Vice (President)

Promoted at last to veep. Am I pleased? Sure. Will it keep me interested in the job for awhile? Absolutely. Do I think I deserve it? Yeah, I've worked pretty hard. Can I excel? I certainly think so, but I must confess, I do have some work-related vices that may, finally, need to be addressed.

1) Instant messenger. And what a huge vice IM truly is. Studies now show that if you want to drop your IQ 10 points during the day, allow yourself to be constantly interrupted by IM and email. Who knows what the developers of IM have done to our GDP with one innocent invention. I figure that my own IQ must be affected by more than 10 points, considering that my worklife is one long IM/email/phone interruption. And let's not even discuss productivity levels.

2) Roscoe. The dog that insists on hanging out in my home office, and even muscles his 95 pound way through my door so that he can lay at my feet and sleep. This is fine and good until I'm on the phone with a CEO and something goes bump downstairs. Suddenly his sleepy senior self morphs into a fury of flying fur and howling. But let me tell you, I'm a softy. The site of my sorry dog's sad face as he mopes away after being rebuffed a position at my feet is just too much. And the truth is, I like having Roscoe around.

3) Decaf. Or caf, depending on how you look at it. I switched years ago from "real" coffee to the less potent stuff. Now that I need more energy to keep up with the job, I may need to switch back. Problem is, one shot of caffeine unleashes my horrible, demanding, perfectionist, darth vader-like self onto the workworld (not to mention my husband). Caffeine, for me, is something like Dr. Jeckle's potion. Then again, maybe that's a good thing... I can hear myself now: "Astroids don't concern me, account executive..."

I'm sure there are others. Like this blog(!). What to do? Hmmm.... something to think about another day, when I don't have a blog to write, emails to reply to, phone calls to make, and an IM message to answer....