2023 was a year of many changes for me. Where I work was in major in a period of change. I’ve worked here for 17 years now. I started as lead for the new evening shift they were putting in place. From there I worked on a major IT project that failed horribly, we were sold off to another major lab which brought a lot more changes.
Backstory: With that change come another promotion to Team Leader. I split the department with another Team Leader. After a few years of being pitted against each other by a horrible manager. The other Team lead was made the supervisor of the department. She and I continued to run most things together, as I was the Technical Lead for the department and SME. She didn’t get along but we were civil most of the time. She made things quite difficult over the next number of years. I had to fill in for her when she was off. After 10 years she decided to retire, I was the last one to find out about it. She had already started to train and groom one of the techs to replace her. As good of a tech as she was, she wasn’t cut out for running the dept. I objected to her being “given” the job without them considering me for it. So with the supervisor’s last day being in 3 months. I was forced to split the job of running the dept again, this time with someone who was less qualified for the job. It made it much harder to do what needed to get done and to learn the few things that I really needed for for the job.
The site director had changed just a few months before this all came about, so that made things more complicated. She decided to hold off posting the job so that the other tech would have time to learn the job. Sigh…. Kind of a slap in the face, again! That was also depressing. However, I knew that this place was really the better fit for me than the other places out there. But, I figured I should really make sure, so begin the job searching. This is more energy consuming than time consuming.
While doing the job searching, it became clear to me that I really needed to get some things back in line. Like, my house, yard, Trailer, credit cards, and what little family I still have. I needed to be set up better to make that kind of a change. Like having more savings, a better retirement plan, house maintenance done, and the yard in a more manageable state. So the house and yard became my focus for the year. I made changes that I had been wanting to do and getting things updated so I could possibly rent the house out if I needed to do so.
So from June to Dec I just didn’t’ have the energy or motivation to maintain this blog. So I pretty much lost interest/energy for doing much else other than Trials competitions. There was of course loads of drama at work.. I just love drama, not. They finally got around to posting the job ad here in Oct… I was hired for the supervisor job in Dec. Things in the department have smoothed out and it doing really well.
Which brings us to 2024…. As of April it had been 1 year since all this mess here started.
Life has settled into a new routine. I’m trying to get myself to stick to a workout routine, eat healthier, balance the increased demands on me and my time by work. Exempt status comes with some downsides, I am working loads more hours, but there is some more flexibility, and in theory I have unlimited PTO. lol. yeah, right. But since the dept has some great techs that I can count on to do the right stuff, it’s not too hard to get time off for the trials events.
I manage to get my yard to look great! I love spending time out there now.
I need to thank Katrin for getting me back to doing this again. It’s therapeutic. I had been told for years by my ex husband that I am a horrible writer. I just might be, but this is for me more that anyone else.
One of the things I did do to help me with the changes was to find an outlet for creativity that wasn’t this blog. So I tried doing some Acrylic Pour painting. I find it to be very relaxing and satisfying.
Here are few of the ones that I really like.
These were the very first ones that I tried last year.
