all the components are in place. This means that I needed to create a few automated processes first. Once done, life might be easier for everyone.
6. Future Energy – Ice-olation. Going to the last point in the Recent Past, of doing this without revealing my hand means I need to push people away and do this in Ice-olation.
7. Feelings – Awareness. The Feelings position is about how the questioner (me) feels about the situation. In other words, how do I feel about discovering that The Dream of support sorting itself out didn’t happen like I imagined it would? I am developing an Awareness of the repercussions of not fully seeing something through. I’m also realising that at the time (Awareness), there were no options available to me. Only the passing of time (Patience) has opened up a new path.
8. Other People’s Views – Laziness. Certain elements of the unpleasant surprises could be perceived of as Laziness. Laziness in the Osho view, means resting on your laurels and accomplishments. Indeed, I am certainly guilty as charged in the “handover” incident. The person advising me of the lack of support probably thought I had been lazy. Also, anyone reading this post might justifiably think it too.
9. Hopes & Fears – Maturity. Quite simply, I Hope that in this situation, the recipients of the handover activities and me, have all reached a level of Maturity. The Fear is that the Maturity isn’t there and the situation is unsatisfactorily resolved.
10. Outcome – Healing. This is a positive outcome for the situation. It shows that the situation is fixable (Healing) and with some dedicated hands-on focus it can recover and have a healthy solution.
References
Osho, Osho Zen Tarot – The Transcendental Game of Zen, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-11733-7
