Cold

Simply cold. On the radio this morning, they said it hadn't been this cold since 2004. In 2004, Andrea was working the late shift at Target collections, coming home at 11pm at night. I remember it because her car ended up breaking down somewhere right off the highway, and I had to pick her up in my Mom's truck. Now I know why she hated that commute so much... I think I might have been a bit insensitive about it at the time, seeing as how I wasn't even working...

Aside from the cold, this week is going well, I heard that my Mom and sister-in-law survived lay offs, so that's got to count for something. Watching unemployment rise, more companies disapearing, and the economy generally sucking is just a great way to stay positive. At some point you just have to shut your brain off to all of it, try to "do your best job" and just try to be ready for when the shit hits the fan. Nothing lasts forever.

I recently started thinking again about a topic that comes back to me every now and then, and that being my choice of worker drone status in life. I'm positive I've mentioned this quote before, but I can't find it in a quick search. It's from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here's the short version:

The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

In the limited 10+ years I've been working, I've always been in the role of the man who knows how. I know how the system works, I know how to make improvments, and I know how to build it, maintain it, or fix it. I can start to see the importance of the why, the value in the why, but I still can't seem to make that leap to caring about the why.

Who gives a rats ass why some company is willing to pay some other company millions of dollars for services, technologies, or software products? Is the "why" important when the "business" asks for certian features? When a boss comes and asks you to do something, do you ask him "why"? No... so why ask why?

I think the answer lies in the full quote from Mr. Emerson, that being ambition. Do I have ambitions to be something other than a worker drone? Maybe... but figuring out what that means is the hard part. Maybe for me, it simply means having a goal of one day being my own boss?

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.