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Happy September! Open Enrollment is coming up. What is Open Enrollment, you may ask?Open Enrollment is a window of time that happens once a year when you can sign up for health insurance, adjust your current plan, or cancel your plan. It's usually limited to a very short period. If you miss it, you may have to wait until the next open enrollment period to make changes.

Important dates:

We will have a Gear Patrol + Justworks Webinar for anyone interested on the first day of Open Enrollment. Stay tuned for a calendar invite to join that session. If you have any questions about plans, please get in touch with Justworks or Health Advocate.– Danielle Alavian

Announcements, happenings, tidbits, and other notablesEmployee Profile/GP Success Stories

Let's give them a big round of applause — thank you!Coming Up

Birthdays

Fast Five with Johnny Brayson

My mullet era, 2020 

– 2022.

Where do you live now and where are you originally from?

I currently live in Hartford, Connecticut, where I moved at the end of last year. Prior to that I was in Los Angeles for 7.5 years, and NYC for 4 years before that. But I grew up deep in the woods of central Maine in a town called Garland. It has fewer than 1,000 people, no traffic light and a single general store that also serves as the post office and gas station. It’s as isolating and frightening as Stephen King would have you believe. Even as a kid I knew it was a weird place to grow up, since nothing on TV or in movies remotely resembled my upbringing (except for, you know, Stephen King adaptations).What's your favorite thing to do on Saturday morning?

Watch cartoons, next question. 

In actuality, I don’t sleep much during the week and tend to sleep through the entirety of Saturday morning. Once I do get up, though, I’ll be a bit more leisurely than normal. For instance, I’ll make a cappuccino instead of my usual Americano as a little treat. Pretty exciting stuff. When we lived in LA, my wife and I used to walk to a local coffee shop in our neighborhood (Koreatown) on Saturday mornings, and our pictures are actually still on the wall there as part of an art installation. But Hartford is a ghost town on weekends with no restaurants open near us, so sleeping has become our new routine.

A more exciting Saturday morning hanging out in Paris during our honeymoon.

Is there something you've been obsessed with lately?

Yes, lately I’ve been all about yacht rock, which is a loosely-defined genre of light rock produced between the mid-’70s and early ’80s — think Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Hall and Oates … that sort of thing. It’s decidedly unserious and cheesy music but it puts me in a good mood. Last summer while living in LA, my wife and I saw a local yacht rock cover band called Yachtley Crew at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood and they were ruthlessly entertaining. Then on a whim a month ago, I looked them up and discovered they were actually on an east coast tour this summer. So we went to their show in Massachusetts last weekend at a lakeside amphitheater and it was even more of a blast than the previous concert.How do you stay motivated or energized for work?

I stay energized by drinking coffee, lots of coffee. As far as my motivation, I am a fairly competitive person, so I like to see my section performing well. If my numbers are lagging behind the other sections or if people aren’t reading my stories, I hunt for ways to improve.

Myself with three members of Hooch while filming a web series for Alpha, a short-lived streaming service.

Do you have any secret skills or talents we should know about?

Well, I spent most of my adult life writing and performing comedy, so I’d say that. I used to perform stand up in New York, I studied sketch comedy and improv at the UCB in New York and LA, and I once finished in the top three in a national screenwriting competition for a ‘Bob’s Burgers’ spec script I wrote. I also spent five years as a writer-performer on a sketch comedy team in LA called Hooch. We started out performing monthly as a house team for the Nerdist School, and after a couple of years of that went independent and put on shows at the UCB, Comedy Central Stage, the Pack Theater and other venues. Covid essentially ended that, but I still consider my old teammates to be family.

Now, show us where you work (or are working from this month):

I’m recycling the photo I used for Desks of GP, since it’s a good photo and my workspace still mostly looks the same. It’s a little corner of my apartment that I’ve carved out as my office.

And …

Here’s my favorite co-worker, Stevie:

Inspiration: Workplace Mental HealthThe office of U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a 30-page report titled the "Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being," which centers around five pillars for health: protection from harm, mattering at work, the opportunity for growth, connection, and community, and work-life harmony. Your well-being is a personal responsibility and a shared value at Gear Patrol. I think this framework is excellent, and I hope you all take a chance to review it and incorporate these best practices for yourself and your teammates. Any Inspiration requests? P&C is on it. Ping Danielle.