I feel like all I've done is eat. And visit one customer.

I've been in Phoenix a few days now. Tuesday I felt like all I did was eat. And drink. Oh, and I attended one meeting. 😅

But seriously, it's the let's-have-meetings-about-meetings problem. Tuesday morning we needed to have a meeting to prep for our customer meeting. We'd already had a prep meeting for this last week, but we needed this additional meeting to do final prep for the meeting. 🙄 We met over breakfast because timing.

Tuesday midday we had our customer meeting. It went well. Yay.

After that meeting, of course, we needed to have a debrief meeting. And again, because timing, we met over lunch. I was still half full from a full breakfast. Normally my breakfast is a protein bar or a few pieces of dried meat and cheese. I ordered a sandwich for lunch. When my plate landed on the table I noticed the sandwich was small, 2/3 the size I expected, and... I was glad. I was glad because that's all I really had room for, and I knew if they'd served me a bigger sandwich I would've eaten the whole thing out of habit. 🤢

Tuesday evening we met again over dinner. All of us were so full from two full meals already that we agreed on going to a restaurant with smaller plates available. That was a big shift from our first suggestion of "How about a steakhouse?"! Over dinner we discussed various sales accounts we're working on. The discussion was wide-ranging, so at least it felt like "Let's talk about what's on our minds" versus "Let's have a meeting about the meeting to prep for the meeting."

Another Customer, Another Meal. And Another Late Flight.

After feeling like "All I've done is eat. And visit one customer," yesterday today I've visited another customer. And sat down to eat again. 😅 At least the ratio is decreasing: one customer visit, one restaurant meal before or after, not three.

Also decreasing is the ratio of meetings about meetings. That's almost entirely attributable to us not having our bosses want to get involved in this one. More people who want to be involved (and have strong opinions about how the meeting should be run) equals more meetings. Today it was just Sandi and I visiting a customer. We chatted briefly about it last night over dinner, aligned on a strategy, and agreed on one small task each we'd do independently to prepare. This morning there was no need for another prep meeting. So we didn't need to meet for breakfast. In fact, both of us still kind of full from yesterday, we both at a meal of a protein bar in our rooms. 🤣 And the meeting went beautifully despite our lack of 3 planning calls to prepare for it.

After the client meeting we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. That, thankfully, wasn't a meeting so much as "We both need lunch, let's eat here rather than go to the airport and pay more for worse food there."

Now I'm at the airport. I'm plenty early for my flight... which is already falling behind schedule.



Yup, 30 minutes earlier this flight was tracking on time; now that I'm at the airport and through security, it's late. But, oh, UPDATE: now it's only 26 minutes late. A few minutes ago it was running further behind. The plane's now in the air en route to PHX so now there are fewer things that could go wrong to change the schedule.