A Few Day Job Words of Wisdom
When I retired from my day job in 2015, I sent a farewell message to friends and colleagues. People continue to ask about it, so I posting it here now.
Favorite Words of Wisdom, None of Them Mine (see sources below):
1. Talk less, listen more.
2. Question the heroic approach.
3. Beware false urgency.
4. Good writing is never finished. It is only abandoned.
5. God doesn’t want us to be happy. He wants us to grow up.
6. It’s not the strongest who survive, or the most intelligent. It’s those who are most adaptable to change.
7. Just about every day you reveal character. What you do is who you are.
8. Conviction is the enemy of the truth, more dangerous than lies.
9. Get up every day and do something you are proud of, and don’t do anything you wouldn’t feel proud of. Line up enough of those days and you will do fine in life.
10. Sixty is another country.
SOURCES
1. Somewhere I saw this line described as the four-word MBA.
2. One of the Oblique Strategies, a great source of inspiration for creatives.
3. From a sign in the office of one of my favorite bosses, Millie O’Donnell. We worked together at Westinghouse as technical writers in the 1980s.
4. Attributed to a many, in variation, e.g., “Art is never finished. It is only abandoned.”
5. Attributed to C.S. Lewis in the biopic Shadowlands. I don’t think the real C.S. Lewis ever said this, but I think he would have liked it.
6. Often attributed to Charles Darwin, who never wrote it. The correct source is Leon Megginson, a professor.
7. My late father, Joel Olberg, a Lutheran minister and former U.S. Marine.
8. Friedrich Nietzsche.
9. Another former U.S. Marine, who became a yoga instructor after a back injury. I took yoga classes from him at Rancho La Puerta.
10. Attributed to Gloria Steinem, after her sixtieth birthday.
