lifeguard at the eRep pool... (updated)

Day 592, 00:38 • Published in USA USA • by scrabman
NOTE: Vote Harrison Richardson tomorrow y'all. He's the best candidate and a hard worker.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/happy-4th-of-july-vote-for-hr--847988/1/all

"Take away the shepherd and the sheep will follow wolves." - Michael Wikoff

That quote really says a lot about eRep and how people play the game. I spoke of this in my podcast interview yesterday with my friend Spike but it has been something that has been on my mind lately along with this quote.

"Better to be hated for one's successes than pitied for one's mistakes." - Michael Wikoff

Both quotes say much about how I've tried to play the game in the last 9+ months ... particularly the last 4 while I've been President. I hear a lot of complaining about my party being full of sheep or the country being full of them (I'm not sure that's really true though) but I would rather they be led by a well meaning shepherd than by the wolves ... I think we've seen that happen all too often in eRep where the wolves take over in precisely this way.

This last week or so I've been sitting in the sun a lot and contemplating things. I've been trying to get a base tan so that I can enjoy the beach the week after my Presidency ends without being burned to a crisp. Of course, one of the things that I may have underestimated is the benefit of Vitamin D because I've been feeling much better about things. Of course, it could also be the burden of office that I've felt slipping away this week. Either way, I'm carrying a tan and feeling good and even got to hear the aforementioned podcast while sitting at the pool today.

Earlier this week I revisited the pool that gave me my first job when I was growing up. That's right, my first job was as a lifeguard. It has occurred to me, several times during my tenure as President and as Forum Admin, how much that these jobs are like my old lifeguarding job. It so happens that I saw one of the lifeguards at my old pool hassling with some obnoxious kids. It was interesting to watch the contrast of how she and the next lifeguard dealt with them so differently and I realize that so much of the way that I've viewed this game goes back to my lifeguarding days ... mixed with my lawyer training ... and mixed with a good deal of learning along the way.

It is a difficult thing to manage so many personalities within this game. The best advice that I could possibly give to a new President is not to get sucked into this trap. Whether the reaction is praise or hatred it is equally important to get past that and not worry about people being your friend as a leader. Those two things have to be separate to be effective. Worrying about how people will react has to be given up but that is a hard thing to do. It's something that I've tried to do while I've worked through this game and it's interesting just how much that this experience has brought back to my awareness the old training that I used in my days as lifeguard. You can't be friends with everyone and do your job at the same time ... one will suffer at the expense of the other.

Most of my adult life has been used to find a new path that is not so authoritarian ... in fact I've been on the Buddhist path for a while ... yet I still have my old roots. I will look very forward to going back to a more passive way. It's amazing how much that this experience has caused those old feelings and habits to resurface. However, things have calmed down on the eUSA Forums quite a bit and need less interaction by the various Mods and Global Mods there. We've picked good people to do that job and I have faith in them. Whoever the next President is I have faith that the nation will continue on and will not suffer too greatly from it. I feel good about how things have turned out but I also feel good about watching them pass on to someone else to worry about for a while.

Good luck to Harrison Richardson on Sunday. He will be a great President ... but he will remain a great friend and a great player of the game regardless of the outcome of the election.

I don't know if I'll have anything else worthwhile to say before my term of office ends. In the event that I don't ... thank you all.