Thread: A Personal Diary Entry

So here we are me, myself and any random readers I may have out there - hi! the last day of the long thanksgiving break here in america. A weekend full of football and family and dry, dull, boring stuff blah blah blah. I have some excitement coming up for the adrenaline junky in me - a Board meeting next weekend. Yes, they are over the weekend because the guy who ownsruns my company into the ground regularly, if not stopped by his management team, yes that guy, insists on having them over the weekend. Sunday actually. We fly out friday, spend saturday working the pre-board meeting politics and meetings before the meetings to talk about the coming meeting... then sunday is the 12 hour day of grueling meetings, half of which I get to attend. The other half I pretty much hang out in the 'war room' and talk about the drama happening next door and try not to laugh at the incompetency. It sounds cocky, yes, but if I can't admit that here, where can I admit it? Anyway - this quarter's board meeting is in the carribean. Yes, very luxurious, especially where we are staying, but also, not as fun as it sounds. I'll be talking business for basically 3 days straight, with a bunch of people more senior than me both in age and experience, although not always industry experience and I need to be awake and competent and with it by about 8am Sat and Sun mornings, which is a challenge for a guy who is most definitely a night owl and would prefer to spend his nights up late followed by sleeping in the next morning and waking up to brunch. I'll be forced to defer to people more senior than me, and generally keep my mouth shut so I can learn from them while somehow still being expected to add value. Such a frustrating situation to be in. Exciting, sure, and its the place where I feel the biggest challenge with my job, which is a good thing. Challenge means I'm learning. But yes, very frustrating. I wish I could enjoy the exotic island I'll be at more, but really only Sunday night will I get a chance to go out and ideally, celebrate with my compadres. And chances are it will be at a random hotel bar following a very long day, and my fellows will crash about when the entire bar is shutting down... late enough that I can't do much else but early enough that its not really a good night. Then I will fly home the next day, and the only benefit at that point is that there is a short break for a few weeks from the madness leading up to these meetings. Company christmas party almost always fun, especially for my eyes and my life will get back to 'normal' for at least a little while. Normal meaning back at my own house, on my own schedule, and at least being able to break away from the daily routine for some work travelingevents. Role playing will probably slow down a bit for me, at least with the lengths of time I can be online to write. But it should hopefully lead to some more excitement for these diary entries, at the very least. I already have a fun dinner in New York City planned that won't likely turn into a long night out... but there's a small chance it could, and at the very least I will make it a fun afternoon. Let's drill down into this dinner for a minute shall we? My job involves working with brokers for the most part, who are the in-betweens who set up most of the business and meetings between my company and my clientspartner companieswhatever you want to call them. Most of the time I use one broking company, who has a team of people mostly to support me. Isn't that nice! However sometimes we use a second broking company, who also has a small team that supports mostly me, but because we do less business with them, its clearly only once in a while. This dinner is with the second, smaller group of brokers. That means I can't tell the first broking team I'm in New York otherwise they will wonder why. Each of the broking teams don't know about the other, its sort of like having a wife and then a side girl - this dinner is with the side girl So my options for that afternoon involve 1 Doing my job properly and setting up more meetings for earlier in the day, either through the side-girl broking company, or directly with some of my clients on my own. Option 2 Saying fuck my proper job and going up to New York on my own earlier in the day, and enjoying some of the sights, sounds, smells and excitement of the city before meeting up with my dinner crowd. Option 3 Don't go to New York earlier than I have to, maybe do either something else or just my job at home before leaving. Chances are it will be something between option 1 and 2. A couple of afternoon meetings, or maybe a lunch meeting with a break to enjoy the city. The problem is I have to actually show up at the dinner, one that is sure to involve large quantities of alcohol on its own, and while I could probably get away with showing up already drunk, I don't think I actually have the stamina anymore to do that like I could have 10 years ago. Yay for getting old! Of course the other problem is I could still very easily get 'caught' if I did something less than above board. That's part of the problem with technology - people being able toallowed to search for my physical location using phones is just freaky to me, and kind of sucks. Of course you can turn location sharing off, but then when they 'cant find me' that looks shady as all hell, and of course it means I'm somewhere I don't want to be seen or known. Stuff like that has forced society to be more and more honest, yes, but I feel like it contributes to some of the craziness that is out there. People need time to themselves or doing stuff on their own that others don't know about so they can release their pent up frustrations. If everyone knows everything all the time, then eventually we have to blow off that steam somehow, and I feel like it ends up being worse than it would have been because it was forced into the closet with no release for so long. Not saying I want to live back in the 50's, but... yeah there are some aspects to it that would be nice. Anyway - frustrations of a man who feels trapped, you can see why little things like location sharing contribute to the problem. I'm going to end this post, since it turned into a huge digression about my job and a limited about of freedom I might be able to have. But another one is coming shortly with my main topic.