Airplanes are boring Post
I’m always amazed by the people who dream big. I feel like I dream big, but know the limitations and the effort that I will have to put forth in order to reach my goals. I feel like I not only dream big but have some directionality to my life. I love people who think that a great idea will equal a great company. I have learned that completely the opposite is true. I would rather have A people with a B idea than an A idea with B people. The A people will make it happen and make it work. Essentially making hard lemonade out of a lemon, and selling it to unwitting consumers at an enourmous mark up – convincing them that it is a great idea and why would you ever be interested in any other lemonade?
My big debate for today is if leadership skills are inherent to a person’s personality, learned, or some of both. Personally I believe that some people have an inate ability to lead because of their personality, and that as those people grow and develop they learn to use those abilities to their best advantage (Think super hero’s finding out they have a power – then learning how to control it.) I know I have learned how to use certain charms and skills to my advantage, but I’m not really sure how I have the skills to start out with – because no one ever told me, nor does my family have an idea that these skills exist in the world – much less how to use them for their own purposes. It really is like super hero’s isn’t it. Maybe I should start making my friends call me by a super hero name.
I was listening to NPR yesterday (hey – sometimes it has a good story on it…) and they were talking about how people in my generation are not interested in running for political office. The percentage of kids interested is disproportionately low. In this day in age with hyper connectivity and practically knowing each and every time a politician takes a crap – I think that politics looks like a very unappealing life for most people my age. We have been taught our entire lives that getting ahead is important, everyone is special, and that if you are “ahead” that you make more money and have to work less – which by the way is entirely not true. Our parents had inherent distrust in politicians after the whole Nixon thing, so they have taught us to be distrustful, and no one wants to be the only disliked person in the room just because of their job; no one wants to work hard, be disliked by half the population, and then have to whore yourself out to huge corporate America and special interest groups in order to make enough money to finance your next political campaign just in order to keep your job.
I’m usually a really decisive person but I’m really indecisive if I want this job I just interviewed for. The industry is sexy, the work sounds sexy, the people are whicked cool (OMG they have a PS3 and a foosball table….), it’s a bit smaller than I expected, but I don’t think that I have the whole story about the company – I’ll definitely need to find that one out before going much further. I don’t mind taking a financial and job security risk – I just want to know the full extent of the risk so that I can manage it and make an informed decision. Blind decisions are not good. That’s what got me into my current situation. I think I’m just scared of having the same thing happen again – jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. I’m really struggling. Comments would be welcome. I really want to make a decision before an offer comes – because if I don’t want it – I don’t want to be tempted to take it just because it’s not the current place. I want to wake up in the morning and actually care about my work and actually want to go. I want to fall in love with work again. I think that my relationship with work is going about as well as my relationships with boys. Hopefully persistence will pay off in both cases.
One weird thing did happen in my interview, which I’m probably reading too much into, but none the less it was a crazy awkward moment. At the end as I was chit chatting and getting ready to leave I asked for business cards in case I had any questions, the girl got up to go out of the room to get hers, and the guy made some comment to the effect “in case you want to call to ask what my plans are this weekend.” I think it was supposed to be a joke, but it was definitely a lot awkward. I figure, that it was an engineering boy – enough said. (He was cute too, if it wasn’t a job interview I would have called him … I totally googled/facebooked him – and found some priceless pictures. Hopefully he didn’t facebook/google me :-/ )
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