Begrudgingly Beautiful

About two weeks ago the New York Times posted a fascinating article, focusing on work culture within eCommerce giant Amazon.  One former employee offered the following juxtaposition:  “A lot of people who work there feel this tension: It’s the greatest place I hate to work“.  For some reason, the description immediately resonated with me – perhaps because in many ways I often feel quite the same about my job.

My job is very global – that is to say, I have multiple work responsibilities and colleagues all across the globe.  On the one hand, the nature of my work exposes me to an incredibly diverse set of experiences.  It’s interesting work and on a daily basis I am chatting or video conferencing with someone in another country.  Further, in the past twelve months I’ve taken five business trips that have brought me to Europe, Asia, and India.  Over time, these regular interactions expose me to the bigger world (people, realities, cultures, etc.) outside of good ol’ US of A … and for that I am incredibly grateful.

On other hand, earth is a big place and is composed of multiple time zones which often do not sync well with my own.  Consequently, my work hours generally suck.  In exchange for my paycheck, I’m regularly up late into the night (thanks India) and often up early in the morning (cheers Europe).  It is what it is, and I’ve long ago made peace with the pros and cons accompanying any globally-based job.

I generally prefer to think I am the positive type, so rather than bemoan today’s early alarm, I’ll simply enjoy the beautiful sunrise that greats me this morning.

I’ll be sure to thank my colleagues in UK and France.