If you ever wonder why it's hard to walk away from work, it's because exchanges like these happen when you least expect it. As a setup: Adam is one of our new Australia staffers, who was on the last leg of his journey home to Australia after working in Boston for three weeks.

Somehow, I think he's going to fit right in...

I'm about to head out on the road again, and thanks to a quirk of airlines, I'll be flying into Vermont and out through Boston. I'm doing it purely so I can roadtrip through Vermont, and see what there is to see.

I have no idea what I'll see, but I'm taking my new camera rig.

Any suggestions?

Wondering why Vermont? See this map, and it'll make sense:

When I put yesterday's fresh rounds of travel into TripIt, I saw a line that summed up my year:

You've traveled 43,660 mi to 44 locations.

I nodded, thinking to myself about the places I've been, the people I've met -- or reconnected with -- and felt profoundly grateful. I've been welcome in a lot of places over the past year, slept on a few new couches, met delightfully new recombinations of humanity. All unique, none replaceable.

I've been dreaming about this week for a long time: the week where I finally had the carpet removed from our house, and put in the hardwood I've wanted for so long. 

It is Saturday, and I'm sitting with headphones on, and as usual, the details of the reality didn't quite match my rosy envisionings. I didn't anticipate that we'd find water damage on the right side of the chimney, requiring an immediate roof repair.

Disclosure: rant.

So, I can finally tell you. I got promoted.

I am moving off of the front lines, at my company, into more of a management role. I'm shifting from the badly-named tier 1 team (tier 1 at this company is FAR more than what you'd think of as "tier 1" support, probably T2 or T3 anywhere else) to a Training and Documentation Coordinator.

The question was pretty simple: how did one person in Alabama become a ticket-smashing machine while maintaining clear communication and genuine customer focus?

The follow-up question is even simpler: and how do we teach this intangible?