I’m sitting in an overcrowded Starbucks, feeling a bit anxious because a deadline is approaching in the next 28 minutes that I’m going to miss.
While I’m enjoying my latte, for sure, it’s not how I thought Thursday morning, Nov 14th, would be going.
Last night on the way to take my son to church youth group, I pointed at some flashing lights, the electric trucks, police cars, etc. There had been an accident where someone slammed into a telephone pole. I told my son, “This happened several years ago, and we lost power for 2 days.”
I had just left home and we hadn’t lost power, so I figured it was okay.
A few hours later, my son back from church, I’m sitting at my desk, and ‘POP’ the house goes black. Power out.
Ugh!!
I pulled the lanterns and flashlights out and we did a few checks to make sure it was the whole neighborhood that was blacked out, and not just our house.
At the time of the outage, I was doing the final edits on the video that was supposed to go out this morning to my customers. No power – no computer. I was working on my desktop computer, and that is the only place where the video is I was working on, and the only computer that has the video editing software.
I went to bed. “It’s okay. We’ll get this worked out.” – I told myself.
A Good Nights Sleep and No Video
So, here I am – sitting here drinking my latte, blogging, listening to everyone else’s conversations around me. Everyone has their problems too. Some sound much worse than mine.
The two men to my right are crunching sales numbers, taking notes, and trying to figure out how to implement some leadership principles. Very monotone. Not much excitement. I had to smile – one guy said to the other, “I know they want to have some fun too, and I know how to have fun, but this isn’t the time for that.” Had to laugh too. I’m glad I wasn’t invited to their conversation.
On the other hand, the three women to my left are passionately talking about difficult relationships, and how annoying it is when other people try and tell you how to raise your kids. One lady is carrying about 85% of the conversation while the other two nod their heads. A bit venomous. Maybe if I’m lucky she’ll speak a little louder so I can’t even hear myself think. I’m glad I wasn’t invited to their conversation either.
Kind of humorous are the students one table over (just past the two monotone guys), who are trying to study for a college history exam for Mr. Kennedy. I believe it’s a early Western Civilization class they are in, if I can read the binding on their closed textbooks from here. There aren’t too many smiles. Just people, dates, and numbers. The only smiles are when they joke about their professor. They don’t seem to be very fond of Mr. Kennedy’s tests.
The rest of the other 18-20 patrons are sitting silent, like me, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, texting, and in their own world. I am actually enjoying listening to the music of Priscilla Ahn, “Leave the Light On,” playing through Starbucks. Kind of soothing to my anxiousness.
(on a side note – I love the Sound Hound app for my phone so I could figure who the musician was. I may need to download this song.)
Well… I’ve just about finished my latte… checked my email… and had about all the drama I can handle. I have enough of my own drama. Kind of strange that no one here seems to just be enjoying the day, shooting the breeze with a friend. Oh wait… two new people just walked in. They’re smiling and laughing. Maybe they’ll be infectious on the rest of us who are worn, anxious, and stressed.
I am feeling better now. Good to get some thoughts out, listen to some other people’s problems, and realize my life will be okay.
Before I leave I have a few things I’d like to say to the people around me:
Lighten up guys. If you’re going to lead people and teach leadership principles, light yourself on fire and people will come from miles away to watch you burn – otherwise, well… you’re just going to bore them to sleep. Don’t be so freakin serious. If you don’t enjoy your work, stop wasting your years and find one that brings you joy.
Lighten up ladies. Live a life with more grace to accept the faults and mistakes of others. And stop being so controlling (to the one lady). No one wants to hear you as much as you want to hear yourself.
Lighten up students. This is as easy as life gets from this point forward. Be blessed and know you’re blessed. You GET to study. You CHOSE to take this course. Give it your best and your 100%, otherwise it’s not worth even 1% of your effort.
Whew… at least I’ve solved their problems.
Time to go back home now and use some of the caffeine energy from this latte. See what I can do… the power is back on now. Yay!! Good job Texas electric… and I hope the person in the car was okay.