winners drive home in the dark

great essay by neal bortz with lots to think about but a few points stood out:

Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don’t see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled, “The Greatest Secret in the World.” The lesson? Very simple: “Use wisely your power of choice.”

 The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block – some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life.

observations

i'm two weeks in to the new gig and i have some observations (are you surprised?):

• i think i'm gonna like it there (paraphased from the musical 'annie'). i've liked everyone that i've met so far and the vibe of the office. reminds me a lot of the >nbbc group when i first started at nbc. people go out for drinks, we have pizza, cake and happy hour on friday, and people seem to be a good bunch. 

• had a good trip out to SF with my boss and the VP of marketing. we ditched the conference on tuesday afternoon and went sight-seeing in SF. aka researched the steepest hills in SF and then drove up and down them, screaming and squealing with laughter the whole time (the steepest hill is a 40 degree grade btw). we also drove across the golden gate bridge on a 'gorgeous sunny day' - it's just so cool out there!

• my new office is on 21st and fifth. when i first started working in NYC my office was on 18th and broadway. it's so nice to be back in the area - remembering my old favorite places for lunch and scoping out the latest fashions on 5th ave (danger). remembered today that the deli i used to go to five years ago serves bagel chips with their salads. it was like getting reacquainted with an old friend. :)

• it's nice to be learning again. the traditional radio business (aka terrestrial radio) is something i'm sort of familiar with thanks to 99 rock, WDCR and my dad, but it's been fun learning about the players in the space, how it's sold and how it all works. i love radio and it's nice b/c there's the digital aspect that i already know but room for me to learn a new industry as well.

in other news, i've been planning away like a fiend for the fun stuff that's coming up in the next weeks/months:

• 6/16 - i'm crashing the '07 reunion in hanover
• 6/23 - jimmy buffett concert #12 in boston 
• 6/30 - cape for the week of the 4th of july where i'll get to see nicole and laurak
• 7/21 - ceppos's bachelorette party in nyc
• 7/28 - sd big sis/little sis weekend with celeste, diede and diede's little sis (location tbd)
• 8/18 and 8/25 - robin's and ceppos's weddings in providence and greenwich

so much fun stuff to look forward to but lots of planning. good thing i like to do it. :)

staying in tonight b/c tomorrow i'm going on a booze bus with a bunch of dartmouth kids to the belmont stakes. there won't be a triple crown, but we were never in it for the horse race anyway. i'm going mostly b/c it sounded like a formal. and it will probably have a similar outcome. ;-)

end of an era

there is a trick to the 'graceful exit. it begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. it means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. it involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out. - ellen goodman

had my last day at nbc on thursday. leaving nbc was hard and it was a three week transition period. one of the things about biz dev is you talk to so many people as you work that i had a lot of thank you notes and goodbye emails to write. the president of ivillage gave me a necklace which was incredibly sweet of her - i had no idea i had made such impression - and we went out on wednesday night for one last karaoke outing under the nbc banner - had folks from local and ivillage come out and while i know i'll see them all again soon it was still the end of an era.

all five years of my time at nbc are chronicled on the blog - it was a long time and i know i would not be where i am if i had not gone to work there. i had a lot of opportunities, learned so much, and had the privilege to work with some incredibly smart and fun people that made going to work enjoyable. i drank the nbc kool-aid and have now joined the 'illustrious' group of nbc alumni. n-b-c - good times never seemed so good.

started on a friday so that my benefits would kick in right away (hi adult status) and so that i can attend a radio conference in SF this coming week. we had birthday cake for all the birthdays in the office and a staff happy hour. i think i'm going to like it there. :)

had an extended long weekend on the cape for memorial day - hadn't been home for memorial day in about 10 years - was still at dartmouth for a couple of those years and it's often not worth the traffic and the trip to go home when the weather is still so fickle on the cape - but it was really nice to see the cape coming alive again and have some downtime before wrapping things up and starting anew. i get to go home for the week of the 4th of july so i'm looking forward to that, as well as the '07 reunion and jimmy buffett in boston. about to have dinner with ceppos to catch up on life and wedding plans and then it's off to SF tomorrow afternoon.

'yesterday's over my shoulder so i can't look back for too long too much to see waiting in front of me and i know that i just can't go wrong' :)