Tonight will mark the end of an era as I convene and preside over my last meeting of the LFA as chair and, indeed, as a board member at all. After eight and a half years, I have done my time and am out of there, though I will remain an advisor to the board on matters pertaining to lake finance and dam observation and maintenance.
To say I have learned a lot would be an understatement. I've come to understand much of what I learned as a management consultant, only I've figured out how to generalize it and apply it in a broader context. I've been dragged perforce into some vague comprehension of what elected officials and other public servants do, taking into account competing claims of different sets of stakeholders and thinking strategically about how to align them. Over years of little carping from the peanut gallery over this and that, I've gained a thicker skin and now understand how people's complaints often derive from their own insecurities and limited perspectives, so I've come to care less about what people think.
Sounds rather boring, I know, but between this milestone and my kids graduating from college and high school, respectively, plus our 25th wedding anniversary (tomorrow) and Mary letting her grey roots grow out, on top of burgeoning tennis elbow from all the time on the court with Z, I feel sort of like a complete adult. Time to dial it back a touch and see what's next.
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