Your Job

Without this unstructuring, the creation of a new structure cannot proceed–since the bits and pieces are still tied together as meaning within unchallenged domains or concepts.

–John Boyd, Destruction and Creation

Thank you for calling Comcast. If you’d like to be placed on hold, press 1, 1, enter your phone number, then press 1, 2, 2, 1, 2. Once you are connected with your representative, please give them the phone number that you already entered, then verify the rest of your account information, so that they may instruct you to unplug your modem and plug it back in.

It’s fun to write stuff like that, to get it off your chest, to be a critic. Stupid, stupid cable companies. No one will argue with you. You may as well throw in a diatribe on traffic or the weather, and can you believe the gas prices lately? Anyone can say me too. But at some point, you have to decide who you are:

• Are you just going to be angry at them?
• Will you be the one who makes improvements within? Maybe engineer a modem that power cycles itself?
• Or do you see something at its core defunct and unsalvageable, and start looking where to plant the base charges?

It’s the difference between irrelevant, good, and great.

Last night, as I traded sleep to worry and think and fear, I decided unquestionably why I am here, and which one I am going to be. The anxiety came from finally understanding what was required of me: destruction. I know now, it’s prerequisite to the job.