What day is this anyway?
People Overload Imminent
Ceremony week for work. We’re doing the Scrum flavor of Agile. The ceremonies are the major checkpoints for a release. This week we had/have a Sprint Review (demo of functionality done in the last time box), a Sprint Retrospective (talking about team dynamics during the last sprint and how it can be improved), and a Sprint Planning (contextual and technical planning of the next set of functionality).
For an introvert, these weeks are EXHAUSTING. I facilitate pretty much all the ceremonies except the Retrospective where I have an external party run those for an impartial opinion. Today was the contextual sprint planning with the development team and the Subject Matter Experts…which is essentially me on my feet for 3 hours reading the room and pulling out information from everyone…switching between people…jumping into their brains to understand, restating what people are saying to make sure everyone understands…translating requirements for the development team with more techie speech to keep them form worrying about the scope….calming the stakeholders and addressing them in a way that lets them know they were heard….
Tomorrow is an 8 hour session with the developers to dig into the technical implementation of what we heard today…LOVE them truly, but it’s more rapid reading of the room, managing the pressure of the personalities of the room, and keeping people on track to make sure we get through our list as efficiently as possible.
Last time after a week like this, I took the Friday off and slept for about 16 hours. Seriously the introversion thing is REAL. It’s like a marathon to step outside of ourselves so consistently…
Already right now, I’m sitting in my office feeling like I want to sleep….but Geek squad dude wants everyone to meet his new Black (!) girlfriend at 8. By the time I get home, I’d have to turn around and leave to make it there in time…just…sigh…
Mommy’s Gonna Mommy…
I was having a “pressure leveling” conversation with a team member yesterday after a slightly heated team meeting. (I generally use these to passively check in with them and pump egos when necessary when people start getting defensive.)
Was talking about how my horoscope says all this stuff about how I’ve been in love and am in a happy relationship and am head over heels and so on and so forth.
Of course this is not true, or at least it’s not directed at a person because my life, but more my career. (7th house rules partnerships…work ones count.) I AM all those things in regard to my team. We have our issues, but I truly love us and am completely enamored by this project. I made a comment to him, which I’m sure I mentioned here, that I wish that horoscope talked about me feeling that way about a person instead of it being about my career all the time.
He said that I come across as the “marrying type”.
I was like “the eff does that mean? Because if that were the case, I would have had more than one person ask me out in the last year..”
He said I was the type you’d take home to your parents because I have my isht together… something about dudes being able to detect that about me and not approaching because they feel it would be too much “drama” if they weren’t up to par. Also said that I’d need a “strong man” to be happy.
I should have asked for clarification on that comment as well…he’s my parents’ age and that might mean patriarchal or something…something I wants NO part of…
I took slight offense at the “drama” comment also. Like the reason why I DON’T date these days is because I don’t even begin to engage people who don’t seem like they’d be up to the pillar challenge. I’m not going to get with someone and then be mad that they didn’t meet the standard…they ain’t gonna change! That was a lesson learned! Pick someone who meets them and go from there!
I explained my Pillars to him. He thought those were good measures to have…and that I shouldn’t compromise on them…and that I should look to dudes 35+ to meet them. He also said I needed to be way more aggressive and intentional about dudes I’m interested in because he guessed that they otherwise wouldn’t know because I seem so emotionally distant.
He then tried to set me up with his sons because I’d be “good for them.”
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM! WHAT ABOUT ME?!?! I AIN’T TRYING TO BE A GROWN MAN’S MOTHER!
I mean…it’s not necessarily that I want to settle down and get married and all that…I just want someone I really like around. Someone who really likes me too. Again, not what I represent or what I can do for them, but they just like ME. (And they have those pillars). There are people that I’m cool with, but not that have that extra…excited/nervous factor….basically pillar 5 (science).
Mentioned this conversation to my mother…SHE says that I am already too aggressive when it comes to dudes. That I need to be more passive and to never pursue a dude in any way.
Couple of things :
- I have been out with 1 dude in the last 2 years…2 in the last 5…and they both asked me.
- When I’m around a dude that has strong pillar 5, I am mostly radio silent. He has NO idea that I’m remotely interested. Or if I AM talking, I’m probably extra academic and not flirtatious at all because I’m so nervous. I don’t know how to operate around dudes I don’t have the okay to do stuff to.
- I told her I was doing trivia with the Geek Squad as a soft intro to geek squad dude’s girlfriend and she was nagging me for going somewhere so late (8 PM).
- I told her “you’re the one who wants me to be married and have kids…how am I supposed to even be asked out if I don’t go places and meet people?!” She offered no constructive advice…legit said “I don’t know. I didn’t have that problem.”
- She then went into all her worries about me a single female home owner living in a “big city” by myself and all the dangers that went with it…said I was reckless…and so on and so forth…
Me.
Work/home, Trivia with 35 year old white geeks every few months, otherwise sitting up at the house taking naps/marathoning tv and playing video games…KaNisa.
Oh yeah…I’m a regular party animal…
Called my middle sister like “WTF?!?! I literally do like 10% of the stuff you guys did and I get all the grief!”
She gave me the inside scoop that all these years her and my older sister never tell my mom anything about their personal lives until something big happens.
Thanks for passing that down, guise….
Lesson learned.
I’m tired though. I don’t know. Maybe some day a dude will activate some emotional something in me.
Meanwhilie…
