YouTube music has an interesting feature that shows quarterly recaps of songs. I have a playlist for when I sleep and it has basically been that list. I will normally fall asleep within the first song and I can count the songs to know how long I was asleep for. I have shared this before. Once in a while Mel and I will go to bed at the same time and I like to have competitions with her to see who can fall asleep the quickest, but she does not like to compete much against me. I have been sleeping fairly well for the last couple of days, but I still need to get up to go to the washroom. I think that it is due to my hydration. This evening I took a nap, and woke up with an urgent need to pee. I am pretty sure that I may have started a bit early, but I am not sure as it seems that I was dry.
Mel has our day planned for tomorrow and we will also have a visitor. One of my dear friends is here for a funeral and hopefully we will get to see him in the morning. I think that he may sleep in and forget as that has happned in the past. We are planning on going to the dump tomorrow, Home Depot, Evans Building supply as well as picking up the apple trees. It should take a couple of hours to get all of that done. Mel then wants to paint together. By paint together it means she paints while I keep her company so she does not seem like she is doing it alone. I can not really help much with it, nor do i actually like painting. I can not really lift my right arm too high with the port so close to the armpit. There is no real physical limitation but i can feel the port pressing and it is a bit discomforting when I raise my arm. I tend to use my left arm a lot more and do a lot of things left handed. When I chop food it will eventually get a bit sore where the port is. I have a bit of a rash around the port, and I am not sure what the cause of it is as it happens quite a long time after I have the bandages removed. I have been using udderly smooth cream which seems to be working for now as it is not super itchy when I put it on and it seems to decrease the redness. My weight has been stable floating between 132 and 133lbs for the last couple of weeks which is a good sign. Eating has not been difficult for me as my tastes have come back, but I do not seem to be eating as much as I have in the past. I think that it is both being lazy making food and getting sick of the same foods repeatedly. I have been in the mood lately for sweet food and most of the time instead of eating protein heavy foods I am eating some sort of a dessert. I suspect it is because that is the one thing I for sure can taste. I took some pork belly out of the freezer and will prep it to cook on Sunday and then have it ready for some Banh Mi sandwiches on Monday through Wednesday. The last time when we came home for Toronto we had some Asian BBQ pork that we had bought from the grocery store and I deep fried it to get the skin crispy and the kids loved it. This time I will we will have it on sandwiches or I will prepare it and Xavier can take it to school for his lunch. I am not sure why I am gravitating towards sandwiches as I can not have much of that and i feel full afterwards. I forget that my stomach is small at times as I can eat more now than I have in the past. I think that is why I am eating less, because when I do eat I am pushing the limits of how much I can eat. I can almost eat a regular child amount right now. We need to clear out the fridge and freezer a bit, but Xavier and Olivier like a lot of the same things that I do. If we bring home something new they like it as well and we end up eating it all fairly quickly. I will eat half a serving and then by the time I go for a second one it is all gone. We had bought the honey greek yogurt from Costco as it had 10% fat, and I had one bowl and when I went to have more there was no more left. We had purchased that yogurt on Monday night where I had some and today it was all gone when I looked for it. Luckily we had a second one downstairs.
Work has been interesting and my colleagues have been having some difficulties with various projects and most of it comes down to communication. There seems to be misalignment with communications and expectations and what is perceived from each group. It makes quite a big impact and it can lead to a project going off the rails fairly quickly. Sometimes you need to see the perspective from the other side and understand what is motivating them to react the way that they are. It may not make sense, but it does not matter because that is their perception of the situation and you then need to work to make sure that there is alignment with all parties involved. It can be very difficult at times and you need strong mediation skills to keep everyone in check and to keep them aligned. Someone told my colleague that their perception of themselves is that they were like me except that they were softer. It amused me as I am curious on what aspect it is that they think that they are replicating. When dealing with clients I can be firm in some situations and soft in others. I am not known as a rule follower and will break rules that I do not think make sense, but I can do it in a way where I can get buy in from everyone generally.
Last year I was working on starting a company with a friend of mine that focused on coaching others, and I was creating something to assist the people with additional coaching using an AI system. It was fairly indepth with what I was doing, but I never pursued it after I started working with the projects as I am doing now because of limited resources and time. I introduced some of the concepts to people that I heve mentored and will test out some of the assessments, scoring and insights with a select group of people to see how effective it is. A lot of it is based upon psychology and is rooted in research. I have always enjoyed theoretical research and then figuring out a way to apply it and I am curious to see how well this works. Over the last couple of years people have made a lot of comments about my leadership and development of other people. I have been lucky that a lot of the people that I have mentored and guided have gone on further to leadership positions and they still reach out on occasion for guidance. I am a firm believer that as a leader it is my job to develop people and probably spend more time on that then I should. That will be my legacy that I leave behind. The projects will eventually end, the renovations will be finished, and even the ideas sitting on the shelf may never be built. I have helped a lot of people along the way and have received a lot of help in return. Looking back, I am proud of the systems, reports, and strategies that have endured, but they are not what matter most. What matters most is that people grew, gained confidence, and went on to do their own great work. That is a legacy worth leaving behind.
Q