Death by Platypus

The weather this week has been nuts.

• 51 degrees – temperature riding to work on Monday
• 91 degrees – temperature on the ride home
• 31 degrees – temperature riding to work on Wednesday
• 61 degrees – temperature riding home

Still catching up from all the fun over the Holidays (now two months ago). Just before Christmas, we took the kids out hiking at Pedernales Falls. It was a beautiful day, and we had a nice time walking around by the falls. What really made the adventure was walking down stream a ways until we got to some of the more rocky areas. The kids had an absolute blast scrambling over the rocks and exploring the entire area. Tyler and Piper even did some caving!

It was so great watching them have so much fun climbing around, and being so aware of where their limitations were – no bumps or bruises the entire day!

Doing some fishin’	The first few steps up the rocks

The taste of success!	The little cavers

Quinn in Zen Meditation	Practice

Tyler makes a death-defying leap!	Quinn takes the more conservative approach

Will they do it or not?	Tyler can’t resist

Heading for home

My recent lack of postings has to do largely with my new job. I am now just over one month into it. Things are going about as I should have expected them to, which is to say that it’s sometimes very good, and sometimes very frustrating. I tend to be a little bi-polar the first two months in a new job, until I start feeling more comfortable with everyone and my new environment. So many days I come home feeling like I am fitting right in and making an impact, and other days I wonder whether I made the right decision at all.

Even though the company is 8 years old and has 80+ people, they still have the startup mentality. Lack of structure, Herculean efforts, flying by the seat of the pants… They’ve got some really smart people, and because of that, they succeed with this approach. Fortunately, they’re making strides to become a more “mature” company this year. That’s actually the part that’s the most exciting to me – not the client work, but the opportunity to really help establish some structure and process. It’s funny since getting away from bureaucracy was one of my main motivations for making a switch. But despite how extreme it got at my previous employer, there are still a lot of really good ideas to bring over.

The pace while at work is crazy. This is largely due to the above-mentioned lack of process, but also because of our own ability to generate new business. We grow conservatively to avoid the typical agency process of growing & shrinking as the work load fluxuates. While this is great for avoiding needing to lay people off, it also becomes difficult as hiring only occurs after everyone has been overloaded for a while. We’re in one of those tight spots right now, and for me personally, there’s been a ton of new business to participate in, while still leading one of our largest clients and trying to really learn my team and plan for our future. Fortunately, the crazy pace doesn’t usually carry over into the evening hours, but it does make for some very stressful days. Ultimately, I think I will like this once I’m settled in and more confident in what I’m doing. But for now…

My team is also very interesting. I went from managing 5-7 people in my previous role to managing 12 currently, with hopefully two more coming very soon. That also includes having two managers under me. This is an interesting change - less direct management of the team and more focus on helping the managers (both are new to people managing) grow their people. The team has a diverse background – some product management, MIS, marketing, project management… They’re all really bright and eager. They’re all really young too – I’ve never been in a role before where I’ve felt so OLD. There is much to work on, that in itself is a bit overwhelming. Focus & prioritization will be huge challenges for me this year.

Anyway, I logically know this is a great opportunity for me, and it’s all that I was asking for when I decided to make the move. It’ll just be a matter of time before I really get past the doubts, and get my head out of the way of my success.

I used to get spam comments on my blog somewhat regularly – maybe once or twice a week. Not a big deal, as Wordpress queue’s all comments from new sources for your approval before posting on the site. In the last month or so, I’m now getting probably 30+ spam comments a week. And most of them make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Why? Why even bother – the comments are so obviously spam that not even your typical moron is going to think they’re from real visitors. What’s the point?

Quick post – I’m off to Detroit for two days this week to visit a client. Checking the weather, I saw the highs are 20 and 19 degrees, which made me stop to think – “is Detroit part of Canada?”  No, those are farenheit… I forgot how cold it could get. Hopefully, I still own a jacket.

I still haven’t been to see the show yet, but my parents sent over some snapshots of my photos up at the Walker Gallery: