Technically leadership

 Wordle 291 5/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟩⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

This time I used the fourth guess to try three random as-yet-unknown letters. In hindsight I should only do that when I have something like *IGHT and a lot of possibilities for the missing letters. In this case I couldn't think of anything at all for that space. Wasting a guess got me the answer in less real time, but maybe not in fewer guesses. Maybe I shouldn't do this until after I've had my coffee. 

Yesterday I couldn't put it off any longer. I thought carefully about what I was going to say, made it as simple and specific as possible, came up with a suggestion to improve things but tried to keep things open-ended, and asked J. if it was a good time to talk about communication problems. It immediately got off to a bad start because it wasn't a good time because his kid was having some kind of health issue. Oh well. We connected again later. It wasn't fun. The call about communication problems, which I had said would take 5-10 minutes, actually took over 20. He made his suggestion before I could get mine out. When I made mine, he said he wasn't interested and expounded at length about how we had different opinions and his were better. For what it's worth he made it clear that he'd take a hierarchical view of things and follow any actual instructions, just not "advice". I admit his suggestion would help with some of the problems, so we went with it, I reassured him that I wasn't going to set word count limits or time limits on his speech, and I also privately resolved to be more assertive about cutting him off when he was holding forth orally. 

I thought it went badly. But 20 minutes later I called S. to follow up about a minor point I hadn't found a good way to bring up specifically, and she said that 10 minutes earlier J. had called her to apologize for it, so I guess the message got across implicitly? I underestimated my abilities in this area? It's unpleasant and difficult but doable if I try? I dunno.

Other than that, work yesterday was just trying to get some old stuff moving, and getting ready for the upcoming vacation. 

It was Tuesday, so the kid had swim class, so I got my jogging in then. 3 miles in 28 minutes 10 seconds, 3.12 miles in 30 minutes. Not a record or if it is, only by mere seconds. I'm not sure how bad I should feel about that. (One possible answer, of course, is not at all! I can't go on improving it linearly forever, and any exercise at all is good compared to 3 months ago and amazing compared to one year ago!) I didn't have the time to go for 40 minutes, but I also didn't have the stamina. Maybe I could have handled another minute or two but I really felt like I would have collapsed in less than 10. 

Dinner was leftovers. Has to be easy on Tuesdays and want to use stuff up. 

After the kid was in bed there were two overlapping school-related meetings. T. was involved in the one about teacher appreciation week events. I attended one about Earth Day events, but didn't have much to say since there was a previous meeting I hadn't known about and I won't be available on Earth Day itself. I guess I could make posters to help if they asked or something? People are actually accomplishing stuff, and I'm trying to help, but I'm not sure how much it matters...