Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

Spent the better part of this past week preparing for the government shutdown that almost but didn’t quite happen at the last minute. The good part of the temporary funding extension is that it goes past the time frame for my next tranche of training in late February/early March, so I’ll be able to plan for that to happen on time. The bad part is that we’ll get to do the shutdown dance again in March when I return from training. It was also good trial-by-fire for my backup at work, who hadn’t been through one of these in the role of fiscal attorney before. But hey, we’re through it, and now I can start leave, albeit a day later than planned (I had Friday off, but The Hill had other plans; the leave will roll over to next year).

The training went really well, aside from a cold (or maybe covid?) that someone brought with them, post-Thanksgiving. No closed-circuit TV to the rooms at the facility like there is at my first agency’s training center, so it was show up or miss out. Lots of masking, but the second week drug on with the cold.

But, the whole experience was really, really good. First week was like ‘federal manager boot camp’, with lots of exercises designed to break down emotional/vulnerability barriers with a small team, then the second went into shorter, more applied courses. I took the negotiating class and the difficult conversations workshop. The latter was repetitive of much of the rest of the material, so I could’ve done something else, but it was still good reinforcement of the other materials.

Two more weeks in late February/early March. Difficult part will be keeping up with the reading in the interim, and keeping some momentum to change things at work, both personally and for the office.

I was semi-hopeful that they had a deal to extend funds, but that apparently blew up when some of the majority party balked at doing their basic constitutional duty to fund the government. A shame, because the original date was beyond my training dates, so I could’ve booked the travel and not had to worry about rescheduling if there’s a lapse at that point. Meh.