Today was Administrative Professionals’ Day, so after one of our colleagues noted it, I collected money across the office to pool together for several bouquets of ranunculus and roses for our office manager. Everyone gave really generously; in the end, I ended up having extra money and had to go out and buy even more flowers. Everyone was more than willing to contribute, and enthusiastically did so. Our office manager really goes above and beyond to make sure that we’re comfortable, that we have everything we need (even the variety of “milk” and the snacks), and that all our guests are fully accommodated and welcomed warmly. If I had her job, I know I’d be exhausted.

It’s like I am still adjusting to how generous and kind and full of integrity people are here. It’s still surprising to me, but in a good way.

Today is the first day of our Java Script and debugging courses after work, which will last for two hours each Tuesday and Thursday for approximately the next two months. We got approval for funding for these classes to have an instructor come to our office and show us the basics, as a few of us agreed that we might be more effective in our roles if we knew more of the technical aspects of our product. I figured it would be a good opportunity, especially since our company is already paying for it, so there was no reason for me not to join. I could suck this up for two short months for a longer term reward in understanding more deeply.

But the class didn’t really go the way I expected, as one of my colleagues ended up hijacking the topic halfway through to ask random, customer-specific questions. I was sitting there, playing with my sushi dinner, wondering when we were going to get back to the core of what the instructor was supposed to be going through. But it never ended up coming.

This was my frustration in school whenever some jerk in the class would take us on a long tangent that was unrelated to the actual subject matter at hand. It’s just like being in school again here where one little twit hogs all the attention of the teacher.

It’s the last full week of our company’s quarter, and it looks like from a sales perspective, our office is not going to hit its number. The funniest thing about this for me personally is that in the past, at least at the last wretched company, there was never a known “number” to hit, nor was there communication about whether we were ever over or under that number because we didn’t really sell any software; we just existed because of our services. Here, we’re actually selling something tangible, and what we’re selling is hard to get to be “sticky.” So now that I’m aware of these things and more or less keep track (because I am post-sales, so it’s not like my job is on the line), I can actually feel the pressure that our sales team is experiencing.

We’ve gone through a lot of changes in the last year since I’ve joined. In that time, we’ve tried to scale to become more of an enterprise company. That means massive growing pains, turnover, and a lot of new process that has not always been the best new process to implement. In the last three months, I’ve probably felt the most exhausted from work than I’ve ever felt. In some way, that’s a good thing because it means I’m engaged and have a lot to do. I find the work far more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done before professionally. But in another way, I know that I’m really here because of what the end result is, which is my paycheck and the flexibility a job like this gives me. I’m far luckier than most people, but part of me is wondering if there could be something else out there for me that could give me more.

I originally planned to just have lunch and maybe a dessert with my friend today, but it ended up turning into a lunch, dessert, drinks, more drinks, and dinner, and additional drinks through the night where both of our partners joined us. It was one of those semi spontaneous Saturdays that seems to happen rarely, if ever for us now. The older I have gotten, the less and less spontaneous the things we seem to do are. We have plans, our friends have plans, so we can never just expect anyone to be available on a whim, and I just loved every minute of it. I loved that it was unplanned. I loved that we all got together and had fun banter among the four of us, and that we went from place to place as though it were just another thing we could do on a happy and carefree Saturday. I wish we could have more spontaneity like this. Maybe it’s just my subconscious fighting the reality of getting older.

I was traveling and away from the office for customer meetings for six business days in a row, so it felt nice to be back in the office yesterday and today with some of my colleagues. Most of us are traveling here and there, and so it is a rare occasion when every single person is actually in, but even with the few who did show up today, I was really happy to see them. It felt almost weird and mushy in some way. I was definitely feeling positive.

It’s so strange. Even after a year in, I’m still getting adjusted to the idea of looking forward to going to the office, of doing work, of being around my colleagues who I actually respect and like. Work-wise, I’m in a very positive place and probably couldn’t ask for any more than I have right now from a social perspective.

I was at happy hour with a bunch of colleagues this early evening, and we were talking about annoying things that we’ve encountered across New York and San Francisco. Since our company is headquartered in San Francisco, everyone in our group goes out west to San Francisco at least a few times a year, so we all have varying familiarity of the city. When it came to talk about annoying things in New York, I commented that I found it a bit frustrating when I moved here that people just expected me to know everything about being Jewish, from what a yamaka is to dates for Yom Kippur to Rosh Hashanah. It’s not that I ever expressed a lack of desire to know or understand; it’s that I was just expected to know all these things as someone who did not grow up in New York City. A colleague then responds, “you do realize that if you just replaced the word ‘Jewish’ with any other race, that comment could be perceived as racist, right?”

Well, no, I actually don’t, I said, and this is why: again, it’s not the lack of desire to want to understand, it’s the expectation that everyone needs to know exactly what you know that bothers me. I don’t expect everyone to know when Vietnamese new year is. I also don’t expect everyone to know what a red envelope symbolizes. If you know, great. And if you don’t know, I’m happy to share and educate you if you’d like. If you express that you do not want to know or try to justify your ignorance, then at that point, I might suspect you are racist. But with what I said… I think that’s taking the labeling of “racist” to a point where people on the left do; too much, too often, and trying to be way too PC at times when there is no need for that.

It was certainly an interesting happy hour. Who would have thought that race would be one of the fun topics of the evening?

All night long last night and through the morning today, the entire New York City area experienced torrential downpour. I woke up in the middle of the night to the rain loudly tapping my windows, and I knew this was going to be really bad. Some subway stations  got flooded in uptown Manhattan. I even got a flight alert notification saying that my early morning flight today might get delayed due to heavy winds. I had a two-hour buffer between the time that my plane was scheduled to land and the time of my business review meeting. I needed to make this meeting.

So, the flight took off a bit delayed. But as we were ascending, the worst turbulence that I can ever remember began. The plane didn’t even feel like it was going straight. It felt like it was going sideways to the left for a few minutes, then sideways to the right, then as though it were tumbling down but trying to lift itself up all at the same time. None of the feelings made sense. I was sitting at the front of the plane and looked back to see people’s facial expressions. For the most part in First Class, people were fairly nonchalant or passed out. But the people in the front of Coach looked disturbed. A colleague who sat back there told me that at least 2-3 people were yelling at the back of the plane, and several others had their eyes closed and their hands together as though in prayer. Let’s all just brace ourselves.

It lasted for over 15 minutes. Even the flight attendants were not allowed to get out of their seats. At least we finally got to a clear, smooth path. We didn’t die. It’s all good news.

I had brunch with a friend today who was visiting from Seattle. She and her now husband have been living in Seattle for almost six years now, and although it was originally intended to be a temporary stint since they both were born and raised in New Jersey, she’s grown to love the city a lot, as well as the friends she’s made there. The two of them have enjoyed the careers they’ve been growing in, and they love the west coast way of life.

She told me that although her husband ideally says he wants to move back to New York/New Jersey to be closer to their childhood friends, she doesn’t see that being a huge plus in their life, as so many of their friends’ lives have gone in directions where she can no longer relate to them, and she’s changed herself, too. She’s lived in other places and has other ways of thinking. She’s outgrown them, and they’ve probably outgrown her in their own ways. It’s a hard thing to confront. She even had the “tough talk” with one of her friends who asked why she hadn’t come to visit her when she’s in town. I don’t even think I’ve had a conversation that confrontational with anyone.

All of our lives are changing. It’s hard to relate to people who stay in one place their whole life when you’ve moved around, experienced other things and other places and other people. We can’t always grow in the same direction, but dealing with it continuing to move forward is the only way to go. There’s nothing wrong with growing up and moving on. It doesn’t make us bad people. We’re just adults making adult decisions now.

The office has been pretty quiet this week due to a lot of work travel for many people across teams. I’ll be away from the office Wednesday through Friday of this week for customer visits in Boston, and other colleagues are in San Francisco for everything from a major conference for a platform we use, to internal product training for the sales team.

One of the colleagues in my office who is on my team and I were talking about our colleagues in general and our general work environment, and we both agreed that for the first time in both of our careers, we actually liked the people in our office and would not mind and would even welcome spending time outside of work with almost everyone. It’s a rare instance to have that be the case, where you aren’t sick of work people where you’d like to see them in a more social, less professional environment. Sometimes, I even find myself missing some of my colleagues when I am away or they are away from the office. That is a very strange feeling for me because I’ve never quite had that before. Things certainly are not perfect here. But it helps when the colleagues you see regularly are supportive and multi-dimensional, and have lives outside of work that we can talk about and enjoy discussing.

It was almost like reverse empty-nest today: Chris’s parents left to continue onto the next segment of their trip. And our house was empty again. We did the laundry, ran the dishwasher, and tidied up the bedroom. It was quiet. And we caught up on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and Chris did his finances while I caught up on my book that I’ve been neglecting on my Kindle. And when we talked to each other, it’s almost like I could hear a slight echo of my voice in the living room. It seemed so strange.

I wonder if that is part of the feeling that “empty-nesters” get once their kids leave the house. There’s no noise. There’s no towels or clothes everywhere. There’s less to fuss over.