Up to Speed.

Well. It's been a minute, hasn't it?

The past several weeks (months!) have been so full of ups and downs and lefts and rights that I could barely keep up myself as I was living it, let alone try and process it enough to write about it all.  It seems that's the way these things go; more happens and the writing gets further away and then there is even more to tell - so much so that it can seem easier to just never start again.

I chuckle a bit to myself as I remember, a million (almost 14!) years ago when I started this blogging adventure I would worry if more than five days passed between my posts. Oh, little grasshopper.

Eventually, the important thing is always just to begin again, something we do over and over in our lives. So, here we are:

The phrase "epic" gets tossed around quite a bit these days, but my May was, in every sense, truly epic.  Stars aligned in all sorts of ways, particularly in the travel realm, and in one month I managed to get to Bermuda, Boston, Japan, Hong Kong, and Martha's Vineyard. What? Even as I type that I realize that is an insane amount of travel, even for me and my hectic pace. As these trips came together one by one and I realized that I could, in fact, pull it all off in thirty days I began calling the month May-mazing.  Indeed.

Naturally I have plenty of stories from those trips but this is also the way things go - once you get home real life starts up again and it's back to commuting, work projects, laundry, trying to make time for yoga and exercise, etc. etc. before you've even had time to scroll through the hundreds of photos you took.

As we are more than six months into 2019, I find myself taking stock at the natural half-mark of the year; to see what I have done that I set out to do and what is still on my wish list of hopes; where I've been pleasantly surprised and areas in which I've been disappointed. My biggest intention this year was to say "yes" to everything I possibly could. Being in a new city and a new routine meant shaking things up and I was/am determined, unless I have a really good reason to say (and simply not wanting to does count as a good reason) no, then I say yes.  So far, I think the yes's have done me well and I am glad for that.

2019 also threw me a very large curveball that I was not expecting in the least and that was one of job security. Now, I suppose none of us ever really know where things might stand with our jobs or positions, and perhaps I took it for granted that my role that I had - and moved down to New York to continue - was just going to be there for me.  Best laid plans, right?  As January moved into February though there began to be a tremendous restructuring at my company; the biggest I have ever seen even having been through my share of company re-orgs.  Without going into too much detail let's just say it was madness. Outlook decidedly not good.

The spoiler alert is all's well that ends well. I am still happily employed and in an ironic twist, came out on the other side of the crazy with a promotion. But do not be fooled. It was a hell of a journey to get there and there were more than a few moments where things really did not look good. Of course I feel beyond fortunate that things worked out in my favor.  Turns out, it can take almost losing a job to appreciate how much you actually enjoy your work. For several of my co-workers, things did not pan out as well. A lot of really talented and smart people are no longer with the company.  Put simply, that just plain sucks.

Still, I count this as a victory, truthfully one of the biggest in my recent years.  There are times, especially when I'm schlepping along on the subway en route to the office, that I will see a young girl, clearly right out of college. At first, I'll look at her and think "right there with ya sister"... and then, after another minute, it usually dawns on me that oh wait. I'm actually not right out of college, I'm not living with five roommates, I don't have to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner daily, I have actually been working for the last 18 years. This realization always shocks me - time you can be such a menace - but I think, with the most recent battles I waged on behalf of me, I was shocked in a new way about where I am in my life.  22 year old me, 26 year old me, probably even 30 year old me, would very likely not have stood her ground quite the way I did this go-round. Not to say I was a push-over then, but I certainly accepted things as they were a lot more than I do these days.  Isn't that what we, as women, are taught, after all? Don't push back, don't ask questions, follow the rules, be pleasant, keep smiling, say okay, and apologize, apologize, apologize.

I have plenty to say about this notion of girls and women being taught to make an apology for everything, which would turn this current post into a novel, so we will revisit the topic in full at another juncture.  With but a few more months of my thirties left, I mourn the closing of this decade (oh it was a great one) however I will say that the very best thing about getting older is that you stop caring about the rules, you start pushing back more, and - as ingrained as it is on women to be "sorry" for every damn thing - you stop apologizing.  No more sorry's.

There have been a few people, who, when finding out about how my work situation finally came to pass, that will comment something along the lines of how nice it was that my company was able to make this work, how thoughtful of them to give me this job.  To which I say - let me be very, very clear. This was my doing. My battle that I thankfully, rightfully won. I fought like hell to keep the role I had at my company and in the end negotiated an even better deal than what I started with.  To say I am immensely proud of myself is an understatement.  It did not come easy and I had to give myself more than a fair share of pep talks to keep going, to keep fighting. And I am truly grateful to know I have that in me; to realize I would not go quietly into the night, just accepting what I was told. Perhaps what I am most proud of on the other side of all of this though? In all of my talks with managers and hiring negotiations, I was polite and calm but I did not apologize once for what I was asking for. I knew I was in the right. I knew my argument and ideas made sense. I knew I was being completely reasonable.  No apologies necessary.