Playing

I struggle a great deal with work. This past week, though, I learned a lot about these struggles. By Tuesday evening, I had ended up in a pretty dark place so I decided to call Mom on my way home. I told her that I was just so tired of the roller coaster ride. I told her that I must just have a wire crossed or something that keeps me from having any type of ongoing satisfaction with work. I told her that I just couldn't understand why school is so fulfilling and work is not.

Well, she brought up the toy farm collection. When Chad and I were younger, we used to play with our 1/64 scale farm collection. This collection is quite impressive and includes a house, garage, 2 barns, cow building, pig building, horse building, grain bins, and silos. It also includes pigs, horses, cows, and people (young and old of each). Other details include 3 types of fences with opening gates, sand box, swing set, and porch swing. Of course, we also all of the necessary farm equipment to maintain the operation. So Chad and I would spend hours filling the ping-pong table with our farm collection. Then, as soon as we were done setting everything up, I would head back upstairs.

Mom reminded me that this would frustrate Chad so much. Why? Well, we never actually played with our collection. We just spent hours setting it up. So Mom's wisdom, "Todd, you need to remember to play."

She's right.

It can't all be about strategy, lay-outs, and projects.

At some point, there has to be some time to play - to enjoy work.

Somehow, by the end of this week, this was happening. I had an unexpected phone call and also an unexpected visit. Results started coming in to the tune of over $65,000 in savings on one project with another $100,000 in process and another $35,000 on deck.

This all boils down to a sense of balance and perspective. I'm not sure what the next steps will be but I'm definitely going to remember to play.