Back at it!

The three commercial parties with whom I have been speaking in the past month - the banker, the financial advisor and the accountant - have all proven themselves remiss.  Given my high standard of diligence it is perhaps unfair of me to label them slipshod. But after practicing what I preach for about 40 years I am not prepared to capitulate. As usual the coaxing of dispatch demanded some prodding - and a reminder that previous promises, howsoever casual, were left unattended. Naturally I have assuaged their heedlessness by asserting on their behalf a myriad of reasons for delay - whether my own compulsiveness or relative unimportance, their overwhelming preoccupation, possible family and health concerns, etc.  I confess I hadn't anticipated the legitimacy of a power outage (as one party complained) but neither do I excuse the apparent incapacity to communicate a rationale for the protraction. What is more evident is the customary disclosure that there is no real reason for the inadequacy.

After dedicating my morning to thrashing the bushes we have wangled considerable advancement.  The achievement is however not without its wearing collateral; and the tawdry practices are largely inexcusable and unwarranted. But the timely performance of business has forever been so, at least judging from my years of experience. I am quite accustomed to feeling intolerably obsessive; but the slight does nothing to diminish my resolve.  Too often I have learned that if it were not for my relentless jabs nothing would transpire (sometimes for reasons fortuitously discovered). Meanwhile it pacifies my neurosis to reason that I am in a position of trust and therefore bound to fulfill my duties for ulterior - dare I say altruistic - motives (which of course as an incentive is utter balderdash but it nonetheless palliates my pathology). Besides by what persuasion am I bound by the approbation of others? Certainly I accept the government of law (though even that I am inclined to examine carefully as to interpretation).  But the petty privilege of others to mock their betters is no such foundation - call it arrogance if you will but I defy my accuser to attack the substance. I hold no grudge for an ill-performed obligation - so long as it is set aright in the end. Yes, it is the outcome that matters.

The singular advantage of obsession is its intimacy with the present; and by the same token its ignorance of the past. I say this perhaps with the further strength of knowing that I am by definition unprepared to compromise one for the other. In the end - there's that word again - either pole is predicted by the same conviction. In business it isn't a question of what one can get away with, or how long a thing can be avoided, or who or what is to blame for the delay; but rather is the thing done that we knew or ought to have known should be done? If so, then all is revealed.  Nothing else competes.

There is nothing glamorous about being a good cook.  It's dirty work from beginning to end. And anyone who imagines that the so-called cerebral pursuits are any less ignominious is deceiving himself.  Dirty fingernails are routine in any trade; and any business is a trade, make no mistake. The adage about comparing sausage and law (the two things you don't want to see being made) is true. Detail is the fright and glory of our existential lot. At least it is of mine!