WWBD

It seems to be a law in my universe that I must have an object of fixation, something or someone to place at the center of my world to be my point of reference and emotional ground. Needing or seeking this is probably worthy of it's own exploratory post but I am convinced most people have someone or something like this in their lives. Parent, spouse, celebrity, friend, artist, deity, we want to identify with something beyond ourselves.

For the last 6 months or so, that point of reference, that object of fixation has been my boss. I want his mindset. I want his focus. I want his zest for living. I want to emulate what I understand to be his life. I don't understand how he does it. I don't even really understand who he is. It matters to me what he thinks of me. If I know he is going to be in the office, I want to be there. I enjoy his company and watching his frenetic caffeine fueled dispatching of his to do list. I am surprised by the things that get to him. I am amused and obsessed with how he never heats his leftovers, how he recycles and doesn't like to unnecessarily print out things, how he will spend 2 hours riding back and forth on the train to come to work for 3 hours, how undisciplined he is about some things and how disciplined he is about others, how smart he is. He's a walking contradiction with such a fascinating decision flow chart that I could set up shop in his life and simply watch it unfold. I find myself wishing I had a cool spouse that he liked so we could be a part of the fold outside of work. To me right now, he is the world's most interesting man.

I tend to become fixated with people I don't understand. I want to understand what fuels his life because he seems to have something I don't. Even from afar his life seems chaotic and at times, tragic. He's the kind of person who goes on vacation for a week during a month when he has so much work travel planned, he won't be in the office more than 3 days. My head would literally cave in and I'm not even married with kids like he is. There is an animal-like mystery to him. I know Baloo will come to me and will solicit belly rubs and expects me to attend to her needs but I really don't know how she feels about me. I don't even know her capacity to feel or how it does or does not motivate her decision making. It's something I infer. I feel exactly the same way about my boss. When he says 'good job' I'm over the moon for days. That's what fuels my engine and a part of me feels weak because I can't self-generate that feeling, it has to come from someone else. Makes my life harder than it needs to be I think because I outsource a part of my self esteem/worth which puts me at the mercy of things I can't control.

Ironically I go to great lengths to project the opposite. I'll be damned if I let you know you matter to me at all when I care that much about what you think. Don't get me wrong, there are countless people who I truly and honestly do not care two shits how they feel about anything at all and especially not how they feel about me. Countless. But my boss is not one of them. I do care and I do build my work world around him and I do invoke him as a reference point in my personal life as I try to be a more interesting person by doing more and thinking less. In a phrase I think he personifies the adage, 'perfect is the enemy of the good.' I am never going to be him and I value myself enough that I don't want to be him but like all the important people in my life, I will try from time to time to channel him; WWBD (What Would Boss Do). I am glad we had the opportunity to work together, to know one another, and for what I gained personally and professionally from knowing him.