Keeping Pace

Keeping Pace

Archives for June 2006

I just got a little “caught up” in things

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You how there are times when you just can’t get motivated to do anything. Well today was *not* that sort of day for me. It was a day of getting “caught up” in things…going overboard…being an overachiever.

I got to work a little later than usual. Having not eaten more than a piece of toast with peanut butter on it, a cheese stick, and my usual non-fat latte by 10 a.m., I was kind of hungry. It was too late to get oatmeal in the cafeteria and yet too early to get lunch. So I busied myself with work. I got busy responding to emails, returning the calls, completing forms, faxing queries, and finally preparing all of the correspondence for the central files. I was on a roll.

One thing led to another and before I knew it I was cleaning some of my personal items out of cabinets and drawers and putting the things into a carboard box. I swear that I didn’t plan this, it just happened. Now my office is two boxes cleaner and the framed photos are arranged slightly differently. Naturally, I had worked up an appetite by noon, and what better meal to eat than an omelete. I ate at my desk and continued to plow through my work. By 3 p.m. I was ready to go for a run.

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Leg Work

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Around noon I put on my running shorts & shoes, pulled my hair up into a ponytail and left the building. People handle stress in different ways. This is my way of handling it. I turned on my forerunner to let it locate the satellites as I did a few stretches and turned on my iPod. iTunes recently released a podcast, by Hal Higdon, for those who are training for the LBCM in October. I listened to the 1st episode as I did my stretches. It was still playing when I began my run and as I made my way out the driveway, I heard Hal mention a question from a V-Teamer who posts regularly on Hal’s Interactive Forum. He mentioned the guy?s vocation and to my surprise it was pharmaceutical. Oh? Could it be that some of you, in my running network, are the people who might be able to direct me to the next step on my career journey?

I continued on my run, now listening to any song that my iPod would play for me. No particular playlist for today’s run. Remember, I am not training right now, I am just maintaining my running in between marathons. The path took me onto the dirt and past various people out walking. I greeted them all with a smile and a friendly hello…as I ran and thought about the similarities to marathon training and the career path.

Before I go into training, I have to look at myself carefully – Identifying my strengths, prior running experience, and determining a goal for myself. For me, having the goal to BQ, it is a goal of significance but I am willing to put in the work. It parallels my career goals as well. I like a challenge where I can pull from my prior nursing experience and continue to learn the clinical research role. After the goal has been set, I choose a race to target, and then the figure out the plan to achieve the goal. Although I yet to achieve my running goal, I have a good base for the process. Now, I figure I can do the same with my career.

So I ran today and thought about my strengths, and prior experience. I thought about my journey, and figure I will do what it takes to live down the dream – be it running, family or my career. Posted by Picasa

Beautiful Smiles

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Our dear friend, David, quoted Carole King on an answering machine a few weeks before he died. He sang a verse of the song “Beautiful”

You’ve got to get up every morning
With a smile in your face
And show the world all the love in your heart

The people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes you will
That you’re beautiful as you feel

I’ve been practicing the art of keeping a smile on my face. At the beginning of the day I have taken a little extra time to dress a little nicer, put a little more attention on my hair, and “smile.” It’s true; I do feel better. I am not sure that I feel “beautiful” but I’ll take it.

At the end of the day, I am smiling because I am away from the stressed out people at the office. I pick up YaYa from camp and learn all about his day. He played basketball and went to the skating rink. He tells me that he skated with the 3-wheeled skates. I sure hope they were in-line skates.

We enjoyed a Jamba Juice drink at BoBo’s football practice. Oh yes, it’s not “practice” – it’s “conditioning.” BoBo is in the receiver group and they are running, turning and then they catch the thrown football. After a few minutes of this, the coach has BoBo throw the ball to the other boys. Hum? I figure this could mean 1 of 2 things. Either the coach’s arm was sore, or he thinks BoBo might make a good quarterback (QB). I’ve got mixed feelings on this one. I like that he is good, but I don’t like the idea of my baby getting squished. I’ll get over it.

Finally, I am back at home. I cooked a good dinner tonight – so I am told. My family was too busy eating to notice that I only ate the brown rice. The truth is that I have lost my appetite sometime after lunch…and it never came back.

There are a few things that cause loss of appetite. One of the big reasons might be big corporate companies that layoff hundreds of employees and then turn around and purchase two other companies. It is nauseating…OR my loss of appetite might have been due to the Jamba Juice (but that’s nothing to write about).

After a 5 mile run today, we had a meeting with the new “suits” that are now learning their way around our office building. The displayed the new org chart where there are about 6 positions that the people in my department and the corresponding department of our sister company are all vying for. Between the 2 companies there are about 50 people all “in selection” for these 6 positions. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don’t see how I can sit around and wait to see if they “select” me. I *was* smiling when I went into the room, and I *was* smiling when I went out. I was smiling, but I was not feeling so beautiful at that moment.

And then I heard about my colleague’s husband who found out why he has been in pain for the past 6 months or so. It wasn’t good news. The news puts it all in perspective. We can all get new jobs, but at least we have our health.

So after cooking that fabulous dinner (so they said), I updated my resume and my blog. I looked into what it would take to get my RN license back in active status and picked out some CEU courses to take. It’s just more on the journey. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and put my smile on again. Why not?

Working on the “Plan”

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It occurred to me that it has only been 1 week since Grandma’s Marathon. It actually feels like it has been longer than that. Today, I got the urge to do some abdominal work, and weights. It wasn’t much – it was just enough to remind me that I haven’t been doing any for the past many weeks. It actually felt good to work those muscles.

I found my running things and when out for a run in the streets around my house. I didn’t pay too much attention to the pace displayed by my Forerunner; I just ran. At a nice point where I could turn and head for home, one of my favorite songs came on my iPod. All the songs on my iPod are good ones, but this song is particularly fun to run to. I continued straight, extending my run. The sun was already putting the heat on, but there was a nice breeze blowing and the street was tree lined. I listened to the beat and though about my running.

Technically, I am not “training” right now. I remember reading in a newsletter from www.active.com about the difference between working out and training. The article explained that in training there is a focus where the training peaks for a goal race. In contrast working out simply maintains a level of fitness. Well, right now my running focus is on recovery, then it will be a few more weeks prior to starting with another training schedule.

I figured this time, my focus will be for the Nike Women’s Half-Marathon. My plan would be to build upon my marathon training using Hal Higdon’s Advanced Half-Marathon Training Plan for the October race date. I knew that the half-marathon training would overlap with the beginning of my marathon training for the California International Marathon in December. What I didn’t figure out (until now) is that *both* the 12-week half-marathon training and the 18-week training plan have the *same* start date of July 30th.

Yikes! Okay, I was enjoying the idea of a break from marathon training. I think. Here is the revised plan. Nothing is set in stone; perhaps I can somehow combine the two programs, or I could have a new goal marathon.

Just Think

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News travels fast; I’ve been getting phone calls in these past few days from friends that I know in the industry, as well as from recruiters. When I made my career move from nursing to research and drug development, it seemed that the pharmaceutical industry was a safe career to be in. This was at a time where layoffs were hitting the computer industry HARD in our area. I have since become accustomed to the lifestyle that I now have since leaving bedside nursing. It has been about 6 years since I have made this career change. While I do miss my patients, I also enjoy this relatively new way of life.

I can remember back to the days of nursing. Things were very different for me and my family in those 12 plus years. It’s the things like being about to have both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off that I would give up if I returned to nursing. I cannot tell you how many times Santa has had to come to our house early just so I could get up on Christmas morning for the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift. Prior to that, there was many a Christmas Eve where I would work 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. only to come home exhausted and struggle to watch the kids open their presents. That was when I worked Pediatric Intensive Care. When I worked in Home Health, I had to provide end of life care to 3 of my kids on one single Christmas weekend. I was numb by the time I arrived at my sister’s house for dinner. It didn’t even register when they were singing Happy Birthday to me. But missing the holidays was not the worst of it.

As a Home Health nurse, I drove to my patients homes to basically teach their parents how to nurses for their children. As a pediatric nurse, most of my patients had private insurance. Their insurance would only cover a few nursing visits to teach things such as how to administer antibiotics into the view using a portable IV pump, care of a new central line for a newly diagnosed cancer patient, or complex wound care. The pediatric patients were just enough to spread me thin and I would drive over 200 miles each day to complete my visits. The driving, repetitive actions in some of the care that I provided regularly, and the use of a laptop created injuries in both of my wrists. It got to the point that I couldn’t pick up my own infant without it hurting. My arms got so weak that I was afraid that I would drop him. It hurt just to cradle him in my arms while breastfeeding him. It was time for a career change. It was a difficult decision to make for me as I loved my patients. I loved what I was doing and I felt that I was D@mn good at it.

In the process of making this career change, I found that people try to make judgments about who a person is by finding out what they do for a living. When you are a nurse, people think that is “good.” When you say that you work in the pharmaceutical industry, people don’t know what to think. Are you evil? Do you keep all that extra money that they charge for drugs now a day? Well, I can tell you that I am *not* evil; I’d like to think that I am still working for the patients. I work to get new drugs onto the market – to obtain the information that the FDA uses to determine if a drug is safe and if it works. There isn’t any immediate feedback. It is years in the process and so many drugs don’t make it. It certainly isn’t as rewarding as nursing was, but I have gotten used to my new life. I now have a life where I see my kids on the weekends and after school. At my current company, I have flexibility to be around more – to flex my time if I need to so that I can attend that play at school. Not all of my friends in this industry have it so well. My friend Cindy seems to be traveling ALL of the time. Now, as I consider changing companies I am forced to take another look at my career. I need to figure out what it is that I like doing the best. How could I make my job more enjoyable, or more rewarding? When I figure it out, then I can go for it. Posted by Picasa

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