DutchGirl's journal

[Rouva]

Happy to hear you had a nice holiday with no interruptions from work!

[DutchGirl]

Yeah. And it's still going pretty well! This morning I went to the gym, then I worked for about two hours and then I saw that for the rest of today the work load is going to be low enough for my new colleague to handle, so I'm taking the rest of the day off. This is probably what my colleague and I will do over the next couple of weeks: she works full time (and of course also gets paid for full time work), and I help her get all the work done and am available for consultation and thus I get my part time hours in that way.

Currently I vacuumed and washed the floor, so now I'm on the couch until it has dried, ha ha.

And later today I must start studying the Christmas songs that my choir is going to sing. We had a performance last weekend of regular songs, so with that done over the next 1.5 months we are going to focus on Christmas songs for our two Christmas performances somewhere in December. First rehearsal is tonight, and since I only started with the choir about nine months ago, I'm going to need to learn all of them. Maybe I'll get lucky and I'll already know some of them - but as a mezzo-soprano I often don't sing the melody, but instead something that harmonizes with it. In Dutch that's called "de tweede stem"; literal translation: "the second voice", but I don't know what a supporting melody for the basic or most obvious melody is called in English.

My sister and I were in a choir together in high school, and she remarked that she always loved practicing the Christmas repertoire in November and December, because it would get her into the Christmas spirit during all of December. Me, I'm not that enthusiastic about it, but okay, I think I can handle five or six rehearsals full of Christmas songs. As long as we can then put them in the attic with the fake tree until next November.

[fingeek]

It sounds like you're crafting some nice flexibility into your job role and day - That's great!

Do you have a mid- and long-term plan for work? Or are you happy maintaining where you're at?

[DutchGirl]

I was going to say that I was very happy with work... but now my highest manager has suddenly started a campaign that we HAVE to be at the office. Oh dear. And just a few weeks ago she messaged me that it would be perfectly all right if I worked from home "because this job is location independent". But apparently something changed and now she is insisting that either my new colleague or I park our butts in specific seats every day.

So yeah, with this new development, let me say that for now I'd love a job or a project (as an entrepreneur) for about two days per week that I can mostly do where-ever I have an internet connection and also with a little bit of flexibility regarding to when exactly I do it. Maybe it can still be this job, maybe in a while I'll offer my newly acquired skills as an entrepreneur and see if some other organization would love to have me work for them - from home.

This manager... Her style of managing and my style of being managed... are not really a match. She has "exploded" a couple of times about tiny transgressions (if they even were that?), saying that she didn't feel respected etc. (And then she also walked out of the door and didn't return for the rest of the day...). She sulked about not being invited to a meeting that I was invited to (a meeting that I feel was more about my profession, and not about managing). And now this sudden 180 degree turn about WFH...

Meh.

So let's see where this specific job goes.

In other news: "War is over, if you want it, war is over, now" - my choir is making progress with respect to the Christmas songs and the songs are stuck in my head.

[rube]

Ugh, that sucks. Especially after your generousity to cover many more hours untill recently for your sick colleague.

What if you just won't do it?

[delay]

but now my highest manager has suddenly started a campaign that we HAVE to be at the office.

That's bad news! Sorry to hear that. I've heard more of that recently. I wonder why companies are ending work from home. Perhaps they expect harder times.

[Crusader]

I was going to say that I was very happy with work... but now my highest manager has suddenly started a campaign that we HAVE to be at the office.

For what it's worth, where I work, the upper management has gone back and forth on how strict they are with going back to the office. It is possible that you can just ride it out and wait for it to change again. It is possible that nobody is going to fire you if you don't comply (e.g. you come in 2 days to the office instead of 5), unless they want to fire you anyway, but it officially gives them a reason to fire you (but... they can fire you at any time anyway, so what does that really mean?).

[DutchGirl]

Thanks for all the support and views on this. I'd like to add that I'm only working this job very part time, so this will mostly be the problem of my new young full time colleague. I am going to have a private conversation with her on Monday on whether she's willing to come in four days per week (I'll do the fifth day), or not. If she's very unhappy about it, I'm willing to fight a little harder for the right to WFH.

But indeed, she and I do have a pretty strong position within the organization. If we would want to, we could point to that in the conversation.

[DutchGirl]

So, quickly talking to my new colleague this morning, in private, I learned that she was also slightly unpleasantly surprised by the sudden 180 degree turn. But since my new colleague lives much closer to work than I do (10 minutes by bike versus 50 minutes by foot&train for me), and works almost full time, she said she was okay with spending most days at the workplace, and didn't want to cause a big stir over this. And her being at work will allow me to mostly continue to work from home (with every once in a while a day when she can't make it into work covered by me). So that's how it will go for now.

Also, over the last couple of weeks my new colleague is growing into the role more and more, and so I can indeed reduce my hours and let her work full days and trust her to do well and finish the caseload of that day. Maybe now every once in a while (like once every two days) I'll receive a text from her with a question about what to do with a specific complicated case, but that takes maybe ten minutes? I'm okay with that. And I also trust that she will do this less often over time as she learns even more.

Yesterday I had a day that I almost didn't work and did meet up with two old friends of mine, one of them lives in the US but was visiting here in the Netherlands. It's funny how you almost pick up exactly where you left before, and how I could see my friend laugh at my jokes just like she laughed at my jokes when I was 15. I hope I also matured a bit in the meantime, but apparently I'm also still funny to her

Nostalgia is hitting this time of year with the holidays, and this year a bit more because there's a school reunion coming up for me next weekend. Most people I haven't seen in over twenty years. That's a long time. So meeting my US-based friend yesterday was just a warm-up to meeting probably more than twenty people that I once spent my days with but haven't seen in a long long time. Odds are good that we're going to have a nice time this weekend.

My guy is playing the computer game Subnautica these days. Indirectly I'm also enjoying it, as I can see on his computer screen what he's doing. What an amazing game, I love the visuals. Maybe one day I'll play it too, although I more often play easier games in less big/ less complicated worlds.

[rube]

Nice to read the good news, at least for now/so far.
And great to read you can finally reduce your hours! Well deserved.

[comandante]

I find it irritating when managers nowadays impose working at the office. Good that you managed it for the better. Enjoy your weekend!

[DutchGirl]

The reunion itself was good, fun. Nostalgic. There were about 280 people from the three decades that this high school choir has existed (it ended around 2005 when the number of choir members had become too low). We sang the old songs to our heart's content, and we talked to each other about how our lives were going. The pictures are already up on the website, and I see many smiles and a lot of happiness.

...and some dear fellow reunion attendant(s) managed to give me and at least 7 others that I know of: Corona. It's my second round with this thing, and after a feverish night on Monday I have been recovering. I'm glad to be able to WFH and I'm also glad that my new colleague can take up most of the workload, so that I'm just logging in for a few hours each day to help her. I'm sad that on Monday I did go in to work (because of some in-person meetings that were planned, and also because of not being ill at that point), so that I have possibly exposed several healthcare workers to it, who in turn might give it to vulnerable people. But oh well, can't be helped now. I have warned my colleagues about it on Tuesday morning.

For me the election results have been very disappointing and shameful. 1/4th of my fellow Dutch people who voted have voted for an extremist, a racist, a sad excuse of a human-being. As a result, he will probably become the prime minister. Nasty. The first guy who was going to explore what political parties could form a majority government had to step down after a day after he turned out to be a fraud and white collar criminal.
As "revenge" or to comfort my soul I'm thinking about paying as little in income tax as is possible for as long as this guy is in charge - by earning little and by making tax-deductible donations to charities that are in line with what I want my country and the world to look like.

The end of the year is getting close, so I have also recently looked at my income, expenses and charitable donations for this year. I had planned to earn little. Due to my colleague's skiing accident in the early spring I worked much more, so my income is much higher than planned. So I have felt comfortable to donate some more money to charities than what I had planned to do at the beginning of the year. My expenses have been "okay" this year, not very low but also not high. Maybe next year, with some more time on my hands, I can try to reduce expenses by buying secondhand and making more meals from scratch etc. This year I have taken 10k out of investments, while I've paid down my mortgage debt by 5k, and put solar panels on my roof for 3k. My investment balance has still grown due to a recovering stock market - with a very crudely calculated growth of about 8% so far.

Update - for 2024 it seems that by working roughly 2 days per week, plus lend a hand with administrative tasks at my boyfriend's company for a few hours per month, I should be able to cover all of my expenses, donate some money to charities, and pay about zero euros of income tax. I won't be able to add much to my stash, but I will be able to let it grow unperturbed. So I've got my plan.

[DutchGirl]

So... I haven't had any confirmations that I gave Covid to anyone else, that's good. Covid lasted about a week for me, but then I went back to work, met other people again, thought I had a post-Covid cough, but then I got sicker again and found out it was a new infection. So so far, December has been a month of very "meh" health. I did do two outside caroling sessions with my choir, because those dates were exactly before and after my second bout with a respiratory virus. I loved the caroling and being with my friendly choir members - it gives me a lot of energy and I'm happy that I have rediscovered singing. That's for sure one of the things that I love. That's probably not true for everyone, somebody reading this may be like: singing - fun?? - but to each their own, you probably have other things you can do or create that bring you joy.

For example: I can't dance. It runs in the family. But a few days ago, my sister-in-law sent a movie of my niece performing with her modern dance group, and hurray, my niece has some moves and some confidence when she's dancing! The spell has been broken?! So I can imagine that some people find true joy in dancing to their favorite music.

The world continues to be a place with shitty people in it, hurting other people - Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Hamas/Palestinians, Sudan. It's sad, it's maddening. I will continue to try and do some good things. Last week I went to the local food bank to apply for a volunteer role (now that I will have more free time - I have been involved with the food bank already by donating money and food, now I can start donating time). I'm probably going to be trained as a person who can do the intakes of applicants. But first I will shadow another volunteer to see whether I like it enough. I do assume you will hear some pretty sad stories, but also maybe meet some people trying to scam some free food out of the system when others need it much more? We'll see. And I will have to think about whether I can take it and be happy enough to be able to provide some help.

Another niece of mine (not the one dancing) is almost twelve years old and is in trouble. I don't think I'll give all the details here, but her parents have a tough time raising her (which is not only my niece's fault) and now it has come to a head. I think some of this is just the fact that she is a teenager now who is discovering her own agency, but still it's too hard for the parents to handle on their own. Both sets of grandparents have been involved already by taking her in for a few days to let the situation calm down or to give the parents and the sibling some much needed respite, but it's not enough. My guy and I have offered to take in the younger sibling for a few days (because we probably don't have enough experience with kids to handle a troubled teenager), but we haven't been taken up on our offer yet. The family doctor and a child mental health nurse are also involved, so hopefully there will be more professional help soon, too. It's really worrying, and sad. I hope my niece will find a way in life to at some point become a reasonably happy adult, but she has a long way to go (which is probably true for every 11-year-old child - puberty awaits and the road ahead is treacherous).

So all in all, this December hasn't been much fun. Hopefully January will be better. My mental health is still okay - and I'm thankful for that, because I've had low periods before and all the unhappy news isn't helping but I'm still doing okay.

I'm not sure were to leave you readers with this, I hope I didn't <verb> anyone's day here (what's the opposite of making someone's day?). Let's try to continue to make life better for the good people around us. Don't forget to feed the birds if it's winter in your area like it is in mine. And hopefully you also have a few things that make you smile.

[radamfi]

Even ignoring major global events, humans are continually bad to each other. People say and do horrible things to each other in all parts of the world. There's no point worrying about these things. Humanity will always disappoint. The best thing you can do is to avoid contributing to these problems by procreating and you have already decided not to have children.

[urgud]

I hope your niece turns out safe and sound. Teenagehood can be a scary period in life.

[DutchGirl]

Investments up 14% for the year, making up for the 12.5% loss of last year I think (help me, Math gods... Oh, according to my calculator 14% growth more or less makes up for 12.5% loss in the year before - my hunch was more or less correct).
From my income I stashed some money in savings this year, and so my (total) net worth is now the highest it has ever been, which is a comfortable position to be in when I plan to coast next year.

Yesterday I worked from home for only a few hours (jay new colleague who did the rest of the work), so I had some time to do some household tasks. Maybe today and tomorrow I can do some end-of-year tidying so I can start the new year with less clutter.

[frugaldoc]

Congratulations on breaking even!

I need to do a better job of keeping track of aggregate portfolio returns. I am inveterate tinkerer, so I run several portfolio sleeves of varying sizes. I know each strategy's performance (returning 5-30% this year) but do not have good fidelity on the blended return. I think that will be one of my 2024 tasks. I also need to figure out whether certain portfolio strategies are worth the time given their size.

Do you keep your own return spreadsheet or just use the performance data from your investment custodian?

[DutchGirl]

I keep my own spreadsheet and calculate using the XIRR function . I've got seven index funds/ETF to track over four brokerages/providers. Maybe next year I should also do less transactions, as I'm also sometimes just fiddling with things, too. I did simplify a bit this year as one broker was bought out, the new owner raised fees a lot and thus I decided to move my money. (In the Netherlands, you don't pay capital gains when you sell, so I could easily sell and then buy somewhere else - transferring would have been more expensive).

[radamfi]

Bear in mind the effect of higher inflation over the last few years so even though you might have "broken even" over the last two years your potential spending power has diminished. On the other hand, you are two years closer to receiving the state pension so your stash is needed for two fewer years.

[DutchGirl]

So I've just had a couple of pretty good weeks. My work schedule for the last weeks and hopefully the upcoming months will look like: work full days on Mondays and Wednesdays, check into the workplace on Tuesdays and Thursdays at around 4 PM for a few minutes to see whether my new colleague needs advice or help (and if she needs it, that could take up to half an hour), and no work on Friday because then someone else does the 4 PM checkup.

After struggling with upper respiratory infection during December - and then the holidays - I returned to the gym at the beginning of January and am pleased to say that I'm back to my regular schedule with the highest amount of weights that I had reached before getting ill, and this Thursday I started to explore adding more weight to some exercises (but often couldn't do the three sets with the higher weights just yet and had to do the last set at the old weight). My gym subscription is slightly more expensive to include a monthly meet-up with a gym instructor. The next meet-up is in two weeks, so I hope to impress her then with some new records, ha. For me the meet-ups also help me actually go to the gym on some days. Other times I drag myself there with the thought of the cheap(ish) tasty cappuccinos they serve there.

On the downside, I ate too much chocolate these last couple of weeks, and it even gave me indigestion for a couple of days. Ugh, not good. So... time to reduce that. I love you, chocolate, but you're no good to me.

Also included in my new lifestyle should be being able to cook more recipes. Last week I tried a new recipe and it more or less failed. I mean, the results were still edible, but this oven cauliflower recipe will need some adaptations to become as yummy as I think it can be. Right now I think I can cook like five different dinners (let's see... two pasta dishes, one rice/curry combo, a noodle dish, a beef stew and two types of pizza), plus I can cook a few more veggies and bake one or two types of meat (and four types of fake meat) for a random veggie - potato - (fake) meat combo. I'd like to be able to do a few more, with confidence.

PS. The situation with my niece seems to have calmed down a bit, so that's good. Sigh.