The Seat of My Pants

I don't know why, but these last few weeks I've felt as if I've been flying by the seat of my pants at home, at work, on the phone and with friends.  No matter where I turn, I have been doing things last minute and my husband is pretty much losing patience with my antics.  Last weekend, when my daughter had her usual Hebrew school, gymnastics and ice skating class - all in one day, we got sidetracked by a Purim party and the rest of our day got all screwed up.  We raced to get to ice skating - got there too late, missed the lesson and my daughter was thoroughly depressed that she couldn't twirl around to her new recital song - which I had failed to download onto a CD because I couldn't figure out how to work my new Macbook.

While my husband glared at me at the ice rink and demanded we invest in a dayplanner, I agreed that I have been a bit flighty these last few weeks.  I'm busy juggling two businesses at once, attempting to help my daughter with her family tree school project, procrastinating writing a new book proposal and constantly getting sidetracked with new opportunities, setbacks, triumphs and sad moments in my life.

You see, while I've attempted to go for the brass ring and achieve everything I think I want to be when I grow up, some of my closest friends have confronted things I've never imagined we'd have to face before we even turned 40.  Through it all, what I've come to realize is that success on the career front is nothing if you don't have your health.  I won't go into specifics but all I will say is I feel fortunate knowing that when the chips are down, my high school girlfriends have rallied around to make sure our friends who are facing hard times are not alone. While my life may be harried, insane, and pretty much going way too fast, I've come to realize that nothing else really matters except for my family and lifelong friends.  

You can never go home again

Funny how after you leave a job behind that your office mates pretty much stop calling for a few months until something happens that they know will totally tick you off.  That's exactly what happened to me last week.  While busy taking meetings in Manhattan for my new business, I got an email from a former office confidante who wanted to know where I was and asked that I call her ASAP.  

In a matter of seconds, I was dialing her number and in minutes, I was transported back to that toxic place where everyone is bitter and tired of working there but won't actually do anything to make a change.  But what pissed me off about the news she shared was that my former boss was actually creating the job I wanted but he wouldn't offer to me while I was there.  The reason - I worked in the office three days a week and he wanted someone who would be committed to a five day a week schedule.

But here's my beef:   He assumed that I wouldn't even consider the job because of the work schedule - but he never actually bothered to call and ask if I'd come back five days.  I probably would have said no, but the fact that I wasn't even considered really hurts and makes me painfully aware that you really can't go home again.  Not that I would want to, but it would have been nice to have been asked. 

In the meantime, I will forge ahead and build my business, but sometimes news from your past office life can really get you pissed and make you second guess if you did the right thing by jumping off the corporate ladder and into the entrepreneurial abyss.  I'm sure in a few months or years I'll look back and say leaving that job was the best possible thing I could have done for my career, but when you're in the middle of rolling that boulder up Success Hill, the last thing you want to hear is that you've already been forgotten from the place where you thought you had made your mark.