Any Excuse

I was going over some of my old performance justifications (that's where I write up how I think I did for the year at work) and they demonstrate that I will use any opportunity for a creative writing exercise. This is an excerpt of what I had to say the year I took over a new team:

A metaphor I would use was that I thought I was going to sail a boat. I prepared to sail a boat - studied my sheets, knew my port from my starboard, knew my spring from my neap tides. I was all ready; even though I knew that part of the challenge was that I would be going into the situation blindfolded. Then I got there and it turned out we weren’t sailing. Blindfolded, I wasn’t quite sure what I had gotten myself into. We were definitely still on land, I could hear a lot of animals around (and it was a little smelly), and the place where I was perched was a bit precarious. I figured out that this wasn’t a sailboat that I could captain, but where was I? Up on a cow pony and we were out herding in the rough country. Well, dang, I know how to do this (maybe not well, but I know the basics). So once I got that figured out everything started to go a lot smoother. I stopped shouting “Cast off!” at the cattle, stopped demanding that the cowboys hoist a mainsheet… basically stopped acting like an inappropriate idiot.