Work Purpose – Passion or Paycheck?

God only knows, God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable to the mortal man
We’re workin’ our jobs, collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway, when in fact we’re slip sliding away

Crazy lyrics, aren’t they? When you’re working a job, and are part of the masses doing a 9 to 5 gig, the above can be a little…well, unsettling.

“Slip Sliding Away” is a Paul Simon song that was blaring from the speakers of the almost vintage Cadillac that I drive on the way to work the other day. The irony of the above lyric hit me like the cliched ton of bricks:

Is my life actually slip sliding away while I go to my cubicle each day and perform the duties of an employee?

And is that a reason to dislike, even hate, the circumstance?

I thought about it for awhile, and concluded that I’m stuck somewhere in the middle. Worker bee limbo. I neither dislike nor love the current situation as it pertains to work.

Not everyone hates their job. For some, the only emotion is indifference.

Maybe it’s a by-product of a lousy economy, but there just seems to be an avalanche of individuals these days that will no longer work for the man. They are running micro-businesses, working independently, and writing blog posts all about it. I must admit, at times I am jealous. They all seem to have it going in the right direction.

What’s an old school kinda guy to do? Well, this theory seems to work—

It’s perfectly fine to try and find some meaning within your day job, collect that check, and have a great passion outside of work.

Find something else to do, besides your job, that will stoke your fire. It doesn’t have to be related to work. Who wrote that rule anyway??

My grandmother worked day and night in her restaurant without necessarily “loving” everything that she did. My grandfather worked a shift in factories, and then went to the restaurant to help out after his day was done at the job. I doubt he was “passionate” about most aspects of his work. He would probably say he did it for the food, the clothing, and the roof.

My job fulfills income criteria as well. That’s all I really require of it.

The idea of a “dream job” can be a fallacy for many of us. I don’t have that one singular, all consuming passion for something that I could make my living at. I do, however, love aspects of my work in sales. I love the competition and the consistent striving to be better than I was yesterday.

My passion is reserved for my God, my family, my friends, ocean front vacations, and my baseball team. My work can just be my work.

Excuse me while I work my job, collect my pay, and yes, glide down that highway.

Never Say Die

“Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.” – Napoleon Hill

If you were playing in a baseball game, and your team was losing 11-0, would the thought of giving up cross your mind?

What if before this game, you lost all the other games you played, in a similarly lopsided fashion. Would that make you want to quit even more?

What if you were ten or eleven years old, and entrenched in this cycle of losing. Wouldn’t you really want to quit?

I’m an assistant coach with this team I describe. If these kids did not want to give up, well, I sure did. It’s actually quite easy to recall all the negative dialogue running through my head during that game:

Man, these kids can’t play at all.

Will anybody swing the bat tonight?

Why are we doing this?

Just play out the string. Just let them play, and in a month, it will be all over.

Nice thoughts for a coach to be having, huh? I was one of the guys supposed be building these kids up, instilling some confidence, letting them know that whatever the challenge, they could overcome. Instead, I’m pacing on the field, looking at the scoreboard, having my own private pity party. But something happened on the way to another beatdown on the baseball diamond.

These kids taught me a lesson. They took me to school.

“When life knocks you down, you have two choices -stay down or get up.”

To give you a synopsis of what turned out to be (even on a Little League level) an epic game, that eleven run lead eventually shrank down to size. With a couple of nice hits, some timely pitching, and our batters being selective in the box when the other team’s pitching went cold, the outcome of the game was anything but decided.

When it was decided, it was a dramatic finish with a play at the plate in our team’s last at bat with two outs.

In that last at bat, with the two outs, our team was still three runs behind. I still thought, even with this very emphatic show of persistence, there was no way they could come all the way back.

Final score 12-11. We win.

I don’t know what caused this monumental spark, a fire lit underneath these kids. But it was sudden. Players that seemed disinterested, even half asleep, began to play in fast forward. And once they got it going, everything snowballed. Still on the short end of the score, you knew which team had the all important momentum.

I think the reaction of most adults faced with such a steep uphill climb would be to pack it up and get ready for another day. But they didn’t. This team displayed a boatload of heart and character.

I was happy for the kids that they got the win. I was proud of the way they kept grinding it out, giving their maximum effort with every at bat, and doing their best in the field.

But, more than that, I was grateful for their gentle reminder that for most situations in life, persistence is everything. It is a reminder that I need more often than not, when you feel like giving it up, it makes more sense to just keep going.

Thanks to a Little League team that didn’t quit, I re-learned once of the most basic old school lessons. Persist. Always be moving forward.

Never. Say. Die.

3 Rock Solid Simplicity Tips From The Old School

There are many simplicity mantras one can follow these days. Whether on the internet, in magazines, or an early morning talk show, you can find tips on simplifying your life and the world around you.

Want “simplicity” choices? There are plenty. Hope you don’t get overwhelmed by them.

Within all the blogs I read, there can be hundreds upon hundreds of tips, some of them conflicting with others, maybe pointing you in one direction when you should be going in another.

If you are among those who have grown weary of all the simplicity content that is so prevalent now, I offer a solution. You can simplify this as well. All the “tips” that you read about, sometimes in great numbers, can be drilled down to a couple that are really important.

Life can be complicated. Technology complicates it even further. I also understand there may be a generational cut off of younger people that have not been guided by the hand of relatives or mentors that practiced and preached a simple approach to life.

I was very fortunate to have a grandmother and grandfather that showed me on a daily basis that your days on this earth do not have to seem complicated or confusing. You can make things easier on yourself, and in the process, make life easier for others.

My grandmother, in particular, had a couple of different mantras that she would repeat over and over again. These lessons could be thought of as simplicity tips that she lived, and tried to pass along. The first is one I’ve written about before, but it’s important enough to bear repeating:

“Life is precious.”

Or, life is a gift that should be spent wisely because we know not how much of this gift we will receive. She thought it a privilege as well, without having a sense of entitlement for anything. Everything had to be earned. She rarely took anything for granted.

This is an important thing to remember, every day. I think of it almost as a mission statement of sorts, instead of a “simplicity tip”.

“Food is everything.”

My grandmother knew the importance of a vegetarian diet before it was in vogue. Now, she was not a complete vegetarian. She loved a nice Porterhouse as much as any carnivore, and she made more meatballs in her life than anyone I’ll ever know. But, more times than not, she was cooking spinach, escarole, broccoli, and green beans, to toss the vegetables with either rice or pasta.

I ate a lot of rice and broccoli in my 47 years. A lot of pasta fagioli. And I drank a lot of spinach juice (she thought the cooked juice helped keep you regular). I ate a lot of simple, healthy dishes that were heavy on the vegetables. My grandparents (and other family members) knew the importance of the quality of the foods you ate, and the long term impact it may have on longevity.

“Life is worth living.”

This is along the lines of “Life is precious”, but deserves its own bullet. Once you realize that life is in fact the best present ever, you have to do your best to enjoy it, do important things, and live it with the people that mean the most to you. The members of this generation spent most of their adult lives on the job to support their families, but they also knew the meaning of their down time and how they could use it to create special memories.

The traditional Sunday Dinner comes to mind. There was rarely a Sunday when parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were not gathered around the dining room table to eat, drink, and have a mini celebration of life. Making it worth living.

That’s it. Three things. Simple, huh? See life as the equivalent of a gift that should be opened, and that we have fun with. Fuel your body with the right foods to have the abilty to fully appreciate this life. Spend your life wisely. Remember your obligations, but also remember to relax and know how to have a good time.

“Life is not complicated. We just make it so”

Whenever You’re Ready

My memory, such as it is, doesn’t function that well anymore. I’m sure the number 47 has something to do with it, but I’m not going to have age be the “be all, end all” excuse. Because of faulty memory, I tend to write things down now more than I did previously. And I should have written down, to commit to memory, a load of things that have happened in my past.

I’ve posted before about how one of my dream jobs when I was younger was to become a writer. I’ve routinely beat myself up in the past because I didn’t do more to advance that dream, to get the process in to flow so it may have had some opportunity for success.

But I don’t make a big deal of that anymore. The fact is, I was doing plenty of things to make my life exactly the way I wanted along the way. There was no room for writing, as I just had so much else going on, the majority being living my life and building a business within the walls of the family restaurant. I read a quote recently that pretty much hit home what was happening to me, and why:

“We do things when we are ready for them.”

Simple, precise, and to the point. And I agree with it 100%. With the exception of death and taxes, nobody really has to do anything that they don’t want to do. There are no rules or regulations, only the ones you impose on yourself.

You can do things, do anything, on your timetable.

I wasn’t taking on writing again until I was ready. I didn’t want to make room for it until I thought there was room to share. There wasn’t a voice that I had that I thought was worth giving to others. That’s over. I can go with that concept now.

So, you’ve wanted to do something for a long time. Or you want to try something new. How do you know if you’re ready?

1. Get confident. This one’s kind of a Catch 22. When you realize that your life is your own no matter what, your confidence spikes right then and there. The more you move your life in the direction that you choose, the higher the confidence level.

To get confident, do things have to be perfect?? No. As a matter of fact, make as many (non-fatal) mistakes as you can. Mistakes and failure are a learning tool. Things will look and sound better with more experience and more attempts. You just have to get it going. Remember, perfect is the enemy of the good.

I know for a fact that, where this blog is concerned, I will write some good stuff, and I will write some crap. But the crap is just as important as the better writing, because it’s still a tool that is sharpening my skill. And then the hopeful result in the end will be quality content, every time.

2. Schedule It. If necessary, put what you want to do on a schedule or a calendar. Or not. If you want to do something enough, you will just start, and then do it consistently over time. Really, do we need a reminder to do stuff we like?

3. Don’t worry about outcomes. Just take a step forward. And then another. If you take enough of them, the outcome will arrive soon enough. And if it doesn’t, you can always tweak your approach, and then take another step.

4. See the end in mind. Visualizing your life as it will be, not just as it is, is hugely important. True, the present is all we have, but I don’t want to see just my job, tonight’s dinner dishes, and tomorrow’s baseball practice.

I want to see new business opportunities, our upgraded kitchen, trip(s) to Italy, my kids growing in stature and confidence, a (pre-owned) Cadillac CTS as my preferred toy, and a whole bunch of blog readers. And that, for me, would be just a short list.

So see the future. Do things in the present to get there.

Whenever you’re ready…

ItalianAmerican: Joe Girardi

Just outside East Peoria, Ill., in a one-story brick building in a small town called Washington, there used to be a Italian restaurant on Wilmore Street where locals could count on reasonable prices and old-world cooking, and a warm personal greeting from the owners. The place was called Girardi’s.

“They served the best ravioli I’ve ever had in my life,” says Jane Miller, a longtime patron.

That was mother Angela Girardi, welcoming customers by the door, a hostess with a long, flowing dress and a background in psychology. That was father Jerry in the kitchen, a man who once harbored baseball dreams of his own, cooking the pasta and simmering the sauces.

And those were the five kids, including the future manager of the Yankees, busing tables, slinging dishes and mopping floors, all hands pitching in, most of them heading to high places. Though the restaurant has long since closed, Angela dying a quarter-century ago, Jerry moving into an assisted-living facility, his faculties stolen by Alzheimer’s, the steadfast, selfless tracks laid down by the parents remain in place.

Since we are well underway with this current baseball season, I thought it fitting that the subject of this installment of All My Heroes would be current New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi. Like Jim Valvano in the post before him, Joe Girardi is the product of an Italian American family that instilled in him the values and work ethic that propelled him to the top of his game.

The above text comes from a NY Daily News article by Wayne Coffey, written just after Girardi was named manager of the Yankees, to succeed long time manager Joe Torre. The article goes on to detail the story of a man who, although now a very public figure, was guided by parents who stressed upon him education, drive, and an unshakeable perseverance to be the very best at what he does.

Girardi’s critics more than likely think managing a line-up of all-star players to a World Series victory was not a difficult accomplishment. I beg to differ. Managing and organizing a team of what has to be super size egos through a 162 game gauntlet and to yet another world championship had to be anything but easy. And kudos to him for doing it.

Those wheels were set in motion long ago, however. Angela and Jerry Girardi, stressing the hard work, goal setting, and never-give-up attitude that it would take, started their son’s quest for perfection in pinstripes in his youth, within a small town Italian restaurant. Where they served one mean ravioli.

Hopefully, Yankee fans will enjoy the result of their labor for many years to come.

I will be occasionally posting a feature that will highlight quotes and anecdotes from famous and not so famous Italian Americans. ItalianAmerican will hopefully provide some inspiration and motivation, as well as a positive reflection of the immigrants that came to America, and their generations that follow.