Life 3.0 (part 1)

Back when the media business was thriving I used to look forward to the annual sales meeting with great anticipation. It was always someplace nice, and usually someplace I wouldn’t necessary go on my own: Lyford Quay, Aspen, Ireland, Palm Beach, or Puerto Rico in the good years. But even in down years, when we’d schlep ourselves or ride a bus to Princeton, Stow or Little Compton, the weather wouldn’t be as good, but it was usually the same good times.

In the later years of my career, after most of my contemporaries had left for other jobs or perpetual consulting, I didn’t look forward to these events the same way, but through the ‘80s and ‘90’s they still had a “pinch-me” quality to them.

“OK, so I don’t have to work this week and you’re going to fly me to Arizona and put me up in a 5-star hotel, feed me four times a day, pick up my greens fees and then pummel me with alcohol and music all night long? And in return I have to be in my chair in the meeting room from 8:00 until noon every day, although I don’t really have to pretend to be anything close to 100% -- is that about it?” I could do that. I still could if someone would offer.

It certainly wasn’t hard, although there was a lot of ritual associated with these events, and the longer one worked there the more responsible one became for upholding, embellishing and perpetuating it. For example, it was necessary to initiate new members into the lore by retelling stories from recent years, including who slept with whom, or the time Jack Rabbit won $500 by swimming underwater 100 yards in his underwear during cocktails, and other assorted tales. There were also stories from earlier generations of salesmen to pass on, like the Life magazine salesman who lost his house in an all-night poker game at a Life sales meeting back when Life was bigger than TV.

Of all the sales meeting rituals, my favorite was a recurring event at five or so of them in the late ‘80’s. Fortune’s man in San Francisco, Tom Malarky, was an accomplished public speaker; one of those guys who could just step up onto a stage and be funny, smart and entertaining for 15 minutes without any real preparation. Each year Tom would be called upon by the publisher to make a few comments. It was never the first or the last night, and it was always at an unannounced but carefully chosen time; late enough so that the crowd was well oiled, but never so late that inhibitions would be too low, or sensitivities too high.

At that chosen moment the publisher would invite Tom to the podium, and ask him to make a few remarks to how we were doing against “The Plan.” By this point we’d had at least six hours of indoctrination during the preceding days on the plan for the upcoming year. So Tom would begin by complementing the magazine’s management on the brilliance of the new plan, and would then tick off a dozen or so of the most absurd and perplexing management moves of the past year, and then explain them in the context of the plan in a very funny way, as if these events had always been a part of some larger management vision that we mortals were only just barely able to comprehend.

These were remarkable monologues for their honesty and insight, but also because they were not the kinds of truths one normally speaks out loud in front of the bosses; but there he was, speaking them very much out loud, at the invitation of the bosses, and to the raucous enjoyment of the hoi polloi.

By the time he finished we’d be in tears. His best lines would be repeated for days afterward. And we’d all be bonded in the knowledge that even the bosses knew the truth of the matter, that while it is all well and good to have a plan, shit is going to happen along the way. Some of it will make you laugh, and some of it will make you cry, but most of it will not be what you expected, or what you planned for.

Put another way: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.

This is all a long wind-up to say that every article or book on the subject of retirement says emphatically that one must have a plan in order to have a successful retirement. And I’m sure that is so. In fact, at one point I was committed to continuing at my job until I had just such a plan in place. And then I began to contemplate the possibility that I might still be chained to my desk at 75 in want of a plan.

So I quit. But the rock and hard place I find myself wedged between are the certainty that I need a plan for the rest of my life, and the conviction that it is a folly to create one.

To be continued.

NOTE TO READERS: Part of my plan is to continue writing, and one of the things I plan to write about is the process of developing this plan. I know this is not the sort of thing most of you come here to read and I hope I don’t drive you all away. I plan to mix it up with the political stuff, so please don’t give up on the Daily Blank just yet.