Today is day 4 of 5 at this Technology Conference. I’m pretty ready to come home. Snarfing a pizza while watching a movie in my room at 10:00pm only sounded like fun. Sweating profusely the following day on the treadmill to purge myself of the extra calories and guilt was fun.
I’m learning a lot. Not only about the new release of a particular suite of a software solution which I sell, but about people. I know a lot about the former, in that it’s been my profession for the last eighteen years; apparently I also know a lot about the latter, in that I’ve been interacting with them for the last thirty-nine.
People. We are funny creatures. Messy. Fun. Not so fun. Annoying. Disingenuous. Smarmy. Lots of smarm around here…
One guy actually said the words (ok, slurred): Let’s understand something. I am not graced by your presence right now, even though you’re beautiful. There are so many things wrong with that, I’m not even going to touch it (pun intended) except to say I have this uncontrollable and unfortunate problem of bursting into laughter at the most inopportune times. Only I’m pretty sure that timing was totally appropriate.
I have no idea what chick in that loser’s life made him feel like he was lucky to be with her, but obviously there was one. Categorically, knowing absolutely nothing about it, two things are for certain: she was right and there was only one.
Literally and metaphorically, there is so much baggage around this sprawling conference center that it’s both saddening and providing cheap entertainment for me. Yet it continues to remind me that I’m no different. No different from any of these people (well, except that jack ass) or, from any of the jaded lenses we look through as we meet new individuals.
Another rather nice guy actually said these words to me: I thought we had a connection? Yeah, we’ve both read the same author. Call me old-fashioned, but that does not equate to waking up together in MY book.
The author was a fiction writer. The only fiction I read, really, while on beach vacations. And this week is no vacation.
I’m ready to be home.
