Interesting week

It's been an interesting week. I've been an emotional rollercoaster if nothing else, but not in a bad way.

Monday I was kind of blue. Firstly, it was the anniversary of 9/11 and I made the mistake of watching some of the coverage replay. It just brought back a huge flood of emotions I haven't even thought much about since that awful day. The horror followed by the immediate disbelief that "this so cannot be happening" came back to me all over again, followed shortly thereafter by the overwhelming sadness of the senselessness of that act. That the world, as I know it, will and has never been the same since. Then the anger. The anger of why. As much as I want to forget, I know we must never forget, lest it, heavean forbid, ever happen again.

The night before we watched a replay of the documentary shot by the two brothers who set out that fateful day to film a documentary about a new fireman's journey into the field, a "boy becomes a man" of sorts. They expected the transformation to occur over the course of several months. Instead, it happened over the course of several hours. The brothers ended up with some amazing footage, many times capturing rescuers' last moments on this earth. Powerful and compelling all at the same time, I thought this piece was very well done, and I liked that they added segments documenting what the subjects of their film are doing now. The saddest part for me was the very end, as they showed sets of four photos of fallen fire fighters at a time as Danny Boy played. That ending segment was emotional enough as it was, but was made even more so by my little boy pointing to each set as they appeared on the screen and saying "friends" each time. Yes, sweetie, those men were friends and brothers all at the same time. Brave ones at that.

The bright spot of that day, however, was a meeting I had with a marketing manager at a local engineering firm. It was a great meeting as the gal was in desperate need of some assistance and the projects she described to me were right up my alley. Before I knew it, I was slated to start on Wednesday! I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself at that point. Things like this typically never happen this fast! So for the next two days I spent quite a bit of time getting my head around the whole thing.

I spent Tuesday being very nervous about the whole new gig. See, I recently got burned in a major way by a previous contract stint. Huge company. Major name recognition. High-visibility project. Crappy role with an inflated title. Awful company to work for. The latter two really soured my outlook, and my last week on the project was so disorganized and clunky, it really left a bad taste in my mouth, making me extremely leery about future projects and gigs. So I didn't get much sleep. And I agonized all day at making too rash of a decision. And was generally unpleasant to be around as a result.

Wednesday rolls around and I felt a lot better about the whole gig after I actually went in and jumped into the projects with both feet. Everyone is great to work with. I am blessed to work with a group of friendly, smart, and talented individuals. A bigger bonus is the projects I've been initially assigned are very interesting and so right up my alley. I never imagined I'd enjoy any kind of marketing other than B2C, product-focused marketing. I'm now three days in and still liking it and am actually excited and energized by the work and the scope of the projects. I'm hoping this rush carries through into the next several weeks - and the work continues!

Thursday I'm still riding high on the wave, so to speak. I'm also stressed about another project that I wish I'd never taken on. The good news is, it's almost complete. The bad news is, I'll probably have residual work over the next 6-8 weeks. And it's work I no longer enjoy doing. But I'll worry about that when the time comes.

Today I had a great day, despite the fact that I caught the icky bug my husband and kiddo had two weeks ago and have managed to lose my voice. I've muddled through and have tried to rest my voice whenever possible. I've only spoken when I've absolutely needed to, which was tough when meeting a girlfriend for lunch and a bit of shopping before heading into the office for the afternoon's meetings. I did it though. I'm also in love with the new Department 56 Snowman House. Too bad it's $90.

Well, there's my interesting week in a nutshell. See, this is what happens when I don't blog often - you guys get a braindump! In all actuality it's probably better than me writing a novel about each individual thing!