PRE-TRIP BLUES

It is another 5 hours before the flight to Norway. Normally, I would be all squirmy with excitement. I love travelling, specifically, air travel (is there any other way?). But right now, I am just feeling numb.

In the past few days I have been on a crazy rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows. On Thursday evening, I left the office feeling great, after a meeting with my senior engineers about meeting their project schedules. For once, everyone was friendly and cooperative and targets suddenly seem so easily achievable. I felt like one great manager.

Friday morning dawned not so brightly. First of all, I was kept busy preparing for the trip and dealing with sundry instruction giving, and having to rush down to town for a meeting and back. In the midst of it, I was told that I should not have been allowed stay so long in Norway and need to be back earlier (hello, I didn't make the arrangements!), so the trip got cut in half. That was already disappointing enough. Then right after the town meeting, I rushed back to office, only to get called into another meeting with the big boss and got royally screwed. Oh, we definitely deserved the scolding, but still the whole episode left a bad taste in my mouth. So maybe I was not such a good manager as I thought I was.

It didn't help to know that my ex-team is doing fantastically well and morale is at an all time high there. Somehow it just manages to underscore how badly my current team, or more specifically, I, am currently doing. In addition, my ex-supervisor loves to update me on my ex-team's good situation and how everyone was impressed by them. While I know he means no malice and is just pleased to share good news, me being an ex-team member and all, sometimes it simply feels like rubbing salt into my wounds.

Anyway, today was spent rushing last minute work. There had been no opportunity to chill and consider the upcoming trip. And what with some last minute shopping and packing, I'm exhausted now and generally feeling anaesthesized emotionally. Oh well, at least I am not going have problem sleeping on the flight later.

I just hope the rest of trip will be better. And I just hope that I won't have to be eating MacDonalds for three meals a day after travelling thousands of miles to the country of wild salmon.