Today's commute was nice, I rode two green-light waves up 4th and 3rd avenues from Bay Ridge up the the Battery Tunnel. I was frankly amazed at my good fortune, but the scrum that is Manhattan brought me back to Earth (although the guy in the E350 that cut me off at the tunnel entrance actualy knew how to handle the car, an exception in Mercedes drivers IMHO). After that frenetic scene, going up the passive-agressive playground that is the Palisades Parkway makes me wish for auto-drive and an in-car bar. I did point out to a fellow driver (in a nice way, really) that they had a tail light out, so I think I am up in the Karmic traffic force.
I'm still trying to get used to the change in pace from the newsroom to the corporate office. I'm so used to the high-pressure environment of a newsroom today, as it is as pressure-cooker an environment as any in business today. Between the voracious maw that is the web and the pressures on print to cram more information into fewer pages while creating supplements and secondary content vehicles to give the salespeople something to sell, editors today are under more pressure than every before. Now I sit in an office and write press releases, call up editors to pitch articles, and present papers at trade shows. Lots of work, but I miss the feeling that everything I touched was an action item that had to be done AT THAT MINUTE.
But I do like the company I work for as marketing director, a manufacturer of power electronics, and I am still active in the electronics industry. It is a much more secure and relaxed (and considering I'm talking about a marketing position that tells you a lot about publishing today) than my editor job, so here I am.
At least now I have the time to take a real lunch every day.