Reading The Tea

Just back from Thurs. - Sunday in Chicago, running weekend retreat for work. I think that I slept about eight hours total while I was there — being everyone’s best friend while juggling running events and connecting w/ outside vendors was exhausting. We had 80 people from 20 offices there, and by the end they were mixing and mingling and bellowing out Karaoke. (Bust a move — yes, I did sing it…) I think that could be called successful. They also seemed alert and engaged during our sessions, which is something considering that they slept almost as little as I did. Now I need to get plans for the next one off the ground, and get moving on implementing some of the ideas they came up with…

I didn’t get a chance to get out and dance over the weekend, and this morning I stepped on a pottery shard my cats managed to find and leave for me next to the bed. I’m going to the doctor about it this afternoon, and hope that it won’t slow me down too much on the dance front…

I’ve been working crazy hours on 5 different analyses. My brain feels like it’s made of foam box fillers, rattling around.

Today on our weekly national call, my boss referred to me as the “analysis guru.”

Yep, that’s me. Maybe I should print new business cards?

What is sucess? How do you know when you have (or haven’t) achieved it? What’s the measure?

When I was little, we had a game called “Careers” that I loved to play. At the start of the game, you wrote down a secret goal, a combination of money, happiness and fame that added up to 60, that you had to collect throughout the game, by entering various side career paths, like “Business” or “Hollywood” or “Moon Exploration.” (Yes, we were playing a very old version of the game.) After each career path you picked up “Experience” cards that could be used in place of a roll of the die, so you had control over which square you ended up on. Whoever got to her or his personal goal first won. I usually balanced it fairly evenly, with a weight toward more money, since that was generally reliably more easy to pick up (Go to college, leave w/ the “science” degree, go to “Sea” a few times (really cheap experience), then head over to “Moon Exploration,” use your experience cards to avoid landing in the hospital and get that $10,000. (Soooooo much more money when you’re eight.) My Dad would often exasperate us by making his goal 60 happiness. Now I understand why. And sometimes he won.