“You know George, the difference between us is that
I do this job because I have been trained to do it. You do it because you
love to do it.”
General
Omar Bradley to General
George Patton, from the movie Patton.
It has been a very busy past few weeks. In hindsight
my instructions descibing my job in India should have raised more
concern. They are simply “Keep doing your current job, just
do it from India”. When things are at their
busiest, as is the case now, my job involves 6-8 hours per day of
meetings. The consequence of being here is that most of those
meetings are happening in the middle of the night. This is making
for long days and nights that are draining my energy for anything other than
work. Even setting out at lunch time and trying to find something
good to eat seems too much trouble, I am bunkered in my office living off Coke
and Danish Butter Cookies. All of this would be intolerable
if I didn’t love my job as much as I do. I am coming up on 10 years
here. Right after I joined back in 1998 I had a rough time
dealing with my manager. I decided to set a rule: “If you go 5 days
in a row of not liking your job then leave.” That rule
is still in force and I am still here. In fact, I can’t
imagine what life would be like with a bad job. Doing what you love
is the only thing that makes doing it 18 hours a day tolerable.
More updates to come, there is much to share from the home
front…