"None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for a lifetime." - Gail Godwin
Funny how some may look at the variety of my various careers, successes and failuers and wonder, "what is this guy doing?" My resume appears to look like a sequence of jobs that would only appeal to an ADHD person. I don't have ADHD. What I have is a desire to actively manage my career. I have a shelf life of two years. Either I am moving up or I am moving out. When I look at my resume, I see a sequence of growth choices. Every job has been a step along my path. I don't pretend to make all the right choices, but even the wrong ones prove to be a preparation for what comes next.
For example, my first foray into the world of work as an Internet professional was at the start of the "boom." The now infamous .com bubble was happening as I made my transition from theatre to IT. I was happy to have a foot in the door on a new career, and everyone else in the game was giddy with the new, fresh world of a wired weirdness. I wasn't out of place. However, my first foray was a bust. I partnered with a person who did not share the same philosophical outlook as I did. He failed me, and I failed him. Did I waste my time? Heck no! This was the first step. It lead to the next step which was an opportunity to build a customer help desk service for a cable provider. The key words here are "cable provider." In 1997, cable providers were not in the Internet Service Provider business and there were no existing models for how a customer help desk for an "always on" cable modem would work. The only metric we had for measuring our success were existing cable television support calls (simple technology with little troubleshooting), or telephony based internet support (complex technology, but short calls due to the inability to troubleshoot and connect at the same time).
I digress. The progress continues. Every step of the way has been some new skill, attitude or knowledge that is building who I am and what I do. So it is with all of us, I think. Each one of us grow, learn, and explore. This doesn't need to be career, some of us see our job as a tool to allow us to be our "true" selves. My grandfather worked his entire life as a custodian in a school. When he retired, he managed to distinguish himself as a wood carver and was quite well known in the Okanagon Valley (his name was Ernie Brierley). Could he have chosen a different path? Yes. Might he have acheived greater things? Perhaps. Was it ultimately what he wanted? I think my grandfather made the choices that he wanted to make. Even if they were choices that he felt forced into. He, on some level, accepted those choices. He loved his family, he loved his wife, he wanted stability and reliability. Did he die happy? I would like to think so.
What he did was persevere. He held onto his dream of being a wood carver for all his life. He was always handy with tools and practical things, but I never thought of my grandfather as creative. His creativity came in the last years of his life. In his own way, he persevered. He kept his dream alive so when the opportunity to persue it, he was able to realize it.
Perseverance is not success. It is not failure. It is neither. It is both. Perseverance, to me, is the doing of whatever that doing is, in whatever capacity you have to do it in. I am a dancer, singer, musician, or athlete. Perseverance is able actually doing those things regardless of the obstacles. I know many people whose perseverance outshines others who have managed to gain fame and fortune doing the same thing.
When we watch someone doing something, we only see the output of their present existence. We don't realize the history they stand on. We don't see the preparation, the growth, or even the starting point. We don't all start from the same place. The next time you decide to criticize, consider this. What is the individual's level of perseverance. Do they deserve your venom or your praise?
This may seem a corny example, but I recently watched some of the "Dancing with the Stars" television series. What amazed me was the fact that this awful dancer was in the finals. He even made it to second place! A much better dancer was cast out by the audience before he was! I had to think on this. It is rare that I am able to see wisdom on television, let alone "reality TV." But here was an interesting story. The audience appeared to resonate and reward this awful dancer because of his perseverance and the fact that he had zero dance training. What they didn't appreciate was the better dancer who had prior training as a girl. She was good, but not as heroic as the dancer who came from nothing and managed to win people over.
Find strength in the joy of doing. Perserve!
- OB
