Wake-up Call

Yesterday was finally the day for my wake-up call at work.

The Executive Director came by my desk in the afternoon, which is a rarity and always portends trouble. Apparently he got a call from the Mayor's Office, where they are very concerned that some of our travel model results are behind schedule and they've had trouble communicating with the team. And yes, if it's a travel model problem, it's Billy's Problem.

Now, granted they should have called me directly instead of going to my boss, but the truth is that I have let work take a back seat for weeks and weeks now as I've been focusing on pretty much everything else except work: my move to the new apartment, the TRB conference, vacation in San Diego, Facebook, boys, more boys... you get the idea. While everyone here in the office was willing to pick up a little bit of slack because of the big boo-hoo breakup, the time has long-since past that that's okay, especially for somebody with my level of responsibilities.

So, yesterday was the last day of that. I cleared out my email, moved all the piles off my desk and into a "to be processed" pile, finally listened to 27 saved voicemail messages, and got off my ass. And the big surprise? Things aren't really in bad shape at all; it just took a teeny tiny bit of effort.

It doesn't take much, but it does take something. Lesson learned.