Sunday, January 12, 2014

Movin' and a Shakin' Things Up

This past Friday marked my third anniversary as a vampire...I mean...the executive producer of 14 News Sunrise. Early next month, I will celebrate ten years at 14 WFIE. I can't believe I've been there that long. I'm extremely lucky to have had two other jobs and been employed steadily since college. But in my business, it's not normal to stay in one place for too long,  Every two years or so, you fly the coop if you want to move up. I never managed to spread my wings and get off the ground. I've said it before: I love my house, I like this area and I'm happy right where I am.

However, my role on Sunrise is about to change, and I'm very excited about it. We are getting another producer. The extra body/brain will allow me to fully come into my charge as EP. I can step back and look more at the big picture instead of being bogged down with the nitty gritty details of my hour of news. I've been in a hybrid role for the past three years. My hours will shift, too. Instead of coming in at midnight, I'll slip in a few hours later, like most of the rest of the crew, and have much more time after the show to take care of issues, brainstorm and get involved with the dayside element.

On the homefront, I recently invested in a Fitbit Flex wristband. One of the perks: it has a silent wake alarm so, hopefully, I won't be disturbing Pmo too much when my new schedule starts and I roll out of bed in the middle of the night. I've reduced the 10,000 daily step goal to 3,500 for now, with plans to increase it about 500 steps a week. I can't go from 0 to 60 in one day. But the Fitbit is pretty cool. It transfers my steps and sleep habits automatically via Bluetooth to my phone. I have to log other details like my weight, calorie intake and water consumption if I want, but so far it's kept me motivated to hit that daily step goal and feel the buzz on my wrist. Yesterday, I got buzzed at 1:00 p.m.! From the bracelet, not alcohol.

I prefer winter cleaning to spring cleaning, so I've started a mission to purge things from the house little by little. We took a small load to Goodwill yesterday. I've been doing some general rearranging as well. The spice rack above the microwave was a hot mess, so I repurposed another contraption we already had sitting on the counter and it seems to be working so far. We also trekked to Lowe's yesterday and replaced two light fixtures in the house. We haven't done a ton of remodeling or updating since we moved in five years ago, because the house was in good shape. Still, little updates like that go a long way and make you feel good. There are plenty of things we'd like to do in the future if we could just stop traveling.

On that note, I'm starting to think about planning our trips for this year. We've talked about going to Hawaii for Christmas, so our remaining vacation days may have to be spent as regional trips over four day weekends to offset the costs. Next weekend is our work Christmas party which was delayed from a winter storm early last month. I'm also going to one of my bi-annual "summits" with my college friends and sneaking in a brunch with another bestie. But besides the upcoming mega-party-weekend, I'm trying to keep things pretty low key right now. We had a jam-packed end to 2012 and I want to relax a bit.

We'll see ;)