I am waiting in the virtual lobby for my last conference call of the day and then it’s out into the world to get dinner for the boys since I didn’t have time to do that before running home to make this call.

The last ten weeks of the year are always slightly crazy. Everyone is running around trying to make their scorecard metrics, zombie warfare is breaking out in the halls and absolutely no one believes in work life balance until 1 July rolls around. I got a good taste of it this morning when I was standing in the elevator lobby to go up to my customer meeting and my colleague calls me about delivering a webinar for next Tuesday that he no longer has time for. All I could think was “Really?? Right now??” but of course, I said I would do it. He told me that he has too many things on his plate – what was unsaid is that he lightens his plate by dumping his leftovers on mine.

From there to the office, where I had a pretty heavy meeting with another American. I think I was able to help her out a little bit with some of her work experience. She just went through the first experience of a major loss on a project. I’ve been to that rodeo before so I was able to listen. And then I was able to talk her through how to disengage and detach – which is something I have learned to do over the past 8 years.

Back to Amsterdam for Dutch. I told Paul today that I am going to take a break from my Dutch lessons til mid June. Mostly because I have to end up changing everything at the last minute which doesn’t always work out with his schedule. I chose to prioritize my banjo lessons with him since right now, they give me a more important outlet than learning a language. When things die down during the summer months, I can spend more time with him. We had a good lesson today, I actually gave him some information. 🙂 He also told me that he sometimes uses me as an example to other students who view learning their instrument as a task to be completed. Since I take pleasure in whatever I learn to play, I have low expectations and as such put less pressure on myself. HAH, if he only knew 😉

Yesterday’s session all the way in Tilburg was really good. I delivered the session in English, which means I still fall into Dutch by accident. It was a tough crowd, pretty divided and not really open to sharing information about what they were doing. But I am pretty good at my job and getting people to tell their stories… so eventually, they gave me what I was looking for and voluntarily! I left them with a list of three things to do and they gave me an invitation to come back.

Walking home from the parking garage last night, I ended up running into some people I know and spent three hours on a terrace. Which definitely wasn’t the plan but was a lot of fun. I like that it happens like that, just as it should be. I also ran into Robert, Astrid’s doctor. He was having dinner with a friend at the same cafe. Small world. 🙂 I like it when various bits of my life overlap, it makes me feel even more connected to the world around me.