Placeholding

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011), Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005

I originally posted this quote about a year ago. As many of you know, we had to close our business, Mastercraft, after 50 years. At that time, everything was still very much undecided as far as what would happen. By now, a year later, it pretty much has happened. The plant equipment was sold, the building was taken, and, as best we can, we have moved on.

There is still a part of me, a larger part than I care to admit, that is still hanging on. Not the part that wants to keep Mastercrafft going. We got to a place that there was really no return. It's the part that wonders what could have been if I had been a better time businessman, the part where I left a lot of people down, the family and the many good employees we had accumulated over the years, the part that, God help me, really likes building furniture.

While I wasn't fired from Apple, I was fired from Mastercraft. Strange, I'd never really thought of that before. I wasn't fired by a person, but I was fired by the Boss, the market, which it really is for all businesses. Even Apple. I failed to adapt, I failed to correct the problems. I failed.

Steve Jobs had the "heaviness of being successful" but I have a heaviness from what might have been. But we really were similar in our position in life. We both had a clean slate, a chance to start over. Of course, even thought he was fired, he had a few million in the bank to play with where I had a hat in my hand. He started an new company, returned to Apple, and performed one of the greatest business turn around a ever. Me, not so much.

While his creativity resulted in the wildly successful resurrection of Apple, my creativity may still resurrect my psyche. Is it too boastful to feel that there is a reservoir of creativity I have not yet tapped? I hope not. If there is anything that can pull me out of this strange blue funk I feel I've been inhabiting, the only possible answer lies there. What will it take? Courage to go places I'm not sure exist. Courage to drop any pretense about who I thought I was and embrace who I have become.

Courage. And a friend or two, pointing the way.

Negative Space

Everywhere you go, everywhere you walk, there are holes. Some of them small. Some of them large. The easy ones are dug by by road crews. They have cones and tape and flashing lights and flagman that keep you out of the pit and show you where to go. I've made a few holes. In the back yard mostly when I built the deck or planted the garden. Pretty easy to fill them up. The garden, however, has yet to prove its worth. Apparently, digging holes have very little to do with having a green thumb.

Making holes. We are pretty good at that. Especially the ones you can't see. The holes we create in our mind. Sometimes we do it ourselves. Sometimes we are pushed in. Sometimes it takes a long process and the next it happens in a flash. These are the holes that drag us down, twisting our psyche in directions and configurations we never thought possible.

We can sometimes climb out ourselves. Keeping the hole private, clawing your way out, finding the will to return to the surface with a new outlook that makes you complete. More often, we flounder about, certain that we don't need anyone or anything, making sure we show no signs of weakness. And there we stay.

If you are fortunate enough, through the darkness of your hole, you'll see a line. If you are wise enough, you'll grasp that line and pull with all your might and on the other end of that line you'll find a friend, a helping hand. They may not have the answers. They probably don't. Just reach out and grab hold with both arms and know that you are not alone.

Grab a line. Be a line.