Tag Archives: change

Deliverance…

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My voice has been heard calling out from the wilderness and I have been delivered! Unending thanks to an old friend who with the simple word “tomorrow” has granted a reprieve from two months of delaying tactics which others were too timid to protest. With that, I conclude my short career as an emergency manager. I still love the work, but find that continuing to work under a regime willing to exploit my talents while at the same time being told that I was not yet ready for greater authority was simply intolerable.

I’m just glad this version of deliverance doesn’t have a scary banjo-playing kid.

Wanting and Getting…

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In life one of the hard lessons I’ve learned is that there’s a profound difference between wanting and getting. Wanting leaves open the window of great expectations where the actual getting has the hard finality of real world consequences. For most of my post-teaching professional career, the only thing on earth I wanted to do was run my own operations center and be at the center of the action. It’s a hell of a way to live and almost never a dull moment.

While I’ve held my own over the last year and even excelled at some points, what I have discovered is that my real talents don’t lie in running an operation. They lie in developing the grand strategies and seeing the big picture that the entire organization will follow. With my own frustration rising to a point that I haven’t seen since I was still teaching, I decided it was time for a change.

To make a long story shortish, I asked my boss if he would endorse a reassignment if I formally requested one. He offered training and a lot of other things to try to change my decision, but I think even he knows that if I’m talking about it openly, my mind is made up. So, yeah, I’m putting the wheels in motion for another change. If all goes well, I’ll still be here in Memphis, just down the hall from where I’m sitting now. Someone once told me that I seem happiest when I’m the calm center surrounded by mayhem and chaos. Maybe that’s true… and since nature has been letting me down in the mayhem and chaos department, perhaps I’ve decided to create my own.

Blur…

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The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized how important it is to hang on to the friends you had when you were a kid. They’re the ones who know where you came from and won’t let you forget it. The ones you cannot see for months on end and effortlessly pick up the conversation like you’d just had a burger at the local greasy spoon the last night. They are the ones who know your secrets and like you anyway. Maybe more importantly, they’re the guys you bled with and who bled with you.

For a long time now, I’ve known that I could be a better friend. The days stream by in a blur of airports and meetings and I realize months have gone by. We’re all busier now, occupied with the commitments of work and family and time has become our most valuable commodity. At the most basic level, I could have spend more time on the phone or sent a few more emails. I could have been there more often on a lot of fronts. Realistically, I think we all know that life isn’t going to be slowing down any time soon. At least not until we collectively punch our last timecard and head to the golf course.

I wish someone would have stopped me years ago, sat me down and made me understand how fast the time would go. There should be some kind of class that teaches you things like that. I don’t want to make a blanket statement and say anything like “I’d love to go back and go to school all over again.” I think that’s probably overstating the case. I would love to go back for just one night, one average night when the whole gang was together. A fire, a half-dozen pizzas, and a house full of your closest friends. I want to go back and see the “god’s eye view” of things and watch it all unfold. It really must have been something to see.

In the meantime, know that I think of you all often. I’m both proud of and humbled by your friendship. I’ve been told I need to stop the mushy posts and keep to ranting, which is a much more natural voice, but I’ve promised to always blog what happens to be on my mind and there you have it, live via tape delay, from Hartsfield International on the evening of July 30, 2007.

Oh yeah…

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I’m pleased to report I am alive and well in Western Maryland, but the thought that occurs to me is that outside of a few old friends and family members I don’t actually know anyone up here any more. I’m not sure why that actually surprises me, though. It’s a “discovery” I make pretty consistently every time I am here for a weekend. Not so much a complaint, just an observation.