I spotted a news story on the Internet about video games so shocking that in some cases they spurred new legislation. A headliner was "Doom," which emerged on personal computers as I was in college. One of the early "shooter" games, it's a first-person view of a dude walking around a castle and shredding every living monster in sight with a variety of weapons so large that the guy's back muscles must make the Incredible Hulk self-conscious.
One of my favorite features, though, was "God mode." God mode is mano-a-monster, where your character becomes unkillable. Therefore you can simply walk right up to a beast and punch it do death while it breathes fire and gnaws on you frantically. Kind of like a Mike Tyson fight, only less scary.
For most people I know, life's a lot closer to God mode than we give it credit for. The mind regards relationship scratches as if they were scarring knife wounds. The momentary swirling uncertainties of the day can rattle our confidence like the death grip of a whirlpool.
Today was like that... a team I'm on with very challenging schedules and limited availability received a management decision that might set our project back three weeks. The decision impacts a dozen other team members and leaves me as the liaison in charge of keeping things moving. Yipes! I got halfway through an e-mail that contained an unusually high dose (for me) of negative emotion in it. Thankfully, years of hard-learned lessons have taught me never to convey anger in an e-mail, no matter what... it's always a lousy long-term investment. And it served well here too. The confidence was forced at first, but after hitting the send button it all started to jell again. Rare is the problem at work that's truly unsolvable, as long as we keep our spirit up.
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