Then something terrible happened. Sometimes, though, something terrible turns out to be a great thing...

Have you ever found yourself in the grip of a hateful, rigid person, a true enemy of hope? Someone hopelessly devoted to charts and policy, incapable of hearing or appreciating a dream, or a devotion to a larger cause? Who, when faced with a problem, will never say, Dale, what's going on? How can we help you? But will instead haul out the color-coded chart and the written action statement. The sad part is, people like that usually become in charge of something. They become supervisors of business units with 100% turnover every 18 months.

Suppose you had an employee who had won two national customer service awards in their first year on the job, an award that was given to only ten people in an entire nation-wide publicly-traded company each month. Suppose that employee was employee of the month for February and had achieved perfect attendance in May, took 90 calls a day with a 4.0 (out of 5) quality rating. Suppose that employee came to their immediate lead and said, "I have a problem. I'm pursuing a dream that means a lot to me and is demanding a lot of my time. I need some flexibility in my schedule. I need to ask if can adjust to a part-time schedule, perhaps 9-5, 10-5 to accomodate my dream." Would you listen? Would you at least attempt to understand what the employee was saying?

It's a weird deal--I am so much my father's son, to my own undoing. I am suspicious of authority, chafe at criticism, and hate conflict. When faced with situations like this, I usually make them worse and then wind up starting over. And now I'm probably going to do it again.

The biggest problem is, I hate working for a living. I'm not lazy; in fact I'm a pretty hard worker. But I hate the fact that you have to sell the biggest part of your life to an organization that doesn't care about you and is hopelessly wedded to ineffectual cheerleading and slogans, that doesn't know how to "smile, care, know, own, step up" when it involves a member of their staff.

I know the blog is only a blog, and there are millions of them out there. But it is important to me, and so is the dream of telling stories, particularly my mother's story, and the stories of those I know who have led such inspiring, noble lives. I probably won't make a dime from this. But it's more important to me than my crummy job. I can always get another crummy job. Although putting this out on the blogosphere probably won't help. Fortunately there are millions of people and employers who have never heard of me.

I hate writing posts like this, self-indulgent and whiny and elliptical. I'd rather write about big things and real emotions, the good stuff of life. But this is where I am today, and we'll have to make the best of it.