Category Archives: Work

Work this week and next has taken on a new sense of urgency as everyone prepares to go away for the holidays.  My company officially closes for the year on Friday, December 21st at 2PM an will not reopen until January 2nd.

This is an unofficial perk that my employer has provided each year since I joined the firm and one that I enjoy.  However, to off-set the time out and away the workload becomes insane.

Since I work from home, most of my meetings come in the form of calls.  Today I did something I rarely do – I had two phone calls at the same time; careful use of the mute button is essential in this situation. I think I would have gotten away with it too had I not inadvertently taken the wrong phone off mute and responded. While my answer was very intuitive it had absolutely nothing to do with the PR call and left the web-strategy team on the other call scratching their heads wondering why I was not responding.  B-U-S-T-E-D   

While I do not expect any sympathy I have to admit that after being away from the office for more than two weeks, I am absolutely buried with work.  Everything has piled up in my absence and deadlines are hitting fast and furious.

I’ll use the memories of Brazil to motivate me and dream about my next trip to distract me from my hum-drum routine.  Watch for posts for the next few days about my time in Florianopolis and Sao Paulo Brazil.

BTW – thank you for visiting my blog both while I was away and now that I’m back home again.

My firm has made a concerted effort to go paperless both to be more environmentally friendly as well as to save costs.  Many wholeheartedly embrace this but clearly this colleague finds the policy disconcerting. I wonder if the A&E show Hoarders would consider coming to this office. One can only imagine what their home looks like.

I don’t comment much about my work because as much as I enjoy my job, this blog is an opportunity for me to escape that part of my life.  However, this spring I was part of a small team to organize a program for senior executives that was hosted here in Boston.  Fortunately, the nine months of planning and countless meetings paid off since the program was a great success.

The event concluded with our keynote presenter, Bill Clinton.  Because of my role, I interacted quite a bit with the Secret Service and had the chance to meet Clinton.  Its mostly for that reason, I wanted to show off share this picture of me with Bill Clinton. I actually dislike the photo. I think I look uncomfortable, but in fact I was just exhausted.

Below are a few more photos from the program including a picture of the Boston Public Library where we hosted a dinner / cocktail reception.  If you are looking for a restful oasis in the middle of Back Bay the Italian courtyard which you see lit up in one of the photos is a perfect sanctuary to relax, have a coffee with a friend or just think.

It is Thursday afternoon and after tomorrow I will be out of the office for an entire week.

I can hardly wait to turn on my email out of office message and turn off my computer.  It has been a very long month and I’m ready to let go and relax for more than 48 hours.

Do  you have any plans for the coming weekend? Do tell.

I’m back off to Gotham this morning for a quick day trip to NYC. The purpose is to get training on a tool our firm is piloting that will help me with our SEO strategy (search engine optimization).  Essentially this tool will help me discern how people are searching for subject matter that is important to them so I can ensure our web pages achieve higher rankings and therefore more web traffic. It sounds interesting, but I’ll reserve judgement until after I’ve been trained and have used it.

I wish I could leverage this sort of thing for my blog. I’ve been typing away for the past few years quite content in my own little internet bubble, but it amazes me how little I really know about how to leverage my site. I may have to make a mental note to look into seeing if WordPress or others provide in person training. As my trip to NYC shows, I’m not really one for virtual training – I still like to be there with the trainer and in a class where I can more directly interact.  We’ll see how this goes and if there are any tidbits I can pick up and apply to my own blog; wouldn’t that be nice.

Since returning to the office from vacation on Tuesday it has been one thing after another.

Although I will have only had a 4-day work week, it certainly does not feel like a short work week.

Excuse me now, while I go put out another fire.

I really am quite the cry baby.  My firm generously closed offices early on Friday, December 23rd and only re-opened this morning, Tuesday, January 3rd. Its been a wonderful week relaxing and spending time with family and friends, but this morning when I awoke early, I couldn’t help but stifle a little bit of a tear that it was all over.  Yes, I’m most definitely a cry baby.