State of exhaustion

What a stupid week. 

It started out well.  We spent Saturday night in Poynette, at a friend’s house on Lake Wisconsin.  We had enjoyed a lovely evening of dinner and conversation.  The morning brought snowy, sleety weather resulting in a 2-hour white knuckle drive home.  We arrived safely to a delightful breakfast of eggs, hash browns and bacon prepared by our son Carl who was visiting from Philly.  He and his girlfriend Amanda had come in for the weekend and it was great to get some “kid” time.  We had a lovely day and wonderful family dinner that included my sister and her family.  The weather continued to deteriorate, but the warmth in the house was more than enough to overcome the nastiness outside.

After dropping the kids off at the airport early Monday morning, I headed off to work.  I run two big projects and they are both ramping up.  Over the course of the week I facilitated 7 global conference calls, accommodating every time zone for over 200 participants in total; I attended multiple strategy meetings and tied off loose ends on project decisions with our supplier.  Overall, nothing more or less than I would expect to do in the course of working these projects.  It’s always tiring, but rewarding.

What I didn’t account for in my allocation of personal energy is all of the craziness going on at our State Capitol building in Madison.  The news has been magnetic.  The conversations have been riveting.  The anger has been repulsive.  In all, it’s exhausting.  I have learned a few things however and would like to share before I back away completely from the discussions and refocus again on family, job and life in general.

1.  An electoral mandate is not numbers driven.  When 1,128,159 voters out of a possible voter pool of 4,370,000 cast their vote for a candidate, in Wisconsin at least, the opinions of the 1,005,008 participating voters and the other 2,236,833 non voters no longer matter.
2. Listening is free; the ability to listen is a learned skill; the willingness to listen is arbitrary.
3. If facts, reason and logic were enough to effectively persuade, no one would use tobacco products in any form.




Blood Sucking Leech


4. This is a blood sucking leech. I have never conversed with a blood sucking leech at any state agency.  I have only interacted with people, you know, human beings with feelings.  And I was taught by human beings in the public schools.  Nice, dedicated people actually, unless of course I was late with an assignment. Come to think of it, the only place I've ever seen a blood sucking leech is in the lake up-north.  And those leeches were not wearing DNR uniforms.

Agree or don’t, your prerogative.

Now, what I really want to do is get on my bike and ride to the beach.  Except the nearest beach is snow covered, and there is no dude renting beach umbrellas and handing out frozen towels.  I guess I’ll have to settle for a nap.  *Sigh.*