I Promise I'm Still Alive

It's been an intermittent month, but mostly because I've been busy. With changes to my life and business travel mixing, it means my fun time has taken a hit. But in the mean time, here's a short blog post to catch you up. What have I been doing? Here's a hint:

I was working our new booth for my company. That's my team beside me (I'm in the striped jacket). For more than a year, we've been working with our staff, booth companies and vendors to make this happen. It was a great moment of pride for us. Not too shabby and under budget. We promptly spent 5 days in the booth working and meeting with customers. But it was still a good time in Anaheim.

The convention was the American Library Association. It's not only academic publishers, but also commercial publishers pimping new books. And because I'm always a fan of books and had just read the last of my free books from the ALA in January, I took a few trips around the convention floor to get some new titles. Another plus of it being a local convention is that I didn't have to worry about luggage space for my books so I grabbed them up. I ended up with 13 new (free) galleys to read and review.

I am now on my 13th straight day of work (another reason --or excuse--for my lack of blogging). But tomorrow I'm off all day! What should I do? (besides read, of course).

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Apparently I haven't given enough details of my job to satisfy some people and I want to quash any rumors of me working for any illicit operations in the Valley. I haven't given any details because of two reasons:

1) I just started last Monday and didn't have any real details, and

2) My boss mentioned in my interview that he had read my blog (it's on my resume), and I found out that other members of the PR team had read it as well.



So in an effort to make sure I actually knew what I was talking about before posting (which is a change of pace for me), I decided to hold off until I had an idea of what my job was before telling a little more about it.

Here's what I know right now: I do PR. I'm the US PR Manager for SAGE Publications. The US is needed because the company I now work for is a global entity and has offices in the UK, Singapore, India and Washington DC. In fact, my boss and the majority of the PR team are located in the UK. I've spent the last week trying to be able to do the time zone math in my head (it's an 8 hour difference).

Lucky for me, last week was an unintentional boot camp of the company. There were LOADS of people over from the UK (including my boss and my UK counterpart), and the freelancer that has been doing parts of the job for the last 10 years was also flown in to help give me some context and information about what I'll be doing. But the first week was intense. I literally met about 50 people, learned about a new industry, learned about 5 new products, and had cocktail or dinner engagements on 3 of the 5 nights. It was a great learning curve, which I feel like I got through pretty quickly.

Clearly, I'm still learning. I can tell you about the upcoming branding audit results and present to fellow staff, but I can't print out a report and staple it--because I don't have a stapler. Or a highlighter. Or just about anything. The office I'm in (and I'm thankful that I have an office and not a cubicle--not sure how I got that lucky, but I'll take it) right now has got a desk with drawers that currently hold a box of tampons (I brought those in), a computer, a week's worth of my notes strewn about the desk (I'm notorious for being messy on the desk, but clean on my hard drive), roses from Chef for Valentine's Day, and a refrigerator.

Why a fridge? Because I'm a lazy caffeine addict. This place has about 300 employees or so on-site and the breakroom is downstairs. There's a vending machine and three fridges for storing frozen meals (but only up to two per person for space sake) and four microwaves. But those things require me to: 1) have cash or change--which I never do, or 2)not be in meetings where I have the 7 minutes roundtrip to get a beverage and get back upstairs. (Yes I timed it). So I'm lazy and put the fridge in my office so I only have a 4 second trip to get a diet Coke. Really it's for the company's sanity as well as my own.

Anyway, office aside, I do a lot of the things I did at the AHA. I push out journal articles from among the 630+ journals we publish. I announce the acquisition of new journals. I announce when books are published. I work on social media. I contribute to a corporate blog. I prep our executives for speaking engagements. I continue to be the branding police. I manage a staff that plans events--except instead of cocktail parties and Galas, it's conventions and trade shows.

That's basically the gist of what I do. And it's for a very legit, very legal and not at all X-rated independent company. On another day, in another post, I'll start comparing for-profit with non-profit. It's been a re-entry experience into the for-profit world. And not a bad one.

And the winner of the Ashley Employer Lottery is. . .

well, me, of course. Because I've got a job. But the employer isn't getting a bad deal, either, because I work my ass off, as a rule.

And the lucky employer is. . .SAGE publishing, a higher education textbook, reference book and journal publisher. On Monday, I begin my tenure as the PR Manager. I get to continue management (or as Amanda quoted to me "We can put you in a position to be over as many as four people"--except that was Office Space and my new gig puts me over 2--one of which I'll have to hire), I get to work with the upper management and build the brand externally, and I get to learn a new industry. All of which are very exciting.

The things I really liked about SAGE were that it is an independently owned publishing house--which is highly unusual--and the owner has set up an endowment to keep it that way. The place feels like its on the precipice--at that crossroads where its trying to figure out how to expand while keeping the relationships and service that made it successful in the first place. And that's kind of fun.

I also got to meet a LOT of the upper management and the CEO during the interview process and they were all easy to get along with and understand. Plus the HR department sent me chocolate covered strawberries to welcome me to the team. Which was exceptionally sweet and Chef will very much enjoy them.

So on Monday I get to bust out my heels and cute work attire and head back into the fray. The one downfall is that there is about a 45 minute drive (with light traffic) to get there--up to 90 minutes in heavy traffic to get home. That's going to be a change from the usual 8 minute commute I had at the AHA. Which got me thinking back to my longest commute. Two of the longest commutes I had were 35 and 40 minutes to Princeton and Mount Vernon, respectively. Which kind of made me chuckle that my longest commutes thus far weren't in the city but my Indiana home.

So the commute is gonna have to become a useful time for me. I've decided to use it to do a couple things:

1. Listen to Mike & Mike and sports talk radio. Mike & Mike ends at 7 a.m. here, and in time, I'll be able to keep 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. hours at the new job. So that means, extra sports chatter. And until then, I'll listen to regular sports talk to get my sports jones in without sacrificing any Chef time, as he's not a fan.
2. Flush out my arguments. For a debate? Against Chef? What kind of arguments? All valid questions. The answer lies in Chuck Klosterman. Thank you, Greg, for introducing me to him and his wonderfully sarcastic essays. They've already got me thinking and that thinking takes time--so I'll use the commute to flush out some weird arguments to write. And be prepared for this blog to shift it's tone a little. I feel like I may have pulled some punches lately to buffer things from any potential employers or to keep from offending. But I've decided its time to be a little offensive.
3. Books on tape. Anyone got any good suggestions? I've never been a big audio book fans because I like to visualize my literature and its harder for me to visualize words that I'm listening to rather than words that I'm reading. Is anyone else like that? Does this mean that I'm a visual learner? I guess it does. I usually take notes as people are talking to me so that I can see the important words they're saying. It helps me remember better. I may never look at the notes again, but just writing them and seeing them help me.
4. And last, but not least, I need to use the time to be inside my head for a little while. I need to let my mind wander and go places that it shouldn't. I need to be my characters for a while and use the time to write. I might even get a voice recorder to see if I can transcribe anything later that could be useful.

So, that's my life and work coming up. Wish me luck on Monday. I feel good about it.