Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

The movie with the same name depicts a single guy, played by George Clooney, who has spent so much time in airports and airplanes that he’s at the edge of a major mileage milestone. He’s a savvy traveler who understands the most efficient way to get through security, sits up front in the big seats and gets treated well by flight attendants but few others. He’s become comfortable with a difficult situation and learned to make the most of it.

My ambitious daughter has been down this road, or should I say flight path, in the last couple of years racking up air miles and staying in different cities nearly every night. She’s younger, more resilient and needed to establish herself in the eyes of her company & colleagues (and probably even herself, I suspect). It’s an endurance test, a marathon and requires an enormous amount of patience. I’m sure she learned just as I am now that if you spend all your energy just tolerating the monster-sized commutes, you can’t be fully present to do the job you were hired to do.

Enter the old man. I heard 70 is the new 50 so I’m going to extrapolate that 50 is the new 30 and therefore I got plenty of gas in the tank for this new journey. After all, I’m a rolling stone, not Mick Jagger or Keith Richards, just an object in constant motion, now graduated to a new, higher level.

*By age 14, I had a driver’s license and have been chalking up serious road time since then, before that it was unlicensed driving with unlicensed vehicles…seemed rational (and I rarely questioned the boss).
*500 miles/day driving gravel truck was pretty common for several Summers.
*I’ve commuted, baby. 16 years of 90 miles, 1-way, 5 days a week, not counting the places I traveled to from there and then there was the weekend travel.
*Turns out I love to ride motorcycles and snowmobiles so traversing terrain of all sorts is in my blood.
*A few years ago I became more mobile when we bought a home 230 miles away from home base. My commute grew by more than double. It wasn’t daily but it was frequent and regular and stretched me …once again.
*My life journey has led me to a new opportunity to once again extend the reach of how far I will travel on a regular basis to (stay in regular contact with my Team and) do my job. Gulf Coast-to-East coast-to-West coast, it’s exciting, interesting, challenging and occasionally exhausting.

Reader, consider the stage adequately set.

While my patience gets tested by the taxi or Uber driver, gate agent, passengers far too large for their purchased seat…adjacent to yours…so they spill over into your personal, already crowded space…around the arm rest (meh), the mountain of change, sharp learning curve, new culture or shifting patterns compared to the last lifestyle from whence I came (and grew comfortable in), I am reminded of a few of the truths I have come to know.
Namely,

I believe.
I believe we all get tested on a regular basis.
How we respond to the adversity that is usually imbedded in these tests DEFINES us. Show up well…someone is always keeping score.

Know thyself.
Knowing how you react in each given situation to the level of detail that you realize your micro facial muscles “tell” your intended or unintended audience what you’re really thinking.
Smile more…It puts people at ease.

Do your absolute best.
When you half-ass anything, and I mean ANYTHING, you’ve wasted time doing it partially correct and a little voice is telling you that someone else will have to come back and correct what you consciously elected to not do well.
Understand what the Standard of Care is for any particular task, job, requirement or expectation … and meet or exceed it.

Teddy Roosevelt said “Do what you can with what you have where you are at.”

Don’t leave adversity, yourself or your responsibilities up in the air. Grab hold, own it, anticipate outcomes, respect the process and deliver (like your Grandma’s watching…because she probably is).

Have a blessed weekend.