I am sitting in the lobby of the mega spa, one that I wrote about in this space a year or two ago. We are back here because York is visiting and because it has been damn cold in Beijing. As far as I know the cold snap and York’s arrival are purely coincidental. A Beijing winter tradition is to visit SPAs and when I asked Yang about this tradition being in contrast to the general phobia of Beijingers about hot/cold weather she looked at me like I had just asked why the sky is blue. Me, I am not a big fan of the spa in general and in particular being the only foreigner in a spa with hundreds of Chinese.  This on the back of a work offsite where I am the only one of two hundred co-workers who doesn’t understand Chinese. So, I’m sitting this one out, in the lobby, taking the chance to catch up on my reading and my writing. It has been a heck of a few weeks in terms of getting behind and not being able to catch up. For my work, for my running, for my sleep, for my time with family.

October started with the national day holiday. Going into the holiday I was feeling strong as a runner and mostly caught up with work. But then we took a family trip followed by a Shanghai weekend trip and my running started to drop off. Couple that with a two week trip to the US and return to China, and I was nearly completely out of shape. But I stuck with my personal commitment and ran the half marathon on Hangzhou. Of the four half marathons I’ve run, this was the third best, the half marathon in Beijing two years ago being the worst. I now feel motivated to get back in shape and with any luck and less work madness maybe I actually will.

And then there was work which is entering the heavy season lasting about six weeks. The part that makes the heavy season heavy like lead is having to convince people who do not know what they are doing that I know what I am doing and for those people to do the same to me. The other heavier than lead thing is when the VPs roll into Beijing for reviews like they did for the first half of last week. The reviews end up magically randomizing the team yet having an utter lack of impact to what we actually do.

Lack of family time and sleep time are all a by product of the work madness. So I am compensating by taking the kids with us to Hangzhou when I was already worn down from work/travel. And sitting here in this lobby while they swim just so I can spend the time in the car and at lunch with them.