Nantucket 2012—12

Nantucket 2012—12

We’re headed home today after two glorious weeks. It’s a drizzly morning, the sky grey, the water slate. The horizon is discernible, I’m guessing about three miles away (it always looks farther than it actually is, sort of like many of our goals).

Every morning and evening I’ve checked and responded to email, and I’ve checked email and phone messages from the beach. These rational business actions constituted zero interference with my vacation, pleased my clients, kept me abreast of business, and diminished the amount of work that I’d be otherwise facing when I returned home. I booked well above $100,000 in these two weeks, and I tell you that not to boast, but to put to rest the dumb advice that you should ignore all email and phone messages on “vacation.” If I can spend a Wednesday at home lazing at my pool, why can’t I attend to basic business needs on an island?

We don’t have a business life and a personal life, we have a life. It’s up to us to organize it so we grow and thrive. You should never accept a buyer’s excuse that he or she is traveling and can’t get back to you, can’t make a decision, can’t review a proposal. That’s pure nonsense. You’re being blown off. Ask where they’re going that doesn’t have wifi, Skype, and phone service—Mars?

I spend a lot of time here thinking about life and my role in it. We enjoy having the grandchildren here for a week, and then a week by ourselves. I was thinking of Thoreau’s quote about “lives of quiet desperation,” and made my bi-monthly pass through Facebook, which consistently reinforces for me how well off I am. There ought to be a banality limit per person on that platform: for example, three platitudes, four self-inflations, two obscenities, and one ridiculous offer per month, per person.

Typical today:

• A woman posing as if for a beauty contest, done up like a donut, just seeking “likes,” which she was getting. If you’re on vacation somewhere interesting, don’t your friends want to see the scenery, and not you all done up like a donut?

• A woman protesting a Dolce & Gabana ad because it exploited women.

• Average wall plaque: “Don’t worry about others’ perceptions of you, because that’s the reality they have to deal with, not you.” (Au contraire, their perception is A) the cause for how they will react to you, and B) often more accurate than your own. Maybe you can beat them with the wall plaque.)

• Incessant boasting about things people should actually be ashamed of.

• Gratuitous and very unnecessary profanity.

• Causes up the kazoo, private agendas, and appeals for very personal needs.

How about all those people who invested in Facebook’s public offering as a “sure thing”? One of the worst stock investments in recent memory, as the market continues to rebound. There is no “there” there.

I’ve also interacted every day with people in my global communities and one issue that keeps arising I’d like to address, sitting here alone and looking out to sea: People are entitled to their opinion, but not to attack you. Forget about poor reviews and unsolicited feedback about your work and opinions. Who cares? (And anyone critiquing and remaining anonymous is simply a coward.) But those who launch ad hominem attacks are the real haters, too inarticulate to debate your points, and too self-loathing in their anger to do anything but turn it on others. Of course, many of them are anonymous!

The ideal in life is to love going on vacation and then to love going home. There’s a wall plaque for you! But I have enough IQ to simply remember it without having to put it on the wall.

Home we go.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.