Home Office TV

Okay, good morning. Welcome to another episode of Home Office TV. Today we have the wonderful Colleen Noonan.

And Colleen, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. What's up?

To our three viewers? Yeah, I am Colleen. I've been at Cloudflare since October 2018.

And I'm a manager of the core SRE team, which is about nine people between Austin, Kirkland, Washington, and San Francisco.

Great. And so you're coming up on two years.

Congratulations. We started at about the same time, actually. I remember when you came in, actually, like, because I have kind of a good memory.

So I started because I had just started. And we had that fun office that we used to go to every day.

I know. I just stopped by over the weekend. And Nicole told me there were Cloudflare branded masks.

And I wanted my Cloudflare fleece from the first all company retreat.

Oh, no, why is my zoom acting up?

Colleen, are you still there? Okay, so I'm having problems with Comcast.

And my zoom screen froze. So I'm wondering what I can do to fix it.

Hmm. Let's see here.

Oh, Comcast, why do you plague me?

Okay, I'm gonna try to change my Wi Fi settings and see if they work.

Maybe it was Colleen's Wi Fi.

Well, I'm not sure if I'm even on right now.

But I'm hoping that we get it fixed. Hoping Colleen comes back.

Hopefully, she'll be back here soon. Okay, she's back.

My Internet connection sometimes doesn't work very well. So I don't know if that was yours or mine.

Hi, Colleen.

I think you're on mute. The the Internet went down just in time. Okay. It happens to me sometimes I actually like I'm getting the messages from the Cloudflare TV.

I just kept talking. I'm like, Okay, now Colleen's frozen. Okay, so everybody went on that journey with us.

So where, where did I leave off?

We were talking about you popped in at the office. How was that to go in and see what used to be?

Like, how's it been going for you working from home?

Well, the office, it made me a little sad because I just had memories of bumping into people in the stairwell or it was just completely, completely empty, as you would imagine.

And all the plants are a little sad on people's desks.

But in general, the pandemic has been a journey. Maybe that's true for for everybody.

But there's definitely been some highs and lows. And sometimes the lows I think are pretty low, but then they keep getting higher.

Like, I ended up having big plans for camping and adventures this year, but a lot of those were canceled due to or it just didn't feel safe to to go there.

Like, I ended up getting winning the lottery for this Mount Rainier hike that I've wanted to do for years.

But it just felt kind of unsafe to, like, either drive to the state of Washington or do I fly?

And, you know, some of the some of the anxiety around that.

And then I had this other thought that if if I go and something happens, am I taking medical resources that would be better used for the people who live there?

Yeah.

So my boyfriend, who I'm currently living with, is Canadian, and he has this idea of, like, being a good citizen and he's taking it very seriously.

And, you know, Canada's numbers compared to the U .S.

are are quite a bit more impressive than than here in the U.S.

Yeah, exactly. We're number one. COVID deaths. Yeah, exactly.

But one thing I've tried because there was a bit of, you know, happy hours that were going on pretty often, you know, just as a way to socialize either with friends outside of work or with the teams within work.

And it just I noticed I was having probably too many glasses of wine then and felt healthy.

So just about a month ago, I decided to take 30 days off.

And today's my 30th day. And I'll tell you, I didn't realize how it was affecting my mood.

I feel so much lighter, happier, less anxiety.

I know they tell you all those things. Sure. But it really has felt like so much better.

So I'm pretty happy about that. That's awesome. Are you going to continue, like, taking a break just because you've noticed, like, the positive uptick?

Are you? I really debated about that because today is the last day of the 30th.

I was like, do I do I celebrate and have a glass of wine or do I just keep going?

Like, now that I'm also more aware of its effects, like, shouldn't I be more conscious?

But I think the way alcohol is a complicated thing, like, I have been doing reading about it, and that it's the only substance you kind of have to have, like, a good reason not to partake in it.

Whereas our culture, our culture, like, heavily promotes it.

It's heavily promoted. It's not just, like, promoted, it's expected.

And it's like, if you're not, if you're not choosing to imbibe, it's more like, well, what's wrong with you that you don't want this culturally appropriate, you know, mind numbing chemical that we're all using, you know what I mean, to get through our day to day drudgery, you know?

It's a, you know, it's, it's like a drug of the masses, kind of like TV, kind of like we wouldn't have the culture that we have if we weren't all, you know, anything like drinking coffee, America's number one psychoactive drug, which I'm drinking right now.

It's my, my morning psychoactive drug, you know, it's not my, my nighttime one.

But yeah, alcohol is a depressant, which we know.

So yeah, speaking of your journey, so I just want to give some of our three viewers a little bit of background.

You have gone through a really serious rehab from a serious car accident last September.

Right? Yeah, it was, it was so crazy. It's still, I just had the anniversary of September 13.

This year is the year anniversary. And I really had some, some thoughts about it.

Because, you know, after the accident, I was just reeling from just my body needing to heal and like all the different injuries I had and things and all the different doctor's appointments.

So it really wasn't until this year where I was able to feel the sense of just intense, like, gratitude and also fear that just like half an inch more, and it could have been on my spinal column, and I could have been paralyzed or, or worse, like this sense of like, anything can happen.

And, and it can be really freaky to think. Yeah, yeah. So there's the short and long of the situation was I was on vacation in Colorado.

I wanted to go see the Rocky, Rocky Mountains and a and a drunk driver hit me from behind at about 100 miles an hour.

And so the car flipped a couple times.

And that driver died on during the impact. And I, I don't have any memory from just looking down at my at my phone saying, Oh, I got 10 minutes to my hotel.

And that's all I remember.

So pretty freaky, pretty freaky, for sure. And it's even odd to think about that, that man, who was driving, you know, especially with me taking 30 days off of alcohol.

And I was like, Oh, man, yeah, there's probably been times where, where we've all if we've ever drank alcohol, we've probably occasionally made choices about getting behind a wheel, when maybe it wasn't the best thing or best idea.

So it really, you know, makes me think about myself and my previous actions.

And yeah, just a lot of gratitude to you know, and like I was saying before, I think before we were cut off that had all these plans for this year, because I'm like, I'm healthy now.

And life is short. I almost died. I'm gonna do stuff.

And then it's all on. Oh, not gonna do stuff. Oh, yeah, it's great. Oh, and then just you, we can hear you.

So even just getting care, like you said, you were, you know, you're making progress with your physical therapy, and we had the back to office life, you know what I mean, going pretty well.

And then suddenly, you get that like rug pulled out from under us, you know, and you can't go to your appointments and stuff anymore.

And it's like, you have to start all over a whole new, you know, like a whole new, like rehab of working at home.

I think working at home is I mean, it's it has so many challenges.

How do you decide when you're gonna start and end your day?

Do you find yourself being able to delineate? Like, no, I mean, because you're on the core SR core SRE team, you know, and it's a, you know, it's a really crucial, you know, piece of Cloudflares internal, you know, infrastructure.

So like, how do you know when to be done with work for the day? That's, that's a really good question.

And it's a difficult one, because, you know, sometimes the zoom calls, you know, as much as I love this one, but sometimes like back to back, they can be exhausting.

So sometimes you're just done and fatigued.

And sometimes you that the end is not clear on the day, because you're like, Oh, Singapore is on now I've been meaning to talk to them or get to know them better.

They've got a new team member, you know, just the days just blur. And, and for my team, they it's the same way, like as a as a good manager, I want people to have like a work life balance, even if I'm not a great example, I try to say that, but then some people just focus better, like in the middle of the night, or some people have childcare duties during the day, that weren't part of their day to day before.

So I really just try to tell people to take the time they need for PTO and, and try to have balance.

And so I guess I'm trying to do a bit of that too. Yeah, it's tricky.

Yeah, I've also in the last week or so I've been trying to, you know, trying to do meditation, it's not something I'm like super practiced at, but I just think maybe it can give a little more focus and presence to, to, to the day and to every moment.

You know, it's only like day six or something. Yeah, so the pandemic's been, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, six days of meditation is better than the no days of meditation.

Like the Buddha would say, you know what I mean? Like just a few minutes, like spent in like true contemplation, you know, of the way beyond the way is, you know, more valuable than like a lifetime of other things.

You know, sometimes I'll read some of the Buddha's words and I'll think, okay, I just need somewhere before I die, I need like one true hour of contemplation.

But I know that that's not the way, you know, I think a lot of, we have all these opportunities for kind of starting new daily practices or new, new, you know, like new pathways.

Cause it's like, it's like, okay, well what's my routine?

Like before my routine was wake up at the last possible minute, you know, take a shower, put on some clothes, you know, run out the door, go to the office, be there all day, you know, be engaged with people.

And it was fun because it was, you know, so many fun people.

And like I was sitting at the front desk and I got to see everybody come through and check in everybody's guests.

And it was really interactive.

And it's like to figure out what the good routine is, you know, for me to do my job at home, you know, it's still kind of a challenge.

I started doing a morning practice at some point during the pandemic.

Some of my friends who've been to India together started doing like a morning singing practice on zoom and I'm often late cause they do it at like 10 AM in Minneapolis, but that's still 8 AM here.

Sometimes, you know, I'm not on time, but just, just knowing that even part of it is part of my day, like that because I was in a kind of a deep funk during part of the show before, like, it's almost like we're going through a shadow, like a collective shadow, like as Americans and in the world where a lot of stuff that maybe has been ignored or we're not focusing on or like, you know, dark things that need to be cleared out, like are coming to the surface and we have to look at them.

And, and, you know, on a personal level too, like you were just describing, you know, like giving up drinking for 30 days and like, you know, thinking about that relationship that maybe you have with that dangerous, potentially dangerous chemical, you know, that severely impacted literally, you know what I mean?

Your existence, you know? So it's like, we have that more time in a way to, cause we're not, there's no external distractions, not as many, you know, it's like we're having dinner parties or going out, you know, to dinner or to clubs or to bars or to sporting events or to movies or anywhere.

We have so much more time with ourselves, you know, to pass through and like get to know ourselves better.

So congratulations on starting a meditation practice. Oh, thank you.

Yeah. It's, it's been good, but you're so right though. You know, while it's easy to think about the things that we don't have, you know, I had a moment last week or something where I was like, I can just spend time drawing.

Like I really haven't had a weekend where I can just fool around and draw because I don't have like, you know, two brunches to go to plus seeing a movie and meeting friends for drinks.

And there's, I miss all that, but it's also like a lot of this idle time that I really haven't had since I lived in my parents' house, like in high school.

So.

So what do you like to draw? Well, I used to take it all pretty seriously. Like take, take art pretty seriously.

So I'm, I'm trying to, I don't know if I have it here.

Do you have something to show us? I don't know where I put it. I think I put it here.

Yeah. It's not going to be, like I said, I was just playing around and there's this practice called contour drawing where you kind of look at the mirror.

You don't even look at yourself. And then you see what comes of that. Oh, I think it's right here.

Yeah. I also have like four journals. That's exciting. This is pretty bad, but it's me looking in the mirror.

Let's see. Oh. So they're meant to be just like not looking at the paper and just, just playing around with the shape of things.

And, you know, sometimes, like I said, I took art pretty seriously. So I, I liked the idea of playing now, now the years later, just take it, take it easy, just enjoy it for what it is.

And so for that reason, contour drawings or photography seem a little more relaxed for me.

I was doing a lot of drawing, but also a sculpture for a while.

And yeah, I, it's just been fun to play and have all this extra, you know, all this extra time.

It's funny though, because a lot of it, a lot of time is just like you said before, taken up with the Internet in one way or another.

My madness. Yep. Yep. So have you been connecting with friends via like zoom and I don't think your boyfriend would be proud of my level of citizenship necessarily.

You know, I don't know. I wear my mask. I've been wearing a mask since March.

I went home to Minnesota to see family during this time when I, I had a sub letter in my old place and I had my new place.

And so I went home, I saw my mom and my sister and my nephews almost killed my sister.

God bless her. I'm definitely not enlightened, you know, like just, you know, like, you know, 72 hours with my family, you know, and I'm like a screeching, you know, crazy person or like, you know, and, and like the full moon's not an excuse to my family, even though that it was the full moon when I got mad at my sister, but that's not an excuse in my family.

You can't even say that it was the full moon. That's like not a thing.

But, um, you know, I, I have, I have a good friend who's in Berkeley. And so like, we'll hang out sometimes.

Like he helped me with my moving. Um, and now that I have an outdoor patio or like, um, I'm going to have some friends for my birthday, um, October 13th, which I actually have a segment on my birthday, October 13th, and we're going to have a little outdoor, like I'll make dinner, but, you know, cause I do have friends who are really still, you know, extraordinarily cautious, um, which people, you know, I totally understand, but we can sit outside, you know, so that'll be really lovely.

Um, for a while though, I really wasn't, you know, I wasn't seeing friends, nor was I even going outside hardly at all.

Cause I didn't like the neighborhood. I mean, it wouldn't even go out into the fresh air, you know, when it was fresher.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm kind of in the same boat and it's, it's, it's especially hard when there is the wildfires and you, you can't get fresh air even if you wanted it.

So, um, yeah, it's figuring out, I guess, you know, some people say the amount of risk you, you feel okay with, but I don't know if that's, I guess, figuring out the comfort zone and the comfort zone of, uh, the folks around you.

Yeah. I've had a couple of tests, um, just, I, I had one before I traveled to home cause my sister is a doctor and she wanted to make sure that I wasn't bringing anything weird in.

Cause then she can't go to her, her job, you know, and she has five kids, um, that she's distance teaching.

She's she, my little sister adopted five children and, and now she's, they're like distance learning, all of them.

And they're ages like seven to 17.

And, uh, it's quite a, it's quite a, quite a family and three dogs.

Um, but I had to get tested before I could go there. And I took a plane. I wore my mask.

I flew with Delta. It was very clean. Like, um, they, they hand out Purell during the thing and they make sure everybody wears their mask and they're recirculating and cleaning the air every two minutes on the cabin.

Um, so, you know, like I felt pretty, pretty okay about it.

Um, yeah, I don't want to get COVID that's for sure.

You know, like it's scary, you know, like we're still finding out what the long-term effects are on people who've gotten it, you know, there's these stories.

It was like, I got COVID in March, you know, and it's September. Right.

Right. And if we lose our affordable care act protections for, um, you know, preexisting conditions, you know, how is that going to affect people's access to healthcare?

You know, so obviously we're in a really, you know, tumultuous and important time right now, where I think we really need, um, you know, some kind of a miraculous voter turnout.

Yeah. I know. Are you going to watch the debate tonight?

I have time. Um, like just in general, like when, when the democratic debates were on, like, I don't always like the way the moderators don't give people like enough time to answer the questions or the way that, you know, the questions are slanted.

Um, so for me, like my, my decision is certainly not undecided.

So, you know, like, and then to like be able to stomach, like watching people like lie, you know, like lie directly, you know, I just, I have a hard time.

I don't know. Are you going to watch it? I did, uh, when it was Hillary and Trump, uh, four years ago.

Um, so I kind of assumed I would just to like, keep up with things.

Huh? Is this, is this the first one? Yes, it is. Yeah. It's tonight, but the, yeah, the moderator is from Fox news, so it might be biased as you said.

And, you know, there is already enough news to like more than enough news to deal with on a day to day basis.

So maybe you're right for best, like mental, emotional care.

Yeah. Yeah. I kind of want to see what Sarah Cooper has to say about it afterwards.

Like she's the main person that I watch when I want to hear what did Trump say?

I'll just like, look up, you know what I mean? Like Sarah Cooper is like satire and cause she's hilarious.

I like to laugh. Like that's, that's how I've been getting through the pandemic.

Um, have you found Oh, go ahead. I'm interviewing you.

You can interview me. What are you going to ask? Oh, have you found any good like movies or TV shows?

I've been streaming. Um, I've actually been streaming the big bang theory on HBO max because, um, now, now usually like it offends me in some way because like, it's, you know, there's like these, like, there's kind of a lot of like interpersonal bullying that happens on this show that I think is really kind of like triggers me.

Cause I'm like, why are you guys being so mean to Stuart?

Like you guys were all nerds, you know, like I don't like watching, you know, like, or like when every plot device has to do with like, we have to make up a lie in order to whatever.

But I think I'm watching it cause there's just so darn many of them, you know?

So it's like, it's a really good, like kind of time suck.

Um, and it reminds me of my dad cause my dad loved that show and you know, like he he's left our, our fine earth.

And, um, so what else have been watching?

I love Schitt's Creek, you know, as I was so excited to see them win all the Emmys cause I just love, I love that show.

I think it's so well written.

Daniel Levy like cracks me up. Um, we actually, we got, we ran into that cast from best in show in San Francisco in the Castro, the night of their 28 year best in show reunion.

Mike and I were sitting out, he was playing his ukulele and we were sitting out in front of this little restaurant and the whole cast started coming out like Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara.

And my friend Mike was getting them to like sign his ukulele.

And so it was so funny. Um, I love those actors.

What about you? Have you been watching any screens? Oh, I definitely watched that, uh, Tiger King.

Oh my God. I watched that too. Yeah, it was, it was a piece of, uh, I think the timing of coming out right at the beginning of the pandemic just made it, uh, everybody watch it.

And I don't know if I normally would have checked it out.

Um, but other than that, I found that I've, uh, I probably have gone into like darker shows more than, uh, like that's where my subconscious seems to be drawn to until recently where I'm like, uh, got to stop it with the true crime.

I'm like my conscious self tuned in and it's like, no, no, no, no more.

But I, uh, watched like, um, the Waco show, anything about cults? Oh, I guess I'm still kind of hooked on the vow about that NXIVM cult.

Yeah. I, I, I, um, now I didn't, I haven't seen that, but I, I read a bunch of information about that a couple of years ago when like, when it blew up and the guy was getting arrested.

And so I was just like, I mean, it's very, it's very, uh, it's very scary. We have a, like a scary, I was watching Westworld, uh, for the first two seasons, but then I was having these violent dreams and I was like, I don't want to have scary, violent dreams.

You know, I actually like, usually if I'm watching a show and the violent part comes on, I'll mute it.

So I don't have to hear it. And like, literally cover my eyes.

I have liked Umbrella Academy. That's one that kind of, uh, has enough violence for people who are into that, but it's really just a superhero show.

Um, my boyfriend has a 13 year old son, so he's here sometime and it kind of appeals to all of us.

Um, yes, I think I, yeah, I used to collect comics when I was in high school and later in college.

So it has a little bit of this appeal to me.

Um, I, I used to collect a Sandman. I don't know if you ever were into comics, but I think it's the artist art that I always really liked because I like drawing as well.

That, uh, uh, that, that has had some appeal for me. Oh, and one thing I wanted to show off on Cloudflare TV in the last two minutes is I bought a painting during the pandemic.

I put it above my desk. Can you see it? Wow. Kind of rainbow.

That is psychedelic. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. It's, um, it's just, you know, whereas everything behind me is like a plain guest room or something.

Yeah. I like that. I like that. That's, uh, I'm actually, I was going to say I've been making paintings.

I don't do drawing, but I'll show, I'll show off one of my ones on Cloudflare TV.

I've been making paintings. That looks really cool. Is that fun?

Yeah. Yeah. Is that watercolor? Watercolor. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. Oh, that looks, that looks really cool. Could use that as a background.

It's really fun. Yeah. Oh, that'd be fun. Um, if maybe we could do an online paint night, I was, I was going to organize that for, oh, we have one, we have one minute left, so I'm going to wrap us up, but, um, I'm in for it.

Yeah. Um, it was so nice that you could join us today.

I really, you know, in our last, uh, one minute, just want to say like, thank you so much.

And I really hope that, you know, this experience like has, you know, is, is movie trending positive, you know, in your, I heard what you're saying about those lows and you're like, how much lower is this low?

And it'd be like, I swear to God, like I'm, I'm in the ground, you know, trend towards, um, optimism.

Let's find out. Yeah. I hope so. I hope so. That's, that's the biggest thing.

It keeps you going. Well, thank you, Amy. And, uh, have a good rest of your week and a good, a good birthday.

If I don't see you before then. Thank you.

Have a really wonderful day. I'll see you later.