To MBA or not to MBA, that is the question.

I was brought up to think that a job was something you did to fill 40 hours or more each week. That if you didn't like what you were doing then you had little choice but to keep your mouth shut and put your head down. I heard this advice nightly at the dinner table as my parents complained and worried over the work they were doing. Bad bosses, lousy coworkers, and repeated utterances of "they don't get it" filled the air around the dinner table. I was being poisoned without anyone realizing what was going on and today I find myself crippled by the remnants of their unintentional teachings.

I struggle with knowing and with action. I need to know what to do before I am able to take the necessary actions. I am crippled by fear. I have take the hit far too many times and been taught too well what my position is supposed to be for it to have been any other way.

I want desperately to break the cycle begun all those years ago around the dinner table. I want to be able to stand up for what I believe is right without having to know I'm right first. I want to be able to take action without and before I know whether I should.

I worry that my thinking is unoriginal, that all my ideas have been stolen from those around me and that should I be put to the test that I will fail miserably. That's what middle managers in corporate America wanted my parents to believe and it is what they taught me to believe as well. I know, intellectually at least, that what is important is not whether you have the originating idea but how you are able to expand upon the idea and what you do with the idea. I think I'm pretty damn good at the former, at seeing the big picture and how ideas and concepts fit in, complement and complete the larger vision.

Does it matter where the idea came from? No, what matters is what I do. And what I've done is to consider the idea and its meanings. What I have not done is take action. Not yet at least. There is still too much of my parents teachings telling me what I cannot do, worrying over the mistakes I have yet to make, and wishing that the world where other than how it is.

All of the actions I've wanted to take have been broad in scope, and long in change. I am the heretic Seth speaks about in Tribes. Nothing about the status quo interests me. Sacred cows should be slaughtered and feasted upon (except for the purple variety).