What a first two weeks!
I want to write every week in 2026, so I decided I would write a weekly personal recap. Two weeks in, to borrow a quote from Jack Black, "So far bad. Off to a bad start." The start of the year is fake and time is made up, though, so it's fine. It's never too late to start changing.
Week ending 10 January
I started the year getting over a cold (probabably not COVID, tested). The kids started back to school on Monday, but 2 of the 3 ended up missing days as they got sick after us. There's a large increase in influenza cases in the region recently, so that's what we assume it was. We're all vaccinated for influenza, so it's possible that we got milder cases as it moves through the community.
Work was normal.
Week ending 17 January
Getting the christmas regalia taken down is the main task of the weekend. Kids are back in to the swing of things only to have another short week next week for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. Honestly, I'm glad they observe it. He deserves it more tha a number of others who share the distinction.
I've started doing this again. I've been tinkering with my home lab, getting my media collection accessible on all of my devices, setting up network storage and backups. I've got everything the way I want it except a way to access my home services when I'm away from home.
Work was affected by the verizon outage because it was very difficult to reach some clients who had patients in the hospital, and because we had more walk-ins from people who couldn't call to ask us a question or let us know they're coming. I feel like we handled it well. A situation like that tests your triage ability and your communication. I work on a team that is very strong at triage. Communicating about expected waits and delays is hard, but luckily our front desk staff is great and will step in and help with conversations like that, allowing the medical staff to get back to the treatment floor.
Looking forward
I'm going to start writing this during the week while the experiences are fresh. This could also look like starting blog posts or progress notes on projects. I've read that keeping a list of things you've done well or exceeded expectations on can be helpful for compensation discussions. I want to keep a little bit more documentation on the things I do, and we'll see what comes of it.