That's a sigh of relief you hear from me, way over here in DC. I just got back from Seattle, where I ran two conferences in a row. I work various conferences throughout the year, but at least once a year there is "my" conference. While there are a lot of people involved, I have the most responsibility for this one. And in 2015, we decided to have a bonus conference right after the first, so it's been a busy week.
When you're in charge of the conference, it means that you really need to be there the whole time anything is going on. Between talks, workshops, planning breakfasts, and late-night poster sessions, I worked some long days. And if you do the math, you will discover that you can, in fact, get 8 hours of sleep and work 15 hours in a day, as long as you only need 30 minutes to get ready and 30 minutes to completely decompress and fall asleep. Running conferences plays to some of my strengths: I am someone who can develop a schedule and follow it, even when time is scheduled in two-minute increments.
Now I am home and enjoying luxuries: a short 8-hour working day, the company of my cat and dog, and food that did not come from a restaurant. I am not enjoying quite as much my damp bed, because the ceiling has sprung a leak. But in that case, I can count my lucky stars that I am a renter right now and not a homeowner.
4 comments:
That's a lot of work for anyone. the soggy bed is bummer.
Hope your landlord sorts out the leaky ceiling problem quickly. Did you have to sleep on the settee?
I did sleep on the settee one night. Apparently I can sleep through nightly train horns outside my window, but not the irregular drip of single water drops. And it's been fixed now!
I would love to learn more about these conferences you run/attend. Any chance you can share some names or URLS? Do they exist online available for the public?
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