Chasing Kites

“Rain turns mountains into sand.”

Taking the job that no one wants has been the key to my success.  In my decade’s long career at IBM, before I took up Real Estate Investing, I discovered that opportunities abound in the workplace.  You can find them under rocks labeled “dirty jobs.”  These are the jobs that no one else wants to do. 

At IBM, it started innocently enough; there was a critical application that required substantial changes.  This application was full of what we called “spaghetti code”; and no one wanted to touch it because there was no documentation for how it operated. Working on this application was like being dropped naked in the middle of the Amazon rainforest on Monday without a map and instructed to be in Los Angeles by 8 am on Friday. (An NO, that wasn’t me in that Naked and Alone episode) 

And the office legend was that any change to that code would bring this critical application crashing down. Incorrectly changing this application could kill your career.  So why did I raise my hand to volunteer for this?  Because patience and persistence were what powered me.

When I was a kite flying kid, the worst thing that could happen to you is having your string break when your kite was just a speck in the sky.  Then you’d have to run full speed while looking straight up and attempt to follow your kite as it fluttered back to the ground. 

Chase my falling kite through playgrounds, over fences, into backyards, down the street to eventually find it trapped in some large tree.

When your string broke, it was the pits.  With that pain in mind, you’ll understand my joy in seeing that spool of nylon string sitting on the drugstore shelf.  It was a technological advancement that would revolutionize kite flying, or so I thought.

As soon as I had saved enough pennies, I purchased that spool of soft spun nylon kite string.  And with it came the promise of ruling the kite flying skies!

I restrung my four-foot kite, and on the next windy day, I was ready.  The strong wind ripped my kite from my hands.  I felt the silky-smooth nylon string feed though my fingers, and in no time, my lime green kite was just a colorful comma in the clear blue sky. Higher, further, faster my kite flew.  My fellow kite flyers were in awe.  I was the king of the heavens that day, …and everyone wanted to know my secret.  I showed them the future of kite flying. Behold! My spool of nylon string!

And when it was time to go home, I began to bring my kite back to earth. I rewound the nylon string around its spindle, but the nylon string was slick and began to slip off the end into a tangled mess on the ground.  Unlike a regular line, the nylon string was very soft and very slippery.  The more I wound, the more my new nylon string resembled a rat’s nest by my feet.

When I had finally gotten my kite earthbound, I gathered it up and scooped up my pile of nylon string and walked home dejected.  

In our garage, I began the task of rewinding my nylon string into a cohesive spool.  The more I worked that nylon string, the more it would fray.  With each rewind, I had to untangle and stretch the line to perform the simple task of making it stay on the spindle. Minutes became hours as I patiently rewound this mess. 

My mom came by and asked, “How is it going?… Dinner will be ready soon.”  I remember looking up at her with a mixture of frustration and determination and said, “Almost got it.”  But that was childishly overly optimistic.  Dinner came, and I was still not done.

After dinner, I was back at it. By this time, the “marvel” of nylon string had lost all its luster. I was tired, but something in me would not give up until it was all rewound. 

Late that night, I had restored my spool of string, and with a kind of stubborn pride, I placed my nylon spool back next to my lime green kite and went to bed. 

Patience and persistence have always been a part of me and has provided me the strength to take on all opportunities, regardless of the perceived complexities of tedium because I knew that as tangled as a business, relationship and life gets with patience and persistence, you’ll always achieve your reward.