O Henry captures in his stories the absurd twists that
confound our best laid plans. His story,
The Gift of the Magi, is one such
tale; it is the favorite O Henry story of many readers.
As my Parkinson’s has progressed, I have noticed less and
less resilience dealing with life’s stresses.
I have slowed down quite a bit which helps reduce stress in my personal
life but boy, oh boy did it have a negative effect on me professionally. It’s pretty hard to meet deadlines when your
engine is revving at half speed.
As long as I held the team lead position, I was blocking my
teammate’s possibilities for advancement and I planned to hold that job until I
retired. In order to advance her career, eventually she took the lead position
on another team. Although I was very
happy for her, I groaned at the added work load as her duties would be
distributed to those of us remaining on the team. I looked ahead at the added stress, longer
hours and more missed deadlines and realized that what I really wanted to do
was retire earlier rather than later. So
I checked my numbers one last time (ok I checked them several times) and
submitted my paperwork.
Surely there’s an O Henry story in here. Would my teammate have transferred if she
knew I would retire early? Would I have
retired early if she hadn’t transferred?
I hope she’s happy with her decision because I certainly am
with mine.
By the way, here’s a link to The Gift of the Magi, in case you don’t remember it from school:
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