{"id":4607,"date":"2017-10-20T17:57:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T00:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=4607"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:53","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:53","slug":"192-whats-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/192-whats-important\/","title":{"rendered":"#192 “What’s Important to You”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I think we all need to step back and take a look at what we do and just how important it is.<\/h3>\n

I sometimes think of dishwashing as one of those jobs which isn\u2019t really a place you want to wind up.\u00a0 There are a couple of ways to look at it, I guess.\u00a0 First of all, there\u2019s the attitude of \u201cWell, SOMEBODY\u2019S gotta do it\u201d.\u00a0 That is certainly true and it\u2019s made even more true by the fact that such occupations are often the route to more important work.<\/h3>\n

Several years ago, my son, Hooper was all set to go into the Army.\u00a0 But then some of his friends told him that they were going to go to the U.S. Virgin Islands and work as sea kayak tour guides.\u00a0 That sounded pretty good to Hooper, so he told the Army to take a flying leap, raked up all his money and bought a ticket for the Virgin Islands.\u00a0 Because ol\u2019 Hooper is kind of a \u201cspur of the moment\u201d guy, he hadn\u2019t researched the job.\u00a0 He just showed up, assuming that the tour company would be delighted to see him.\u00a0 They told him that at 18, he wasn\u2019t old enough.\u00a0 \u201cSorry\u201d.\u00a0 Delight didn\u2019t enter into it.<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Hooper sailing with some of his pals in the Virgin Islands <\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But here\u2019s what impresses me about Hoop.\u00a0 He was broke and stuck with no prospects.\u00a0 So he hauled ass across the street to a little seafood restaurant and nightclub and got himself a job as a dishwasher.\u00a0 Once in that job, he showed up every day and did a good job.\u00a0 Eventually he started cooking, then he became a server, then he moved aboard a boat, learned to sail and to weld underwater.\u00a0 By the time he left the USVI a year later, he had crewed on the second place boat in the Rolex Regatta, knew how to SCUBA dive and weld and was the chief cook and server at the little restaurant.\u00a0 When he returned to home, courtesy of Bert Garrison\u2019s \u201cBuddy Pass\u201d on the airline, he was far better off than he had been when he left the U.S.\u00a0 For the most part, he had done what he wanted to do and had enjoyed himself doing it.<\/h3>\n

But I learned from his little adventure that what is important and fulfilling to one person, may not be that important and fulfilling to another person.\u00a0 That\u2019s why you\u2019ve gotta make sure that you\u2019re pleasing yourself and not others.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an excerpt from my diary when I was flying for L3 Wescam:<\/h3>\n

\u201cMorning at Wescam getting CGETC ready for flight to Victorville, California.<\/h3>\n

\u201cFlew to Victorville and found my operator, Dave Arnold, taking a \u201cclass\u201d on airport operations.\u00a0 It\u2019s required in order to take a test for a pass to work on the field.\u00a0 These folks take their airport (on which nothing happens; it\u2019s a graveyard for old airliners) VERY seriously.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen anything so outrageous.\u00a0 It would be funny if it didn\u2019t waste so much of our time.\u00a0 The guy giving the class had also created the test of which he is quite proud.\u00a0 He has no life!\u201d<\/h3>\n

It occurred to me as I watched poor ol\u2019 Dave put up with their nonsense, that this was a classic case of something being important to one person and at the bottom of the list for most others.\u00a0 That guy taking such pride in his course and his test, thought that what he did at that lonely airport where nothing happened, was really important.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t, but he well never know that.\u00a0 That\u2019s another lesson:\u00a0 We need to take our \u201cblinkers\u201d off in order to see our own situation.\u00a0 Maybe that guy needed to take a page from Hooper\u2019s book.<\/h3>\n
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Hooper back in Oregon and back to work as a river guide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“But here\u2019s what impresses me about Hoop.\u00a0 He was broke and stuck with no prospects.\u00a0 So he hauled ass across the street to a little seafood restaurant and nightclub and got himself a job as a dishwasher.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,67,143,165],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}