Good
Thursday morning, wake up and smell the coffee, it's going to be
February 23, 2012, so let's all make the very best of it! I did a lot of feet watching while I spent all those hours in the ER with my wife. They had the curtain that came down but about 6 to 8 inches was visible at the bottom, therefore, everyone who walked down the hall, I could see, but only the bottom of their legs and their feet. We were watching the qualifying for the Daytona 500 because I knew
SHE would want to see that, but, I was also fascinated by those feet walking past our room. It didn't take long for me to connect the type and color of shoe with the folks that were most important to our situation. Meanwhile, people walk funny. Have you ever noticed that? I mean some walk with difficulty, maybe from an injured or sore foot problem. Others just walk funny. I might walk funny as well but they were the ones parading forth and back, then back and forth. They do a lot of walking in that place. One huge fellow, and I mean huge, maybe 300 pounds, had kind of small ankles and feet, and I will tell you, when he came down that hall, it was like watching Charlie Chaplin. Some of the ladies walk with an air of importance. Others take these little bitty steps, real fast. Some wear tennis shoes and many of them wear those Crocs shoes. I don't have any of those but it seems to me they would be real easy to walk out of, that is, if you were not paying attention. Was I that bored? Hey, you go do seven hours at that joint and then come back and tell me what you ended up observing. You might just be surprised.
Have you noticed how that often the ones who talk about burn out or needing a break tend to be folks you never really see that busy or overworked? I remember back at the big company when everyone started being concerned about burn out. My managers caught on to that and it became a topic that was discussed quite often. I will tell you that I was not so inclined to be sympathetic to their concerns about how much midnight oil they might have been burning. I'm also not saying I was 100% correct in my approach but I always thought that burn out was somewhat of an overblown excuse, but that is just me. Believe me, I've known some people who were over the top when it came to their commitment to the job. Maybe they were trying to escape what awaited them on the outside but they tended to be the exception, not the rule. My approach was similar to the title of today's little dialogue. In fact, I used to tease my guys by telling them I had no interest in burning out, I wanted to burn up instead. Okay. I didn't say you had to agree with me because I too have heard all those sayings about how that all work and no play makes things out of sync. I think the original punch line was how that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I worked with a particular Jack for many years and he was a very interesting fellow. He was an older guy and he held the keys to some of the ancient programming that had yet to be converted. He didn't like to be called out at night when those old programs failed. Deadlines were for us to worry about, not him. In fact, he often had his wonderful sweet wife tell the job coordinator at midnight that she had no idea where Jack was. She would be so nervous she hardly could say the words. That didn't make him a dull boy but it did make our work more complicated and it gave us some legendary stories to tell and tell again.
I suppose in many ways I, for the most part, aggregate this, that, or the other for use in my daily blogs. If there is a skill, it might be in knowing where to look for the rocks that might have something under them. What's that you say? I agree. It would be good to find some new rocks, now and then. One of the amazing things about Facebook other than the originators all being billionaires is how it actually does bring people together. I now routinely talk with people I haven't seen or heard from in thirty years. One fellow in particular was like a protege of mine back in the mid 1970's. We don't exchange stuff that often but when we do it's like we are sitting once again across the table from one another. How crazy is that? He was just a young dude back then and now he is a grandfather and I am a great grandfather. Who would have ever thought? He has built a very successful insurance business out in West Texas. I can remember how he used to be good at finding a place where we could get a pretty good meal at a really good price, meaning cheap. We would walk over to a cafeteria he found and get a big bowl of soup. The crackers were free and we drank water. We could actually enjoy a meal that way for under a dollar. Those were the days. I was always proud of him back then, and I still am today. Those connections do go beyond just working at the same place, I reckon they do. Thanks Facebook, for the good things you bring to us all. Now we all need to go right out and do our best to have a really good day.
Amen. See you next time. .....More later.
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