Lux Delux

It’s a savage westward expansion.  Victims of manifest destiny, the unassuming pioneers are crushed beneath the metal treads of the marauders.  Will you overcome?

Wrong.  I’m the marauder.

Adventures with Bill

Events not necessarily in the order they occurred.

 

 

My Top Ten Perils of Leadership (#5, 6 and 7)

5.  Teamwork.  Really the perils here are too numerous to all be accounted for; this is one of those avoid-at-any-cost dangers.  It has mostly phased out of the contemporary work place but there are some exceptions found in the more naiveté, idealistic organizations.  These organizations are also marked by attempts to regress into the past with such fossilized techniques as employee training and paper recycling.  The greatest risk of teamwork is, of coarse, the incorporation of multiple dummies into one location with the intention of acquiring something smart.  This is an impossibility because simple math tells us no matter how much ‘dumb’ you have, you will never get ‘smart’ as a result.  In fact quite the opposite; the ‘dumb’ increases at a geometric rate.  A leader in this position really has no place to squirm.  If you ever get stuck as the leader of a “team” with the requirement of “work” you might as well go out for drinks on the company tab because your doomed. 

6.  Caring.  Take it from me, avoid the heartache of lost employees and don’t get involved on any level, except if it has raw benefits that are not contingent upon them staying or leaving.  Sterile detachment is the key to success in this field of leadership.  Steer clear from conversations with employees apart from reprimanding them or demanding higher outputs.  Research* has shown it’s actually best not to acknowledge others as persons to keep affection at a minimum.  I’ve started referring to employees by their assigned numbers, but make sure to use numbers higher that one thousand so they feel lost in a sea of competitors with no chance of climbing to the top.  (*No research was ever done for the presentation of this information.)

7.  Positive Attitude.  A good manager must be excited about everything regardless of all the impending cut offs that are about sever what limbs are left of this already bleeding, terminally ill corporation. This is a challenge because to communicate certain ruin to underlings will result in chaos and a potential uprising could be on your hands but baring the weight of all that information can really put a damper on one’s day.  So it is best to hint at the companies capsized state indirectly.  I’ve started ‘accidentally’ leaving company stock reports in the employee break area.  When employees see the profits sinking into the tar pit of no-recovery they will get the idea and begin leaving naturally.

Debut Album.

My top ten perils of Leadership (the first four so far)

 

1.    Lack of sufficient information.  Not all information is public and even if it were there’s just too much to explain and even if one did, it’s probably not that exciting anyway.  But of coarse everyone feels owed an explanation.  I mean it is hard for me to work solely because of a “I told you so” especially when the tasks feel like digging and refilling holes in the ground.  But in those cases where that’s all the information I get, I find difficulty transforming that into profound motivation for those I am leading.  A sense of accomplishment is a strong motivational tool.  But “Do it because the nations are hanging in the balance” only energizes up to three people for two to three hours tops before I need to give them something else.

2.    Greater intelligence.  It’s the worse mistake when I accidentally hire someone who is way smarter than I am.  Then I have to fain competence on a whole other level to let him know that it is right and fair that I am in charge.  But it’s a hassle.  I have to start carrying around the Wall Street Journal during my lunch break and I can’t bring my clubs to work anymore.  I started scheduling ‘busy’ tasks at key heavy traffic hours during my workday.  For example pretending to talk on the phone with clients or calling meetings with people to discuss ‘progress with their project’.  Everyone should be working on a project and if they’re not they will make one up on the spot so they don’t look like a slacker so it is always safe to ask that question.  You can see how quickly things will get out of hand if you don’t clip this thing in the bud.  The higher the I.Q. of my employees the more work that is for me.  Hence my motto: “Take it slow - go low.”

3.    Communication.  No matter what is said it will always be heard differently.  And no matter how many times it is repeated people hear what they want.  For example, “Go take the trash out!” will read “Go t___  ___  tr___  out?”  Next thing I know all the employees took the rest of the day off to go fishing.  The best solution I’ve discovered to date is just not to talk to co-workers, don’t even make eye contact – that’s a form of communication and God only knows how far they could take it.

4.    Responsibility.  The dreaded ‘R’ word.  The best way to avoid this downfall is blame shifting but of coarse in the business world we call it “acknowledgement transference”.  Boss: “Did you run that report?”  Me: “Due to my enormous workload I seem to remember transferring that project to *co-worker*.”  I then look good for my delegation skills and the boss will never really invest the energies to follow up on that report anyway.  It’s a win – win.

Penned Deceit

I write to you today in dire need.  I great evil has been uncovered and I have spent my last breath to warn of it.  Do not attempt to write me back or it will be too late for you.  It was Thursday, May 15th and I sat in the prayer room just writing down my thoughts, jotting whatever came to mind.  And as I did so a peculiar idea wafted into my brain.  Though now in reflection, I now feel not so much as if it wandered on in, but more like it was already there and I only then suddenly become aware of it.  The same as one would who comes upon the proper diagnosis of an long standing illness of which the symptoms have always befallen him.  Looking down into my hand I saw that I was holding a pen.  A thin black plastic tube out of which comes a dark liquid.  I’ve used this pen to write with often.  But I then understood that as soon as I were to put it down I would no longer have writing.  No words.  A lost voice.  I needed him, that pen.  It was then that it struck me, “Who’s using who?   Or worse, who owns who?”  At that point I vigorously began to scribble on the page as I now felt victimized and vulnerable.  I couldn’t stop writing for then I give him power over me, as I would be silenced.  But in order to commit to word these terrible thoughts, I had to continue to rely upon him for those words I wished to use to speak out against him.  Now I was stuck, I wanted to scream out for help in my dire state but as I looked around the room I saw it had already happened to the others.  Their faces were bowed to paper, hand stuck to a pen, droopy and despairingly they trudged on enslaved by this black machine.  How horrible, for this item of technology was meant to serve humankind and now he has tightened his menacing grip upon those he swore to uphold.  My only chance was to pen this letter while he was not looking pleading for all others to heed my warning and destroy all pens everywhere.  Leave not a plastic shell remaining.  For I’d rather have no voice at all then to be told when I may and may not speak.  Now I must go for I fear then may have already discovered me.  Be strong, long live the revolution!

The Wheel of Love

So in the prospect of a highly anticipated, too-slow-approaching event, I have been reading a book on the subject to which this event is concerned, marriage.  In so doing I have been particularly surprised with the descriptions Mr. Mike Mason (in his book, The Mystery of Marriage) has employed for his topic.  My surprise is concentrated most specifically in a reoccurring theme in the book.  I’ve always thought this was the case but Mr. Mason just has such a terrifyingly lucid way of putting things.  For convenience, I have italicized just a few of the many phrases I’ve found to be pointing toward this theme.

“One of the chief characteristics of love [, is that] it asks for everything. … The wedding is merely the beginning of a lifelong process of handing over absolutely everything, and not simply everything that one owns but everything that one is.  There is no one who is not broken by this process.  It is excruciating and inexorable, and no one can stand up to it.  Everyone gets broken on the wheel of love.  …  It is not physical pain or natural disaster or the terrible evil world that is to blame, but rather it is love, love itself that breaks us.

[But love] is where things really hurt.  There is no hurt like the hurt that happens in the place where we love.  That is the vulnerable place in all human relationships.  … In the relationship of marriage it is this very quality of vulnerability that is exposed, exalted, exploited.  Many give up and run away, their entire lives collapsing in ruins.  But even those who hang on face inevitable ruin, for they must be broken too.

The difference, however, lies in the place where ruin is experienced.  For in those who run away from the intense fire of marriage, the ruin happens in the place in them that is love, and this place, this glorious and mysterious and delicate capacity in them, really does receive a terrible wound, sometimes enough to impair it for life.  But in the case of those who hang on to love and who see it through to its mortal finish, the ruin that occurs, the internal debacle, is not in the place of love (although it may often seem to be happening there), but rather in the place, in the palace, of the ego.  And that makes all the difference in the world.  It is one thing to wreck the ego.  But it is quite another, and indeed the very opposite, to make shipwreck of the soul.

One of the hardest things in marriage is the feeling of being watched.  It is the constant surveillance that can get to one, that can wear one down like a bright light shining in the eyes, and that leads inevitably to the crumbling of all defenses, all facades, all the customary shams and masquerades of the personality.  Does this make marriage sound like some ordeal of brainwashing?  But actually that is very much the sort of effect it has, with the single exception that the one doing the brainwashing, the one holding the bright light, is not some ruthless prosecutor or torturer, but love.  It I love that pins us to the wall and makes us answer, and makes us keep on answering until the answer that comes out is the one that love wants to hear.

Matrimony, then, through this devastating strategy of watching, launches a fierce and unrelenting attack upon the fortress of the ego, upon that place in a person that craves privacy, independence, self-sufficiency, lack of interference.”

These wonderful quotes and others like them were found between pages 21 and 24 of Mike’s book.  If you have not guessed it yet the theme is: love = sacrifice (and the pain therein).  But don’t worry; though he has wounded me, this next quote is the hope underlying the voluntary embracing of such wounding.

“Under such treatment, of course, a person is given the opportunity of opening like a flower and becoming perfectly natural, perfectly himself.  And yet this true self of his turns out, surprisingly, to be someone he himself has never met before, someone just mysteriously different enough from the real self he thought he was that it can only be described, finally, as someone entirely new.  Or someone who has been there all along, perhaps, but who has finally become self-confident enough, through the grace of love, to step out of the shadows.”

This is the freedom I look forward to.

Grace be with us all and me especially,

David S.

Undisclose-ed-ness

On a certain day, which will not be named here, I had a certain conversation with a person, who also will remain unnamed.  During this conversation, at an undisclosed location and time, I discovered very important information, the likes of which I certainly do not have the authority to repeat under any circumstances.  Upon discovery of this information I stood aghast, scandalized and oscillating in and out of rapturous perponderment.  Were any of the afore mentioned names, locations, topics, or even time frames to be even suggested aloud I would most undoubtedly be ostracized.  Because of the publicity surrounding this blog I can go into no greater detail but for the sake of my sphere of influence I feel the strictest obligation to hint at the fridges of this data.  Really all I can say is, good luck to you all, and may God be with you in these perilous and/or glorious times ahead.

Sincerely, David S.

The Engagement: David’s Story

9 Days and Counting

            So I have the ring already and I am sitting in my office.  I mean I’ve had it for about two weeks now, stowed in a drawer in my room.  Periodically I would take it out, inspect it in the light to make sure it was a real diamond.  I would wonder about just walking into Kristen’s office and sitting it on her desk in the morning and saying something really cool in a deep voice like, “Hey baby, a diamond is forever, and so is my love for you.”

As I sat I pondering, in walks the fabulous Lauren Shaffer.  “Have you picked a day yet?” she inquired.  Lauren was on the inside.  “It’s complicated, there are coming events this weekend that I have no control over” I responded.  “Why don’t you just do it on Thursday?” she stated simply.  “That’s freakin’ brilliant,” I said.  Not a moment later Lauren had emailed Kristen’s roommate, her good friend and my best friend and organized an attack procedure.

            Here was the plan as detailed as I was willing to make it: normal day at work, distracting activity afterwards, then surprise proposal and dinner back at her place that had been set up by friends while we were out.  I knew that if I tried to plan much more than that I would start to get stressed out which could potentially tip her off.

4 Days until Thursday

            I’m hanging out with Kristen and her roommate and The Day is drawing nigh.  I am racking my brain trying to figure out what activity to do this coming Thursday to distract Kristen until the house is ready for our surprise dinner.  In a moment of inspiration I pipe up, “Let’s go bowling.”  We had just played Nintendo’s Wii bowling the previous weekend.  “I’m just going to pick a random day: this Thursday, we are going bowling this Thursday.”  “You have prayer room team on Thursdays, your not going to skip it are you?” she looked puzzled.  Then followed an awkward conversation about how I was in fact going to skip prayer room team to go bowling with my girlfriend.

The Day to Bowl

            Priority one: act normal.  There’s nothing special going on today, just a normal bowl with a diamond ring in my jacket pocket.  The day was difficult.  I was concerned she would head home for some unknown reason only to find four random people in her house cooking and moving around furniture.  I wanted to check on her but I knew that would make her suspicious.  During lunch she mentioned how long and tiring her day had been at work so far and how she wanted to take a nap at home.  “You shouldn’t throw off your schedule,” I bursted out nervously.  That was a close call.

            We bowled after work; just one game.  I won 96 to 75; I don’t know that I have ever broken one hundred in the five or so games I’ve played in my lifetime.  I’ll just have to add that to my bucket list.  I need to get back to Kristen’s house at seven otherwise the food will get cold but not sooner than seven.  It’s not yet six in the bowling alley so I demand that we play pool.  She hasn’t played before; I have, but I’m not very good.  Our game drags on as neither of us can hit the ball into the pocket.  She is getting board but I make her play three more games.  Eventually she just sits down and lets me take her turns as well.

            We get back to the house at twenty after seven.  I had Lauren unplug her garage door opener so that she would have to enter the house through the front door.  “Perhaps it’s out of batteries,” I suggest.  I am now shaking and swallowing hard.  Kristen opens the door and stops.  The dimly lit hall leading to the living room is flickering in the light of many candles.  She spins around and looks at me, her eyes wide, “Did you do this?”  I am still standing outside, “Let’s go all the way in.”  She slowly makes her way to the living room, pausing every step or two to catch her breath.  All the furniture in the living room had been removed and replaced solely by the dinning room table.  The fire in the fireplace and the candles generously dispersed throughout the room romantically provide the only light.  The dinning room table supported a fantastic meal cooked by the one and only culinary genius Richard Liantonio; I would do the meal a terrible injustice to try and describe.

            I didn’t know how the room would look so I am just as surprised as she is when we enter.  After we both came to, we turn to face each other.  We look deep into each other’s eyes, then trembling I get on one knee.  Her hand is over her mouth, “Kristen, will you marry me?” I squeak out barely audible.  I don’t know if she even heard me but she started squealing, “yes” over and over so she must have gotten the idea.  We ate together and I made sure to go slow to give my heart time to slow it’s beating otherwise it would pound right out of my chest.  It all felt so fantastic that it I had to remind myself it was not a dream.  But in fact Kristen Anderson and I are very happily engaged.  I love that girl!  And I look forward with great expectation to the upcoming months.

 

A Weeks Worth of Vacation: Day 3

Oceanic Exploration was the goal for this day.  It’s well worth the twisty coastline hour drive from my house.  Again these pictures are all unadulterated shots by me (unless they are of me in which case Kristen took the shot with her iPhone).

  On the road to the ocean    the ocean    The next Wild at Heart cover picture