More wreckage of my past

My very first blog post, from that other, dead blog.

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Let's start with who I am. Good question. If I knew that, why would I need a blog?

Of course, I don't actually need one, do I ? I mean, this is my first entry. So presumably I do actually know the answer. It stands to reason.

I suppose I'll have to just let anyone who happens to read this decide who I am over time. Don't say I didn't warn you, because I didn't, and so I know that, Captain Obvious.

I'm a degreed person, which means I have successfully completed university studies. Unlike many people, I mean that--completed. I have no wish to return. Many people I know continually talk about returning to further their education. It makes me wonder what they've been doing. Life is certainly an education if you're paying attention at all.

They also frequently express a belief that I, too, should further my education. Go back to school, get another degree, get a PhD, become a lawyer or a doctor--do something with yourself.

Oddly, they seem to mean this in a vaguely well-meaning way, as if the suggestion that I was inadequately educated was supposed to be taken as complimentary. Apparently, their suggestion is somehow to indicate that I could rise above my current level and make more of my potential, like them.

So, potential, is it?

Potential is an old friend of mine. No, actually, he's an old friend of the family. My mother kept making play dates with him for me all through my childhood, but I can't stand the little bugger. He's been thrown up to me all my life. Even today, he's around all the time, with a bigger office than mine, and everybody recommends him and claims to know him very well. He gets a free pass in life because he doesn't actually have to do anything. No, all the actual work is up to me to live up to Good Old Potential.

That's the thing about potential, isn't it? To exist, it must be unrealized. One seldom hears anyone talking about people who have exceeded their potential, but we all know some of them don't we? They haven't increased it, just exceeded it. They are the millstones around our necks, who slow us down and waste our time exhibiting how far beyond their abilities they have reached.

Usually, they do this on conference calls.

Conference calls, for those of you not yet condemned to the business world, are meetings which take place over the phone. The advantages of conference calls include the fact that, since no one is watching you, you can do something else while theoretically at a meeting. This is an advantage because one of the other advantages of conference calls is that it is convenient to invite lots of people with no interest in the subject at hand. Thus, if you are one of them--and at any given moment, most people are--you can do something else, like read email, write in your blog, or see how many staplers you can fit in your nose.

Nothing is actually decided in conference calls, except the necessity to have another one later on the same subject. Perhaps the idea is to try and find a session where the person who has just dominated the discussion by proving beyond doubt how little they understand the subject, will be unable to attend. This theory's weakness is that the person in question usually is the one arranging the next call.

If this sounds like the sort of thing churches predict will happen to sinners, you're getting a good idea of the reality of it. Surely, Hell will involve a lot of conference calls.

This is why I resist pursuing potential. I like my work, and it is easy enough to appeal to my inherent laziness, but varied enough to provide some stimulation. In the event of promotion, however, I would be unable to avoid the conference call process, which is naturally dominated by persons whose potential is pushing a shopping cart around somewhere babbling about space aliens.

I'm not saying I'm smarter than anyone. I don't have a need to be. I don't care if I am. I am content with who and what I am. My potential can have his corner office and his sixty hour work weeks. Sure, he also gets the Lexus, but he also has to make the payments. He can also keep the conference calls.

Steve "Two Staplers" James