Professional Networking

Although I am seriously not a morning person, after my late night last night I dragged myself out to the office, plopping my things down at my desk at 8:30 AM. (Given that I rarely leave the house that early, that's quite an accomplishment!)

The reason for this early start was a "Women's Networking Breakfast", where I got to listen to the Deputy General Counsel of my company speak. She was an American from our Chicago office, and I had to admit that she was a really interesting and engaging speaker. I was also impressed that whilst she had started her career in Chicago, she had spent 3 years living in London, and 5 years living in Tokyo. In all of this, her husband had become a house-husband, or as she puts it, "He's been on a REALLY long leave-of-absence from his firm!" Although it does make you wonder, can anyone really make it to the very top of any multi-national organization these days and have kids if they don't have someone staying at home running things on the homefront? It basically seems like if you are a two-career couple, you either forget about having kids or doom both careers to mediocrity. Getting to the top requires sacrifice, all the way around.

After the networking breakfast, I met with my career counsellor and kept sending out e-mails to people about my revised employment situation, and just generally trying not to fall asleep at my desk, even after three Diet Cokes.

Finally, at the end of the day, I tried to rally myself to head out to an HR networking drinks meeting happening at a nearby bar. Yet, after I realised that very few people I knew would be going, and I was absolutely tripping over myself, trying to stay awake.

And then I remembered the most interesting response of the day to the Senior Executive at that morning's event. Someone asked her, "If there was one thing you could go back and do differently, what would it be?" I was both surprised and impressed when she answered, "I wish I had taken better care of my health."

Indeed, she was your classic middle-aged woman draped in scarves and loose flowing clothing, trying to disguise the fact that her middle was probably larger than her bust, and a double-chin was definitely creeping in. I won't try to paint the picture that she was some horribly obese woman, but definitely one who, while she took care with her appearance, had a few too many lines on her forehead and a few too many pounds around her middle to truly be considered healthy.

And so with that, I realised that dragging myself out to stand around making polite chit-chat with people over drinks just wasn't worth it, and so I went home, pulled together dinner from what I found in the cupboard (hurrah for rice and beans!) and was in bed by 9 PM. Sometimes an early bedtime is the best career move of all.