Meetings. Many, many meetings.

Meetings are certainly part of my job, and thankfully, they�re not usually the useless round-in-circles talk fests that many of my friends and family experience. They�re usually one or two on one or two and aiming and reaching a particular conclusion. But that being said, I don�t generally have that many of them. One or two a week.

Most of my work is done on the phone, or in front of the computer. I talk to people all the time, but not usually face-to-face. I may talk to a client on the phone for a year and a half before I meet them.

But over the last couple of weeks it�s been crazy with the meetings.

In the office, out of the office, over lunch, over coffee. Yesterday I had three. One in the office at 10am, one over lunch at 12.30, one at the other end of town at 3. The last two weeks have been the same, multiple meetings every day. And throw in meetings with the real estate agent and the architect about the new offices, and I haven�t been at my desk much.

Which is both a blessing and a curse.

When I�m hitting that mid-afternoon motivational free-fall, a two hour meeting is perfect. Especially if it includes coffee. I�m working without having to make myself work. It�s lovely.

On the other hand, when I�m on a roll on one of the 45 different things I have to complete before the end of the day, a two hour meeting is a pain in the arse. Not only does that work get interrupted, but before I can get back to it there�s generally a few phone messages to return and several emails to respond to. And of course the busier I am, the more of these there are.

And then there�s the work that the meetings themselves generate. Which immediately leaps to the top of the To Do list either because of urgency or the ease of doing it while it�s fresh in my mind.

So two straight weeks of meetings combined with the usual pre-Christmas rush means that my desk - hell, my entire office - is a junk heap of things to be done. These things are generally constituted of unfiled pieces of paper. Everywhere.

On top of which I am happily placing the plans for the new office so that I can add in telephone points and furniture requirements, and with which I can generally have much more fun than with all the crap - er, work � underneath.

Of course, the more I plan the new office, the more I realise that the major implication of moving is that I will have to clean up this office, and all the random bits of paper, before I can move. By the time we move I will have been in this office for just over six years. Can you imagine how much crap I have in here?

But that will all be worth it, because not only does my new office have windows on two sides � yes, it�s a corner office � but it will also mean not sitting with my desk and myself facing directly into a wall as has been the case for the last six years. My desk and I will face the room with the windows at my back and side, like a proper office. There will be chairs on the other side of the desk facing me.

So, you guessed it, I can have meetings in my own office.

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On a random side note, I have found a new favourite place for lunch. Sprout on Little Collins Street. It�s been around for a while, but I�d never been in until this week. And I am in love. All they do, really, is salads, with every kind of ingredient possible. It�s stunning. This is a place that has roasted garlic as an ingredient in one of its standard salads. I�m going to have no problem with the lunch time part of the diet with Spout in my life.