People keep telling me to run for an elected office, and my automatic response is always leeriness. The hierarchical nature of any bureaucracy restricts initiative and that’s my main strength. There’s also always too much talk and too little action. I’ve been to far too many meetings and read far too many weblogs where people feel perfectly comfortable telling how things should be, but do no work themselves to make those things come about. Actionless policy ideologues are really just public masturbators.
My mother used to always sing the patience song to me, but it never stuck, and my natural impatience becomes initiative when I put it into action. I can’t count the number of times this year that people have asked me if I’m running for the board of TWDC. There was a time when I thought that working for TWDC would be good for me and the neighborhood, but now I can better appreciate the strengths of unaffiliation; much in the same way that I refuse to be affiliated with a political party. I don’t have to play favorites, focus my work on appeasing someone’s ego, or lick any boots. I’m my own boss and I get much more accomplished that way.