My cognitive mess

I know I do this to myself, but I wind up with multiple mental "spinning plates" that always result in me feeling like there is something on fire. After a lot of therapy and luckily finding meds that work for me, I have been able to live a life where that tension of the plates spinning doesn't get in the driver seat often.

With all that said, I'm going to braindump a bunch of stuff around the spinning plates in my head so I can get them lined up and sorted.

I am in the middle of printing out an 18 board grid of 7x7 multiboard boards.

While I'm excited to have a modular storage solution for my workbench, it takes a lot of time to print out all the base boards. A stack of 4 boards takes roughly 16 hours. And then I need to print out all the mounting hardware, connectors, and actual storage pieces to make it functional.

I want the mess gone, but it is time gated and it is making me think "what if I had another one..."

On top of that - my partner was asking for a customized gift to be able to give a coworker. So the boards are on hold until I get that done - hopefully by tomorrow so she can bring it in on Monday.

I'm also kicking around an idea for a TPU based cap for beer cans - both in the standard 12/16 oz size and the crowler 25/32 oz size. It fits a need, especially with the crowlers since 32oz is a lot of beer and being able to somewhat seal a can is always a plus. If I'm able to figure out how to do logos/customization, it feels like something that could be productionized.

I keep a running list of topics for long-form posts. Things that I feel like

• need to be broken down and examined
• I have a take that I haven't heard people have before
• could bring positive change to a large industry of knowledge workers if it takes off

I started one of these topics with the Let's Talk post on building a conference talk "in the open". It has stalled after that first entry, mainly because there is a fear of putting myself out there and having people tell me my take isn't great.

And i don't know which is worse... having people tell me I'm wrong, or having no response at all.

On top of that, I have a few other rough ideas, where I keep debating if they are worth writing about or if they are just navel-gainingly self important...

• How navigating the XY problem is a core competency for UX people in corporate america
• Feedback loops - how in a team you need to have short feedback loops from the effort to the outcome. The longer the feedback loop is, the more likely the team is to become uninspired.
  • This becomes extra important when an IC moves into a people leadership role. Immediately the feedback loop of success has a dramatic change in timeframe, and many people wind up burnt out because they look for empirical evidence that they are good at what they do in the wrong timeframe.
• How there is a blind spot when looking at company culture. People look at the actions, but never examine the inactions and tacit compliance with unspoken boundaries. The true measurement of a group's culture are the bad behaviors they tolerate.

On top of the above, we are juggling

• a total of 6 cats in the house right now.. with 5 of them dealing with giardia.
  • Not the chicago sandwich topping, the parasite
  • Long story short - feral cat came to our back yard during a freeze. Then she got knocked up. Gave birth in the back yard. Brought the kittens back to us when they were ready to be socialized.
  • We adopted the mama because she is quasi-feral and we'll take responsibility for her. We also adopted 1 of her 4 kittens.
  • Wait... mama and 4 kittens, that's only 5? Yup - we already had a cat. And we were kinda looking forward to the inevitable "no animal" life...
• Looking for a job has been at least somewhat positive. I redid my resume because I got some feedback that the automated software couldn't parse my 2-column layout. And after making it a single column I haven't been rejected for jobs where i have 15+ years experience by being told "I don't meet the minimum requirements"

So yeah... it isn't a terrible amount of plates but all of them spinning at once leaves me feeling scattered.

There's also a wave of anxiety that is telling me there is stuff I'm missing, but I'm tired and and to go to sleep...