Early Morning Meetings

Returning home from a vacation is rarely exciting. Sure, the comforts of your own space, your bed, and your town can be calming and relaxing, but the enjoyment of travel and adventure usually far outweigh the “typical” day of being back home. Especially when you’re in the midst of a career transition, and being home means returning to the mind-numbing frustration of your day job, and the evening exhaustion (albeit worthwhile) of building your business.

It was 6AM on a Monday, and I had just sat down at the desk in my home office. I opened my corporate-issue laptop, and pressed the power button. Once the computer booted, I entered my password, and got a message from the administrator: “It’s time to reset your password”. I figured I’d do it once my brain was ready for that - coming up with a 15 character password simply wasn’t in the cards at that moment.

I scrolled through the emails I had “missed” while I was gone. Why does it always seem like there are so many emails where people don’t slow down for a minute to comprehend what the other person said before shooting back some snide, irritated response? I get it; we all have bad days, short tempers, not enough sleep - but sometimes I wonder if people would rather be on the defensive. Maybe it’s an aspect of corporate life that I’ll never understand - even a decade in.

Though maybe that’s also why I wanted out. I’d never really felt that I fit in there, not from a technical skill and ability standpoint, but because I never seem to see things the way others do. A calendar notification popped up on my screen. Meeting in five minutes. I guess the best part of the job was my connection to people from around the world, and getting to interact with and solve problems with them.

I took another sip of my coffee, and joined the meeting. Once I dug out my notebook - how it got buried so deep in the drawer when I wasn’t home is beyond me - and settled in to see what folks had to say. As we worked our way through the topics, we reached a point where my manager reminded everyone of the upcoming staff exchange. Clearly this had been brought up while I was gone, because I had no idea what he was talking about.

Corporate had decided that two of the people from our supplier in India were going to be sponsored to come here to the United States for six months, and two of us from the States were going to be sent to India. The idea was that it would be a great opportunity to create more connection and enable easier collaboration between our two teams. The list of names was on the next slide in his presentation… and I almost spit out my coffee.

My name was on that list. To say I was shocked is an understatement. Not that I was entirely surprised, I’ve always gotten along easily with the folks in India, and had great rapport with them. Being chosen without even having a clue this was happening though was another story. My boss reminded everyone that next steps for visas and other paperwork would be emailed to us, and that we would need to meet with HR to discuss the specifics of how all of this would work.

I sat through the rest of the meeting, excited for this opportunity, but a little overwhelmed at the same time. Once the meeting had finished, I noticed that I had another scheduled with my manager for that afternoon. I started gathering my thoughts and creating a list of questions that I would need to ask him. This was going to be interesting.