two- thirds

So, it's been a busy while.  Mostly I can say I've enjoyed all of it.  A good majority of the time I have a hard time narrating it myself.  If people asked me to describe life in the last eight months, I'd call it a dead sprint.

And I'm beat.

A year older, not sure the wiser.  Day in and day out, for some time, it wasn't an issue about me being able to tell you how horribly I did something or how much misinformation I'd given.  The folks I worked with felt reassured asking if I was still sticking it out working, rather than asking me for counsel or advice.  That bothered me at first.  I'm not a know it all, or presume to be smarter than I look.  A lot of time was trying to measure the confidence and faith people had put into me.  For a few months I didn't care.  I was grumpy, unwilling to learn new things, and generally not very hospitable.  It was a pouting ritual I had gotten pretty good at.

I hadn't fully learned my position.

Metrics, operations, resource management, social and professional capital were all stagnant.

I wasn't doing myself any favors.

I operated about 7 months on the job knowing about only 60% of what it is I'm supposed to able to do.

Sure was easy to blame others.  I'm tired.  I'm burnt out.  It's exhausting.  I'm managing temper tantrums and not professionals.  I refused to do a good job because I wasn't operating at 100% of an equitable knowledge base. Pretty lame excuse right?

But then I thought, "well if I'm going to know only this much of my job, then I'm going to have to try and make it work."  So a couple of revelations happened.  A sobering reality hit- what if I don't take this as  seriously as the people I work with?  How harmful is that to them?  The thought still inspires me.  There is a dignity and a value to what they do.  If anyone who would understand, it'd be a guy who made sandwiches for a living.  And what if the 50% of my job- which I had done a pretty bang up job was the 100% they were counting on me to do?  Like I said, sobering.

It was scrupulous, but day by day, two- thirds is how I went about the business.  Ultimately things changed.  I got trained to do the other third of my job.  And I feel so much more comfortable and confident, for the better.

In the between time, I learned to appreciate the little things, nuances, personalities, helping cultivate a culture of trust and excellence.  I'm not at all trying to set a bar for anything.  I'm pretty grateful for a sluggish start, but it's been encouraging.