There’s No “Squirrel” in Team: My Year in Review

[tdelillo]

I had kind of a lot going on in 2018. But if I were to focus on the “Work Life” sub-account of 2018, and then the sub-sub-account of “Work Life - Good Stuff”, one of the highlights was the fact that 2018 was the first year my work team was stable for a whole, entire, calendar year. And therefore, it was the teamiest year yet. I mean, we teamed the heck out of stuff. We collaborated. We edited each other’s documentation. We cross-trained until we had backups of backups for all of the systems we administer. We shared allergy meds and Excedrin. We were truly team-tacular.

In all seriousness (for about 5 seconds), I spent years slowly building this team of fantastic people. They could frankly be kicking butt elsewhere for more money and fame and sports cars, or at least better office spaces, but for the time being, here they are. And, well, it was nice to have them in my 2018. There was a lot of change in our organization during the year, and a lot of weird new challenges. Being surrounded by people who work hard, innovate, and do it all with almost no direction made it much less of a crazy-pants year.

But speaking of crazy-pants, have I mentioned that my team is also hilarious and outrageous? They are my tribe. We make each other laugh. They accept that I have zero leadership skills but insist that I do. And sometimes we do strange things and call it team-building. We rarely have team meetings anymore, because such meetings tend to be redundant when collaboration is ongoing, but I’ve always insisted on having a team name. The names have ranged from “Team Defeated” to “Team Earth, Wind, Fire, and Kenneth”, but when my newest employee started, we quickly decided upon “Team Random Squirrel”. That was based on our propensity for getting off topic almost immediately, and usually in unexpected and untraceable directions. The name has stuck longer than any other team name, even while we continue to be random (but in a good way).

Most of the team finished the year with a flourish by road-tripping it from San Antonio to Austin for CanvasCon Texas. We left at 6:00 am. We got home at 8:00pm.  @kenneth_rogers  drove (and provided breakfast tacos).  @kschneider25  and Kenneth presented. I networked. d8c605a9d7f7d6dc4b3d5ace8500c81a9e3efe68574a4035a23a5100ee2011a5 absorbed Canvas knowledge like a sponge. We had the kind of good time you can only have when you are really sleep deprived. And we got our picture taken with the classy JW Marriott Christmas decorations because when the sleep-deprived boss insists, you’d better just roll with it. I think that probably summarized 2018 in a nutshell (Get it? Nuts? Squirrels?).

Here’s hoping that 2019 is a little calmer in the workplace and in life. And here’s to another year of Instructional Technology Randomness with my peeps.

[Random Squirrel logo courtesy  @kenneth_rogers ‌ / Team Christmas photo courtesy  @rseilham ‌ holding someone's cellphone]