One of the side effects of spending years in security is that you learn to watch everything.
You watch people.
You watch vehicles.
You watch entrances and exits.
You watch for patterns.
You watch for things that don’t belong.
You watch for the one thing that can turn a normal day into a very bad one.
After ten years in corporate security and several years transporting people in a vehicle that weighs a couple of tons, that habit doesn’t just disappear.
Situational awareness becomes part of who you are.
You notice the car drifting into your lane.
You notice the person staring at their phone instead of the road.
You notice the equipment that hasn’t been maintained.
You notice the policies that look good on paper but probably aren’t going to survive contact with reality.
You notice a lot.
The problem is that if you’re not careful, you start noticing everything.
And that’s where people get themselves into trouble.
There is no shortage of things to worry about.
Companies cut costs.
Contractors replace employees.
Insurance carriers fight over liability.
Businesses look for the cheapest solution that still technically solves the problem.
Then they discover that cheap and effective aren’t always the same thing.
The cycle repeats itself.
I’ve watched it happen more than once.
A company outsources a task.
The contractor takes the job.
The contract includes penalties.
The contractor starts losing money.
Corners get cut.
The service gets worse.
Everybody wonders how this happened.
Then somebody discovers that the lowest-cost solution was, once again, the lowest-cost solution.
That’s not cynicism.
That’s observation.
But observation has a danger of its own.
If all you do is watch for problems, eventually all you see are problems.
That’s not healthy.
It’s also not useful.
You still need to know what’s going on around you.
You still need to pay attention.
You still need to understand that actions have consequences and that decisions made today can create problems tomorrow.
But you also need to know when to stop staring at the problem.
Sometimes you need to take a break.
Sometimes you need to look at something completely unrelated.
Sometimes you need to laugh at a ridiculous story.
Sometimes you need to invent a magical weapon that only works because the target is too busy wondering what the hell you’re doing.
Not because it solves the world’s problems.
Because it clears your head.
A rested mind sees things that an exhausted mind misses.
A person who occasionally steps away from the noise can often recognize patterns that someone buried in the noise never notices.
That’s one of the reasons The Gig Man’s Life jumps around so much.
One day it’s rideshare driving.
The next day it’s media rights.
The day after that it’s a discussion about a D&D magic item from a notebook I drew in the early 1990s.
It’s not because the world stopped having problems.
It’s because the world has enough problems already.
We don’t need to spend every waking moment staring directly at them.
Pay attention to what’s happening around you.
Understand the risks.
Know the realities.
But every once in a while, give yourself permission to think about something else.
You might be surprised what you notice when you come back.
And if nothing else, maybe you’ll get a laugh out of an Arrow of Befuddlement or a Hammer of Second Chances before diving back into reality.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Happy Birthday, Mom.