This is what I wrote in 2024 at the end of December as my resolution for the new 2025:
Looking back on 2024, and especially on January and December of 2024, I decided that in 2025 I am setting clear work boundaries: no more work overload, no matter what.
I won’t accept back-to-back travel or work beyond 40 hours a week. My focus will be on the things that recharge me and give me energy—creative work, writing, training and hiring new talent, speaking at conferences, and teaching. These are my priorities, and I’ll try to ensure my schedule reflects that. By saying "no" to unnecessary demands, I can focus on what truly matters for me and what fuels my motivation, passion, and my energy.
Do you want to see if I did it... like at all? At least on 5%? Keep reading and you will know! 🌝 I will be writing a series of posts about each month and my reflections about it and how it went. Mostly for myself to read next year, to see where I failed and where I progressed and where I just simply enjoyed the life...
I will be happy to hear what you think about that style of my blog posts!
January 2025:
Emergency at the farm. Business trips. Energy and heat sources disaster at home
In previous episodes on the farm:
we thought we had everything sorted out with chickens, ducks, goats, and several chickens on quarantine in the warm garage, chicks in the brooding boxes, fox ambushed ducks... Then an unusual freezing temperature hit Virginia, and water froze in the garden hose like forever. But we got used to filling the hot tap water every morning and night to de-ice and refill water for all farm animals, give all ill chickens medications (oregano oil and vitamins mostly).
We had a few problems we weren't ready for (in Virginia, you are not expecting freezing weather for longer than 3 days and especially with snow):
the firewood would take ages to make with only a short saw and two axes, so we didn't have time and were out of firewood by January when the snowstorm hit and covered all the woods, making it impossible.
We stupidly believed the internet that chickens are good without heat in winter (said by people who never used thermometers in the coop, so it wasn’t any data-based or real-case-based information). The chickens temperature resistance depends on breed, age, health condition, coop design, weather and humidity, bedding, food and other 500 individual factors.
We lost 5 chickens who were literally frozen to death in the coop at night. Others were sick with bronchitis (yes, chickens can have it!) and stopped laying in mid-December. So, literally before New Year’s Eve, we insulated the small coop outer walls and it started to look like a homeless people’s tent. We installed red lamps inside and started spending A LOT of electricity trying to save a few not sick chickens and other farm animals.
On the first of January, when the new Richmond mayor stepped into his role, the water treatment plant went out and the entire Richmond metropolitan area was without water. I was so impressed by him, his charisma, and his great emergency management skills, and later in 2025 I got a chance to personally meet him and tell him that. Anyway, we were so relieved that we had our own well, and it got broken literally the next day when the water treatment plant went off.
Right the next day after that, electrical power outages started almost every day. We didn't have a generator and barely managed to find one at a time when the demand was the highest ever!
And as a cherry on top, the gas in the tank ran out, and the company that should refill it couldn't come earlier than the end of January because everyone was out of gas earlier, and the weather conditions and location put us at the end of the line for refill.
Sooo, in the situation where we had to boil hot water for all farm animals twice per day, before that we at least could just get the hot tap water! And get hot meals for them because we couldn't properly heat up the coop on days without electricity, the house was cold as hell and could only be heated by the fire stove (we were out of seasoned firewood)... I had to go to Texas on a very important business trip and left my full-time-working husband and full-time-study son at home to manage all that disaster on their own.
My schedule for January looked like this:
First week - all possible energy sources disaster happened on the farm adding to the winter storm, snow, ice storm and freezing weather;
Second week of January — business trip to Texas;
3rd week — full of remote audits at home;
4th — business trip to Texas again.
Yes, I started the year with a very important business trip with the DNV ICT team from Europe and... was the only one who could make it to Texas! Me and the European team. The snowstorm across the entire USA led to cancellation of all flights. And our Texas HQ office was closed for the entire week.
We were trapped in the hotel for the entire week with the European team and spent time working at the hotel restaurant. I was really enjoying warm temperatures in the hotel room, running hot water, and electricity without needing to wake up at 5am to somehow make water for farm animals, knowing what a disaster they had at home.
The funny part of the remote work - any disaster you have at your home locations are unknown for the main office. So, you kinda have to justify everything or... keep working. But if you travel to the main office and THEY have the weather emergency, they simply stay at home and the office is locked for safety reasons 😂
I joined the farm disaster recovery team in the 3rd week of January, barely managing to sleep while doing full-time audits, a full-time job on top of that (US auditors who were reporting to me had a lot of issues with flight cancellations, and it was honestly... very challenging to spin all plates). Our well finally was fixed with replaced the pump, so we could strikeout one of the disaster with buying conteners of water for all farm animals.
On top of that, I had a long-booked webinar for a huge online community (Austin Agile) and was speaking for them on the AI and security topic at the end of January:
Reading: I finished only one book, but it was massive! Fifth book of Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. I haven't been disappointed in the series and am sooo looking forward to the next one:
Because of intensive travel months, I finished 3 full structured courses on animal health, anatomy, and biochemistry, and one new course (in addition to the previous 8 haha) for AI legislation development. Self-study is my only way to fight travel anxiety, which always comes with the feeling that I am wasting my time on the road. And I was really disappointed with myself for not being able to move further in any of my personal projects like writing books, blogging, or applying for a few conferences I really wanted to attend in the fall.
New habits:
The most important new habits - I started write down about my each day in the 5 year book and it's sooo interesting to read it now! I started review all screenshots and photos taken at the end of the month and write down the month reflections. That was probably one of the life changing habits and I did it because of my grandfather - you can read this pinned post with him on the old restored with AI picture where he is 1 year old only
This is how my January flew by in the blink of an eye. Phew! Let's see what February brought and if it was at least a bit easier haha 😆
P.S.: This is my absolute favorite format of blogging which I started to write in December of 2004 (how about that!). It's a mix of year/ month/ week reviews and self reflections, but also something to share with you.
