We are well into summer here in the Ruiz household, with one vacation in the past and another soon to come. We spent the first week of June in/around Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and had a wonderful time. I’m working on a post (well, really more of a photo dump) to put here for posterity. We stayed at YMCA of the Rockies, which I had never heard of until the last couple years. It was SO great! They have lodges and cabins, and so many things to do that you could probably stay there for a month and still not cover everything they have to offer.
Coming back home was a letdown, as the end of vacation usually is. C’est la vie. And while Jose went back to the office a couple months ago, I am still working from home. I haven’t heard anything set in stone from NASA yet, but there are rumblings about federal agencies in general and I’m thinking I may be back in the office around the time school starts. We shall see.
I have mixed feelings about going back to the office. It will be good to see people face-to-face. It will be easier to focus on some of the meetings I support if I am there in person. And it will be good for my overall job-related productivity, as I am very distractible being at home, and have trouble focusing on work sometimes. But I also really LIKE being at home, distractions and all. I like being more in control of my time, and having a lot of schedule flexibility.
My manager recently asked me what I thought I could/would like to support when we do return, and I decided that my goal is a roughly 50/50 split. I’d be in the office 2-3 days per week and working from home the other days. But realistically, that will be tough to pull off unless my entire center takes steps to maintain some of the technical setup and management expectations that have been reset in the last 16 months. Previously, I worked a roughly 9/80 schedule where I had every other Friday off. In the future, doing something similar, but being home every Friday is probably doable.
I also daydream a lot lately about an entirely new job in an entirely different industry. Really feeling my “golden handcuffs” these days, but also feeling super icky and privileged if I complain about it. So there’s that.
We never ended up making firm summer plans for Emma and have been managing things a week at a time. She stayed home the week after we got back from Colorado, then went to day camp at the nearby Armand Bayou Nature Center last week. She enjoyed that one so much that I signed her up again for this week — hooray for that! TBD what we will do for the rest of the summer. She could stay home, of course, but my stress/mom guilt level is significantly reduced when I know she’s occupied and doing something other than spending the whole day on her iPad.
Summer! Onward!
We stayed at the YMCA of the Rockies once and we wished we had more time there. It’s a fun family place!
We’re already plotting a return trip!
Looks like a lovely trip! We sent Forest to daycare but he’s had mixed feelings about going back and next year I think I’ll attempt to do several kinda of day camps if I can. Sorry you have to head back to work—everyone seems to be heading that way again. I would have loved working two days at home.
Daycare is definitely the easier thing to do! But there are lots of good day camps as well. Just takes more planning to keep schedules straight!