...I just finished an intense travel season of 12 flights in 16 days...
...Three trips to Florida in 16 days...
...I was offered a job in Florida. Jokingly. But sort of seriously, too...
...I was asked to speak at an event at my Alma Matter, Saint Mary's...
...Tonight, I starred in a zombie movie with my staff. It was the stuff of memories.
...I had the harsh realization just this morning that I LOVE my job. Like, I adore it. I throw absolutely everything at it because I have already burned the ship. I think that's why I have this love/hate relationship with my career. It drains me and yet still motivates me to live. More on that later.
So, yeah, lots of flights these last couple of weeks. Lots of airports. I've been on every type of aircraft Boeing makes. As a kid, I thought air travel was SO COOL. That only the serious, serial business professionals and international jetsetters flew a lot. I realized I somehow became seasoned at flying when, the other day, the plane taxied and took off without me even noticing. I was deep in a really interesting book and suddenly looked up to see the quilt-like surrounds of Atlanta on the horizon. At one point on Tuesday, I actually had a "where in the US am heading?" when passing through the Charlotte airport. My favorite drink on airplanes is Mr. and Mrs. T's Bloody Mary mix. Not with the vodka, just the mix. Which bodes well for business travel!
But I had a little Bloody Mary mix on the rocks this evening with Jack, sitting in the driveway, soaking up one of the last few great evenings of late summer. At tasting the BM mix (even in a disposable cup), my mind wondered where I was heading and when I would land.
Conditioning is for real. Cue the Pavlov.
Anyway, all of the travel was well worth it; the trips helped illumine our biggest-to-date purchase of a CT scanner that will surpass all of the existing scanners in Indiana. We will become The Destination for CT Scanning. We will be That Hospital That Rocks All CT Scans. With a $2.5M budget, of course we have to test drive the Ferrari before we purchase it. It cracks me up how all of the site visits are the same. The top vendors match you to a hospital with similar operations, management structure, and strategy, fly you to the destination (sometimes it's even in Europe), wine and dine you at a lavish dinner where the national sales VP comes to woo you, put you up in a posh hotel, feed you a fancy in-room breakfast, shuttle you to the hospital of your site visit for 4-5 hours, whisk you away to another fancy lunch with yet another sales VP, then shuttle you back to the airport so that you can catch your 3pm flight and make it home by maybe 8 or 9 pm.
It's exhausting. And also down to a science. That's been the fun, philosophical angle of this whole journey. Every vendor's process is the same and it's sort of hilarious. No wonder their sales budgets are so high!
So yes, three trips to FL in 2.5 weeks. One of the trips was for a fun long weekend away with Nurse Starbucks (hey, Nurse Starbucks! Whadddup?! How's Gussy?! ). But I still feel like I should have voting rights in FL because of my recent visits. And yes, the University of Florida offered me a job. Jokingly but seriously. It was my equivalent position but with a larger department. I can't leave my current job yet but it was flattering. Gainesville was strikingly similar to South Bend. If FELT like we were on the campus of Notre Dame, just without the golden dome and, well, in Florida. The Swamp was definitely the Swamp but Gainesville is a happening college town. Loved it. Wish we could have been there for an SEC football game!
I guess that brings me to my upcoming speaking engagement at Saint Mary's this November. It's totally surprising and I feel so completely unworthy....it's about executives who have made their study abroad experiences part of their professional identity (oh, so philosophical). My year abroad in Ireland did change me and I've been trying to percolate just how it changed my innermost of guts. But I chose to accept the invitation and return to campus. I can't remember the last time I was on campus. I told my mom the news the other day and she was like, "Can Dad and I get tickets!?! We want to cheer you on!!!" It's so cute and heartwarming. They'd probably start The Wave during my talk. Haha!
But overall, things feel as though they are going so well. I have had the illusion of control at work for the last week or so. I hate to admit it, but the perspective I'm gaining lately has helped immensely, in not succumbing to peoples' power games and weird ploys for power. People seem so wanting of power and I just don't get it. So I'm taking a break from the game for a bit, to regain my strength.
Tonight really helped me regain some strength. A few months ago, I asked my management team if they'd be willing to have some fun and go crazy for a video. They agreed (not really knowing what I was asking). For national radiologic technologists' week, we filmed a short movie tonight...dressed as zombies performing a choreographed dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."
I've never laughed so hard in my life.
Seasoned managers, younger supervisors, even people with bad backs came together to carefully learn and synchronize the Thriller dance we group-choreographed last week. People texted each other to remind them of the chronology of the dance moves. The girls huddled together in one of the hospital's bathrooms, hogging chunks of open mirror space, to perfect their gray face paint and black lipstick.
I did a "Jackie Z" look for the movie. My usual black suit, white shell, huge Adams Family bump in my hair, with a white face, sunken eyes, and black lips. I took a selfie and sent it to Jack who promptly responded, "Hey, did you take that when you couldn't sleep that one night last week?!"
One of the male supervisors actually glued bits of linen to his face and had to leave early when he started breaking out in hives. Amateur mistake!!!
The team practiced our Thriller moves so well that we got the scene in three takes. Even the Creative Media Director filming the movie was shocked at our synchronized dancing. What my staff DO NOT KNOW is that I will be organizing a flash mob in the department next week and we'll all break out our dance moves in real-time. We'll so be on YouTube.
So that's the moral of my story tonight. I have written about how I've hated my situation and felt totally overwhelmed by the scope of my ever-increasing job. But I decided to "burn the ship" years ago. The theory behind "ship burning" is that settlers to a new land would often "burn their ships" so they couldn't go back. They HAD to be all-in, there was no other viable choice. By moving to Chicago, I burned my ship and knew I could never go back. But I think I always sort of looked back, wondering what my life would be like if I was not on this particular path. Through all this travel lately (and the resulting exhaustion), I hope the ships have finished burning. I can't go back. This is my calling and recent revelations suggest that I might actually have fun some days. The road is hard, rotten and awful at times...but I really don't want to give up or go back.
This is what I do.
Just keep swimming.
Zombies swim, right?!
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