Last week may have been the nuttiest, 8-pounds-of-sh*t-in-a-5-pound-bag, week that I've had to date. My week went as follows:
- Sunday - woke up at 4am to go to airport. Flight cancelled, and rescheduled for red-eye to London. Went home for a few hours and was back at airport at 11am. Thanks to Nancy for shuttling me back and forth!
- Monday - Landed in London at 5am after sleeping for maybe 25 minutes while sitting upright, washed face, brushed teeth and tied tie, in airport bathroom, and went directly in to all-day meeting, went directly from meeting back to airport and flew to Dusseldorf, landing around 10pm local time. Slept in hotel room slightly bigger than a closet and it was glorious!
- Tuesday - Customer meeting on Tuesday morning, after which, I managed to pay a speeding ticket (yes, apparently it's possible to get speeding tickets in Germany and I am now a veteran of one), then was back at the Dusseldorf airport at 4pm. Flew to Munich, then Tbilisi.
- Wednesday - Landed in Tbilisi at 5am local time, slept for about 90 minutes and went back into a round of all-day meetings, workout, typical Georgian dinner. Slept a full night in hotel.
- Thursday - meetings all day. went back to hotel at 5pm, thinking I had 2 hours before dinner, went to gym, 35 minutes into workout, got phone call that a very high ranking customer wanted to meet me and to be ready in 15min, did my best superman impersonation and was back in a suit 14 minutes later ready to go. Went right from meeting to dinner. After dinner, packed and slept for 1.5 hours, left for airport at 2am local time (5pm Thursday EST).
- Friday - flew from Tbilisi - Munich - Newark - Rochester and was back in Rochester by 530pm.
- Saturday - woke up 5am, went for run, drove to Buffalo to meet some friends for a tour of the Southern Tier Brewery, which was a blast.
I think I've been recovering from all that for a full week, but am starting to feel somewhat human again. I guess the positive of the insaneness of the itinerary above is that I don't think I ever adjusted to any timezone because I basically slept every other day. Not something I'm looking to repeat, but I did re-adjust quickly.
On a different note, my foot is starting to recover and I've been able to run a little and may try riding on the road outside this weekend (since it's supposed to be 60F), so not much to complain about here.
Friday, March 9, 2012
The "dash"
First, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who sent e-mails, texts, notes, phone calls, tweets, facebook messages and any other form of communcation that we're using these days to express condolences. It really meant a lot to me to have such a great group of friends and family.
One final note - at my Grandfather's funeral the pastor mentioned something I hadn't thought of previously. When you look at a tombstone, there's a lot of information on there (name, hometown, date of birth, date of death) and he brought up an interesting point - a person doesn't get to choose his/her name, hometown, date of birth/death, there's only one piece of information that's typically printed on a tombstone that's within the control of the person it belongs to, that's the dash ("-") between the year that person is born and the year they died. In part, it makes you realize that there are a lot of aspects of life that are completely out of your control and there are aspects that are 100% within your control. Then, there's a gray area where the right decisions given the right circumstance presents an outcome that could have been vastly different otherwise. I had a baseball coach once that told me once 85% of life is just showing up on time and seeing what's going to happen (which was hugely helpful when I was going to grad school using the "just keep showing up" motto). However, that other 15% of life is a pretty crucial piece. One of the lessons I learned from my grandfather was that you don't always get to choose the challenges that you are faced with, but you always get to choose how you react to those challenges. Perhaps successful people are successful in part because they're better at compartmentalizing what's in their control and what isn't. I'm probably not making much sense with this nonsensical rambling, so I'll wrap it up...I guess the main philosophical point that I took away from the pastor's speech that day is this - don't waste time and energy on the things you can't control, but instead focus on making the most of your "dash". Easy to say I guess, but something to think about...
One final note - at my Grandfather's funeral the pastor mentioned something I hadn't thought of previously. When you look at a tombstone, there's a lot of information on there (name, hometown, date of birth, date of death) and he brought up an interesting point - a person doesn't get to choose his/her name, hometown, date of birth/death, there's only one piece of information that's typically printed on a tombstone that's within the control of the person it belongs to, that's the dash ("-") between the year that person is born and the year they died. In part, it makes you realize that there are a lot of aspects of life that are completely out of your control and there are aspects that are 100% within your control. Then, there's a gray area where the right decisions given the right circumstance presents an outcome that could have been vastly different otherwise. I had a baseball coach once that told me once 85% of life is just showing up on time and seeing what's going to happen (which was hugely helpful when I was going to grad school using the "just keep showing up" motto). However, that other 15% of life is a pretty crucial piece. One of the lessons I learned from my grandfather was that you don't always get to choose the challenges that you are faced with, but you always get to choose how you react to those challenges. Perhaps successful people are successful in part because they're better at compartmentalizing what's in their control and what isn't. I'm probably not making much sense with this nonsensical rambling, so I'll wrap it up...I guess the main philosophical point that I took away from the pastor's speech that day is this - don't waste time and energy on the things you can't control, but instead focus on making the most of your "dash". Easy to say I guess, but something to think about...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
