About death by excel and coping with death by excel

Omg it’s been a long break again. Almost two months I reckon. Two weeks ago on Sunday I was talking with a dear friend and she was wondering if lack of blog posts is a good sign or a bad sign and hoping for the first. I laughed and said it’s kind of both, I am doing well but the thing called work is destroying my plans to update the blog evening after evening...and for the sake of people around me (and promises made over new years) I am not ready to steal time by not eating, sleeping, jogging, meditating or doing yoga. All important parts of my daily work stress survival strategy. So to disappoint you guys, I have been working mainly. Frigging adult life. Buu.

Let’s start with the boring stuff to get it sorted with. Last 9 weeks have been absolutely crazy. Crazy in terms of workload, moving parts, re-work and stressed managers who constantly make things bigger as they really are and want to cover all corners although we are very much on top things. It was very much expected that from end of January onwards our team would be in the spotlight, what wasn’t expected was the tools that we need to use to complete our main deliverables for the period. When you hear a word “tool” within massive global rollouts you’d think that it is something that makes your life easier...we are using good old excel sheets that make our lives fairly frustrating. Monster excel sheets, tens of them, closer to 35 on my table but who counts. Death by excel. Death by version control. Death by scrolling. Death by dropdowns. Death by horizontal sorting. Death by vertical sorting. Death by copy paste. Death by random template changes that don’t get communicated and you need to go through every single workbook to find out what has changed. Death by twisting neck to be able to make sense out of it. Death by “refreshes” that destroy all the formula you have built in. Death by managing excels by excels. Death by managing the managing-excels with yet another excel. Death by the ultimate excel that summarizes all the managing of the managing excels. Who is responsible for inventing excel? Names please.

On top of this, only after two weeks of madness I got a tennis elbow to the right hand of all the sorting and needed to start using mouse with my left hand (which kind of has been the most challenging part of my work lately, excel templates don’t need much brain effort) which is on the same path towards uselessness. This is also one reason why I have been sluggish with writing, during weekends I try to avoid using pc as much as possible for the sake of proper tennis elbow rehab. So in addition that I am THIS fed up with work (hand over head) I have a physical damage that might take months to recover, or might never recover if this goes on too long. Seriously, during the darkest moments I have thought about starting to make babies to have a break and way out. That bad. I am not pregnant, no, but the idea has brought me hope. Hope is needed during dark moments. Maybe one day there is light at the end of the tunnel. I’d make a good mom. Better mom than excel updater I reckon. My colleagues agree.

In my project we are also not allowed to have any holidays, which is kind of funny as people are eligible for their holiday within a year. Everyone is THAT important  ALL the time (with my excels I at least don’t feel like it). I do wonder what happens if someone gets sick? Oh yes, in our project people don’t get sick. In diplomatic terms I call this bad project management, in not so diplomatic term it’s *ucking ridiculous. Yeah. On top of this we are not allowed to participate to any company internal events to make sure we aren’t away from our desks. This means I am cannot participate to our Australia wide once-a-year event where people have a chance to meet colleagues from other offices. In diplomatic terms this is *ucking ridiculous. And on top of this we have no official budget for any of our team milestone celebrations. Just to clarify, we are over 5 months from go-live, our project is well scoped in terms of resources, we are tracking according to our plans, and I am not working for a non-profit organisation but for a huge and extremely profitable company that made record high results in FY11. OMG. Key word, PANIC. I still don’t understand why.

But not all bad with something good also. I have absolutely fantastic colleagues with awesome sense of humour which makes this all a lot more bearable. Black humour is a life saving thing for social workers AND consultants suffering from excel fatigue and as we know, it’s not the easy life that ties people together, it’s the long hours, tiredness, frustration and stress where you see what people are made of. And my closest team mates and peers are made of gold. Gold from US, gold from Australia, gold from Denmark...a super international dream team. We share the pain for excels, frustration for micro management, I teach them to swear in Finnish because it is a brilliant code language (it feels awesome to say “voi *ittu” without anyone giving you a bad eye or rising and eyebrow), make jokes, help each other out (thanks for Charles I am vlookuping, hlookuping, concencanating and conditional formatting like there was no tomorrow), exchange looks at team meetings knowing we are sharing the exact same thought of “WTF is this???”, backing up each other and always standing on the same line and the list goes on. We have some conflicts too, but that’s part of the joy of bunch of professionals from different backgrounds working on the same thing. Which is excels *haha* *not funny* Good stuff. Looking back I have been extremely lucky with the teams I’ve been part of. Starting from 2005 with Eepi and Arto, .mobi, .com and now this...hard work, lots of fun and lifelong friendships and people who leave a stamp on you.

So all remaining time I have off work goes to maintaining some level of mental sanity and doing things that bring me more happiness than work does. I think I have pretty robust system in place with meditation, yoga, running and opening up to my nearest and dearest. Meditation came to the picture kind of by good luck. I spotted a facebook add promoting a Mindfulness meditation study by University of Helsinki and signed-up immediately. Being part of the study group I need to meditate 20 minutes daily for 2 months, keep diary on my practise time and fill out a survey at the end of February and March. This meditation has nothing spiritual in it. It is very simple exercise of bringing your awareness to the sensations you are experiencing and deepening the awareness level by level. At first I was doing the meditation with the recording we received as part of the study (a deep male voice guiding you through the practise) but the last month I’ve done my practise without guidance, having just a recoding with timed signs to move to the next phase. I didn’t have much expectations when I signed up, just curious to see if it makes a difference, especially during busy times. I feel the difference, it’s actually amazing how much 20 minutes of conscious focusing on present does for you state of mind. I feel I am better able to control the busy mind that is always somewhere else than in the moment. I feel my level of awareness has deepened and condensed, not only during my practise but in general. I feel I have more control on things happening around, well it’s not really control but the awareness that puts things in context and make you see better which part of the buzz is caused by the busy mind or stress factors around you and which part of it is actually something you can influence and act on. I think I am less of a basket case with work because of meditation. I think my nearest and dearest agree. The 2 months study ended yesterday but I will continue my daily practise. I am slowly turning to be a bit of a hippy here. Or maybe it is just West End.

Then there is yoga, the dearest of my free time activities. Don’t remember if I told you last time, but I found a yoga studio in West End, The Yoga Den that hit home with my first visit in early January.  My teacher (Dan) is extremely dedicated to his task of assisting people on their yoga practise and has very nurturing, accepting and heart-opening style. He’s all about feeling what is right for you and we spend a lot of time exploring different asana, or more so exploring what is happening with the mind when you are in a yoga posture. He’s a man of details when it comes to body awareness, never ever have I paid attention to how my kidneys feel when I am twisting the spine and it is fascinating. At the age of almost 32 I am aware of my kidneys :) So far it has been an exciting journey to myself, realise the difficulty of exploring how something f-e-e-l-s when with figure skating I have grown to treat my body has the tool to achieve something very goal oriented with very little respect or attention to listen how it feels or what it wants to do or needs to be well.  I also noticed that at starters I was cheating myself to think I am “feeling” but in reality experiencing what my ego was expecting me to experience and feel. With Dan I have realised my body awareness isn’t really body awareness...I had the ego that is very used to “doing things right and as much as possible” on driver’s seat, setting a lot of expectations on my doing. I treated yoga as an exercise to build strength and openness, I was trying a lot with it. Thanks to Dan he opened up my eyes about trying. Trying a lot means you are not willing to accept what is. And at his class “what is” is the most important thing. Same goes to accepting you as you are rather than comparing yourself to others or someone you used to be or wanted to be. He jokes that “being as bendy as the person next to you does not bring you closer to enlightenment”. Fully agree. So I have started from the very basics, firstly by letting go of the expectations of being something, like bendy, flexible, balanced, right or strong as possible. I am learning to be open to explore every posture like it was the first time I am doing that, not expecting it to feel the same as it did the last time... it is a different week, day, moment after all. And it is once again great to realise how our brains are built to trust on previous experience and how easily they kind of turn mute to the moment of now and rather re-play stuff that has happened or race ahead in future plans. Mind is a funny thing. A bit twisted really. The joint effort of my yoga and meditation practise is to break that habit of being all the time somewhere else but never in the now. Being aware of what is happening around and in me and being fine with it. To fall down 2 times and get up 3 times. I find myself having a lot of challenge with balancing postures although throughout my life, I have had fairly good balance. I have started from scratch in exploring what is good grounding, wondering how on earth it can be difficult to stand still with two feet on the ground and have equal balance on the soles of your feet. Tricky for someone who has always taken balance for granted, never really paying any attention to it, not even thinking about respecting it! Maybe someday my tree-pose is steady instead of waving from side to side like in the middle of hurricane or something. There I admit I have a target with yoga, less windy tree-pose. So slowly but surely yoga has ceased being just a physical exercise but become kind of a home in the “spiritual” sense. Respect and acceptance for everything you are and everything you are not. Respect and acceptance towards other people as they are. And staying calm and grounded, not matter what life brings on your way. For example a process and SAP roll-out for a mining company ;) Lol, living in the extremes!

But not all mediation, yoga, carrots and hippy life, I have done also more normal Ansku things. Like exploring the dining scene of Brissie (nothing big to report). Weekend trips to Noosa, Mooloolaba, Sunshine coast and Bribie Island (booooring) to enjoy the sun (in the shade though) and ridiculously warm sea water. West End markets on Saturday with coffee under the fig tree and fresh fruits and veggies for the week. Morning sports in addition to yoga to make sure my heart gets to race too and I can keep up with long work days without losing attention (and to be able to eat ice cream during weekends and not gain weight, hehe). I bought a huge mirror to my living room and got it with fairly good deal. Sauna, swimming and saunamakkara at Kaija’s in addition to regular pizza nights. Went to see Lenny Kravitz to River Stage last weekend with my colleagues and had an excellent night out and terrible hangover the next day (it was literally the first big night out in 2012 as I had kind of forced and extended dry February for having multiple antibiotics on for a 6 weeks period, nothing serious though). Regular Sunday Skype sessions with little people, brother, mom and dad. Also, summer has kind of come to an end and weather is slowly cooling down a little. Today has been the coldest day so far and I kind of feel ashamed and spoiled for saying this, but 23 degrees can feel slightly cool. I am not complaining as this eternal summer feels a bit exhausting and I want to start wearing dresses with long sleeves and having less damp air to breathe. I want to wear my woollen socks and curl up to the corner of sofa and drink tea in a candle light, proper winter stuff.

Today I have been extremely domestic and focused on housekeeping, flu fighting, getting this post ready and soon Skyping with a dear friend whose voice I haven’t heard in 9 months! It is amazing how time flies, from new years to April just like that...nine months here already. Easter will be spent in Cairns relaxing, sleeping in and admiring The Great Barrier Reef hopefully under clear sky although my hairdresser Emma said that it rains in Cairns every Easter. It feels good to have a bit of a holiday and leave Brissie after hectic 3 months and see yet another new place in Australia and try my snorkelling skills (and most likely burn my bum). So next time I’ll report news from Cairns, promise I won’t take 2 months to get it done.

Pusmoi dear friends and take care!

//Ansku

About Road trip to Hunter Valley, closing 2011 and opening Twenty Twelve

Long time no see. Hope you all are ok? I am good at the moment, have been a lot of things the past four weeks or so and back from my blog break that was not intended but happened by pure accident, meaning lack of time and energy. Heaps of stuff to update again and don’t know where to start, from Christmas exactly but if feels like ages ago.

But anyways Christmas. Ho ho ho and so on? Not really, almost 30 degrees and like any other weekend on a loooooong holiday. Very hot, no snow, people getting excited about BBQ and prawns and drinking heaps of beer. That’s not Christmas. That is more of a Juhannus without the naked football part. Christmas comes feeling like it or not and we had planned to have a good dinner cooked by Dad. He promised to create a menu that doesn’t have even a hint of traditional Finnish stuff in it, goat cheese mushrooms and Thai prawns, apple crumble and cheese plate was the end result. Tarja had bought a tiny Christmas tree from IKEA with little led lights to light up our evening, not that we needed it because Christmas eve was sunny and pretty (I actually still have the tree on my bookshelf waiting for the battery of the lights to run flat...because I don't know how to turn the lights off *blond*) but it reminded us that the evening was somewhat special. Calls back home were emotional and I was even more grateful Dad was here, it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to spend Christmas with him and loved the fact that I could share my first one here. Made me feel less homesick. To balance out the tears we of course had a lot of bubbly and good wines to match the food and at the end of the evening around 3.30 am came to a conclusion that a box of bubbly and 2 bottles of wines is JUST right for four people. Ugh. So when the Australians were waking up to Christmas day and starting their drinking I woke up with sore hair and couldn’t even think about starting the new tradition of bubbly Christmas Day brunch. And there we covered also Christmas Day, hangover and bit of a leftover picnic at Kangaroo point. Done. Ho ho ho.

Boxing Day was finally the start day of our much awaited road trip towards Hunter Valley wine country. First stop was Byron Bay, just perfect for a late morning beautiful sights, walking down from the light house and enjoying a tasty midday brekkie at Twisted Sista. Dad and Tarja loved Byron, no wonder, and it was a great kick start for our trip.  Next stop was Coffs Harbour, pretty much the only logical stopover place between Brissie and Hunter Valley to spend a night. When sharing our plans with few colleagues and asking what to do at Coffs Harbour I got an instant answer: Big Banana. Wot? Yes, visit the Big Banana. What is it? A big banana with lots of banana stuff on sale. Okie, sounds like a-must-see thing on East coast of Australia. So about 200km before hitting Coffs Harbour I was all excited about the Banana. What’s it like? How big is it? Is it vertical or horizontal banana? Can I take a picture of myself with it? What kind of Banana items they sell there? Banana shakes or splits maybe? Banana toys? Outfits even? Maybe something for the little people? So many questions with a single banana. To keep you from excess excitement the banana was a big banana, horizontal one, closed for Boxing Day and therefore quiet if one can say quiet of a big artificial fruit. We took our pics and I think Dad was ashamed of my excitement…but seriously, that was THE most exciting thing at Coffs Harbour. Well, we also had a big spider named Bob in our cottage but that was more scary than exciting. A bit of sleep before getting on the road again.

Tuesday 27th was the game day as we arrived to Hunter Valley after some 6 hours of driving. The scenery is totally different from anything I’ve seen so far in Australia. Wine yards after wine yards and tens of little signs wishing people welcome. With our wine lover hats on this definitely was a right place to be. The concept is following: a) name a dedicated driver if you are not planning to walk a bit tipsy tens and tens of kilometres, b) pick a winery and pop in c) see a list of wines on tasting that day and say “I’d like to taste THESE”, d) sip, enjoy and compare the wines and do not spit away if you are not the dedicated driver e) buy a bottle or two if you think the wine is worth 20 AUD (that was pretty much the common price for basic wines), f) pick another winery from the map and ask the dedicated driver kindly to take you there. Nice! So this is what we did for 1.5 days :) Our absolute favourite winery was Ernest Hill, recommended by dear Marijke. The atmosphere was more peaceful than in most of the places, we got our own Barrel and got to sit there and take as much time as we wanted and no one was pushing around or making any hassle. The owner and his son were actually running the tasting and telling a bit of history and stories around each quality and gave a nice extra layer and emotional stamp to the event. If I recall right we bought 7 bottles, a bit of each! Ernest Hill has 16 blocks of grapes and on average year they are harvesting 10 for their own use and sell the bad stuff for big wine houses like Tempus Two (yuck). Grapes are always handpicked which of course makes it more expensive to produce but comes out as a good quality. Ernest Hill makes approx 77 000 bottles per year, compared to the bigger wineries who make 50 000 per hour. There is a difference, a big one. I liked pretty much everything they offered (surprise surprise) but the winner was the ‘easy rose’ which is done “over 6 pints of beer” (meaning the grape skins are kept only 6 hours to give a nice light red colour and taste) and perfect for hot summer days (already imagined myself at my balcony drinking the rose all day and reading a book or something). Ernest got new friends, loyal too if only I could find their stuff online or at the local liquor store. Second prize went definitely for Peterson’s Champagne House and their nice brekkie...well, it isn’t champagne for obvious geographical reasons but their cuvee is very close to champagne and has good price quality ratio. Third prize goes to Lindemans Sparkling Shiraz, quite an exciting wine that at first feels very controversial to senses. We learned that Bubbly Shiraz is popular in Australia and growing fast with the sparkling boom and tendency to prefer cold drinks during hot summer. Hot or not, we loved it. Rest of the program at Hunter was mainly following the beautiful sunset at our balcony, testing the newly bought wines with good selection of cheese (extra portion of wine for the dedicated driver) and playing cards till late. And while at a wine country you don’t get any hangover either ;)

After two nights at Hunter we decided to visit Sydney too, as we were only some 160 km away. There is something magical about Sydney, it has such a different vibe compared to Brissie. Sydney is a big city. We had nice lunch at a cosy Bossa Nova bistro after some 19h of dieting (the thing with Dad is that he’s never hungry and we somehow managed to skip brekkie with the driving and lunch with the checking in to our hotel ending up being extremely low on energy and blood sugar and extremely snappy too) To summarize the “conversation” from 17 to 19 hours without food: “Mikä fiilis?” A: No *ituttaa. Niin nälkä et *ituttaa. Period. *silence* After finishing our plates I was sorry for using the v-word and Tarja and I decided this is the last time we are skipping dinners. Hunger is a female thing, I know, but damn I was angry. All good we continued towards the Opera House and through the Botanic Gardens to the cbd to do some sale shopping and finally having a bit of burritos for dinner at Darling Harbor. Overall good ¾ of a day at Sydney, 2 meals too which is definitely better than just one (rest of the trip the definition of a good day was based on the number of meals we got). Next morning we started our journey back home to Brissie, some 900km ahead with a stopover at Coffs Harbor again. Arriving on new year’s eve with trunk full of good wines from Hunter we were happy and tired: 6 days, 1900 km, 4 new places, constantly changing scenery, heaps of wines and good food, sunsets and long evenings playing cards, sightseeing and sight seeing. Road trip rules. So no surprise the year turned in fairly easy going mood, dinner and wines, midnight fireworks and trying to call home (didn’t get through) and bottle of sparkling shiraz at my balcony before heading to bed. Thank you 2011 for the courage, welcome kind 2012 :)

2012 has started with no big hassle and zero resolutions, still it has turned out to be good to me, or I have put an emphasis to be good to me. I’ve done a lot of walking, some running, twice a week yoga at Den studio at West End and Pilates too. I have had less coffee (even coffee free days), a lot less alcohol (let’s not here talk about the amount of wines over holidays) eaten at home more often and pushed myself to bed early if feeling tired. Looking back 2011 was an exciting and exhausting year, a marathon really from starting the year with dear friends at Barcelona to ending the same with family and friends in Brisbane. Big opportunities, big decisions, variety of emotions, leaving behind, starting new, living day by day and making things happen, slowly finding a corner of so called comfort zone, new project and everything around it, new people, new life situations, new ways to communicate, learning, learning a bit more, and maybe the most about myself. No question New Year plays an important role in my life; it is an opportunity to reflect the past, make my summary around it, accept it and cherish it no matter how tricky stuff the year might hold and then turn a new page. New Year and new page isn’t escaping the past for the sake of better future, for me it is about seeing the bigger picture and my growth in it. No right or wrong either but life that unfolds exactly the way I have guided it. All that happens is for good at the end of the day, sometimes we just need more time and perspective to realize and accept it. Anyways on last day of 2011 I was happy to look back and realize how much life has unfolded and how much I have accomplished. It would’ve been a bit surreal without Dad and Tarja here, but they somehow reminded me of the distance being only a matter of having holidays and booking tickets and the thing between family ties staying the same whatever the continent or environment might be. I felt proud, content and happy...future looked bright, it still does. Marijke and I decided that Twenty twelve will be a year of goodness, letting the accomplishments of last year carry on and focus on quality of life rather than building up a life.  That’s a turning point. According to Dad there is also a big difference with the Ansku here compared to the Ansku back in Finland. Marijke asked him how he sees my life here and dad answered with tears in his eyes that it is great to see how all the tension from me is gone and I am so much more calm and peaceful and happy here. I was kind of surprised to hear that and especially from him but thinking closely it is true. Despite all the hard work and tiredness of starting fresh and missing nearest and dearest I am a lot more content here and the change is of course more obvious to people who can make the comparison between real life Ansku in Finland or in Australia....I cannot do the comparison clearly either, I am in the middle of living it. The weeks here together with Dad were fun and I feel I grew closer to him. I believe he left Australia with peaceful mind knowing I am ok and people around me will take care of me too.

So according to the goodness plan last weekend was dedicated for recovery. I was dead tired, I looked like sick people do, couldn’t think of anything better than wearing pyjama two days in a row with no commitments or plans. I hadn’t had a free weekend in 2.5 months, not that many free evenings either and that’s a lot for a girl who used to have heaps of me-time back in .fi. I seriously decided to do nothing, say no to any offers, do what I (capital I but that is capital already) want to do…be it laying on the sofa or sleeping whole day. I almost decided to update this blog too, but felt I needed to be fully on "now" rather than reflecting the past few weeks. So I slept, ate healthy food, read Riikka Pulkkinen’s Totta from front to cover (beautiful beautiful book, recommend it warmly), watched a movie, had naps, went to market to have coffee and pancakes under the fig tree, skyped with dear friends and crawled early to bed. No magic happened with winning the tiredness over a weekend but it was a good start, kick-start in a relaxing sense. You need to start somewhere, right? I’ve continued the routine of goodness this week too. Twice on a yoga class, three times on a long walk, yesterday Pilates over a lunch break, healthy food and less coffee, no commitments for evenings, 8 hours of sleep per night and feeling a lot better. I think Wednesday Yoga was a turning point, I left the class feeling calm and energized, woke up on Thursday with no tiredness on the back of my eyes and felt the world is smiling again. I felt I finally had control over my own life again and really managed stop on physical and mental level, managed to be. Just be.

My recovery continues over this weekend, done a lot of being and a will do the same tomorrow too. Part of the recovery contains ice cream on the sofa and Australian open from telly, with ice cream there is always an excuse :)

Love,

//Ansku

PS: Caramel, date, pecan ice cream..mums mums