The Return to Work

The first week back at work. It could have been much worse…

Monday

My first day back was pretty low key. Tasks were mostly around getting access back to systems that were skipped in my reactivation.

The most important one missed was my building badge access. My set working hours are 7am to 4pm, which is an hour earlier than most. Fortunately, I was able to tailgate another departmental coworker in the door. We got this one fixed right away.

After the first hour of getting situated, there were the first two standing meetings. Lots of “we missed you” and “glad to have you back” sentiments from everyone. It was nice, but also kind of embarrassing at the same time.

From there, the rest of my calendar was free. This gave me the time to go through 13 weeks of email to separate the irrelevant from the important. There were thousands of messages, with 60% falling in the irrelevant (and deleted items) bucket.

Then came lunch. Before my leave, I was an eat lunch at the desk type who continued to work while I ate. I made a pact with myself that I wasn’t going to do that anymore, so I got up, went outside and took a brisk mile and a half walk. Then I came back and ate in the employee lounge, reading a book and turning off work for 30 minutes.

After lunch, it was back to sorting through the remaining emails and catching up on Slack threads. All through the day, people were dropping by with welcome back wishes.

When 4pm rolled around, I packed up and headed home right on time. In the past, I’ve been a “one or two more hours” type, but not anymore. The work will still be there tomorrow.

Tuesday

This was a very full day of meetings, most of which I had scheduled with different teams to get debriefed on everything that happened. I purposely scheduled them individually to be sure I got the same story from each group – which I pretty much did.

All in all, what went down was not earth shaking and my direct reports handled it well. Kudos to them. I feel more confident that I won’t have to be the one to save the world anymore.

The last debrief was with my manager. He promised me he wasn’t going to overwhelm me with topics, but naturally he kept adding “one more thing” to the list, which kept me around until 5pm. He also assigned me a critical project to be worked on.

We’re back, baby…

Sticking around until five, I’d forgotten how bad traffic can get. In true SoCal fashion, it took me an hour to drive 18 miles home. I was tired when I pulled in the driveway.

Wednesday

Today was all about catching up on training. There were several hours of it. I somehow managed not to fall asleep.

Wednesdays are employee breakfast day. Today was breakfast croissant sandwiches. I’m too scared of eating bacon and sausage now, so I took the vegetarian option. It was enjoyable, but there’s something about bacon on a treat like this that just hits different…

There were more team meeting sprinkled throughout. The “welcome backs” were getting more infrequent by today.

Traffic home was as bad as the day before.

Thursday

It was hard to get going this morning.

Today was practically all meetings. I had a couple of hours to work on the high priority project, but the rest were with key vendors. These meetings can be a slog.

A whole new wave of “welcome back” and “we missed you” sentiments from them. Yeah, yeah… Thanks.

I was able to maintain my new lunch habit of a 30-minute brisk walk followed by eating in the employee lounge all the way through the week so far. I’m pretty proud of myself.

I got out of the office on time, but traffic was again bad today too. Thursdays are the worst evening commute day in SoCal.

By the time I got home, I was wiped out and went to bed an hour earlier than normal.

Friday

I’ve made it through the week. Still tired, but I think I’ll make it.

A couple of standing meetings in the morning, and a full two hours uninterrupted to work on the project. It was awesome.

Then lunch. I made it the entire week without eating at my desk. Woo! But, being as tired as I was, I skipped the brisk walk. I felt guilty for making this decision, but the body needs rest sometimes too, right?

After lunch, it was a monthly call with my friend & mentor, Matt. We talked about the week, my plans for next week at the Dreamforce conference and just how I was feeling overall. It’s always great to catch up with him. Matt is the real deal.

The final meeting of the day was with my team to coordinate our arrivals at the conference on Monday. We’re a distributed team, so we’re coming in on different flights.

After working all of that out, I did a little more work on the project that I’d planned to leave until after my return from Dreamforce. This will put us a week ahead of schedule. I felt accomplished by it.

Finally, with everything pretty well wrapped up, I left the office at 3pm. Traffic did not suck at this time.

All in all, it was a good first week back and I feel strong. I’m glad I had it to get ready for next week. It will be full of walking, sessions and meetings with vendors we work with.