Gratitude

As I rise each morning and climb into bed every night I ask myself the same question, "What day is it and where did the time go?" We have been living in 2020 for the past 8 months, but yet it feels like I keep repeating the same day over and over again like Phil, the self-centred weatherman that goes to the town of Punxsutawney for an assignment in the movie, Ground Hog Day. This morning my message was a clear one that said, slow your roll mister man and focus on all the things that you should be enjoying. As I was walking to my local pharmacy I received another message when a young male cashier smiled at me and started telling me a story that seemed to be pretty funny. However, I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying to me. It's still challenging for my American ears to understand when some Australians talk to me and use slang. I am also starting to believe that wearing a mask tends to affect my hearing and I can only imagine how muffled I must sound to others. Nevertheless, the take away from the polite and cheerful clerk was to remember to express my appreciation to those who have done great things for me over the years, whether they know it or not. Well, at least that's how I interpreted his words.

During the year 2000, which seems like a hundred years ago, I worked as a Trainer providing financial literacy information to community based organisations all over the country. Being a teacher of many years I loved facilitating workshops with my colleagues. After 10 years of working hard to make things better for everyone, I started to notice a bit of jealousy and backstabbing within the consumer organisation. I have never been one to be distracted by malicious and cruel staff because my focus has always been on the audience and the community to be served. It was a valuable lesson in observing how insecure and even incompetent people behave in the workplace when enabled by poor leadership. I cheerfully ended up leaving the organisation to do more positive work around the country with people and organisations that appreciated my talents. Today I pause to give thanks to the few people within that organisation that encouraged me to make an exit plan to leave the toxic environment and that they would do the same. Today I am still connected to the three genuine people that provided lots of support. When you do things the right way you never have any regrets and quite often a larger door will open for you. Today, I am sending notes to those three angels in my life to say thank you and remind them of how important they were to me.

As I pulled one door shut, someone quietly opened another door. Although it feels like a blur today, I just remember myself sitting at a large conference table with a group of other marketing professionals talking about developing a campaign on the topic of drugs and teens. No matter how much I search my brain, I can't remember why I was there or who invited me to participate. While I was there, someone walked into the room that looked familiar and she was the client. She greeted me with a warm smile and we proceeded with the discussion of campaign ideas. It finally dawned on me that it was someone that I had worked in broadcast media together years ago. After the meeting I was invited to grab a dessert and a coffee or tea. I gladly accepted with the excitement of catching up with my old colleague. As you can imagine, we had a great time chatting, laughing and just shooting the breeze with each other. As our time was coming to an end, I learned that she lived and worked now in Washington, DC and had a plane to catch that evening. I was quite impressed. Then she announced that she worked in the Obama Administration and asked if I would be interested in working on a campaign since my ideas were innovative. If I would have had dentures they certainly would have been on the floor. I simply thought it was a joke and said yep, of course. Many, many months passed and I had forgotten all about the interaction and then one day I received a call to file a lot of paper work, such as getting finger printed, background checks by the FBI, medical exams, drug tests and to provide lots of references to document my character. This is when Mr. Fear stepped in to tell me to flee, freeze or simply hide in a dark closet or under the bed. Fear can be very powerful in filling the mind with false information that I was creating. The internal voices kept telling me that I would never be good enough, or smart enough to survive in DC. One voice even said, hey you are a little black boy and you can't compete. It was quite a struggle to free myself from the shackles of fear.

With a lot of hesitation I completed all the scary tests and answered lots of questions. One day out of the blue I received a phone call asking how soon I could move to DC for the position. I froze again and sounded like a 2-year old babbling da, da, da mama, mama like an idiot. I pretended to be strong and shared that I wanted to remove my name from the list of potential candidates. I was very proud of myself. My new boss said, "Nope, you can't do that because that will make the government investigate you even more because it sounds like you may have something to hide." She added, "There are no other candidates." Fear's bigger brother stepped in and I became even more frightened and thought, damn if I do, damn if I don't. I trembled and said, "Okay, I will be there in two weeks." I have never been more terrified in my entire life.

My new boss never let me down and slayed all the fears that I had brought with me to DC. She was incredible and a great leader and never stopped pushing me to do great things. Today, I will be sending her a note to express my gratitude and to say thanks for the experience and exposure that she created for me. The years spent working on major national campaigns changed my life and the way I conduct marketing and public relations campaigns today. While in DC, my role was Media Policy Analyst/Senior Marketing Specialist for a national youth anti-drug campaign that pushed me to work with major Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations firms in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago and San Francisco. There is not a day that I didn't love it. I worked extremely hard to do a great job and make my boss very proud for choosing me. Working in the Obama Administration was the greatest experience of a lifetime that will never be forgetten. How could anyone forget the creativity, innovation, intelligence, and great leadership of Michelle and Barack Obama. They truly made America a better place. It was a time when other countries respected America. You Can't Fake That is a video that says it all.

After being in DC for several years, I returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and rejuvenated my communications firm, Promotions West with more energy and confidence based on real life experiences of dealing with social marketing and social media from a national platform. The experience made me love my expertise even more with a strong desire to share them with those interested in receiving them.

Prior to moving abroad to Australia at the end of 2019, I spent 2 years working in public health in San Francisco. During my tenure, I worked with an incredible Director. Placing the adjective incredible in front of Director is quite rare for me since I never got to meet more than 3 or 4 out of a huge staff. My director was amazing and empowered me and my colleagues to do great things with our priority communities. I am looking forward to sending her a note of gratitude today. Another note must go out to my team mate that kept me on track, always laughing and someone that I love dearly. Have you ever met someone that you would push out of the way of a speeding car, take a bullet for or push them into the lap of a good looking rider on San Francisco Muni public transit to keep them from falling? Well, that's my other angel. She will be getting a note of gratitude too. These are just some of the people that I think about every single day.

And last, but not least, I am grateful to so many friends that have shaped and moulded me to always show kindness to others. True friends are so important to me. When I wake up there are always messages from them or something funny that helps to kick off my mornings with a laugh. The teasing goes on throughout the day. It's such a delight to savour those experiences every day. A good friend told me this week that I was on sabbatical and not in retirement. Before I could check the meaning of that word on Google she started defining it for me. She informed me that, "Sabbatical was a time in your life to explore things about yourself, your surroundings and to think about your observations." She sold me on the idea now that I know what the word means. During my evenings, we always share loving thoughts as they prepare for bed and I prepare for dinner and a movie with family. Many of my family of friends have been in my life for 30 years or longer. I often feel that COVID has tightened the circle of my friends and increased the love that we have for each other. There is no room for outsiders or those carrying negative baggage in the new normal that I am creating. I also feel wiser and more grounded in who I am as a person, as a friend, as a partner, as an uncle, and as a loving family member.

In moving forward I will make a list of the many folks that touched my life in a positive way. In another life, I would hold on to people that brought negativity into my life and hate them forever, wishing them eternal diarrhoea when a toilet was not available. Today, I don't think of those people at all, and I don't allow those people to enter my peaceful zone. I have learned that we all have a choice, we can accept to allow bullshit or to block it out. I vote for blocking it out forever.

So tell me, can you think of 3 people that left a positive impression on your life or went out of their way to do something special for you? Have you ever expressed your gratitude and how would you express it to them?