Last week, when just about everyone on my office floor was taking the holiday week off, I was working. Somehow, I had convinced a director of a west coast consulting firm to have breakfast with me, and I wanted to prepare.
It seemed a little strange to me that, in the midst of a downtown Manhattan office building, I would be nearly alone at work. The large companies that reside in the building, fairly well known names, had basically shut down.
Above is the photo of the office water cooler, with closed doors behind it. For Gen Y's and Xer's, who might not know, this is where we used to connect, collaborate and complain. It's a lonely place today in more ways than one.
There are millions of people right now, who would do just about anything to fill one of those empty offices on any day that these companies would hire them. Now, some of those people have chosen to work solo, and many more were downsized and have little choice. Whatever..
On New Year's Day, gathered at a neighbor's house to celebrate together, a friend noted that the best thing about the day was that it was Friday. He and other guests would not have to work for the next two days.
Like millions of people now searching for work or clients, that sounded very strange to me. All we want to do is have a place to work, customers to meet, colleagues with whom we can engage. We work every day and most nights, and have gotten to like that. We've had our fill of "free time."
"Holiday" to us is when we get a work assignment, a retainer check in the mail, or MSN Money picks up our blog-post. We have to be plugged-in constantly, to find opportunities to pitch a client or a possible employer.
Some of us fall asleep at night searching for just one more idea; hopefully, we awake with an even better one. We may work solo one minute, then be linked to dozens, hundreds, sometimes even thousands in our networks in the next. We have become a NetWorker Nation.
We are, in a very real sense, a developing economy within the ultra-developed US economy. If this sounds a bit desperate to you, you may work in one of those companies which closed for the holidays, while your customers still had to cover your rent.
Our determination should not be mistaken for desperation. We are focused and persistent too, like Brazilians, Indians or Chinese. The B, I and C in BRIC. Personally, I like that connection.
Many people seem to be waiting for things to get back to where they were before the "credit crisis recession." I am not one of them. I do not believe that everything will return to some norm forged in the past.
It has taken some time, NetWorkers are moving into the fast lane, looking to the future, making that future. Don't be surprised to see them passing by in the fast lane.
Is that your customer in the back seat?
3G recommends: http://lifehacker.com/ ,Gina Trapani's brilliant tool for anyone living the NetWorker life. Thanks, Gina, for building the cooler water cooler. And, of course: http://www.recessionwire.com/
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