"My Many Colored Days"

Some days are yellow. Some are blue. On different days I'm different too. You'd be surprised how many ways I change on different colored days.

On Bright Red Days how good it feels to be a horse and kick my heels!

On other days I'm other things. On Bright Blue Days I flap my wings.

Some days, of course, feel sort of Brown. Then I feel slow and low, low down.

Then comes a Yellow Day and Wheeee...I am a busy, buzzy bee.

Gray Day....Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today.

Then all of a sudden I'm a circus seal! On my Orange Days that's how I feel.

Green Days. Deep deep in the sea. Cool and quite fish. That's me.

On Purple Days I'm sad. I groan. I drag my tail. I walk alone.

But when my days are Happy Pink, it's great to jump and just not think.

Then come my Black Days. MAD. And loud. I howl. I growl at every cloud.

Then comes a Mixed-Up Day. And WHAM! I don't know who or what I am!

But it all turns out all right, you see. And I go back to being...me.

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Wish I'd written this--it's one of my favorite books. Instead, I have to give credit to the great Theodore Geisel, who has also left us with such classics as Go Dog, Go.

It's early-ish in the morning right now, and I'm on the opposite coast from the one I live on. I've just finished a four-day conference that I help organize. This year, we hosted 500+ people at a historic hotel in downtown San Francisco. It was a great success, this software conference. Everyone left happy, my company hit a home run with its customers, our employees had a phenomenal time. You get the picture. Personally, I'm just glad it's over, so I can go back to being Me.

No doubt, I'm a certain Me at work who is surely different than the regular Me. But at this conference, in particular, there are a lot of situations in which I'm not particularly comfortable for which I need to rise to the occasion. It puts me in a sort of mixed-up Me kind of place.

I'm not the person who enjoys being thanked in front of a clapping crowd of people I mostly don't know. My feet hurt after a full day running around in "professional" shoes and tailored pants. I don't really like the dance parties. I'm not interested in being around those people at cocktail parties who over-appreciate the free drinks -- and, in my case, spill them on you. I find small talk inane; I want to know the stories of and by people, not "How are you today?" or "Are you enjoying the conference?" But it's a little socially weird to bypass the small talk and get right to the best song written in the past decade, whether flu shots are being oversold, or how you ended up where you are.

Fortunately, I experienced a few moments of real with people I respect and enjoy. Attendees at our event enjoyed themselves and learned a great deal. Those who like to dance, danced. And there is joy in that.

So as I stop whining and head home, with a good book in my hand, song on my iPod, and thick, comfortable European shoes on my feet, it is all turning out all right you see, as I go back to being Me.