What do you say after being MIA for so long?

It's been almost two months since my last blogpost and I've gotta say I've missed blogging. Blogging started as something to do while I kill time at my boring old job and also as an attempt to document my life as a quarter lifin' gal trying to figure things out.

A lot has happened since. Well main a series of things leading to a huge, monumental, life changing event:

On June 20th, I got laid off from my old boring job.

As luck would have it, on the same day, I had a phone interview for an Analytics Research position with Slide, a facebook apps and widget making start-up founded by Max Levchin, the founder of PayPal.com.

They liked me on the phone and wanted to bring me in. I was scheduled to visit my parents in San Jose that upcoming weekend and so I extended my visit for an 8-round deep interview process at the Slide headquarters in San Francisco...amazing, beautiful, vibrant San Francisco.

They grilled the hell out of me in that interview, asking me all kinds of questions from brain teasers, to "how would you solve xyz metrics related problem" to prove that a limit exists from my Real Analysis class. It was non-stop talking and thinking and rinse and repeat and wait you think you're done but you're really not so let's grill you some more. Man, it was an intense, intense experience..but strangely, secretly, masochistically..I enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed it.

It had been so long since I'd been challenged to think, challenged to use my brain, that part of my body that I value the most, that I had neglected for a little while. As scary and intimidating as it was, I really liked every one who interviewed me and some how I knew, I knew that they felt that I belonged at Slide.

I guess that gut feeling was right, because that friday, the 27th, I got an offer.

I packed my bags up, took off for good old SF and started my position on the 21st of July.

Since then, I've been challenged day in and day out both intellectually and emotionally, as a I swim upstream to get up to speed, work long hours and feel exhausted. But I welcome it. I welcome feeling humbled, I welcome feeling like there's so much to do and so little time to do it in, and I welcome feeling overwhelmed to my fullest capacity....I guess these feelings have been missing from my life for so long that I had forgotten how much I secretly enjoyed them.

Alas all this does come at a price. All other aspects of my life have taken a bit of a backseat. My relationships with family and friends, my triathlon training, my desire to read more books and of course my blog. My days just sort of fuse together into a long string of work-sleep continum with a little bit of eating and working out.

I am definitely struggling to keep my triathlon training schedule and am just now starting to get back on it with less than 4 weeks left until my big race, the big Kahuna.

Luckily I had built a nice cushy run/bike base while I was in AZ. Th swim...well you know how I am with the swim..I'll just have to wing it some how..like I always do :).

It was already tough to be on a strict workout regimen with working 7-8 hrs a day in arizona, but now, working 12-14hr days..it's even harder. But that's what makes it that much of a challenge..and predictably enough, that's what makes me wanna work out even more.

Scarcity.

It's an amazing phenomenon

When you have the time, you don't know what to do with it, but when you don't, alluva sudden you wish you did.

Now, I look forward to all my workouts. I cherish them whole heartedly and I love each and every one of them because every time I make it to a work out, I thank God that I was able to find time in my schedule to run, bike or swim.

That fire that I talked about a few blogposts ago..it's back. it's here. that fire to do something big. I feel like being here in SF is my callng, I feel like working this much and being so involved in what I do has reminded me of the passion I used to have of being something bigger, achieving something grand. That combined with my desire to be Ironman...I'm on top of the world.

And, I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of a nice place to be. All I can do is just work hard and hope that I don't get knocked off this cloud :)

Azra