All Day At Work

It is Wednesday after all so it should be no surprise that I was going in to the office today. Even if we Directors get a double whammy.  We have to do Eloisa's Strategic Meeting update starting at 8:30 AM and then we have to do the Leadership Retreat the rest of the afternoon. I had no intention of staying until 4 PM. Not even 3 PM really. Johnnie is spending the day at Lisa's office after all and I was going to try to pick him up as early as I could. I know he would never say how bored he gets with either one of us. But I do know him well enough that he's going to want to not be cooped up in there all day. Already my sleep last night was not as good as it usually is, not as good as when he's in the house really. But I did get up early enough to get to the FRB well before the meeting. I even had time to get me a breakfast sandwich and make myself some hot tea... before Lupe informed me that she had breakfast sandwiches coming for us. DRAT! As far as the meeting went I started with the icebreaker, which was to get everyone to give themselves a gift. No limits, no rules, but it had to be material and it had to be only for themselves. I started with the F-150 Lightning pickup to set the tone and give an example. Although, really what was in my heart if I followed my own rules was to get my 2 BR condo in Playa Vista fully paid for, keys in hand. As it was no less than 3 other people had buying property on their minds. From Lupd with a house in Pasadena, to Rody, to Anne Kim. Anyway you can say a lot about a person from this kind of a gift they give to themselves. You can say that Araksi totally does not think about herself much if all she wants to gift herself is an iPhone.And that's ok. As far as the actual meeting, we did go over the Strategic Plan again and Eloisa seemed intent on getting us to commit to priorities. Which is a good thing. I noticed she had a not-so-subtle veiled attempt to push Technology Advancement as one of the priorities and I'm sure she meant EPIC. For me I just want us to be competetent at using it, let alone use technology to do advanced functionalities. Towards the end she also seemed to send a message that we all should think about what pushing the envelope means and whether we're all in on it or not. Hard to commit if it's just woo-woo stuff at the 50,000 ft level which all strategic plans are aren't they? So I'm not sure what that was about. If she wanted us to feel urgency or perhaps feel threatened that we are underperforming, then that was probably an outcome, unintended or otherwise.  I reminded myself that I had plenty of on-hand cash should I get let go tomorrow LOL. I'm going to be just fine regardless. 

The afternoon was spent at the leadership summit, talking about accountability. In one of the exercises I got paired up with Rody who practically validated that he too felt uncomfortable at how Eloisa ended the meeting on a note of you're in or you're out. And sort of subtly telling us that we had better step it up. Or else. I guess he had had some interaction with her that left him wondering whether he was doing an adequate job too. So it wasn't just me wasn't it?  It looks like it's an Eloisa thing? I remind myself that I am here at the pleasure of the CEO. And she can choose to let go of me at any time. I simply have to remind myself also that I am good at what I do and that if there is a gap, it's a relationship and communication gap, not a performance gap. If such is the case, I still have to be prepared for any outcome shouldn't I? I tell myself that it's ok, since I want to position myself not to have to work anyway. The trick is to get that done much sooner rather than later so it doesn't matter.  Anyway for this afternoon session I had lunch and I participated but I left at 3 PM to pick up Johnnie. And sure enough I found him sliding around on an office chair, bored as heck.  I brought him home from there and checked out of work mentally. Later on we would do the Domino's pizza thing except that we brought it back to the apartment. I thought Lisa wanted to get together for dinner at her house tonight. Since Johnnie had his pizza, I made myself spaghetti bolognese. And so when we ventured back out, it was to bring Lisa minestrone soup that we picked up from Maria's on the way home. It was 7:30 by the time we went to her office. She was about to leave and had almost given up on us. But she did eat all of the soup. And ran some wind sprints with Johnnie LOL.  Hey everything worked out like I thought it should/would. I didn't focus on negative stuff, just on a harmonious outcome. And we got one didn't we. Back at the apartment, NOW I could sleep early. It had been a pretty long day.