Stamina

On the surface of things, one might be tempted to think that I lack the stamina to complete a project. At the moment it would appear that I am flitting from project and career with almost wild abandon and that none of it seems to connect to anything else. Yet in my head it all makes sense. Is there risk? Absolutely. But anyone who doesn't recognize that there is risk in simply drawing the next breath is deluding himself.

For a while I thought that life was all about mitigating that risk. Taking steps to insure that, should the worst actually happen, the damage would be minimized and recovery would happen as quickly as possible. Then, and I don't know exactly when, I realized that was a very reactive way of living. Real greatness and satisfaction has never been achieved by reaction.

I remember life in the late 70's. It seemed that every movie or TV show depicted the horrors of unemployment. In particular I seem to remember the hardships on the show Good Times and just how worried those characters were about money. Life in a Chicago housing project could not have been further from my lilly-white life in rural Iowa, yet I understood a tight budget. I just never recognized lack of money as being a permanent situation. Of course, I didn't have kids to clothe and feed. What really scared me at that point was the belief that lack of job meant lack of definition. If you didn't have a job, did you have importance of any kind? In retrospect, there wasn't a chance in the world my father would have ever lost his job, yet he acted every day of his life that he was going to be fired. Yet he had a job and little self definition.

I don't remember the circumstances, but when I was about thirteen my mother actually did lose a job. She quit because the boss kept making passes at her. She had two teen-agers and limited education and experience. She was scared. I remember that fear. She made some decisions out of fear that ultimately landed us in Alaska. Three or four years later she quit her job up there. At that point the isolation of living in Alaska, and at that point in time Alaska really felt like the ends of the earth, depression and fear gripped her so tight she couldn't move. There was no money. We were on the verge of being evicted. That summer she'd been fishing and caught a thirty-pound white fish. I ate that for weeks. The details of how the situation was resolved is subject for another post. It got ugly, but it got resolved.

So, when I struck out on my own, I remember my biggest fear was unemployment. I knew I would never be able to rely on my mother for help, and I also knew that if I'd ever asked my father for help he'd try to provide it, but it would have been a hardship. The first little bout of unemployment was terrifying. The second was tough because of the ensuing depression. This one I honestly see has a bit of a breather to change the direction of my life. There are minor frustrations with uncertainty, but after seven weeks I'm still in good shape.

At my last job, the CEO kept saying that the fate of the company rested on his interest and that the greatest danger to the company was the threat of his boredom. He considered himself to be brilliant and that his responsibility was to think deep thoughts and have others carry out his ideas. He may have been right. He is brilliant, and most CEO's simply articulate a vision for the company. But that company was very small and struggling and there were transactions that he had to make because others either couldn't ore wouldn't. What became clear was that he was either unable or uninterested in executing his ideas. I spent hours with him talking about this and the first time I raised the issue he was slightly offended. But then he turned the comment into a statement of praise. He was a visionary and it was a waste of his time and talent to attend to the details of any project. Again, he may have been right.

The CEO and I share the same birthday -- fifteen years apart. He and I are similar in many, many ways. I too am very good at coming up with projects, but lately I've had to ask myself if I have the stamina for completion? I quit acting. I've quit several HR jobs. I have an uncompleted novel and short-story collection.

Yet, I completed a bachelor's degree. I completed a masters degree. Why is it that I'm able to stick to those things, but abandon larger things.

I could be deluding myself, but I actually believe that the acting and the jobs are just details. The easiest thing in the world would have been to continue acting and waiting tables, slowly sinking into bitter middle age. Or to sign on to an HR job, getting comfortable with the salary and eating myself to the size of Utah to manage the frustrations.

There is a brilliant line in You've Got Mail. Meg Ryan announces that she's decided to close her bookstore, defeated by the large corporate conglomerate. Jean Stapleton responds, "Closing the shop is the brave thing to do. It means that you're willing to imagine a different life and to face the unknown armed with...well, nothing really."

At this point I feel like I too am facing the unknown, but certainly not with "nothing." I have a compass. I have tools to help me along. I'm educated and I have a small amount of time on my side. And in spite of potential boredom and frustration, I actually do have the stamina of completion. But more important, I believe I have the stamina to remain positive. I refuse to give in to the thought of failure. I'm not here to make money, nor become rich or famous. I'm here to build the best me possible. In the last few years I see real progress in that area, and I think that takes more stamina than anything else in the world.