Lean in. More.
Alright folks it has been a solid minute since an update.
I can attribute this to a number of things—
...staffing & organizational changes at work
...industry events and travels (I managed to hit 9 states in less than 2 weeks.)
...receiving definitive proof that I’m not invincible (read as: 3 weeks of bronchitis)
Although I’ve been MIA since the launch, this blog hasn’t been MIA in my mind. I’ve just been busy leaning in.
Back in September, someone was fired the office. Most of the time, this isn’t a huge deal. But, I work in a small business. So when we lose a member of the team, it’s kind of big.
It was even more impactful given the timing of everything— we were one person down, one month before two very important events. The team quickly learned we’d been essentially one person down during her six-month tenure with the company. Nothing was done that needed to be done in preparation for these events.
Rather than sit and dwell in the awfulness that surrounded everything, the team banded together to get things done and I suddenly found myself with a new title, Project Manager. As PM, I immediately owned the end results for the upcoming events and ongoing operations projects.
Challenge accepted.
Suddenly, I went from someone sitting at the table watching and learning, to sitting at the table making things happen.
And so did the rest of the team. This is not about how I did all the things. My boss, the team, everyone during this time, we all leaned the fuck in.
During this time, I quickly realized that so much of what school does to prepare folks for the workforce isn’t all just academics or even social skills. (Though I think we all know the fine art of Smile-and-Nod is truly honed in discussion based classes.) Both undergrad and grad school have unique ways of instilling professional endurance. In grad school, there are no deadline extensions, and anything lower than 80% is failing but really anything lower than 90% is cause for concern and can impact your academic standing. The idea of self-care is discussed, but often only in theory as a neat idea.
Suddenly I found myself being thankful for dead-week and finals, because those sprints taught me how to shut down everything for two or three weeks to just get things done.
I know work-life balance is trendy, and taking time for you is totally necessary. But guys, sometimes it’s not feasible.
We can’t have a perfect balance of all the things that make up life all the time.
It’s about having the balance so when things are unbalanced, you can deal, and have other things take the backseat. But the idea often touted as a consistent balance of work and personal stuff, doesn’t seem feasible to me.
There are times in life when you have to have one focus, and the past few weeks has been one of those times for me. Even when I was on vacation (previously planned before the whirlwind organizational changes) I was checking my e-mail, connecting with clients, and generally making sure things were handled. Now that the events are done, key content is out, and general operations are starting to proceed as normal, so am I.
So I’m back, and like I said, I never forgot about the blog. I have some new and exciting ideas that I’m excited for. I’m especially thrilled because I finally came up with an actual name for the blog. The official launch for everything will be around mid to late-December. But between now and then, I’ll be popping in with some fun updates too.
Cheers,
Dez