DutchGirl's journal

[chenda]

And oh, I plan on talking to him about what he wants to do with his time five years from now. Let's make some new plans...

Yes, as they say its best to retire to something rather than from something. Do you think you will retire fully as the same age as SO or will you maybe keep some part time work?

Would you mind sharing the rough details of your budget and how you invest? No problem if you would rather not share.

[Scott 2]

my first feeling when he told me about retiring in five years was a bit gloomy: that's it, he will then start the last phase of his life. And thus, by proxy, so will I.

David Brooks wrote a book - The Social Animal:

https://www.amazon.com/Social-Animal-So ... 0812979370

In it, he talks about each phase of life, and what we as a human take out of it. Intertwined, is the story of a couple's life. One of the characters is a driven company leader. You could find some parallels to your journey, all though it does take a US centric perspective. There's a lot to look forward to, even in the years when we grow feeble. I find the rough map for how we age comforting.

I'm not sure of the age gap between you two, but at a minimum, there are several phases of life to come.

He has a TED talk, if you want a feel for the type of thinker he is:

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_ ... ial_animal

[DutchGirl]

Soooo... the last couple of weeks I worked way way too many hours because too many colleagues were sick or on holiday. Now that schools are back in session after the spring holiday, things are looking up and it seems like this week I'll actually be working just 16 hours. Fingers crossed. Because of it my next paycheck in two weeks will be quite a bit bigger and I'll put that money into investments.

I never got that fine for driving through a red light (this was due to me being too tired and driving on auto-pilot behind a truck that went through orange - I've paid more attention since).

At work we had some information sessions on the reorganisation that is coming. The interim manager said that it might take up to four years to change things. So my strategy is going to be to stay in my current role or even drop to one role below my current one and see whether I like it well enough to stay around parttime. If there's too much bullshit, I'm gone. And maybe at some point I'll be gone anyway. I notice that I'm quite skeptic of any change management wants to make - maybe more skeptic than what is fair. So maybe then at some point you just need to leave and find greener pastures for yourself elsewhere.

In the last couple of months I gained a few kilos, and I'm not completely sure why now. It was quite the hectic period of time over the last couple of years, but I first managed to lose some kilos and then for half a year or so to stay at a lower stable weight... so what has changed that now I am slowly piling on kilos? Well, last week I had enough, so here we go again - spend some more time and focus and energy on how to eat (and when to eat and when not to eat) and I should be able to lose those extra kilos again.

My guy and I talked some more about our plans for the future. I'm getting more enthusiastic again, because we also discussed things like slow travel - I would like to go live someplace else for at least a few months (or maybe a year? or maybe every winter for a decade?). Places that come to mind for me are the UK, Norway (in summer!), Portugal (in autumn/winter) and Italy (also autumn/winter). I'm also listening to a podcast that discusses how adults sometimes don't know anymore what is fun to them and hey, that's me. Glad to hear that I'm not alone. The podcaster advises to try and rediscover what kind of activities are fun for you, and to also accept that those things may have changed or that if you try something and it's not fun to you, that you have wasted some time (but you've learned from it!).

My portfolio hasn't been much fun lately. I did love the feeling of having earned "free" money when I could update my spreadsheet with a higher net worth even when I hadn't added much to the investments. Now I try to shovel as much money as I can in there and my net worth still shrinks. Oh well. Onwards and upwards. Or in reality, onwards and in whatever direction the stock market wants to take my investments.

See you guys again some other time.

[DutchGirl]

I'm officially old now. I just "replied all" on a companywide email.
The one good thing is that there weren't any swearwords in my reply.

[rube]

You made me chuckle .

[DutchGirl]

I'm officially old now. I just "replied all" on a companywide email.
The one good thing is that there weren't any swearwords in my reply.

Of course I didn't send yet another companywide email to apologise for the previous one. I got one annoyed email back from one of the recipients asking me not to use reply-all, and I did send a "sorry, I messed up" to them. That was it. All's well that ends well.

Yesterday I got a tour of a "makerspace" - i.e. a nice place for people who like working with their hands to come and join together and create some sawdust together (they're working on building a central vacuum system to get rid of the dust more easily).
Lots of tools for woodworking, metal working (although not for HUGE metal projects I guess) and a battery of 3D printers as well.
Monthly fee 25 euros, except if you become a volunteer for them, then it's free. Using the laser cutter (that cuts wood) still costs 10 euros per hour, but I understood from the person showing us around that that is fairly cheap compared to commercial prices. Their members are happy hobby workers and a few startups who like to build some prototypes there. I loved the atmosphere and I think some of you guys would love it too.

I got some extra money coming in this month with my salary - vacation money from one job, salary from extra hours worked from the other. I put it all straight into the stock market. Maybe I bought at the lowest point, maybe it will trend lower still (in which case I will deploy some more of my savings into it), but it feels good to buy right now with a 10-15% discount.

My extra weight is slowly coming off, again. I've had a slow work week this week (lovely!), so I was able to spend more time on exercise and making good food for myself. So that's good, but it'll take a while longer to get back to a reasonable weight. Today I have the day off, too (which is why I'm typing this at 9 AM, hanging around on the couch). I'll walk around some more today (and will take a raincoat with me because it might rain) and I have no other plans for the rest of the day, yet.

[DutchGirl]

We've volunteered to take up a refugee or two in our home (this is supposed to last up to three months), we're in the process of telling the organisation (TakecareBNB) what we can offer, and them vetting us for trustworthiness too. So we don't know yet whether any refugees will actually come and live with us for a while.

So this thing is finally coming to fruition. Over the last months every now and then we got a call about needing some more details from us or updating us on where we were in the process. Last week we were contacted that a potential match had been made; we were asked to meet up over skype to get to know each other, and then each party of course gets to decide whether they want to proceed or not. My guy and I had agreed on a secret signal for if one of us had a "Oh no, this is bad! Abort!"- moment in the conversation and then we would just cut it short and say "no" to this specific match, but we didn't need to use that. And he even surprised me a little bit when at some point he wrote down, out of sight of the camera: "I like them, I'm okay with them coming to stay here".

I like 'em too. They're a couple in their thirties who were building up their lives and careers in Ukraine and who had to flee. I'm still cautious, I'm sure there will be some annoyances down the road and sometimes it will suck to have less privacy, but we're going to move forward. Over the next week or two we're going to clean out the top floor for them so that they can move in there. Luckily for them, the host that they're staying with now is flexible in how much longer they can stay there, up to a couple of weeks. Otherwise they would have to move here and stay in a bed in a room full of boxes. That wouldn't be the best start.

The matching organisation will stay in touch, and also somebody from the Salvation Army apparently will come around to meet us and the couple and check in on us every once in a while. Also, the city here has lots of resources for Ukrainian refugees on how to find work, how to learn the language, et cetera. We can tap into those resources as well.

The idea is that the stay lasts at maximum 3 months. We're also allowed to continue beyond that if both parties want that, but for us for now it feels good that going into this adventure there is an end in sight. For the Ukrainian couple, if at the 3 month mark they still haven't found their own living space or returned home to Ukraine (say, the war in Ukraine has ended and they feel they're safe to go home), then the matching organisation will help them find new hosts, too.

[chenda]

Thats great dutchgirl I hope it works out for you all.

[llorona]

You're a rock star! I hope this experience is enriching for everyone involved.

[DutchGirl]

I hope this experience is enriching for everyone, too.
For now I see it as an adventure and I hope it will be mostly positive like that.
Although, of course, the reason why they're here is heartbreaking and infuriating.

[mooretrees]

That's super cool and I'm sure fairly nerve racking. I'm impressed you're doing this, very generous of you two.

[DutchGirl]

So at work things have been rather tough. We've been understaffed since January or so, and every second week some other colleague caught Covid or a flu and was absent for ten days or so. So it's been too busy. One other thing is that in the last couple of years I've had two managers who, in different ways, were/are not supporting my colleagues and me. The first manager was already mentally signed out (he only needed to stay for 14 more months until retirement and he knew it!) - I was glad to see him retire. The current one is a scatterbrain who is nice and who has lofty goals but doesn't follow through and sometimes causes more unnecessary chaos because he just doesn't check the schedules or gets back to someone in time or... With both of these managers I've thought: you'd better not need their assistance.

I am definitely negative towards my current workplace. It's not my direct colleagues that I work with. It's not the day to day work. It's the direction that the upper management wants to take the organisation. It's the way that they have failed to attract nice colleagues for me to share the workload with. And, a bit, the way that upper management does not monitor for quality in middle management nor the HR department.

So I've been thinking that I should quit because of how cynical this workplace makes me. But maybe I'll wait just a litttttle bit longer, so that I can beef up my cash savings. Until the beginning of next year for example. And maybe by then the market has recovered which would make retiring seem a little bit more feasible. Ach en wee (which is a Dutch saying linked to the jewish oy vey). I'll quit whining now

The Ukrainians are now scheduled to arrive within a week. A few weeks ago their current host caught Covid; they all had to quarantine and weren't able to come to us. They should soon be able to get here by train. We now have prepared the rooms that they'll stay in. The rooms are functional now, not cozy, but they can live there and maybe it's even better if they get to decorate it to their liking. I'll keep you guys posted every once in a while. Oh, and if anyone in the Netherlands reading this would be interested in hiring a Ukrainian 30-something refugee who studied Economics in university, has experience working at a bank as a manager and speaks decent English - or a 30-something refugee who designed clothes and had her own (small) fashion company in Ukraine and speaks decent English - let me know.

That's it for now, see ya later.

[ertyu]

So I've been thinking that I should quit because of how cynical this workplace makes me. But maybe I'll wait just a litttttle bit longer, so that I can beef up my cash savings. Until the beginning of next year for example. And maybe by then the market has recovered which would make retiring seem a little bit more feasible. Ach en wee (which is a Dutch saying linked to the jewish [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey]oy vey[/url]). I'll quit whining now

Imo quit now or quit later is a false equivalence. Why not stay at this job for now but begin actively applying to other positions? This way, if something more attractive emerges, you can quit. If nothing more attractive emerges, you stay.

Good luck with your Ukrainians!

[disk_poet]

Awesome that you're letting folks stay at your place. A friend of mine did the same and it was definitely eye opening. Unfortunately my current apartment situation doesn't allow for that but I have set myself a goal to be able to.

Regarding quitting: Are you quitting for good (i.e. retiring) or thinking of getting a different job?

[DutchGirl]

The Ukrainian couple has arrived and they are nice folks. And we're finding ways to live together in a house of reasonable size.

As for my job, I am thinking of getting some type of different job, but I don't know yet what type of job. The reason to get a new job would be me developing more skills and having different types of interesting experiences. I had a reason to want to wait until the new year, but I forgot what it is. So maybe it was not a very important reason.

On Friday more details on the reorganisation will become known. I'm curious what Friday will bring.

[DutchGirl]

Friday: no new details on the reorganisation have arrived. Typical.

[DutchGirl]

The (first) details on the reorganisation came on Monday, with an apology for being late. The details caused an uproar among my colleagues and at first I also was swept away by their indignation and I was planning to look up how fast I could quit, but later I talked to my boyfriend and he calmed me down a bit.

This is possibly the worst part of this reorganisation: the part were you say goodbye to some colleagues and were the old structures are destroyed but new structures have not yet formed. Everything's uncertain. Who knows, maybe I'll like the new construction by say February next year. I must say that they are going to get rid of some managers who are very kind and very enthusiastic but also very chaotic and lazy.

So to quit now would probably be to quit just over this temporary (?) turmoil with no idea what my workdays will look like once things have calmed down again.

Still, I am going to talk to someone about a potential new job next week and I won't hesitate to take a new job if they've got something nice for me. And I'm continuing to look on several websites for job options.
I'd like to continue to work (parttime) for monetary reasons and because I want to try and do something good.

[rube]

I have been in the same situation. A couple of times actually. They "let go" some of my colleagues (who invented the phrase "let go", you simply fire some one, it is not as they are tied to your organization and you cut them loose....anyway). And indeed, I experienced the famous phases one go through emotionally. I think you are now in the comfortable position you can look at it from an observer viewpoint and try not to be too involved emotionally and just see if you stay or if you can find something better without being stressed too much or at all.

Besides, a change of environment might be good anyway, you are here already for quite some time if I remember correctly. Good luck.

[DutchGirl]

Yeah, I have even thought about getting myself fired. I've read about people manufacturing their own dismissal or volunteering to be let go instead of their colleagues (and getting some money in return for being fired). But unfortunately, in this case and with this reorganisation they are not letting the bottom rung of workers go, just managers. So I can only quit and not get myself fired.

Yes, I've worked at this place for over ten years now. I still like the day to day work, I do not like the politics and pressure from above, though.

[herp]

Sorry to hear about the reorganization, DutchGirl. I've been in those situations (like just about any other office worker, I think) and it's not fun to bear the uncertainty.

Was any timeframe given for when the new structures will be in place? Perhaps there's a chance that the workplace environment will improve if chaotic and lazy managers get fired.

On the other hand, working at the same place for over a decade is a long time.