Bloom Where You're Planted

While my day job provides many benefits (such as a paycheck) and many frustrations (such as the sixty-plus-hour weekly commitment that pulls me away from my writing), what keeps me going back is my fabulous set of coworkers. I'm very lucky in that I actually enjoy seeing many of the people I work with; there are always the occasional people whom I avoid when I see them walking down the hall, but they are far outnumbered by the people whom I would gladly sacrifice ten minutes of precious worktime to catch up with.

I had a meeting today with one of my direct reports, and the meeting reminded me just how lucky I am to work with these people, and even more importantly how much I just need to figure out how to balance the job and the writing and not get frustrated when either one is not going exactly right. The person I met with was an officer in Iraq and served two tours before leaving the Army and going into the private sector. As we were talking, he mentioned something that his grandmother told him before he left for Iraq -- that it was important to "bloom where you're planted." Isn't that excellent advice? Regardless of whatever situation you end up in, you can still strive to bloom in it.

This is far sappier than I usually get, so I apologize for the uncharacteristic lapse. I will be back to my regularly scheduled snark tomorrow!