I have barely had the time or inclination to write a blog for a while so I thought a summary of the last couple of weeks would be good!
Last weekend was the Mardi Gras Parade and our annual Parade Party that we throw. The party was a hoot, although a few tense moments when the shirtless waiters got lost and were an hour and a half late.
I discovered that straight girls are the worst party guests of all, they drink so much they become paralytic. One even took it upon herself to get so drunk that she threw up and shat herself all at the same time - delightful!
We had a big media launch of a new product at work which generated a lot of great media interest and has generated a load of interest in our work from some unlikely sources like PayPal and a couple of advertising agencies.
The lead up to the launch was very intense trying to get everything ready was a huge workload and many late nights and weekends spent working.
A big thanks to Gabe for the help he gave in the media launch I could not have done it by myself.
The start to the year was slow with new business but hectic with existing customers. The last week has seen all of the quiet prospective customers come out of the woodwork and our forward sales pipeline is now very healthy.
We also set up a new team in India this month, which has been an interesting challenge for me, bot in terms of timing and learning how to manage an off shore team that doesn't start working till 2pm our time and goes through till 11pm our time.
My family is still a cause of stress, trying to juggle the day to day issues that arise with parents who have dementia. It's tough remaining calm and not show my frustration when they say the same thing over and over and over again and ring ten times a day to tell me the same thing.
But that's the unfortunate future of dealing with people whose mental capacity is diminishing.
We also have friends from the UK staying with us on and off for a couple of weeks and it's been nice catching up with friends that we haven't seen in nearly 8 years. Although because we have been busy we haven't been able to spend so much time with them.
This year though seems to be flying by and it's already the first week of March and it still feels like January.
But everything is pointing to this year being a really fantastic year all I have to do is find a good balance between working hard and achieving my goals and getting enough down time to relax and recharge as often as I can.
One of the biggest failings I have face the last couple of months is taking up my bad habit of smoking again, but I have promised myself once all the Mardi Gras Parties are all over I am going to dig my heals in and kick the dirty habit for once and for all.
I can feel the smoking reducing my fitness and health and I don't like the feeling, but I have to get myself into a psychological state of determination that I will stop and stop the discussion in my head when I do stop.
For anyone that stops smoking you know when you first give up it's like a battle of wills, on the one hand your 'good' side says yeah you can do it, whilst the other 'bad side' tells you, that you will just start smoking again so it's stupid putting yourself through the pain of stopping.
It's stupid really I just have to quiet my 'bad side' and nurture my good side.
Let's see how I can quite the bad and nurture the good in the next few weeks!