Donna Shrugs

So a couple days ago I went to a business card exchange and I got cornered. I met this guy before and he offered me a discount on my cell phone. He said if I knew someone who worked at IBM he could offer me the IBM 25% Friends and Family discount. 25% is 25% and I am extremely “LinkedIn” so finding someone I know at IBM wasn’t hard.

I called him one afternoon and gave him the name of my IBM contact and voila! 25% discount. AWESOME! Quick, easy, painless. So anyway, I am at this business card exchange and he corners me and tells me I HAVE TO GIVE HIM SOME LEADS! I was really shocked because I had no clue he was even expecting me to provide him any in the first place. I guess there was a string attached to that IBM discount. Certainly if I knew of someone who needed his services I would have tipped him but honestly I am more interested in finding my own customers right now anyway.

At any rate, I shook it off and went about my business. That evening and over the next couple days I have found myself thinking about him cornering me and demanding leads. Although I am fine with my reaction, I just can’t really believe it happened and I feel silly accepting his kindness thinking it was kindness blah blah blah.

As I normally do when I am caught in this type of a situation I think of Howard Roark from the novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Howard just didn’t care, he was totally single-minded and singularly focussed on his own being and his own goals. Howard didn’t entertain these types of thoughts and I wish I could totally exorcise them from my mind. BUT I CAN’T. It’s taken a few days and it seems I have driven it from my mind but it bothers me that it took me a couple days to get over it. Will I EVER become self-actualizing?

Talking about Ayn Rand, I AM STILL READING ATLAS SHRUGGED! I can’t seem to get through this novel! Truth be told, it just sits on my bedside table untouched. I never reach for it. I rarely read it. The weird thing is, I really want to read it. I really want to love it! I want to be one of those people who are so moved by it they get a tattoo on their back of Atlas… shrugging (of course my Atlas would also be frugging).

I just wish Ayn Rand could have opened herself up a little to some editing. Of course I am always wowed that she could write as she did… in a second language! She was Russian and didn’t learn English until her twenties! How is this possible? But there are other authors just like her…. Jerzy Kosinski and Vladimir Nabokov to name just a couple. It’s so humbling to think of these poor slobs learning English and becoming amazing writers and here I am, growing up with English as my first language and I am fighting off the desire to start each sentence with an I or And (and losing).

4 thoughts on “Donna Shrugs”

  1. clay barham

    Roark cared! His core beliefs are why America was a success in a world still unable to achieve freedom, prosperity and success, other than dictatorship and special interest elite bennies. There is a distinct psychological foundation for prosperity, shown in Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity on Amazon and claysamerica.com. Here are many Tea Party justifications for those new to politics. Activate the brakes to Obama’s headlong rush to European Marxism and bigger government. The tradition of individual freedom is still too strong for the kind of centralizing power-grab we are experiencing today. Claysamerica.com

  2. Adrienne

    ha ha ha…why does it not surprise me that you are and Ayn Rand fan…at least of her ideals if not her text.

  3. Gomer

    You are learning, lassie, what being “a business” is all about. It’s different than being “in business”, and worlds removed from merely working for one. The mindset is the key, and you must achieve it if you want to stay alive.

    Everyone you transact with, even if it’s just pleasantries, is out for their own. Not such a bad thought when we’re all beatles feeding off the big tree, but when you get to be the tree, you must regard ALL insects with suspicion. There is no such thing as the words “social interaction”, “gift”, and “favor” in the world of “a business”; no matter how much we want it to be true.

    ALWAYS remember the difference between “being yourself” and being “a business of yourself”. The two should never meet. Thus reads Gomer’s paranoid business mantra: Your friend has a knife. Know where it is before you end up paying someone to tell you how deep it is in your back.

    (editors note: Gomer spent 20 years wandering the excrement-ridden planet of business ownership searching…in vain…for signs of humanity. He is currently employed as the love-slave of a wealthy capitalist.)

Comments are closed.