Dina
It’s been a hard day’s night
I have recently learned a valuable lesson—and I’m not ashamed to say it took me awhile. Years, in fact. Yes, years of countless late-night college cram sessions complete with copious amounts of diet coke, two-day-old pizza that, in my sleep-deprived mind, was still a candidate for dinner that night (and possibly breakfast the next morning), and a roommate with an N*Sync fetish and no headphones.
This treacherous journey was all worth it to come up with this one pearl of wisdom: Great accomplishments do not happen overnight. My mom told me that once, but I scoffed at the notion claiming my ‘best work’ always happens between 2 and 4 in the morning. Little did I know how right she was. But what she didn’t tell me, and what I have recently learned, is that they don’t happen overnight, they happen over many nights in a string of events that can only be likened to a movie that went way longer than it needed to be, aka Titanic (only this ending doesn’t leave precious Leo on the ocean floor). But there is something to say about the sense of accomplishment after months of labor when the finish line is in sight—sometimes elusive and blurry, but there just the same.
A couple of weeks ago, members of our web marketing and IT teams joined forces and set up shop with a laptop in one hand and a Redbull in the other with one common goal: to launch the new and improved Murad.com. Our heroes, resembling nocturnal creatures coming alive when the sun goes down, worked tirelessly through the night to ensure a seamless transition from old to new and only headed home for a nap around the same time coworkers arrived to begin their day, and sometimes not even then. . .By Thursday morning we were roaming the halls in Wednesday’s clothes so entrenched in our own ‘redesign’ world we joked that people could walk right through us and we wouldn’t even feel it. . . (read: ‘I see dead people. . .’)
Fueled by caffeine and 80s music, we sprinted toward to finish line while ‘Eye of the Tiger’ roared in the background. Our senses honed, eyes glued to the screen with fingers cascading across the keyboard (sometimes two) with the prowess of a jungle cat, we prepared for what felt like the ball dropping in Times Square (minus the 20 degree weather and the kissing, of course). We cheered as the stylish new home page graced our screens. The moment was fleeting as we immediately switched into ‘post-go-live phase’—but we were live.
A huge ‘thank you’ to our designers, marketers and IT team for your tireless efforts over the past nine months. An even larger ‘thank you’ is extended to our families, friends and significant others for their incredible patience throughout this experience, especially during the zombie-like aftermath that ensued in ‘post-go-live-get-my-life-back-phase.’
