I know I say this every year but this year is flying by. The speed is forcing me to catch up. This year has been highlighted by losses and reawakening to life after significant loss. That is the sweet part of life that losses are always coupled with wins even if they seem insignificant in light of certain losses. Remember a win is a win even if it is trivial like my Yankees or my beleaguered Chelsea.
Personally, September is a great month of transition. Usually the fall weather is flirting with us. Beckoning us to bundle up just to find a 90 degree day forcing us back to shorts and sandals. We bemoan the fickle weather but we should be thankful of slow transitions. My personal challenge is my inventory of loose ends in 2025. There are a series of items that have carried over from years past that I feel, for some irrational reason, they should have been resolved. Irrational time frames or illogical time frames plague me personally and professionally. Many times we frankly cannot gauge or estimate how long something should take to resolve. The tendency is to assume to our own detriment that this thing we are going through should be resolved in the time that we think should be resolved. On a closer look, we are clueless on how long this loose end should remain flapping in the wind.
Most of these issues are questions of first impression to borrow a legal phrase. We have not encountered these situations before nor do we have the fortitude to set a known course to completion. Additionally, we have failed to evaluate the appropriate resources necessary to “button up” these persistent troubles. There are too many unknowns or more frustrating the changing variables thrust us back to square one in the hunt for a knowable solution and acceptable time table. It feels like a moving goal post mocking us to score just when we think we are done the end is snatched from our grasp. A perpetual Lucy football Charlie Brown scenario (younger folks will miss this reference so ask an old person for explanation).
When we start feeling that this should be done ask yourself what reference do I have? How long is grief? How long does an evolving legal problem take to solve? What gives me the right to demand succinctness? We could blame it on COVID but that excuse seems played out 5 years later. Maybe we can blame it on the complexity of our tech driven world so our most precious items remain unresolved as a new open source code byproduct. I guess I need to whittle down my to do list to rearrange my expectations to hopefully resolve one loose end by year’s end. Just one – I have four months to get one thing done. Hopefully that is not too unrealistic.
Albert R. Hartley
Currently Reading:
The Emperor of All Maladies
By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Stranger
Novel By: Albert Camus
The Fall
Novel By: Albert Camus
The Plague
Novel By: Albert Camus
Create Dangerously
Essay By: Albert Camus
The Code Breaker
By: Walter Isaacson
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780
By: Rick Atkinson