So one of the projects I mentioned was delayed not by our team but simply because the client’s cadence is slower than ours. While others see disaster, I see us building credibility for a much more robust and successful project implementation for 2Q23 or so. Short term small something vs. long term large everything. I’ve seen other reps almost hyperventilating trying to demand attention so they can I got dramatically called out today by one of my senior peers not for anything I did or didn’t do but because my position, naturally, is point man on building a credible, honest, teaming relationship. My peer, who is responsible for crafting the technology plans for 30 accounts plus an entire state government, flat out told me “you get your engineers, get on a plane, and go sit in their conference room and listen. We must meet them not where we want them to be, but where they actually are, from an organizational technology standpoint. Go build alignment and credibility. Your role is to help us grow trust and currency.” Old me would have said OK, gotten drunk, and either quit, fumbled the job, or found a way to fuck it up. Sober me says time to approach this relationship with honesty, good-faith, and a genuine desire to be - like that big book says - helpful. Old me would have been balls deep in my comp plan, figuring out how to maximize immediate financial gratification. I mean, fuck em, what’s the most I can get for me by January, the rest of the year be damned. Sober me accepts that the job is what it is, the financial rewards are latent results of being a responsible contributor, and that what I need to do is be courageous, honest, present, and quiet. That I can use my brain to be of maximum help and work as a partner. In that scenario, trust God, clean house, and help others means I probably end 2023 with double or triple the income if only I can do the footwork, set my ego aside, and rise above the sickening transparency of a selfish actor. Then I get back into pages 60-63, am I the director or the actor, to page 99 of the 12 & 12, can I be the st Francis prayer in action? By all accounts I should be dead, but for some reason God or a power other than me or by fate or for some other arbitrary reason I was placed, decades later, into this service position. That’s it. My career is nothing more than my service position. I’m either making coffee and arranging chairs at a meeting, or flying all around the country and asking for understanding rather than demanding to be understood. How can I bring God into the global technology game? This might be a little sick but I’m gonna be dead in 30 years, why don’t I stop putting limits on God and just let him be revealed? Enjoy the show, right? (Cue the scene in Moneyball where Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is driving down the highway listening to his awkward teen daughter play the her song “Enjoy the show.”) Midnight ramblings of a midlife recovered alcoholic waiting for a product manager in Europe to wake up, check his email and Slack, and get me some pricing.