Rui CarmoIt’s been a while since I wrote one of these, so I thought it would be interesting to record how miserable fascinating things have been of late – and what better time to do so and get my mind off stuff while I recover from another bout of back pain?
All times are GMT/Lisbon, but you can adjust them to your favorite time zone of quiet despair.
4:30 - Either due to insomnia, back pain, or both, I decide that rolling over and lying in various positions that would best befit a contortionist is not a strategy conducive to sleep, so I leave the bedroom and sit in the living room. During the heat wave I also make it a point to check whether my office window is open to make sure it cools down overnight, and then settle on the couch. Trying to read with a light on doesn’t work well (this is when I really regret that the Nomad has no backlight), so my life hack is to don my Oculus Quest and, depending on my mood, either use the browser to check on my agents and RSS feeds or watch stuff that might help me go back to sleep. James Bond movies, which I have been slowly watching in chronological order, are kitsch and distracting enough that I sometimes actually doze off wearing the headset and bear a red imprint on my forehead until mid-morning.
6:30-7:30 - All attempts at staying asleep usually end either around this time or an hour later (on weekdays), depending on what I have scheduled or whose alarm goes off loudest. I imbibe some form of hard caffeine, vaguely edible toast and optional painkillers (for my migraines or back), and shutter my office before the sun starts warming it up.
8:00-8:30 - (optional) shower, make myself vaguely presentable to humans, check my schedule. Depending on how messed up it is, I pick out outdoor or indoor clothing and tally any required shopping, then keep my office shuttered before the morning sunlight pours in and brings it to 28 °C. I track down the Roomba and make sure it can earn its keep now that it can roam the house and noisily bump into everything without legal harassment from the neighbors.
8:30-9:00 - What the holy f*** happened overnight in my inbox? Formulate a strategy, often completely different from what I expected the night before due to the latest corporate reorg, which is still casting interference patterns and minor uncertainties that are reminiscent of quantum physics. This is also the time Teams notifications are automatically turned on, and when Copilot starts accepting meeting requests again.
9:00-10:30 - This is the only slot in the day where the Venn diagram of wakefulness and outdoor temperature makes it viable for me to exit the house, trudge 2 km uphill to a rather nice garden I have no real time to sit in and enjoy, pick up some groceries on the way back, and have a (non-optional) shower upon my return. The window is always too short (I make it a point of doing at least 45 minutes of continuous walking), but it is impossible to predict due to the barrage of project stand-ups, check-ins, team meetings, and whatnot, so I might take the calls at my standing desk, as I leave or return, during my hike, etc. Fortunately, these days most of them are check-ins where my direct reports are leading, or where the discussion does not require me to present anything. The trick for this part of the day is to grab two six-liter milk cartons on the way back downhill, which forces me to walk straight, brings my shoulders down and is much better for my back and neck pain than painkillers. And yes, work-life balance is a fallacy.
10:30-12:30 - Even if I have too many early calls, delay my outing and only return home on the late side of this slot, my office is still taking the full brunt of sunlight and heat, so I will show up on video calls as if I am living in an air-conditioned underground bunker with LED lighting, standing awkwardly in front of a makeshift standing desk and propped up by sheer willpower while I work my way through a tumbler of iced decaf. I will also be sniffing as loudly as Darth Vader breathes because I have to have the AC on, but liberal use of the mute button makes me seem human. The Roomba usually runs out of battery sometime before DHL and the Post Office start their deliveries to my zone, so I can reliably expect to answer the door, receive a package and then spend a few minutes figuring out where it is sulking, which is hardly exercise but can get somewhat involved for my neck and back if it’s stuck under furniture.
12:30-14:00 - Another floating slot. The first thing I do is to set an alarm for 13:45, which serves three purposes: reminding me to wind down family matters and get back to the office, making sure I take any painkillers on schedule, and making sure I wake up in case I doze off on the couch after lunch. The second thing I do is to panic about whether or not I have food, need to attend to family stuff or have a deadline looming. Ordering, fetching and consuming food happen at random during this time, as do any necessary outings (and further non-optional showers due to the heat). On a good day, only one person will ignore the very prominent block on my calendar and book a call in this slot (even if Copilot automatically declines it); I will have some leftover food and still be able to sit on the couch for 15 minutes and take my mind off things. On an excellent day it will be cool enough for me to have a decent lunch, eat fresh vegetables and get back home to do some actual productive work. That’s two working days out of 30 this summer, and the average is going down quickly.
14:00-18:30 - Actual work might happen here if I am lucky. By this time my office is in shade; I can shift from my standing desk to my “real” desk and continue to worsen my back and neck, but my feet appreciate that I am now only metaphorically racing against the clock. Fortunately, I become more productive as Europe slows down and the Americas come online, but there are, invariably, meetings to attend to. There is also usually a second pitcher of iced decaf and some loud music to keep me going.
18:30-21:30 - Second round of family/personal time, roughly aligned with meal times in the Americas. In summertime, the lovely light of the golden hour makes my living room irresistible, so I end up collapsing on the couch in a heap and earning myself another crick in my neck or back to compound the long hours of sitting. If I retain enough presence of mind, I will add a couple of intelligible paragraphs to one of my various ongoing drafts and sic my agents onto some code. Unless I go out with family, I skip dinner more often than not these days.
21:30-23:00 - Occasional late calls, reading, choice TV to justify my Apple TV subscription (usually the cultural highlight of my evenings when I am fresh enough). If I am completely fed up with work, I either resort to hacking at some obscure coding problem or to self-hypnosis by doomscrolling, followed by a descent into increasingly futile attempts at sleeping. Sometimes I just go out like a light while trying to read.
02:30 - Oh bugger, not again.