Marathon Monday

Normally I’d be flying to STL or already there today. It’s the first day of the early RM NA Corn meeting in our company. This is the time of year that we evaluate all the results from multiple years of testing and decide what products have commercial merit or not. Typically it takes most of the week and is a long and stressful slog. This year will apparently be no different. I was up early and knocked out my MSF chores while preparing for the day. Integrating it is the only way I can manage, I can’t do them as a separate block of time, that’s not feasible. So I battled other heroes over cereal today. Yes, breakfast was truncated so that I could get a good start on the day. I ate and washed up so that I could be at my desk by half seven. I had a lot of email from over the weekend that I refused to address until I got back to work. It is critical to set boundaries and stick to them or work will crawl all over your life. That is the corporate way, to maximize everything. Companies only care enough to keep you productive. Don’t be fooled, Human Resources is a department designed to manage the corporation’s humans, not to help you. But I’ll curtail any potential ranting, I’ve never had anything but good experiences with those folks personally but it’s in human nature to revolt to control. Work started with an hour to wrap the weekend and prepare for the onslaught. First meeting flowed into the second and then into the third that went until after six. There was a lunch break and I warmed up my gnocchi leftovers and inhaled them while on the phone in about fifteen minutes and got back into it. Here is how I did last week for my meal board, better than I suspected on Tuesday.

At quarter last six the meeting ended for the day. It was a different format this year and a little less structured than I prefer. Or maybe I’m longing for the past. When it wrapped we had an hour to live life before the evening meeting with my Canada colleagues. I decided to knock back a bigger meal of a Knorr Chicken Sidekick, actually a pair of them. It was a good recharge but I still had a worn down feeling and slight headache.

I ended up having to drive the data tools for the evening. The meeting had some lovely discussion and probably took two hours longer than required because of one individual wanting to take every product. There always seems to be a wart or two on the best products and eventually we got to a list with acceptable trade-offs. It’s a fun game but can be stressful. Eventually we wrapped up at half eleven. I hustled to do my French lesson and my MSF again, I was actually able to do the chores for the next day by the time I wrapped up. I slipped into the sweet embrace of sleep shortly after.