Bridges Built and Burnt

There are a number of things I’m good at. There are also a number of things I could do better. Relationships are one of the latter.

As I’ve mentioned before, this is my second go-round in the land of testing. The first time I got lucky: I was partnered with Summer, who was pretty much the best partner ever. I think we butted heads maybe twice in the whole time we worked together. It didn’t take a whole lot of work to get us on the same page and working together.

My current partner is another story. I like him as a person. But we have entirely different approaches to managing.  He prefers to fly by the seat of his pants. And that works well in a lot of situations, but for what we’re doing it’s a giant recipe for disaster. I like to plan and be organized, and improvise when that doesn’t work.

Be More Better! We Are Businessing Here!

That’s going to be the title of my best-selling management book, by the way. So don’t steal it. You can use it in everyday conversation, though. I do. Because I invented it. Because that’s how I business – more better every day.

I’m working late again. I haven’t done that voluntarily in years. At my last two jobs, I couldn’t get out fast enough when my shift was over: if I needed to stay late to finish something I would, but I wasnt going to spend more time there than was strictly necessary.

Not That Kind of Guy

I’m not generally the most stereotypically “guy-like” of guys. (He says, drinking an 18-year-old Glenlivet – I enjoy it now, but back when I started drinking scotch it was mostly just an affectation of something stereotypically masculine that was just different enough to be distinctive. In Glenlivet, veritas.)

I like women.I like competing, but not enough to do it all the time. I enjoy a baseball game now and then, but mostly only if I can get to the ballpark. Football and basketball don’t do much for me, and while I respect the skill and discipline it takes to be successful at boxing or MMA I don’t enjoy watching people beat each other bloody. I’ll go to the bar and have a few drinks, but not beer: I’ve never tasted a beer that wasn’t too bitter for me, so I’ll stick with gin, vodka, whiskey, or margaritas. Don’t play the “playful punch” card on me because I will almost always interpret it as overtly hostile. (It’s a learned reflex.) I can play poker,  but I have better things to do that pour my money down a rathole on the off chance it might come back with a few friends.

The Opposite of Crusade

I don’t trust militancy.

I don’t trust the idea that we should devote our lives to one overriding passion and submit everything to that. I don’t like seeing what that does to people: it narrows vision, calcifies thought, and hardens hearts. In what universe are any of those good things, and how can we get ours farther from that one?

I understand commitment, focus, and passion. I don’t understand letting any of those take you to a place so unbalanced that the rest of your life falls apart – much less that the rest of the world falls away. Certainly you should pursue your goals with all the strength and determination you can muster. But you can’t lose sight of the rest of the picture while you’re painting that one corner, or you’ll have nothing but a sterile, isolated corner to show for it. And that doesn’t seem like much of a life.

- no title -

Not watered silks but the whetstone.

Not the wake behind but the tide before.

Not rest but resistance. The climb, the slope

Steep and rocky under bloodied feet, and

An avalanche of cold wind onrushing -

Howling hell, the rage of chaos untamed.