“Workaholism is really shit.”

So I woke up Monday morning to the news that Cisco had bought Meraki. Six months ago I had never heard of Meraki, and all of a sudden this completely changed my world in some ways, although in other ways not at all.

The news kicked off a very, VERY interesting week. Settling into the new offices, deepening friendships over email, getting my ass handed to me in the gym, and oscillating between excitement at some new opportunities, worry over competition and market windows, screening potential new hires, stepping into some sales situations, annoyance at crooked people and mean people, and starting to hit my groove as a manager.

One thing anyone should know about me: I am honest, I am fair, I am reasonable but do NOT get on the wrong side of me. If you show that you’re untrustworthy or you make an unwarranted personal attack on anyone I consider to be on my team, our relationship changes, and it changes forever. Over the years I’ve learned to take constructive criticism better, just as I’ve learned to take compliments better, but if you criticise me or mine in a way that I think is unjust …. Don’t do that, rather. Makes life a lot easier.

On the flip side, I really, really care about people and about relationships. I am now getting a chance to practice some of my theories about how to do things properly, which is to say: treat co-workers right, treat vendors fairly, treat customers with respect and do right by them, don’t just close a deal that’s not a good long-term fit.

We are now starting to move the ball down the court on some topics we’ve been discussing for a while. You can only achieve progress through focus on one thing at a time. So, prioritise and focus.

Oddly, and randomly, I feel much more at home in our new offices than I ever did in the old ones. There’s probably several reasons for this, but one of them is awesome new neighbours!

I had two very interesting meetings this week. One was with a prospect, and of all the things we discussed, what struck me most was the bit about how easy it is to get a big head when you’re living in Cape Town. You can be a big fish in a small pond very easily here. At the same time you can be meeting with someone who is either famous or incredibly rich and people can walk right by you oblivious, so it’s not that small of a town after all. Then a few days later I was having a meeting with someone whose career I could do well to imitate. I’ve always had a bit of a startup junkie in me … I don’t think I’m an early-stage girl but either a take something small and make it big or turnaround specialist type role.

I would certainly not call myself a successful business leader yet. I have some things I’m good at where I have a track record, and some other things I’m still learning. I may have potential but there are also high expectations for me, which is, I suppose, not a terrible thing. Point being: kindred souls recognise each other.

So Monday night after a very humbling workout (one of the ones you want to quit but don’t), I drove over to Kenilworth area to have dinner with one of my favourite people. The evening light on the mountain was … stunning. It was at that moment that I finally felt at home again. The few nights of good sleep and good food didn’t hurt. It’s nice to have made the switch from chocolate bars to broccoli and from wine to protein shakes. Although we did have a few whiskeys, and instead of going home at 10pm we instead left the restaurant at 1am. Well … no regrets.

It was at that dinner that the title of this blog post was uttered by my companion. I was relaying the story of one of the quotes below … I was mailing to someone in California about Merisco (Meraki-Cisco) and I said something about how I was surprised he was answering emails on a Sunday night … well, one never stops working. He replied to say he had his workaholism under control, so I quickly replied that since it was 1am there he wasn’t fooling anyone.

Here’s the thing: we brag about workaholism, sort of like in certain circles overtraining can be a badge of pride as well. But if it prevents us from living life properly, it’s kind of a problem. Now work may be fun for me when I love it and I’m learning. When I was at Ask Jeeves International, my friend Chris and I used to have competitions to see who could stay up later into the night working. He always won. Always. But it’s also true, when I’m up late doing the emails I literally didn’t have the two minutes during the day to write, and then I don’t get 9 hours sleep but rather 7 and it impacts my training, well, that’s kind of a problem. But it’s also a choice hey: we play the hand we’re dealt unless we go back to the dealer to ask for a few new cards.

For me, I have to get more out of it than what I put into it. Maybe I’m crazy but the times in my life that I look back on when I was really the absolute happiest where when I was head over heels in love with the work I was doing. I really do reject the notion that as much as you want it to be more, a job is just a job. At least for me.

I was talking with my friend Riaan, who runs a local tech company. They say it’s lonely at the top. Well, if you’re CEO then you have staff, and you can’t quite be friends with them because there must still be this authoritative relationship there. They look up to you. You have to be a leader, be inspirational, and take a lot of responsibility. That’s a lot of pressure.

Then you have your board of directors and shareholders, who are also all looking to you but from the top down. They are valuable mentors and advisors but they also can’t quite be friends in the same way as if you didn’t have this working relationship and they aren’t exactly peers either.

It’s like you’re at the centre of an hourglass with pressure from both sides. This can’t be good for your emotional health, he was saying, and he’s right.

Speaking of putting yourself under undue pressure, I’m pretty well over my days of trying to persuade anyone about CrossFit and paleo. I definitely get that they are not suited to everyone’s personalities, but they work for me. Not taking it any further than that. I’ve done enough nutritional research to understand some of the basics and you can go down this never-ending rabbit hole of comparing various different ‘diet’ plans. I was eating poorly overseas, gained a bunch of weight, I’ve now lost 2 kilos in a week and a half and I feel much better. I suppose at a certain level you do become a creature of faith but whatever: you do your thing, I’ll do mine, I don’t have time to advocate my way or the highway. I sometimes do wish I didn’t eat as many animals as I do, but you take the bad with the good.

Well, getting back to training has been fun, at both CrossFit and qigong. I had to miss Friday’s CrossFit workout so I went and did a CrossFit workout in the Virgin Active at like 8pm on a Friday night, which was amusing at least to me. I unfortunately tweaked my back a bit testing my deadlift strength. Still tender I guess, but much better: I can now, mostly, train without fear, which is no small thing. Also, my body is craving training again rather than the first few days where I almost had to drag myself: when you train in the morning and mid-afternoon comes around and you’re itching to get back at it, you know you’re getting back to where you should be.

Now is the time for me to make some decisions, which means planning what data I need to make those decisions. This is a lot of fun for me. Here we go!

Another interesting conversation from the week was related to commitment. I love telling the story of John and the popcorn, because it’s really all about intrinsic motivation and commitment. Like last year in competition season I didn’t have a drink for over five months, and for a good month or so I didn’t have any sugar or starchy carbs, and no red meat for about three weeks. It was easy. The reason it was easy was because I decided to do it. I didn’t make a half-hearted commitment and then feel guilty later … I made a real commitment. When we’re ready and motivated we commit. I feel like we should quit bashing ourselves around for presumed failures of discipline. We make false promises to ourselves all the time, and that’s the problem, not our actual behaviour.

Yoda was right: do. Or do not. There is no try.

• “I like him already.” – Ross
• “Don't get the wrong impression — I have my workaholism well under control.” – Steven
• “Life is a caveat.” – Doug
• “It’s a local place.” – Doug
• “That man is going to be very successful. Mark my words.” – Doug
• “The second sort, those are the game-changers.” – Doug
• “There are other things in a coffee shop besides coffee.” – Sipho
• “You only get attention because we like you. ;-) We’re such personable people. (Steven taught me that word and I insist on using it now).” – Robert
• “The question is not are you upset, it’s are you surprised.” – Michael
• “Not my fault.” – David (I never said it was….)
• “I think I can tell if you put vodka in my water!” – Ellie
• “When you fall in love, you don’t know when to stop being in love.” – Tony
• “Well, he’s in sales too.” – Ellie
• “Wisdom is not age-related.” – Tony
• “I hate her!” “Why do you hate her?” “I don’t hate her.” – Sam & Ellie
• “It’s kind of tough for honest people like us to realise there are bad guys out there.” – Michael
• “I’ve been four times already.” – Riaan
• “But to me, work is play.” – Riaan 

Moving ... home

So I got in around noon on a Wednesday. As my arrival coincided with a big conference happening in Cape Town, by 4pm I was down at the CTICC for back-to-back meetings, followed by rooftop drinks and a chance to reconnect with one of my new friends from the Bay Area. I really, really like this guy: smart, and a straight-talker, and one who’s not afraid to talk a little smack either.

There are pros and cons to living in a global village. It’s great that I have friends from all over the world, but at the same time your friendship can really only go so far when you see each other maybe twice a year.

So after drinks, dinner, then more drinks, then yet more drinks with a different group who were hanging at Bascule. It occurred to me when I got home at 1am and was chatting on the phone (actually to someone about whom some smack had been talked earlier in the evening, ironically enough), that this had all gone a bit too far. I’m not in Kansas any more, and by Kansas I guess I mean Denver. Or maybe San Francisco.

Our company was moving offices over the weekend, so the short while in the office in advance of that was very distracted with the impending move. The physical move itself was all right, although it was more straining for some than for others. Luckily I only found out after the fact about how one person was nearly hurt badly carrying all of our stuff down several flights of stairs.

I’m not going to lie. Settling back into Cape Town the first few days was rough. My body was probably still a few time zones away; my head and heart were also not fully present. It was a rough trip, and I was severely out of sorts. Bad diet, bad sleep, very little training, quite a bit of drinking, some emotional strain, and travel-related stress. Even worse, that feeling of ‘home but not home’ that you get as an expat was much stronger. I’d never been away from SA for this long before and when I get back it didn’t feel quite right and I was gripped with nostalgia for those Denver mountains, for Starbucks, for safety.

Well the grass is always greener, right? It just so happened that a friend from Sweden was in town this weekend at the tail end of a longer Africa trip. I had dinner with her on Friday and hearing her speak about how she feels about South Africa and Cape Town reminded me of myself a few years back. Like, almost word for word. So that helped.

It also helped to go to a birthday brunch for one of my good friends, and to get to spend more time talking to some really smart, dynamic women (there were men there too, but not at my end of the table so much!).

The longer days also helped, a catch-up in the form of a hike in the Tokai forest with my friend Amy who is leaving the country soon and getting her perspective on that …. Well, a sense of place is important but I suppose it’s actually not as important as I once thought. Just like I can’t predict my career after the current job, I’m kind of done predicting my future.

Living in the moment and appreciating every jacaranda tree.

I also realised something else when talking to a relative newcomer to CrossFit. I’m in some relatively bad shape at the moment, but I’ll get it back soon enough. When I was talking to her I said something that pretty much amounted to: “I’m a competitor. When a competition comes I take it to a whole other level that I just don’t do in the gym, whether out of mental laziness or weakness.”

The same is true of work. Peter once told me that when I have responsibility for something I take it by the scruff of its neck and apply myself to it in a way that I don’t always. This is the difference between ownership and involvement.

Or between being a pig and a chicken (the old Scrum joke).

• “She wouldn’t like you very well.” – Steven
• “You always know where you stand with him.” – Robert
•  “I believe we make our own luck.” – Katarina
• “I don’t think you should choose work over true love.” – Sam
• “It’s a big difference if you say yes or if you say no.” – Katarina
• “All’s fair in love and war, right? Well, business is war.” – Ellie
• “But I still feel dirty.” “Yeah, it is dirty. But it’s not unethical.” – Ellie & Katarina
• “That’s not alcohol. That’s olive oil.” – Rudolph
• “Is that a real article? It sounds like something The Onion would write!” – Ellie
• “They were from new York though so they’re not really American.” – Jennifer (she’s American)
• “My CEO just told me not to be hung over tomorrow.” – Tim
• “Americans are so coddled!” – Amy (she’s also American)

What I learned [at Heart]

Some (a lot) of this, isn’t new, or news: a better way of putting it is things that I have picked up my whole career, that is top of mind at the moment. Kind of like the coach’s exhortations not to land on the rope is just words until you learn the hard way by nearly breaking your damn ankle. Or …. Other advice that we know we should follow but don’t always, sometimes to our detriment.

In retrospect one thing that was not clear to me while I was in it that is clear now is that I’m not ever going to make a good consultant. Not enough skin in the game. I need ownership. Not full control; goodness knows I don’t like the responsibility that comes along with that. But actual, tangible, ownership.

One of the things that my friend Jaco said over and over about the social enterprise space in South Africa is that social entrepreneurs don’t need advice: they need people to pick up the bricks alongside them. Well … I beg to differ. They need both. But what they don’t need is bad advice, or half-hearted advice, or uninformed advice. It is true that everyone and their brother thinks they can mentor a startup. Having tried to mentor some and being in a position where I am now being mentored makes me not an expert per se, but less of a naïve bumbler than I could be.

I have been meaning to write this post for a while but never quite got around to it, or there was always something more pressing. But as I was sitting in New York on my final day in the U.S. talking about the challenges of bringing cheap connectivity to the world, the past got rehashed. It just did. So. Here goes:

Lesson #1 – People are the only important thing. I know it’s a cliché, but damned if you can do much of anything, especially change the world, without a good team. Ownership is what matters; great ideas are just that. The magic is in the strategy, the beauty is in the execution.

Lesson #2 – Look around. Partner intelligently. Don’t be so distracted by your own internal operations that you neglect to see what is going on around you. Don’t get caught in the trap of ‘not invented here’ or ‘we could do this so much better than they could.’ Be smart. If you are legitimately wanting to do something, it’s amazing how much you can accomplish if you’re not looking for credit. I know, I know, in the do-gooder world the credit, and kudos, and continued/additional funding is everything. But when chasing the glory makes the pie many multiples smaller … in the business world this is called a lapse of fiduciary responsibility.

Lesson #3 – Be clear on why you’re doing it. Here, I mean the customer ‘why’ not just the social ‘why.’ No clear customer value proposition means no solid foundation on which to build a business. If you want to be a charity, be a charity. If you want to build a business, find a customer need first then figure out a social angle.

Lesson #4 – You can’t sell someone something they don’t actually want. Need I say more? Actually, yes, I do need to. This can sometimes work for once or a few times, but when buyer’s remorse occurs … you’ve not only lost a customer but you’ve generated a potentially angry, resentful customer. Don’t be that guy.

Lesson #5 – You should always have a plan. Don’t know where you’re going -> don’t know how to measure if you’re being effective or not. It’s a good recipe for drift. Know where you’re going long-term, know your short-term priorities, and, most importantly of all: make sure everyone in the company knows them. Better still, let them co-create the plan, to the degree that this is possible and makes sense. But also … if you don’t have goals then the goal posts can shift, or staff can under-deliver, and neither case is easily handled if you weren’t clear up front.

Lesson #6 – You don’t get big by thinking small. OK maybe I didn’t learn this one at Heart but it’s definitely been the theme of the day since.

Lesson #7 – If you see something, say something (used without permission of the New York MTA who somehow trademarked the phrase). It is the responsibility of management to solicit advice and feedback, and it is the responsibility of staff and advisors to offer honest feedback. Saying ‘I told you so’ feels great. You know what IS great? Not having to say ‘I told you so’ because you course-corrected.

Reflecting on my U.S. trip …. It was longer than I had anticipated, and when I counted it up I’d hit 13 states: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, and New York. I counted wrong on Facebook (forgot Iowa!). 13 states, 11 domestic flight segments (of which only 4 were round-trip), 5 rental cars, and all 4 time zones. Had a hell of a time separating work expenses from personal expenses, I can tell you that much.

I slept short, I slept long, I relished seeing friends I hadn’t seen in literally 10 years, and I enjoyed making the acquaintance of new friends. I drank with executives. I drank with Vikings fans. I donated blood. I ran a beer mile. I played in a corn maze and a corn bin. I watched a Vice Presidential debate, a Presidential debate, and the election after-math. I even made a cameo appearance in the Tailgate32 Minnesota episode. The best was at the very end:

John: “We’ve now lost Ellie, too.”

Aidan: “Isn’t this how all horror movies start?”

Mike: “I think there’s cider over there.”

Love you, too! Miss those guys to pieces …. Social media doesn’t help. Neither does the cough I’ve had since Denver. Thanks a ton, Mike. Bloody hell.

But you know, it’s rather like anything you’ve enjoyed tremendously: I am so glad I did that, it’s an experience completely unlike any other that I’ve had before or will have since, and it’s also one that I’m lucky to have had. It’s not everyone who gets to hop on that RV with a documentary film crew for 2,000 miles. But it is also not my reality. Sometimes I can’t actually believe that my reality is what it is; I feel like if you pinched me I’d wake up.

And maybe I will … I had a very “this is the Matrix” moment on the New York subway. After all, who really knows? I took the red pill ages ago.

• “I’m not jaded. I’m just tired.” – Kosta
• “I might move here. There’s money here.” – Kosta
• “I love my haters.” – Carl
• “But you can eat white bread, right?” – coffee shop guy when I said I couldn’t eat wheat

Gloriously unstuck

That didn’t take long. There is nothing, I guess, that makes me happier than putting puzzle pieces together. Of course, there remains a lot of analysis and work to be done. But through the haze of exhaustion I am feeling tremendously excited …. At least about work.

So my last whirlwind week of living out of a suitcase, at least for a while. Monday was Seattle where I caught up with two ex-coworkers who now work for Microsoft. It’s actually quite amusing in a way, the scale of the operations these guys are running or working with. Oh, you know, 500 people working for you, oh, just working on software that a gazillion people use every day …. Just another day at the office. Amazing. Well, I promised next time I’m in the area to come and spend more time and reminisce about the old days at Jeeves. I won’t say good, I won’t say bad, because they were kind of both.

Monday night I flew to San Francisco then drove down to Sunnyvale where I had a late night Skype call, followed by falling into bed because I had to be up at 6am or so to drive up to the city. I still hit traffic and arrived late to the conference I was attending.

Now this conference, called the Wireless Broadband Association Global Congress, is kind of just that. It had CEOs and execs of all manner of companies that relate to Wi-Fi and wireless communications, so it was a great networking opportunity for me. I had a couple of names of people I should look for coming in but at the end of the day I didn’t know anyone, so it was a bit of an uncomfortable situation for me.

I’m a strange character …. I’m shy until I’m comfortable, then I’m anything but. In this case, I didn’t really have a choice. Attending the conference was not cheap, and you’re not going to get your money’s worth by sitting and listening to presentations (although in a way it was actually worth it from that perspective alone). For me, networking is a joy if I’m in the mood. If I’m not …. I really can’t do it at all. At least I’m pretty good at getting myself into the zone; it just takes energy to be charming and outgoing when you don’t know a single person.

What can I say? Not only did I have a great time and learn a lot but, for the most part, I did what I had to do. There are a few companies I didn’t get a chance to speak with but they are ones we already have a relationship with. And I did make some quite interesting new acquaintances. Some of the guys I found just really really interesting as people: one product marketer ex-physics major and likely soon-to-be author in particular; we spent the entire pre-awards dinner drinks pretty much ignoring everyone else. New friends are always fun!

I did also manage to go out drinking with some of the friends of the guy who had my job before me. I met them at 4pm on the second day of the conference and by 9pm we were happily drinking martinis. Good fun, including laughing at a decapitated Christmas tree. What was not so much fun was the next morning when I had a hangover so bad I could barely move my head. Oh my word. Well, hell, I deserved every second of that headache.

My one regret other than the aforementioned hangover was the timing of the conference, because Tuesday November 6^th was election day in the USA, and as I was on the west coast all the results came in early in the evening given my time zone. I had so been looking forward to being in America for the election because the Presidential election is like nothing else …. You sit there, with your friends/family, and watch the states be ‘called’ as red or blue, Republican or Democrat, in this case, Romney or Obama. You watch the electoral count, and, in recent years, all sorts of statistics to make a numbers nerd get excited.

This year I missed all of it, because I was working. Well, networking, if you can call that working, at a rooftop bar at the Clift Hotel. Right about when I wanted to leave to go to Cathleen’s election night party was when I was introduced to the people who were two of the most valuable connections I made the entire conference. And, as we were standing there talking about Cape Town, and ice hockey, and tailgating, someone loaded up CNN on the smart phone and we saw that the election had been called. Just like that.

I got home just in time to see Romney’s concession speech, eat some totally non-paleo food, and then watch Obama’s victory speech. It was actually quite emotional for me for a couple of reasons. I was happy Obama won. I was sorry I missed all the fun. I was sorry that I’m not actually living in America to experience the results of this election, although I did cast my ballot proudly (my district had a 75% turnout, by the way, which is impressive). I was missing Cape Town like crazy. I was also missing living in San Francisco, and going to parties on rooftop bars, and watching football, and being within a few hours flight of friends, family, …

Then came Thursday! I was meant to train with my friend from Jeeves days but when I went to bed at like 4:30am that was clearly not going to happen. I did manage to rouse myself for lunch up in beautiful Marin with another ex-colleague who has worked in sales his entire career and is another guru. He gave me quite a few great tips all for the low low price of a California roll and an iced tea. But there’s nothing like talking about sales to get me excited, even with a headache so bad that I could barely eat my food. Good heavens.

Afterwards, I went to a Starbucks for the free Wi-Fi which wasn’t really free because I indulged in a $5 gingerbread soy latte even though I know the sugar and the soy are not optimal but damn, it’s a treat every once in a while. I needed the Wi-Fi because I had a conference call to review the new version of an interesting mobile app … good stuff.

Then I drove down to Sunnyvale for an after-hours meeting with one of the companies I’d met at the conference. Now I was impressed: firstly, that you could schedule the day before a meeting for 6pm. Secondly, that when I was caught in traffic (it took me two hours to drive from Sausalito to Sunnyvale!!) they were gracious that I was a half hour late, AND managed to bring a South African product manager to the meeting just so I’d feel at home (ok, ok, he also happened to be a logical person to include). Now there’s a company that’s hustling. I love it!

Afterwards I had a dinner meeting in Mountain View with another potential partner, and the CEO there is a very interesting guy. Young, smart, dynamic, confident, driven. Good stuff. We have some fun people in our industry.

Then I went to the airport where the TSA confiscated my canned pumpkin that I was trying to bring home for my friend Amy. Apparently it counts as a liquid. Unbelievable. But I was too tired to argue. I was so tired, in fact, that I slept through almost all of my Virgin America flight and was aroused when the plane landed in JFK five and a half hours later.

From there, I met an interesting guy who was kind enough to let me hop into his taxi to midtown: a personal tax consultant out of London for one of the big consulting firms, and he just happens to specialise in tax situations for high net worth Americans who live overseas. Not that I’m high net worth or anything, but maybe some day! So I took his card, and then we found a Starbucks. Because that’s what one does before one finds a Dunkin Donuts.

I was in the city to run some errands, wound up feeling like I’d won the lottery although in some ways I most definitely hadn’t won anything at all, and after I finished, headed back to the airport. I was again so exhausted that I napped on the bus to the airport. I don’t GET this tired. I blame the martinis.

A few hours later I was reunited with my family in Vermont. Happy days! I think, I was so tired I can’t quite remember. But considering that I’m returning to South Africa shortly I wanted to spend the rest of my time with my family, as one does.

So all in all, a relatively quiet weekend. I even took most of Saturday off from work but then again I didn’t have a choice because I was still exhausted. This living out of a suitcase, not eating properly, not sleeping well, not training, etc has most definitely taken its toll.

But whatever issues I may have had last week are over now. My health & training will sort itself out; competition season starts in 10 weeks or so, so ….time to get serious. Soon. Just to be back in my home, with my normal food, and training, I cannot wait!!

If it’s possible, I’m even more excited now about my company and my job than I was a week ago. The trick now, is making the right choices that don’t box us in, and executing as rapidly as possible.

I’m also excited to be getting home in time for some fun stuff: Southern hemisphere Thanksgiving, a friend’s birthday, a powerlifting comp, a summer camp for business people, company holiday party, and a few other things.

This is going to be fun.

• “I see now why they’re called Ruckus.” – Ellie
• “Some …. Handle noisy environments better than others.” – Andy
• “Hurricane Sandy did us a big favour.” – Michael
• “I know you’re a believer. You work for a startup.” – Shadi
• “So do we.” – Mark [spend the majority of money on drugs/alcohol, transport, and telecommunications]
• “They’re French.” – David  
• “One.” – Steven
• “Two months? How is it that you’re sitting at this table, then?” – Nigel
• “I work until I go to bed.” – Zach
• “I will stab you if you do that again!” – Cathleen [I had it coming!]
• “So he’s American.” – Alex
• “I feel like I just won the lottery!” – Ellie
• “You were a snob.” – Mom [still am; just smarter about it now]
• “Easy, and easy for you are two different things.” – Mom
• “I don’t think he was expecting Romney to lie quite that much.” – Cyrus [on Obama in the first debate]

Stuck in the mud

You win some, you lose some. I feel like the last bit has been more Ls than Ws for me but you know what? A lot of it is in my head, which means it is both the easiest thing and the hardest thing to change.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, though, and in a way for someone who is used to feeling good all the time, I’ve actually gotten kind of used to not feeling good. Which is, obviously, not good. I know there are many contributing factors but I am actually starting to become quite agitated in that I just want to go home.

As much as I might get annoyed at the car guards, or the robot hawkers, or the politics (says the girl in the end of an American election cycle!!), or feel ennui at those random times when I really do feel not only alone, but a foreigner who is alone …. I am missing Africa like crazy. The blue skies, Camps Bay, the visual mishmash that is Woodstock, the Biscuit Mill, the light on Table Mountain, my apartment, my normal food. My job. My friends.

But it’s more than that, and this is ironic considering that I never actually travel into Africa. South Africa is like Africa for beginners, but it’s still Africa. I miss the red sunsets, the red dirt, the smell of the air. I once kept saying that I just felt like the lights were brighter, and the sounds were louder, and I felt more alive in South Africa. Well …. I am not sure this is true at the moment as I drink in every moment in every place I go, because I never know when I will be in these places again: Colorado, Washington, etc.

Susan called it. She told me a week ago that the reason I was so upset is that I didn’t know when I would be back home.

I love where I live. It’s stunningly beautiful. I love my life: my job, my health, my sport, my family, my friends. It’s a work in progress, but I am feeling stuck, like I can’t move forward, until I get back. It’s almost like when I’m here, I’m wistfully chasing after another life, and I have one foot in both worlds, and I can’t fully live either one.

On Saturday Susan was busy all day being on call to go out on an air ambulance (helicopter ambulance). Too damn cool. So she sent me out on a road trip through the Colorado mountains. I started off with breakfast in Glenwood Springs, followed by a hike to the spectacular Hanging Lake (the SA version is Crystal Pools, but you can actually swim in those), followed by lunch in Breckenridge, then to Evergreen and a drive back through Morrison (home of Red Rocks Amphitheatre) to pick her up at the hospital. That last stretch was actually the most beautiful but it was also too late in the day for photos to come out so I didn’t even bother.

A couple of interesting tidbits: I used to work for a white-label travel company north of Boston and it was fascinating to me to get to drive through all these ski towns that I had only ever heard about. They were not as I was expecting, in most cases, but stunning nonetheless. I also was feeling much better about myself on the hike when I was happily passing everyone I encountered on the trail and while I did break a sweat, I didn’t get out of breath. Then again after The Incline anything is going to seem easy!

My only regret about my time in Denver is that for a good chunk of it I was either too sick, or either Susan or I, or both, were too sleep-deprived to be ideal company for each other. But hey the place is beautiful, the Mexican food was great, the altitude training kicked the snot out of me, the Tailgate32/Denver Broncos experience was memorable, and I discovered a weakness or three. I also gave blood for the first time in several years, which was extremely fast and painless. I should really do that more often.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling a bit under the weather again, and knowing that the only time you can heal is when you’re sleeping, I made a tactical call to sleep for the 2.5-hour flight to Seattle rather than working on the plane. It worked.

I came to Seattle to visit some ex-Jeeves colleagues who are now working for Microsoft; partly a social visit and partly work-related. Before getting down to the pile of work that I absolutely had to get done before the crazy work week starts, I stopped by the tailgate which was at a bar of all things. Well, first I went to the lots themselves where I encountered some people who put vodka into my coffee. That was weird.

The boys all seemed quite happy to see me; Mike even went so far as to run down the road, pick me up at the hip and lift me all the way up, which, sadly, was not captured on camera. You might even say he cleaned me. I was impressed. Well, he is a CrossFitter when he’s not busy being as opposite to a CrossFitter as one can be. I actually just love the entire crew; I again hadn’t laughed as hard in a week as when sitting in the RV with the boys. I mean … how can you see Aidan or Dustin and NOT crack a smile? But that was not the place I needed to be, and quite frankly I wasn’t in the mood, so I headed off into what would have been the sunset if you could actually ever see the sun in this town.

You know, words are just words until you make them more. Like: who, or what, do I really want to be? What, and who, do I want to care about?

People will be what they will be, and they will think what they think (even if they don’t have the full picture and no interest in learning it), and as much as you wish things were otherwise, they are as they are. I’m not sure if it’s fear or inertia that holds us back more, or why I can do one thing when I wish I’d done another. In my case, probably fear.

We play the hand we’re dealt unless we have enough guts to ask for a new hand. I usually don’t. But then again, along the lines of be careful what you wish for …. Some paths are better not travelled.

Hierarchy of needs: there was a good Facebook debate this week about what was more important: the economy, or civil rights. Very long debate but here’s the rub: I’m a liberal, obviously, I think people should be able to do whatever the heck they want unless it clearly and explicitly hurts someone else. In the grey areas, you must THINK, even if you do sometimes decide to be selfish and there is a negative externality. So I believe in such things as freedom of speech, and equality of opportunity for all regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.: I try not to let my stereotypes get in the way and to evaluate people as people.

This is all well and good, but it’s also very ivory tower. It’s easy to say this when you do have a job. If you’re part of the long-term unemployed, I can understand that frustration, rage, desperation (kind of, but not really, as I haven’t actually experienced it). I can understand listening to someone who tells you what you want to hear.

We believe what we want to believe, until reality smacks us hard across the face.

I can remember where I was for every Presidential election. Before Cal, they were at my parents’ house in Vermont. 2000 was at a hotel bar in California with some Jeeves people. 2004 was at the John Kerry rally in Boston (was meant to be a victory rally but was more like a wake … and shame, I had front-row tickets because I’d been in the right place at the right time). 2008 I was at the house of some people who are no longer friends. In 2012 I will be first at some San Francisco bar (again), then at my friend Cathleen’s house in Sunnyvale.

I’ll close with this tidbit from Twitter. I mailed my absentee ballot from the middle of Colorado. I’ve done my bit. That’s all I can do: @BettinaVLA Romney's closing argument: 'Trust me. I was lying during the primaries.'

Perfection is the enemy of the good

It’s disconcerting to me when someone calls me out, especially when by virtue of time spent in my company they have no business knowing me this well.

Well … I got an unsolicited piece of advice the other night while out drinking. It turns out to be, probably, just exactly what I need right now. We all know I don’t do moderation. So I’m now going to try and be more conscious of fighting my perfectionist tendencies. There’s actually not enough time for them.

I had been in a royal funk all week. Getting over illness, and not really being able to push myself forward the way I wanted. Brain in a fog, just nothing going according to plan. And of course, not eating well because my self-control isn’t very good when I’m feeling sorry for myself.

But the other thing, of course, is that with great power comes great responsibility. It’s also true that the higher the stakes, the more each little decision matters.

It’s like I was telling John when we were at the wing joint in Wyoming or wherever it was, and there was this popcorn in the middle of the table and he kept eating it then idly wondered why he couldn’t stop eating it. Easy: he hadn’t made a commitment to stop. It tasted good, and there was no compelling reason for him to stop: he wasn’t allergic, or training for a competition, or on a diet. So in the absence of an explicit commitment, we just keep doing what we do.

Inertia is a powerful thing. I think this is the hardest step in change, once you realise you want to change, is making that plan and that commitment. Sometimes you know what to do but just keep telling yourself ‘I’ll start tomorrow.’ Well, tomorrow never comes until you make it.

Although it is a bit hard when your pre-frontal cortex is tired. Or when you’re sick. Or when you’re just down in the dumps.

Wednesday was Halloween and I was just SO not into it. I played along because my friends were quite into it, and I wound up having a good time. But mainly my head just wasn’t in the right place, because I didn’t feel like having a good time. I managed to rally, though. Plus my costume was super fun, and Susan took great pleasure in the fact that by the measure of how much attention I got, my costume was by far the best. I was a bunch of grapes. And I had straight hair which was great fun for me, but that was only because I’d had my hair cut earlier in the day by a fascinating, outspoken, business owner. Wow people can get emotional over elections.

On Thursday, I got to get a tour of Susan’s medical school campus, including such things as the café that makes sandwiches on gluten-free bread (soooo not paleo …. But I hadn’t had a reuben in years and I enjoyed every bite!), and the inside of a classroom, and the bone room, and Children’s Hospital.

Then we drove to Colorado Springs, where she used to live and where I had visited very briefly a few years back when I used to work for Exit41. That city is absolutely stunning. Not sure how I was there for a day and never noticed …. But I was there for a day and never noticed. I noticed this time.

We started with a workout at Pikes Peak CrossFit, which was even higher altitude than Denver. It was a thruster ladder with burpees in between. Oh my heavens. I tried to take it easy. But here’s what happens: you get winded, then your muscles don’t get oxygen, then you wind up wondering why all of a sudden 3 thrusters at 95 pounds feels heavy. I mean … that last thruster at 115 pounds felt like about 135. Sickening. Who knew, you needed oxygen to your muscles to be able to lift heavy weights?

But fun. It’s quite interesting, this training at altitude may be rough but it’s also super fun because it’s a new sort of challenge. I’m used to knowing what my body is capable of …. But this is new! In a way I feel just as out of shape as when I first started CrossFit, and that’s probably the closest analogy I have, because back then I was strong but lacking in cardio capacity, which is basically what happens to me, here. Still, die though I did, I felt so much better after training. Nothing like endorphins to lift you out of a funk!

After the workout we had a beautiful dinner of trout almondine followed by a fun Irish pub where I got to meet some of her friends. The next morning we woke up early early and went to hike The Incline. This “hike” aka stairway to heaven at the foot of Pike’s Peak starts at something like 6,000 feet of elevation and ends at 8,000 feet or so. The pictures don’t really do it justice. It’s … daunting. And I say this as someone who is not daunted. The air is pretty thin up there, and it was horrible, but horrible in a way I was expecting so it was fine. I even did 10 burpees at the top, then we jogged most of the way back down the hill.

The hike was followed by eating a gigantic plate of food at this awesome diner in a purple castle. Amazing. And some really good coffee. Happiness in food form. I am so glad that I got to stay in Colorado longer. It’s very beautiful here, and an amazing combination of Rockies and American west. I actually really, really like it here. I’m also discovering that I’m a mountain girl, not an ocean girl, if you make me choose. But if there are no mountains, I get very sad.

Speaking of letting things get to you, I was overhearing one of Susan’s friends at the bar going on about his love life. I wasn’t trying to listen, but he was drunk and being loud. It was interesting because he’s clearly a nice guy, in this particular situation he was being “friend-zoned” (I couldn’t help but think of what Motheo would have had to say!), but then he was going off about how he was just going to start being selfish, and even went so far later as to claim he was an asshole. Far from it, and I told him as much.

It’s the same concept as claiming you don’t want to get into Harvard because it’s just a stuck up rich school anyway. You’re sensitive, you get hurt, so your new knee-jerk reaction is to pretend you don’t care, and then you put up this shield. I actually don’t think I have ever heard a guy claim he was an asshole who wasn’t, actually, the exact opposite but trying to hide it. The real assholes don’t know they’re assholes.

Speaking of, I also did my homework, made my decisions in the local elections, and cast my absentee ballot. This was more homework than I’d ever done in the past. This is the problem with voting; too many people cast uninformed votes. Well, it could be worse. At least most of the population is semi-educated and literate which isn’t the case in a lot of the world. I suppose that is an elitist statement but so be it. I do tend to think that you should at least understand your candidate before you should cast a vote.

It wasn’t planned but I am kind of happy that I will be in this country for this election. Next week is going to be another stressful but fun whirlwind of activity.

It’s breaking my heart a little bit not to be in Cape Town. Damn heart, why must you be so fragile? It should be more like the lungs, the more you stress it the harder it gets. Haha, that wasn’t what I meant but in light of the above, it’s amusing and I’m keeping it.

Who says we can’t control our own future, anyway? I’m definitely going to make lemonade out of lemons.

• “I concede, and am duly impressed.” – Michael (I beat him to the punch on Twitter)
• “Good luck staying sober.” – Henk
• “Do you really think Lehman Brothers is going to save you?” – hair stylist
• “Did you just say ‘oooh a ranch!’?” – Susan
• “That was kind of awesome.” “That was kind of stupid. Which I guess is kinda the same thing.” – Susan
• “Who needs drunk when you have delirious?” – Susan
• “I’m a little bit scared now.” – Ellie
• “No one would ever say that our lives are boring.” – Susan
• “Being away is opening your eyes in a way that being there would not.” – Craig
• “At the end of the day, they own their own success.” – Craig