I Woke Up Feeling Stupid

Self esteem is highly overrated.  Adolf Hitler had high self esteem.

What good is it?  Most of the people I have known who have HIGH self esteem have a truly over-inflated view of themselves.  They are arrogant and have little feeling for their fellow man.  Their ears are closed to any comment or suggestion that is in opposition to them and their mouth is wide open proclaiming their greatness.

Give me a truly good failure anytime.  At least they have done something besides toot their own horn.  Someone who has failed has tried.  I am a failure at many things.  Now I know that it is not a stigma to have failed. 

Thomas Edison obtained 1,093 patents during his 84 years.  If you do not think he failed many, many times, you know nothing of inventing.  Not everything works the first time around. 

I worked as a Network Administrator for more than 15 years.  I worked with computers in general for more than 35 years.  It was nothing in the early days of the desktop computer to format a hard drive or a disk without realizing it.  It was those failures by users and inventors alike that lead to the lines of code that prohibit someone from formatting their hard drive or disk without asking a question, not once, but 2 or more times, "This action will format your hard drive.  Do you want to proceed?"  Of course, if you heard a co-worker shriek, you knew what they had done.

I installed a phone system for a company several years ago.  Management did assume that I knew what I was doing and allowed me to do the job as I saw fit.  I did not do it alone, there were several others who played a part.  My job was mainly supervision.  It went fairly smoothly.  The company was down for a short time while components were installed.  The same type of operation was performed again several years later.  Management at this time was intent upon "saving money" and tied my hands in certain areas.  Although they had no prior experience with a change of this magnitude, they chose to rely on their own limited knowledge and overrode my suggestions. 

The system was down for several hours and there were a multitude of piddly problems over a period of a couple of weeks.  Cost is subjective.  If you want to spend the money, the sky is the limit.  If you feel it is unnecessary, no amount of common sense will provoke you into seeing that spending that extra dollar will be a good deal. 

Who did they blame?  They blamed the one who installed it.  It wasn't their fault because they wouldn't spend the extra money for the new equipment.  No, it was mine for not being more relentless in my pursuit of warranting the extra cost.  Persistence pays off, but how often do you take their abuse and question your own motives before you finally give up and let management have their own way?  

How can you simply say that the next time I ask will be the time when they give me the OK?  Or will that next time be the one where they say, again, "I told you how it was going to be!  Why can't you just do as you are told?"  I heard that, too.

So, I have failed.  But I have tried.  I have also succeeded.  I will fail again and I will succeed again. 

If you wake up feeling stupid, either try it again changing one small thing or try something else and get back to it later.  If we are worth our salt, we will fail.  Failure is only a reason to try something different or something new.