Work total burn out, coping mechanism is on: furniture building mode | Networking and public speaking | Spring is coming!
March turned out to be one of those months where one things quietly aligned and other started to boil and stirring: I published February already but didn't send it to email (I don't want to spam you and test your loyalty to my newsletters), but you can read it here: https://bobkova.online/2025-in-review-february/
It was a month of working mostly remote and speaking at a conference that, unexpectedly, became a turning point. After my talk, I received such a strong and thoughtful response that later in the year I was invited to join the conference committee. That alone felt incredibly rewarding. On top of that, I was also invited to deliver a lecture for Genworth Financial at their risk management summit later this year. By the time I am writing that review both events are happened already and it just so fascinating to see the power of the networking events and community.
Here are out local (well... "local" is the Virginian which the state closest to capital of the USA) networking event which I highly recommend you to pin if you are in the USA:
RVA Tech has 6 major events every year and the greatest benefits from those events is networking before and after the event and the annual social network coverage of the sponsors. I know that no any events or conferences do that.
known
AI Ready RVA has many small events through the year but they are very niche and ideal for networking:
Public speaking-wise, March was a real success. It was deeply satisfying to clearly see what I can do well and where my strength really is. At the same time, it highlighted something important: I still don’t fully operate in the teaching and lecturing space in the way I want to — and that realization matters. I really want to dive again into structured classes study where I design classes and curriculum.
Outside of my community work and work work, spring finally arrived. The grass came out, and everyone felt it immediately — especially the chickens and the goats. Their happiness is very visible when nature wakes up.
We did a very important and long wanted to do thing with my son, we went to the Commonwealth of Virginia Library and investigated the history of our land and after spent 3 days to do a "gold digging" 😂 Okay, just spent a few hours with metal detector and found 3 200-year-old nails and one metal rusty something, but it was so fun and bonding time!
We also continued moving forward with the coop build. However, we couldn’t move even part of animals yet, not even close to that! Because they must be relocated all at once. If you remember my “outer layer of protection” logic — goats are supposed to be the first layer, protecting everyone else. That means they have to move all at once and goats should move first, otherwise the system will not work.
I started to mapping the local plants making list and portfolio of all significant trees and just realized how many invasive plants do we have!
Unfortunately, we also lost another duck to a fox attack.
And I want to be very clear about this: I never blame foxes, raccoons, or any wild animals for killing poultry or livestock. Humans have brains and opposable thumbs let's start with that. Wild animals follow instinct. If your defenses fail, that responsibility is on you - not them. Foxes have baby fox in spring, how you can blame her to wanting to bring to her offspring, tasty chicken or duck?
In this case, it was 100% my mistake. I didn’t realize that even with two or three layers of fencing and narrow one-inch cage mesh, a fox can still lure a duck close enough to the edge of the cage and kill it through the mesh. That was a hard lesson. But I planned and implemented big improvement to prevent the next ambush. So I added mesh wire directly to the cage and moved the ducks into a different, more secure enclosure. To jump ahead I can tell you that it was last bird to be lost because of fox - until the end of the year, we didn't have any other victims (one for owl, but not even one for land predators)
What worried me even more was our barn cats who might try to fight the fox again. That made one thing very clear to me: I will do anything necessary to protect the cats so they never feel they need to protect ducks or chickens.
Another lesson learn: There is always something you can improve — but only if you have observation data. Without cameras, temperature, screenshots, motion detection... without understanding what actually happened, without investigating after an incident, you will never know what to change or how to prevent it next time. Data matters, even on a farm.
The March ended with some kind of exhaustion from work, consistent and total burn out and no any understanding of what to do with that. I knew I didn't want to continue to work for 8-10 hours per day only knowing that I need to work more, because working those 8-10 hours you doing nothing for your KPIs and it will be reflected on your salary. Maybe it's okay in your 20s but definitely not in your 50s.
The March was the turning point when I started writing down my work preferences and... play chess... a lot! Playing chess helping me to find new neuronal pathway to think outside of the box. It's my meditation I would say.
When I am stressed from work and burned out, I am collecting relevant memes, building furniture and playing chess 😂😂😂 These are 3 unmistakable signs
But as a result of that burn out, I started the extended kitchen project and made the most challenge out of it: I bought in Lowe's and Home Depot, broken unfinished kitchen cabinets ($6 or $12 for one - those were my records!), fixed them and finished them and resolved the Tetris puzzle to build symmetrical kitchen group from all different sizes and forms. Unfinished cabinets required a lot of painting, sanding and finishing work, so it's not that easy as it seems. Here is my March progress on that:
Here is my previous kitchen extension project from the previous house:
Elena Bobkova
It was pretty much as this one, but before it was a WAY easier because I had more time and I had more resources - I wasn't buying broken cabinets like now, but bought all planned and needed sizes of cabinets and fixtures at once.
