A Night of Daydreams

It is 4 a.m. and it has been a great evening.

I dreaded it. Late this afternoon I promised my boss that in the morning I would give him a draft of his for-publication, 9-page, mostly-bullet-points, strategic plan. It’s the sort of thing you’ll use for reference and it won’t get much attention from anyone unless they think you did a bad job. Then it will be relentlessly mocked and used as proof that you’re really an idiot who has no business trying to play with the big boys. It’s not an opportunity to win; the goal is not to lose. You merely hope to be ignored and if someone ventures a yawn, you bask in the attention – honored by this faint evidence that he actually read it.

So why the great evening? Well, it stirred sweet memories of late-night college papers – sweet memories of bitter experiences that were retrospectively satisfying. (The smug thought that this professor had no idea that I started writing the 18-page paper 12 hours before it was due at 9 a.m. If he’d known, he would have denied me an A out of principle.) And there is the mellow company of successive cups of tea and cheery IMs from my friends several time zones away. They are surprised to find me awake. Besides, even if all the ideas in that paper don’t inspire anyone else, they kind of get me cranked up. I will pay the prince of weariness in days to come but for now, it has been a very comfortable night.

In three or four hours I have to get up, submit the draft, and get my boss to seriously engage it since he will be publicly expected to follow through on everything I have written. Then I need to use it and some other materials to talk through and possibly write some less comprehensive and more catchy materials we will publish for broad consumption. Then I have to shoot some footage of my boss in action as he speaks to a group of chiefs then gives a speech. Then I need to pack for a 2.5-week trip that will take me half way around the world and back. I really should do a little work on the details of the trip too.

Yes, it’s been a comfortable evening of trying to describe the dream of Malawi's future. Thanks friends for keeping me company.