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Many of you who have read my book or keep up with my blog know that I have a full time career in technology. It was really fun when my colleagues discovered my website and read my bio, which included, “By day, Mindy pretends to be a technology executive for an enterprise software vendor when she would rather be writing.” Oops.

Truth be told, I love my job. I work with a team of unbelievably talented human beings, rocking good technology and no two days are ever the same. I also travel a fair bit and have seen some pretty cool places.

This week I’m on the west coast. It’s great, you gain 3 hours every day when your body leaps awake at 4am, still on east coast time. Of course, you lose the same 3 hours when you implode at 8pm because your body thinks it 11pm.

In anticipation of a busy, meeting-filled day, I took east coast Mindy to the gym at 5am to get the heart going and stretch the muscles. It was great. The hotel has a fabulous breakfast buffet and coffee to go. After my workout I snagged some oatmeal, eggs, fruit and a giant coffee to consume in my room before my first pre-office conference call.

That’s when everything went horribly, horribly wrong.

West coast Mindy was a little discombobulated. Energized from the workout, but still not quite on California time. Showered, dressed and ready to work with 10 minutes to spare before the call.

Also on Skype, responding to email and drafting a correspondence. Kind of proud of my exceptional multitasking capabilities. I almost forgot that I was ravenous. Almost.

The dilemma facing me was the small seven minute window remaining between my eggs and my call. I despise eating fast, it’s so uncivilized. Hunger pangs won and I decided to take my chances. The oatmeal was good (if, like me, you enjoy bland, tasteless white mush every morning.) The eggs were really yummy, a treat I don’t usually indulge. A bit of fruit then…

Ring. My mobile. Colleague overseas and I knew it was important. T-minus 4 minutes until call time. Being the pleaser that I am, I answered while simultaneously swallowing the eggs. A little uncomfortable, but I got through the brief conversation. 2 minutes remain until the conference call starts.

But I can’t talk. As I was hanging up I took another bite of scrambled eggs. It got stuck. In my throat. No, in my esophagus. Yikes!

Sheer panic set in. Eyes tearing up, coughing and an internal dialog that went something like this:

“Can’t breathe. Holy crap, can’t breathe.”

Wait, I actually said that out LOUD. I was breathing. Coughing, choking, but breathing.

Then, “I am not going to die in this shitty hotel room eating these shitty eggs.” Suddenly my nice hotel and yummy eggs were reduced to rubbish. I began to curse the world of innovation and progress that enable all this ridiculous multitasking. Surely, the only reason I was attempting a self-inflicted Heimlich Maneuver was because I had one eye on Skype and the other on email. One side of the brain focused on the phone call and the other on email. There was simply not enough brain power left to chew my eggs. I had exhausted all reserves.

I began jumping all around the hotel room trying to dislodge the scrambled egg fragment that was sure to end my life. Or at least make me miss my call. One minute left.

After what felt like hours but was actually 60 seconds, 3 cups of water, a full blown panic attack and poorly executed “Heimlich-like” Maneuver, the coughing stopped. The multitasking-induced choking abated. I was okay. I was OKAY.

7:00am on the button. I was better than okay, I was on time for my call.

I dialed in and announced myself. Then I fired Skype back up, finished my email and wrote my correspondence. Man, innovation is great. We can do so much all at once.

**Shout out to my friend Desdemona. Everyone needs a confidante with whom they can share even the most embarrassing moments. She was the first person to hear my story and offer support. When she finished laughing at me. Really loud. 😉