Double Digit Day

lol my boss today mentioned that it was my "double digit day" (10th day on the job) and it made me laugh.   So now I have a couple "triple digit" goals ;)

So right - the last two weeks have been INSANE.   Primarily because it was not ideal timing to take on a new job the week before both term papers were due *sigh*  But here we are...

Right - so the work aspect; I had the advantage that a long transition meant I had time to meet my team and a bunch of stakeholders before ever beginning (to put in perspective - I had 90 pages of notes) but even though I had some idea of the workload awaiting me, I didn't *really* know.  

When I used to have the opportunity to teach riders to gallop for the first time, I'd tell them they're going to think they're galloping, be pretty sure of it actually, and then they're going to *know* they're galloping.  This...  This was kinda the work version of that.  Albeit somehow not nearly as much of an adrenaline rush lol.

So yeah, there's a lot more than I'd expected...  I mean - the words "blank slate" had been thrown around, but while I theoretically got it, some baseline assumptions I'd made were proven dramatically false.  On the plus side -- I'm a builder.  I *love* creating things and so I'm super excited about this whole concept.  The only slight stressor is how much of it we need yesterday.  It really is playing catchup and slightly insane.

And then on Day 8, I got to present my plans to my boss' Town Hall.   To steal a line from Rebecca: "Here's the deep end, start swimming."   And you know, other than that writing a speech for a few hundred people wasn't really what I wanted to do to kick off week two, that part - sure.  Don't ask too much depth, but I can give you the theory.   The challenge came with teh Q&A.   😂   It was to cover the *whole* Townhall, so honestly I'd entirely dismissed it.  I mean who *really* cares about what the PMO is doing in the grand scheme of things...   Uh a bunch of people apparently.   "I'll let Lauren answer that", "Lauren would you like to take this one?"  "Oh look, this one has Lauren's name in it - I'll read it out and then let her answer" *sigh*.   To be honest, none of the questions were unreasonable, and I got through it, and the feedback I got back was pretty good.  But OMG.

But in two weeks -- the team has come together and created a vision statement that they're all aligned to, I've prioritized which order we need going to put fires out (the ones people are enjoying roasting marshmallows over can wait a bit ;-P), I've met a ton more people, and I'm slowly learning how things work at GAM (which is very much it's on little world).  It feels like my old job was a lifetime ago, and yet at least a few times a day somebody will say something that will make me realize how very new I still am.

But I am super excited about it.  Like to the point that I keep getting up in the middle of the night and making notes of things I've thought of and things to do...  Fortunately next term I only have one class and it's change management, so lots of time for the extra hours work's going to require for  a few weeks.