My friend moved to Chicago. She attended a Cubs game there the second day and was on seen on TV. She’s in the black hat. Friends all over took pictures of her on their TV’s. My uncle George once was on the Lawrence Welk show in the 70’s and danced at the end – as they invited the audience members to come up and dance at the end of the show. Grandma took pictures of the TV set with George dancing and you could barely see him – but we all knew the story, so it was good. Times really haven’t changed all that much.
I asked her how it was going – “it just feels right and good”. I thought about this last night while running. I thought about the concept of “feels right and good”, and I thought about the concept of the bus and the right seat and how when life is grooving, all is well and it sort of hums. When we’re out of sync – when we are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole (& no matter how hard I push, it just doesn’t fit – and trust me on this - a lot of my life has been spent trying to cram the square peg …). My life is humming right now; I would venture to say that our organizational life is humming right now. Things are good both personally and professionally. I’m grooving from a health perspective, and Iowa Specialty Hospitals & Clinics is doing exceptionally well.
Soooooo … what is this square peg you speak of? A couple of things come to mind. First – if you are not humming in your life, figure out what the block is and deal with it. Go for groovy. Maybe it’s your car or house or job or relationship or lack of whatever … figure it out, change it if necessary, and move on. Again, go for groovy. The square peg – if it doesn’t fit right away, it probably won’t fit ever. Dr. Fink talked to me about running today. He asked if I was planning on any races. Races are square pegs for me. They tend to ruin a good experience because I am slow and don’t appreciate when I come in last place. I “hum” when I jog alone with my music and nature. Another thing that comes to mind regarding the square peg is “change for the sake of change”. It is important to keep things up and awake, but this is dangerous, just because you crave excitement doesn’t mean that adding stuff equals more in the end. Sometimes more is less.
Reality. “Steve, you love change. You love to cram the proverbial square peg into the round hole! You just buzzkilled your future”. Actually, what I did was I added pause. Hopefully, before I get all hepped up on some new thing, I will pause and reflect. Is this the right time and place for this? If it is I might end up on the Jumbotron, smiling in a black floppy hat.
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It bugs me to no end when I lose something. I had this picture of the Berlin wall from 1991 in my office. My friends wrote “Happy Birthday Steve” on the actual wall, took a picture of it and gave me a chunk – when they were tearing it down. I had the piece glued to the frame and I think (think) I asked someone to reglue, it or reframe, it or something. That was probably last year. Can’t remember if I thought I did this, or if I did this and who I gave it to … because I don’t have it now and it is driving me crazy!
-Steve Simonin, President & CEO
