Time Zones

I like that I work internationally now. It has a nice ring to it and an aura of intrigue. I like being exposed to the accents and different cultures – the interesting parts and the challenging parts. There is even travel thrown in which is generally fun (I don’t like being tired that comes with the red eye flights). But man, some mornings are rough. Everyone has those crazy days with tons of items popping up that need to be dealt with immediately. I don’t think I’ve ever had a job where there weren’t “emergencies” of some form periodically. But I’ve decided I live in the wrong time zone. Before my day even starts I’m behind. I tackle the Middle East first, then move on to Europe. So that by afternoon, I’m exhausted and just starting on the North American stuff.

Now, don’t get me wrong, most days, I can keep the day pretty steady, but some days there’s a collision of events that just knocks me back and wish for the days of working in one time zone. I’m a planner, I like to be ahead of the curve. And don’t even get me started on my math. A few months back it was a little crazy as each country institutes day light savings at different times, so the five hour time difference to the UK is shifted to four hours for a few weeks. And that’s just the UK. Trying to schedule calls between folks in Abu Dhabi, London, San Francisco and Chicago (not to mention Boston) gets a little complicated – there’s such a small window. So when the projects get high stakes and looking for fast turnaround, it doesn’t help to be located in the western part of time zones. Ok, that’s enough venting. Focus on the good, and practice my math.

In other news, I need to get back into linking with professionals to hit my next milestone – 250. On LinkedIn I just hit 131. My 131st contact is my brother. Which sounds strange, maybe even desperate, but it isn’t – he’s got good connections and even more importantly I can finally keep tabs on what he does. I periodically get asked what he’s up to. I say he’s living over in Delhi (or Lahore depending when I was asked). Half the time that’s enough. But the other half, folks ask what he’s doing. Which gets a little tricky answering as he has gigs that are under a year long and not always straightforward (i.e. I forget exactly what). Recently he’s been teaching, so that makes it easier. But with LinkedIn, I get a little cheat sheet. It does make me wonder if that make me a bad sister that I need a social media site to remember what my brother is up to? Um, nope, just makes life easier.