On the subject of frustration

Today at work, a project that we crafted for many months went away. Vanished. Poof!

My college roommate Peter Massard Hixson once said, "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." Could be.

Then again, perhaps Peter J. Gomes, my favorite preacher named Peter, got it right. He said, "On this Opening Sunday of a new academic year, I take as my text the fifth verse of the fifth chapter of St. Luke's gospel, which Dean Kirby read for us, these words of Simon, later to be named Peter, to Jesus; We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing. Let me offer you a thought upon which to hang, if either you or I lose our ways during the course of this sermon. This is it: if it is worth doing, you will be frustrated. Hold onto that thought."

He goes on to say that "frustration is not the exception to life but the rule of life." While he was speaking about a higher power, he may well have been discussing a more humble pursuit, advertising.

So much of what we do is not productive. If one idea out of 100 is produced, you're having a pretty good career. If that one idea out of 100 gets produced exactly the way you want, you are very fortunate indeed.

The heartbreak comes when one of the ideas you quite like, perhaps an idea that you have fallen in love with, gets bought and is well on its way to being done. And then somehow, it just goes poof!

If only good ideas appeared just as quickly.