Tag Archives: calling

What I learned this week…

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I spent the day Thursday scouring the dark recesses of used book shops. I didn’t find any treasures, but made off with a fair few reading copies of things that looked interesting. I spent the night Thursday reading books and dispensing ear scratches between three critters.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that my natural calling in life was to be a used book shop owner. Then, of course, I remember that particular line of effort would mean daily interaction with customers, who I would in no way be able to treat as “always right.” Putting me anywhere near the general public could only result in disaster for everyone involved.

So this week I learned the thing I’m probably most suited to do by inclination is something I’m utterly unsuited to do by temperament.

Not all learning is helpful.

The last half of the week…

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48 hours is how long it took me to coordinate, fix, spindle, mutilate, and otherwise jump through my ass to accommodate an out-of-nowhere demand to move an event that’s been on the calendar for months. Upon getting that finished and then getting back to doing actual productive work towards making this event a reality, I hope I’ll be forgiven if I seem less than thankful when told minds have been changed and to go ahead and plan for the original dates. There’s no morale building activity quite like being directed to spend the last half of your week undoing what you were directed to do at the week’s beginning. It’s absolutely stupefying that this is how any organization actually tries to operate.

Want to know why I feel like it’s a job instead of a career or a calling, well this would be a prime example. For an organization that prides itself on being committed to “decisive action,” I have very serious doubts that we could decide to leave the room if someone set the damned thing on fire. I’m just a cog in the machine. I’m a tool – and a particularly blunt and ineffectual one – under circumstances where planning and logic find no purchase. I’ve recovered the same ground so often that I couldn’t tell you definitively the last time I made something that might accidentally be considered progress. While I might catch hell for it, my planning isn’t to blame. If you’re interested in finding fault took to the great and the good at echelons higher than reality who for some unknown reason have been allowed to imagine, unchallenged, that the sun both rises and sets directly into their 4th point of contact.

I’m a simple guy and I’ll do my best with whatever ash and trash I’ve been told to work with. Know this, though: Even though you can technically polish a turd, all you’ve got at the end of the experience is a shiny turd and really dirty hands. If the gods on Olympus can’t figure out what in the hell they want, I have no idea why they think we mere mortals will be able to divine the secret meaning behind their endless grunts and fluttering eyebrows.