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Bus Riding

Reading this article made me think about how many times I have wanted to hop off the bus in my professional life and could not because of a variety of reasons. I stayed on and tried to make the most of what I found myself in the middle of. Most of the work I ended up doing is middling - nothing I would proudly recount to my grandkids. 

I learned to deal with freakishly difficult people, complete absence of leadership or strategy or both and irreparably broken processes. Somewhere in the midst of all that, almost by miracle some actual work got done. I am still on that same bus hoping persistence will pay off one day. And those completely useless (to my mind) skills I have mastered to work around obstacle courses to deliver results will prove to be part of some bigger picture, grander design I have yet to see. 

By staying on the bus, you give yourself time to re-work and revise until you produce something unique, inspiring, and great. It’s only by staying on board that mastery reveals itself. Show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way and every now and then genius will reveal itself.

My "mastery" is that I can survive and thrive in any workplace no matter how dysfunctional or toxic. I am not sure why such mastery is valuable to anyone including myself. 

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