Exhausted, satisfied, home

Wow, it's been a whirlwind summer. First the wedding (and all the many months of preparation), then my company's annual 3-day customer meeting, which I was responsible for (luckily with some fabulous help from several colleagues), and now the IBC  trade show in Amsterdam, which lasts for five days, including through the weekend. Luckily one of my able-bodied colleagues was responsible for that, though I gave a lot of support here and there with various things. Add to that our new advertising campaign, and this is the single biggest body of work I believe I have ever delivered in such a short period of time. 

I've been generally really happy with the outcome of everything. The wedding went off exactly the way we wanted it to, and I've actually enjoyed it more after it happened than while it was happening (which is somewhat typical of me - I'm a 3 on the enneagram if you know what that means). The User Group went off very well with nary a hitch (one or two small ones), though the content could have been fresher - partly my fault and partly the fault of the industry where technology has outpaced the ability of companies to implement it effectively, so things are sort of stagnant or frozen right now. The ad campaign is really fun and unique and gorgeous, but there are a few execution flaws we might have to fix - it all had to happen on such tight time schedules, it was crazy. But generally, I'm quite happy with everything. And quite grateful to the great (mostly new!) colleagues that helped pull it all off. Good job, team!

Now, after finishing IBC and a short trip to England (robbing me of yet another weekend day), it is going to be all about me for a while. I should get called for my surgery sometime the week of the 17th, and then will know exactly when I have to go in the next week. I've been talking a lot about it to people, who are curious about how it works. That has lead me to get pretty enthusiastic about the whole affair - sort of an Adjustable Gastric Band Ambassador - and I'm feeling really ready for it. 

Last but not least, I'm really happy to be back at home with Wilbert and not so much of a stress chicken (cool Dutch term) as I've been. Time to get back to basics, and I'm looking forward to it.