I realize that some would consider this engagement/position moving up in the world, but I hadn't realized quite how literally that would take effect.
During yesterday afternoon's fire drill, for example, where suddenly a seventeenth floor office was so much more noticeably high up.
Trudging down each flight, surrounded by the entire contents of the building, I swallowed a few dirty looks for trying to continue to talk about one of my projects and then gave up happily, and cracked fire-related jokes for the next thirteen flights.
Not that this building has a thirteenth floor or anything. A pet quirk, that. A reminder that some people can believe hard enough to affect the architecture.
Trudging back up the seventeen floors I cracked a few less jokes, but I made it.
Seventeen fucking floors. No, I did not take them two steps at a time the way I do at home to get my legs working better.
Not after the first four, anyway.
The rest of the way up there was a gong ringing in my ears, not from exertion but from the strangest thing that our department lead did that morning.
When I'd finally swallowed enough courage to wander up to his doorjamb and proffer my hand, he, in all his curly-haired shaggy-bearded glory pronounced too-large phrases with the words "perfect fit" parading far too many times within them, and proceeded to reach over onto his mahogany display table, and scoop up a golden gong that he'd brought back from Korea.
And rang it. Clearly, and loudly, all speech interrupted until the reverberations dissipated into the building.
Now apparently this gong is reserved for calling everyone's attention at urgent moments, so the entire contents of the floor came running.
And I shook hands a few more times, and grinned, and put my hands on my hips and accepted the compliment with as much humour as I could muster.
My boss laughed, the department lead laughed, then everyone else laughed, and I disappeared to my corner of the universe, gong still ringing in my ears.
Of course it's no big deal. It's just humour, just some very large (in spirit and accomplishment, I mean) man's way of livening the atmosphere.
In all my nervousness, though, with this great pile of responsibilities that I can't really talk about but that need doing NOW, with the last six months of soul-searching and desperate fear that I've lost my skills and my ability to contribute to the society I am fighting to live in...
In all the myriad factors that took until last night to sink in,
his words, "perfect fit, rare to find such a perfect fit," and the great sweep of his gonging hand, shook me to the core.
Last night, I slept some, for the first time in a while, and this morning I woke up having found I'd already accepted this massive change.
Not bad, I think, especially for a perpetual wired worrier, and the thousand issues, from incorporation (and getting my brain around it) to maintaining the contacts I've made so far, to revamping my home schedule so that I don't fall into work-sleep-work-sleep-order out-sleep-work patterns.
I want to keep climbing. I want to keep singing. I don't really want to keep partying, but I do want to keep seeing people, Q and Larry and Ford and Rob and Kitty and Cindy and Kristen, so many of the faces that have made the last six months worth looking at.
And yes, losing the inspiration that is Mr. Pyke to two weeks of insane travelling on his part will be difficult, but only because it will be cold in the hearth and in bed, but not so cold as you might think.
It can never be cold when I'm that excited, that proud, when the phone rings and his perfect voice rings out to charm his travel agent into doing the impossible for him.
Jealous? Maybe a little bit. But I've been in that sleeping-in-the-airport place, and I'll be there again, and the over-riding feeling is that Valentine's day will be all the more wonderful when I'll have him to nibble on again, a handful of days after the ribbons have disappeared from store windows.
And I could keep muttering the minutes of yesterday, but today is already looming before me, new documents on my desk, new hands to shake, new demands from the smiling crew.
This morning, as I was going over my notes from yesterday and remembering to ask my assistant for the documents that L had mentioned at the meeting, my assistant showed up with them all clipped and organized and highlighted in her hand.
Wow.