I used to work in event production, plays and festivals, one of them attracting more than a million people. I loved it very much, not least of all because most of the stage managers and crew were big, tough guys who got things done. Busted lights, sprained joints, wonky, unstable, dangerous equipment, boredom, fatigue, dire emergencies. . . These guys were strangely Buddha-like. They knew what they could do, what they couldn’t do, the limits of their big muscles and ingenious minds. They knew reality. And you knew that if they said they would get something done, it would be done. If it couldn’t be done, they would tell you too. I remember a dozen of them getting together to fix something wrong with my car. It still warms my heart.
On a drunken night, one of them told me;
You know, there are 2 types of people on this earth; those who have problems, and those who have solutions. A stage manager is the kind of guy who. Must. Always. Have. Solutions.
I love stage managers. I love being one of them. Lee Child rhapsodizes about sergeants in the army – the guys who get shit done. The ones who end up with the proverbial bucket. I endlessly respect those guys. The rest is fluff.
So I guess, at the time, I had a lot more problems than solutions. It didn’t make me happy or empowered. I wanted to be the guy with the solutions. Meeting stage managers was a good representation for me. While people watched the stage, I watched the backstage. Funnily enough, I see in hindsight they were all Sensors. A little grounding to my flights of fancy.
And this is how I measure my progression; do I have more solutions than problems? Can I take care of stuff? Do I get shit done ?
Sometimes I drop balls and look like a golf practice range. But most of the times, these days, I feel I could be one of the guys. Just call me Bear and hand me a beer…
