May 22, 2009. Bethesda, Md. Ants in Pants.

We just can not keep still. In one way, it is a great blessing. Life brings the requirement for change, so moving along to a new system or a new program brings us little anxiety, but I know that being around us can raise hackles. On Wednesday at Gold Team lunch our topic under discussion was increasing outreach for each agent. Carol E. suggested the topic. She along with the rest of us here at work are fearful that we will stay pat. Success has it's own problems, one of which is to keep on doing what makes you successful to the exclusion of any new ventures. So the round table discussion of ten top agents was lively and generated a couple of new ideas. Damian suggested teaching every vendor how to get you referrals, which is a great idea. One agent who was there on Wednesday laughed that the office has done very well the last two weeks, and then along comes Ruth to bring up the subject of whether we are getting ahead or staying in place. Unfortunately she is true. For good or ill, I am always worrying about what we are doing to do now, and how we are going to get better in our job.

Fortunately, both Ken and I suffer from the same disease, except Ken is much worse. Last Friday when we went to the cottage at Lake Joseph, Ken walked all around the property, watched the bugs in the water, checked out the racks for the canoes, went to take pictures of the trilliums, inspected the cottage itself and then finally sat down for lunch. All my relatives are aware of Ken's propensity to wander so no-one said a thing about it until we were ready to leave when my Brother noted that he had hoped to have us stay a bit longer. Nothing doing. The ants had returned to the pants and we all moved forward to our next venture. The best part of being an adult is that you can control your activies, both mental and physical. If I am at a meeting and it goes on too long or is boring, I just leave. In the older days, when I was a child, Iif the class or the meeting was boring I would start fooling around and causing mischif, which ended up with me getting in trouble. Meetings I run myself are very short, mostly because I quickly get bored myself if the meetings last a long time. Ultimately, I have decided that having ants in the pants is a great asset as it gets you moving along. That is my story and I am going to stick with it, even though it may be correct.