Routine

Great quote from BZ this week,

It's the awareness of the routine, the point when you know exactly what's coming tomorrow, it is that point that is the real killer."

I could not agree more. The curious mind finds no solace in the same-old songs. Perfect is more than practice alone. Human beings are not meant to live out their lives under fluorescent lights and concrete walls. There is a reason prisoners leave worse than when they arrive. It is the same reason we have more employees than entrepreneurs, more jobs to make a living than living to make jobs, more two week vacations than lifelong adventures.

It is about the stories we teach. The priorities we place. It should not take a lifetime of servitude to have the freedom to break with routine, to revel in the unexpected, to marvel at the unknown.

StatusQuo

How far do you go to protect what you have?

The outcome of today's freshly-negotiated State employee contract proposal should not have been surprising. I have known the rules for some time.

Yet I was shocked walking out today. Not at the level of give-backs expected, but rather the level to which negotiation went merely to protect the status quo, the same things, the same attitudes, the same costs that placed a system under water to begin with. While simultaneously sacrificing the benefits, the security of those who come on board with fresh ideas and strong work ethics because, ultimately, they have something to lose if they do not produce.

It is a sad reality when any organization gets to the point where the only measure of contribution is the number of hours you have watched pass by, the number of years you have done the same thing. Are we so out of touch with employee contribution that we cannot identify who has performed what service, at what cost, with what results?

Privilege

Love this...

The ancients are right: The dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege."

- Marilynne Robinson