Micro Management....or Taking Care of Business

You get up every morning
From your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above
And people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed
Look at me I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day..Randy Bachman

And there's nothing cold as ashes after the fire is gone....Faron Young

I would say I could hardly face the headlines this morning, but that would be hedging.   I simply didn't read the news this morning.  I didn't scroll through the Wall Street Journal opinion page and I haven't turned on Fox News.  I have yet to forgive my favorite pundits their rosy scenarios, even if they sincerely believed they were right.   Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn's close nearly clashing harmony comes to mind in Faron Young's classic cheatin' song:

Though the steam rolled off the coffeemaker, the morning was truly cold as ashes.

"How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws and kings can cause or cure."...Samuel Johnson

That quote was ever on our minds thirty years ago, but it seems to have fallen from favor.  Even as the media, blogosphere, and even Williams Sonoma entreats us to get closer to our plates by gathering honey from our own hives, chasing our own chickens around the yard, and washing soil and its associated wildlife from our own greens, our society either pounds its collective fists on the table of public opinion and yells, "MORE!" , or else sits in the middle of the sidewalk like a two year old at the zoo and says it can't go on.

Ha!  That felt good.   Not constructive, but cathartic.

So....rather than moping around in my flannel jammies and shuffling listlessly through the day,  I took full stock of what could be accomplished, election or no election.  It is a long list, believe it or not.  I like to think Randy Bachman was more focused on selling a catchy tune and making the big bucks than in creating a paean to the huddled workers of the world but if the driving beat doesn't get you out the door, the needling notion that self employment lets you 'work at nothing all day' gets under your skin.  Karl Marx said 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. ', meaning a relief from pain.  Experience has led me to the conclusion that work is a perfectly good antidote to disappointment, pushing aside that which cannot be cured for that which can.

In economic parlance, we turn our attention to the micro part of our lives rather than the macro.  Rather than mourning for that which we never did control and over which we could only exert the most miniscule and incremental of influences, we should turn our energies, passions, hands and hearts to that which we can.  Amen.  Long live our micro habitat, our milieu, our domain, our territory.  We are not the aggregate; we cannot budge the GNP, nor make the Iranians play nice.  But rather than 'rage at the dying of the light', we  do our part and :

Put on a Happy Face....

No more 'Blues in the Night'.  No more 'the sun will come out tomorrow'. No more 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'.  

I'll be... 

Taking care of business, every day

Taking care of business, every way

I've been taking care of business, it's all mine

Taking care of business. and working overtime

Work out

We Build...and Rebuild That

No number of compliments, accolades, reorders, contracts, ooohs, aaaahs,  or verbal pats on the back can compensate for one nasty phone call, one irritated email, or one dissatisfied client.  A won/loss record of .600 sends your team to the World Series; batting .400 lands a player in the Hall of Fame.  Its a rare year indeed when the team coming out of the Final Four has run the table.  But....in business, as we all learn eventually, statistics like these make for lonely days and nail biting nights. 

'Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail may stop the postmen from their appointed rounds', but neither are they excuses for flowers that are too little, too big, bloomed out or not colorful enough.  Selling service, personality, expertise, or creativity is all for naught if the so called factors out of your control take over and change the equation.  Dealing with Mother Nature is a fickle and frightening enterprise.

So...you cover all the bases you can.  You double down on...or up...as the case may be, on numbers.  Perhaps ten percent overage is enough, but let's be safe as long as there's still a margin to be had.  After all, a deer might run through, followed by all the canines on the farm.  A straight line wind might play grim reaper and windrow a hundred pots against their neighbors.  These occurrences are not hypotheticals; they are data points on the graph of experience.

There isn't a safety net in this small business. 'Don't look back.  Something might be gaining on you,' is the admonishment of Satchel Paige.  With the admission of imperfection comes the wedge of vulnerability.  Someone, somewhere, is growing, and selling, and trying their darnedest to make a living too.  Maybe someday it will be easy and we can all get lazy and fat and dumb and happy.  

Or maybe not.  More likely, we will continue to scrape and worry and use all the means at our disposal to grow row upon row of mums as perfect as soap bubbles but durable as basketballs. We'll sweat in the summer and chill in the rain.  We'll admire our handiwork marching four by four in the slanting golden light of autumn.  

Yes, indeedy.  We have the cuts and scars and pulled muscles to prove we built that.   Not only that, but we'll pick up the pieces and build it all again if we need to.