When you got a job to do you gotta do it well

"Whatever your life's work is, do it well.  A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The regular delivery of my neighbors' mail in my curbside box is annoying, but tolerable.

Watching her clench a letter in her lips before putting it in my box is gross, but not deplorable.

The breaking of my and my neighbor's mailbox flags is a nuisance, but I suppose it happens.

And the time she refused to bring a package to my door last winter because I hadn't yet shoveled the inch of freshly fallen snow from my walk was flabbergasting, but I got over it.

But now she's making Newman look good.

My neighbors and I do our best to clear the snow from the curb beneath our mailboxes, but our latest powdery cloud dump left a pile of white fluff that was admittedly an inconvenience for the stubby little truck with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

An inconvenience.  Certainly not an insurmountable obstacle.

After a day without mail, we received this note:

As did several neighbors.

Just the note.  Not our mail.

Our lovely carrier managed to get to our mailboxes to drop these notes but opted to keep our mail at ransom.

Oh well.  Not the end of the world.  I had intended to make a clearer path anyway.

So I did.

And did she deliver our mail the next day?

No.

How 'bout the next?

Nope.

I finally got to the post office and explained my displeasure.  I wasn't alone.  Nor was I offered an apology or an adequate explanation.

Turns out the carrier, that very day, delivered a package to my neighbor's door and explained that the snow wasn't adequately cleared.

Luckily, my local newspapers are delivered via Sherman Tank so they're able to get through the vast dam of snow - nay - frozen rock without leaving behind tactless notes.

Was there a time when people would do their jobs without manufacturing excuses and blaming others for their decision to underperform?  Or have we always been this lazy and unappreciative of actually having work?

There are countless folks who would absolutely love to have my postal carrier's job.  Is mail delivery a life passion of many?  Probably not.  But it's a job.  A good job.  With benefits.  How many people don't have that luxury?  And here is a woman who refuses to bend an inch when saddled with even a minor inconvenience.

What is this rant's relevance to a blog supposedly centered on a guy's journey from small-town Minnesota to Hollywood?

I'm glad you asked.

Well, I'm glad I asked.

In my efforts to establish myself in the entertainment industry, I have been burdened by more than a Crayola crayons' box worth of menial, uncreative projects or parts of projects.  Putting finishing touches on a video of drying paint in the middle of the night isn't exactly living the dream, but doggone it, I don't want to phone it in on anything.

(For those literalists out there, I've never actually done a video of drying paint.  It was a metaphor.)

The end results - drying paint videos or otherwise - don't always prove I gave my all, but it's not for lack of effort.  I have a hard time investing anything less than 100%.  Usually.  I mean, sometimes I vacuum lazily or buy canned chicken stock or run at a slower pace than I'm capable...

I digress.

My point - no, really, I have one - is that work is a privilege and should be treated as such.  And lest I write myself into a corner here with implications that I really am committed 100% to everything I do, the full disclaimer here is that I'm reminding myself to appreciate any work I get.  If it helps pay the bills and buy Barbies and Matchbox cars, it's a blessing.

We don't have to love what we are doing, but whenever we have something to do, we should be thankful.  As Harry Connick, Jr. croons in Hear Me in the Harmony, "There's a whole lotta hard workin' people that could take my place."