Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Game Day

My senior year of college I played rugby - I needed something new - and during one game while I cradled the covetous ball, I was slammed on both sides by two of Amherst's finest. I am pretty sure the whole of Pioneer Valley heard the breaking of the four bones attaching my fingers to my wrist. As I lay on the ground where I had dropped to allow play to continue, I remember feeling stunned. Not physical pain stunned but stunned at how easily and purposefully the premeditated, brute force of the tackle had been delivered. I have been a tentative dancer ever since.

Somewhere in the middle of my career path I received a similar tackle. It was purposeful. It was forceful. It was premeditated and it left me stunned.

To be honest, it changed the way I work. The way I view the workplace. Now, the office is a pitch and the game is on. And I have learned to tackle.

I am not the wunderkind who flew up the career ladder, rather, I have zipped around like a tipsy bumblebee. While I have stayed consistent regarding the arenas within which I worked, my focus areas have been dizzyingly different. Truly. I skidded from education and youth to hospice and end-of-life care with a dog leg through international law.

Each punch, stumble, accolade, and day's end shows the world that I may be down, but I will never be out. The ball may not be cradled in my arms but it will...even if it means I have to do the tackling.

Through it all, I have felt the brightest light of commendation and the darkest cloak of betrayal and in between the slippery silk of disingenuosness. I have fired people, taken pay cuts, developed national resources, taken short cuts in my work, experienced negative treatment as a working mother, held colleagues and direct reports to impossibly high standards, taken personal days, worked through lunch with a sickening regularity and pretty much fought the good fight just like everyone else.

Lately the good fight has taken me on a longer daily tour of duty and so the blog has fallen by the wayside while I navigate this new phase of my flight of the bumblebee. You see, it would appear that I am in another rugby game.

I am cradling my ulcer and my career goals in my arms.

Tackled, I refuse to fall to the ground waiting for play to continue.

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