30 days

When I start a new job, I keep track of how many business days have gone by, for at least the first 30 days.  Though I have a good since of time in minutes and hours, it starts to blur after a couple of weeks, and I need the countdown to remind me that I haven't perfected everything and solved every question yet because I have actually only been on the job for 15 days.   120 hours - minus meals, bathroom, waiting on conference calls for a point to be made, and minutes spent in meetings reviewing what was said at the previous meeting.

It is not 30 business days since I left the Mill.  I won't figure that number out because it is unnecessarily obsessive and not likely to reveal anything.  It is 30 calendar days, and I need a topic for today's post.

The work does indeed expand to fit the time available, so I do not read or watch movies, or sleep in as much as I was afraid I might.  I do take a lot of meetings, which take some time to get to, so there is a lot of time on the road with the comfort of my iPod friends.  A lot of lunches and dinners, and happy hours.  Wednesday I had 2 in one night.  Thanks to my masterful multi-tasking skills, I had everything lined up in the right sequence.

Let me remind you that it is not that I am such a fantastic planner.  I just found a field that fit my neuroses.

I have not dwelt much on this downtime in this webspace for a few reasons.  Let's enumerate them, shall we?  That's always so satisfying.

1.  There really was a clause in the documentation.  That's the end of #1.

2.   "What I did today" wrap-ups are kind of dull, especially when one leads a fairly internal life.  [8am - tried to figure out why "I left my heart at the stagedoor canteen" is always playing my head while I am getting dressed.  Does something trigger that?  Or just the memory of how it was stuck in my head yesterday while I stared at the closet?]  If you come here to distract yourself from your own task list, I should at least meet those expectations.

3.  If I write it all down here, then I have nothing to talk about when we lunch.  So I'll just tell you where I ate this week: Maguires (grilled chicken salad and a wheelbarrow of fries); U-Mass Boston Starbucks (small C.O.D with Clif Bar); Thai Basil (chicken with peanut sauce)Jules' place (turkey and swiss wrap with yummus hummus); Not Your Average Joes (sausage & roasted peppers pizza); Thai Basil leftovers.

4.   I need advice dealt out in small doses.  Much as I need to perfect my "presentation statement" and interview goals, I work out ideas in my head.  While they are baking, I don't really respond well to suggestions of how I should have mixed in craisins.  So I pick my spots with that carefully and 1:1.

5.   I'm all over the place.  A lot of irons in the fire, and I am reluctant to pursue any one too forcefully at the risk of losing some of the others.  Each has its attractive points, but usually at the expense of others.  I am thinking of that Romanovsky & Phillips song that says, "Should you take what you can get/Or take the time to shop for what you're wanting?"  I recognize that the Supremes sang a similar song, but I went a different way.

6.  I am not yet ready to be working.  I said the other night to my dinner mate, "I am not going to say 'I've never been happier,' because I have certainly been a lot happier...."  But what I am not is bored.  More importantly, I am not jumpy and hypertensive.

Now I have a list that stops at 6.  And I am going to give myself permission to leave that hanging there.   This weekend's posts will come up late.  I am choosing to write them after the fact and post them late, so there will be something to write about, rather than rambleramble ahead of time just to make a deadline that has no real meaning.

like I did here.