Too much travel.   Too much time on the road.   This is what I get for putting myself on a commercial project…..   That said the client is great, the wife is hugely supportive and we are seeing some very cool facilities.    We’re making television history.    Sorry - can’t talk about it publicly yet.   

Now, March 25th its Aruba for the wife and me - without the kids - for five days.

Well I have to admit to thinking a couple of things I saw today were pretty cool.   My prior post spoke of the pressure I sometimes feel between our Blue Hat Design business that’s focused specifically in churches and ministries and our legacy in the commercial broadcast world.   Jumping between the two for me sometimes feels like business whiplash.   Today I was smack in the middle of the commercial side of the world and saw some things that few people get to….

We’ll be working for KNBC in the same building with the Jay Leno studios and just down the hall from Days Of Our Lives.    This is the same complex that Carson did his show from.   Here’s the fiber tray that sends signals to Jay’s dressing room.   It’s strange when someone is telling you to land your cables here or there and then you look down and see something like this in the rack you’re going to be working in.

Well I just taped on my office door a month of travel itineraries.  It says I will be in the office for exactly three working days during the month of March.   This is a good thing really.  It means we’re so busy that I will be in the field where the action is for the better part of the next month.   

The majority of this time will be for NBC and there’s the rub for me.  I love being busy.  I derive great satisfaction form rising to a challenge.   Arguably this NBC project  our team is taking on is one of the most challenging projects I have ever seen.   But it’s a commercial project.   Now the balance of our faith-based work goes on as usual.   Mat and Steve keep the wheels turning but I have to miss a lot of it.   I am needed elsewhere.  

I am conflicted about this because like I say, I love a challenge.   But I want to work with the church all the time.   But in this economy one should be ever grateful to literally have more work than you can handle.   This is our position.  We’re turning some work away.   

Sunday at 8:30 I am on a plane from Atlanta to San Diego.  Internal conflict or no, I will be on the plane.   I will hope for an upgrade.  I will collect my frequent flyer miles and Marriott points.   I will go through my usual first night of on the road insomnia.    I will miss two track meets and five nights of tucking in the little boys.   I will wake up alone and so will my wife.  

Still for twenty years this is what I do.  

So I guess I will see you out there somewhere and until then, keep on truckin.

Today Mat just HAD to snap this one of me during a critical moment in our design review.    It was an all-day affair and a man’s gotta eat.

Well you see all kinds of things when you’re on the road.   We’ve been trying to take pictures when we can.   And while we thought the “tornado shelter” sign on the women’s restroom in Akron was pretty good, THIS room was awesome.

Here it is 5:39 PM on the first business Monday of the new year and where’s Waldo?  In the airport of course.   Mat, Phil and I are all headed to Canton, Ohio to kick off a new project.   

I guess it’s right.   I have spent so much of my life in airports, on planes, trains and automobiles.  

Anyway, stay tuned for the next couple of installments of Lessons In Management.   Curing The New Year Blues promises to be worth your time as well as Dealing With The Recession. 

Until then…