Time to Make It Mine

I’ve got to travel.  Tonight, down to Shanghai.  The next evening over to San Francisco.  I’ve been cramming this deck up into my noggin for the last few weeks.  I didn’t write any of these hundred-and-ten slides.  I just need to be able to tell the story beneath them.  And there’s a good tale in here about innovation and creation.  Takes lots of time to make it mine and own each phase of the intended progression. 

Packed up.  I’m trying to anticipate if San Francisco will be warm or cold.  Both, I’m sure.  This is sales-kickoff time of year. I’m was over there this time last year as well as the year before.  This time a company wants us to get training there with them from the outset, which is smart.  A whole bunch of us learning together, being something other than a purely virtual organization.  

Stood and stared at the suitcase and the backpack and ran through my mental checklist: Passport, headphones, contact lenses:  all the things you’ve forgotten so many times before when you've dashed off.  As it was I learned later that I’d forgotten to pack all the tee-shirts I’d laid out.  How’d that happen?  Now I imagine myself shopping for tee-shirts on Market St. 

Soon I’m involved in a phone call with someone in Kenya.  It’s morning time for him and he wants to talk about this new client in Brazil and the trip we'll do there.  This conversation takes me out of the cab and through the check in and over to the special entrance on the north side for people like me traveling to Shanghai.  We’re still talking by the time I’m seated on the plane.   Now I tell him that I’m being stared at and must stop the call, which is as good an excuse as any.  And now I don’t know if I should read the slide deck one more time or allow myself some time with my novel.   I have a window seat and the woman with the middle seat keeps falling asleep and learning on my shoulder, which makes me wonder how many times I've done that.  

Sunday, 02/24/19