Life at the Tempel

What did you imagine life after graduation would be like?  Many people want different things, not all guided by their best selves. I personally just wanted to get into any industry that would have me and learn the ins and outs.  I had very low expectations, but also very low ambitions.   What you envision of your work life will be is something that doesn't seem important at first.  But its importance grows in time. As I said, I wasn't aimed at moving up any ladders or anything like that.  I just wanted to get a job, any job, and I would figure it out and deliver things and please my bosses and mentors.  And everyone would clap, as the meme goes.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I backed into the engineering profession. I mostly did it because I was ok at math (just OK, not great.  26 in math on my ACT...) and I just didn't have the public speaking confidence to be in English classes, which is what I really wanted to do (32 in English composition an

Say you are particularly motivated to get something done and you get a project done in warp speed.  You most likely had a reason, a motivation, for getting that thing done, you probably had a prompt (perhaps your services were much needed), and you probably the life circumstances (energy, attention, emotions mostly positive or hopeful).   But in your lifespan as a worker, you won't always be at your best.  There will be times when you really lack motivation, be it because your boss won't be back for two weeks anyway, or just that your team is not great and you don't enjoy working for them.   There will be times when your life circumstances are crummy, say you are in a new city and lonely with no support.  These are not ever times when you are at peak performance.   There will be a lot of good and bad times. So why do we always demand perfection from ourselves? I believe that by doing so, we are making ourselves miserable. I think expectation that is realistic is in order.  

I've been a substation engineer for a while now and at a certain point a few years ago I realized that I don't really understand much about it as a whole industry. I don't know what is happening, and if you don't know what is happening, you can't properly sell or market yourself.  People may assume that we engineers are involved pretty deep in the organizational decisions, the meetings that talk about how the power system operates and what's going on with a company and what kind of work is out there, let alone larger events that happen such as blackouts in Texas and California.  But the truth is, we're mostly unaware, keeping our eyes to our own paper, trying to deliver our own projects, and not really educated about what is happening elsewhere.  The fires in Cali and lack of generation in Texas don't really affect my day job that much. In the media everything is portrayed as a mega disaster that is only getting worse and worse.  If everything is a disas

I had been chugging along well after coming back from a trip to LA/Long Beach with Andrea.   All until this week, when I discovered my work project had been released without my consent and in poor shape, unreviewed and unchecked.  It has been yet another humiliation as a professional.  I worked so hard (I really did work extremely hard) on something that ultimately turned out to be mostly a failure. This has made me continue my "career search" and find a lot of inspiration in something new for me, Urban Planning.  I attended an alderman townhall, watched a ton of youtubes, and even contacted the local school to see if I could audit a class, thinking that maybe I can get jumpstarted in something new and exciting, something that will allow me to interact with different types of new people in the world that want to do something good too. There are two competing schools of thoughts that are swirling in my brain regarding motivation and passion.  One is the Cal Newport "Don&#

  I arrived back at 6013 N Damen at 10:42am.  Being a runner, I had run down Granville St. about a mile and then hung a left down Oakley which usually was not highly trafficked. Then I went down the busy Western Ave, its various semis and commuters giving it a superhighway feel for a surface street, and crossed the street illegally. There, I would cross into the decidedly more open and natural setting of this stretch of West Ridge, between Bryn Mawr and Peterson.  This area of the city with its houses and yellow bricked apartment buildings in particular engendered a peaceful feeling in me.  It was a sunny day; I remembered when I was stressed by work (and i was always stressed by work) and took this same route, with similar results. Not having a fitbit or apple watch I relied on timekeeping the old fashioned way.  Having left at 9:44pm I had been out for 58 minutes.  Perfect for not being a real runner, for being a lazy incompetent. Usually 20 minutes was my max. I typically loathed ru