Sitting on the vacant second floor near the office’s west-facing windows in a rare moment of reflection during what is normally a hectic and nonstop workday, I am noticing for the first time what’s actually outside these walls. Across the street is a millwork facility, and behind it a new parking garage built for the Starbucks HQ that I’d never noticed before today. Behind that is the Burlington Northern rail yard and the northernmost reaches of Elliot Bay Harbor where the massive cargo cranes tirelessly juggle shipping containers like a never-ending Lego kit. One such container rolls by in the foreground atop an 18-wheeler’s specially-fitted trailer, the driver snaking his way through the orange cones and steel road plates littered down South 1st Avenue, remnants of a perpetual construction project that currently toils a few blocks further south. Across the sky a small private jet slices through the hanging clouds, descending towards Boeing Field’s southbound runway, and not long behind it a cargo transport flight on a longer approach, its silver fuselage glinting in the waning winter sun. It’s a very raw neighborhood, marred by no attempts to mask the purpose of the sprawling warehouses that are its trademark. Even as SoDo has seen some of its industrial tenants be replaced by stylish warehouse condos and shabby-chic loft workspaces this has only peeled back the neighborhood’s skin and exposed the meat and bones of the heavy industry that first made Seattle a boomtown and the blue-collar workforce that quietly keeps the city running despite a culture largely focused on the pleasures of white-collar life.

As one of those white-collar workers I have enjoyed this office’s proximity to the massive physical scale of America’s industrial machine, and as one of the high-tech laborers pushing the country into an era of electronic accomplishments rather than physical ones the honest tangibility of this largely-bygone impotus to America’s previous-century growth has been a valuable source of perspective.

On my last day in this office – the company is relocating to a more modern (and much more tightly-crowded and “efficient”) space near the financial/legal district and Chinatown – I can’t help but wonder what the next century of industrial revolutions will bring and what the littered past of my industry and the ones that come after it will look like to those that follow us. We won’t leave behind vast warehouses, complex machinery, massive infrastructure or huge environmental change. Just digital records, unfinished ideas, and a smattering of office furniture to show for all our efforts to change the world.

I’m back in Seattle today, in case you missed that in the moblog post earlier. I wasn’t outside very much this week in Denver, spending most of the 90+ degree days in a conference room with the blinds drawn, but there was a refreshing fire drill on Tuesday that forced us all outside.

It was a great few days with my new team, meeting the ones I had only heard on the phone and – more significantly – spending time in a new capacity with several of my friends from around the company that previously I didn’t have many opportunities to see other than socially. It was especially great to see Katie, as since she moved to SF two years ago it’s been tough to keep in touch. We both came away from the team summit feeling a little overwhelmed, a little flattered, and a lot blown away at the big challenges and opportunities in our career paths now. Now that we’re both part of a global team with the freedom to travel wherever our jobs require, I’m very excited that we’ll be able to see a lot more of each other.

Yesterday stood no chance of being an average tuesday anyway, but it really spun into a tsunami that i couldn’t leave you all out of. I spent all day yesterday at the W hotel for a work training, which meant i wore slacks – but no tie, this is still advertising, and i’m still in Seattle – and carried a black computer bag and valet parked, and pretty much felt like a “suit” in the New York sense. There were catered lunches and team happy hours and a raucous private “wine room” with a nine course italian meal and, obvs, all the wine we could imbibe. There were already enough moments of stress, excitement and general wackiness to fill a tuesday scheduled for me that i needn’t have layered any more on. But you know i did. :)

I snuck out in between sessions to meet Gloria, my awesome realtor, to sign and initial 30 pages of fine print and write a huge check, placing an offer on a townhouse in Lake Forest Park (north and east of Seattle, one exit closer to the city than my current apt). Then i spent the rest of the day clutching my phone compulsively, daring it to vibrate with a message from Gloria.

An update came about six pm, that the selling agent liked my offer and was going to suggest their client accept it. But the seller was working the polls, which don’t close until nine, and hadn’t seen the offer yet.

At almost eleven, as i was headed home to sit by the phone in more comfortable clothes, my pocket emitted Gloria’s distinctive tune. Two words that i needed to hear: mutual acceptance. There’s still inspections and appraisals and piles of paperwork, but 50% of the battle has been won in my favor. It’s exciting and scary and most of all makes me feel very grown up. :)

And it has a two car garage, room for all my toys. :)

There are so many things to catch up on in October, as it’s been a busy, exciting month and I’ve been e-gagged since nearly the beginning of it. I’ll try to start at the beginning but I make no guarantees that I’ll regurgitate things in the order they were digested. Wow, that analogy was kind of gross.

Let’s start with October 1st. It was a Monday, the first day of the month and of the week, and my first day in a new job. Same company (although it changes a little every day since we were acquired by our new overlords) but a new position, as the Technical Program Manager. It’s the kind of position I’ve worked for since college, a hybrid between client service, software development and management where my success will come from knowing as much about my favorite parts of the business – technology, operations, business development – as possible while being able to almost completely ignore the parts I have little interest in (sales). I feel very – for lack of a better, less-hubris-filled word – proud that I’ve been able to claw my way up the ladder into the job I’ve wanted despite maybe not taking the most direct path there. August was my three year anniversary with the company and this will be my fourth position there (each one a promotion) because I have never let myself be satisfied with “good enough” and I’m happy to say that approach has paid off in this case. Everything has worked out, including a lot of right-place and right-time luck, and I finally feel like I have a career and not just a job. For the first time ever I actually look forward to handing out my business cards, and it’s a nice feeling.

Perhaps one of the best parts of the promotion was the faith my bosses had in me to assume the significant new responsibility. My direct manager was completely supportive even though I would be moving out of his team, and he’s made my transition as easy as he could and continues to be a huge help. Our department boss is someone I’ve never been able to read well and whom I’ve always felt didn’t really like me much, so hearing her praising my skills and experience and saying she was excited to see me take the job was at first unnerving and then really motivating. I’ve definitely come to feel highly valued and greatly appreciated by the people I work with, which is a great situation to walk into every day. I hope that as our division continues to grow and as the company as a whole is broken apart and swallowed up by something much larger that the teams of people I’ve been spending this October with are still the same faces I see around the meeting tables next October, too. I’m definitely happy to be where I’m at and looking back into the blog archive that’s not always something I’ve been able to say.

We can only make progress when we’re able to let go of old methods and embrace new ones. While self-examination is great, i find it’s much easier to identify annoying, troublesome or inefficient habits in others and target those habits for extinction. The workplace is an ideal arena in which to expose yourself to the ineffective habits of others, as you spend a large block of time trapped in a confined space together separated only by fabric-covered cardboard sheets and a layer of animal pictures and thumbtacks. Some of the practices i’d like to see swiftly abolished include:

• Using the bathroom as a conference room.
• Dialing on speakerphone. (should be punishable by death)
• Forwarding emails to large groups of people tagged simply “FYI”.
• Emailing a link to a file or webpage without checking first that the link works.
• Printing something, to then turn around and fax it.
• Printing something, then never picking it up off the printer.
• Printing an entire slide presentation.
• Printing email.
• Opening a trouble ticket just to ask a question.

Look around at work today. What could your coworkers do better?