The world is beginning to open back up, which means I’m starting to visit more companies in person. I recently went to Boston and spent a productive day and enjoyable dinner with one of our startups.
Everything went well until it didn’t.
Anyone who knows Boston knows traffic is horrible. So my colleague and I smartly waited until dark to leave the city. As we left dinner, we had a great conversation walking to the parking garage. Spirits were high.
Then we entered said parking garage. And spent the next 25 minutes looking for our cars on L2.
At first it was funny. “We’re trapped in a Seinfeld episode!”
Then it became annoying. “These spaces don’t even look familiar!”
Then we (and by “we,” I mostly mean “I”) began to panic. “Are we stuck here forever?!”
Finally, we calmed ourselves and returned to viewing the situation as funny. “We’re going to laugh about this tomorrow!”
Eventually, we realized we were in the wrong garage. As we walked over to the correct garage, my colleague, who rightfully requested to remain anonymous, joked, “Did you do that for your newsletter?!”
No. I am just that big of a fool. But the truth is, things are bound to go wrong. A great day can be sullied by a mistake. Or it can make the story even more exciting.
As the Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl once said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
We chose the wrong garage. But we chose the right way to handle the situation. When life hands you lemons, write a newsletter!
