by Christopher di Armani

This past couple of weeks has been pretty busy for me, so writing for the blog has been temporarily relegated to the back seat. While I’ve managed to keep to my goal of one new article per day most of the time, this past week has certainly not been one of those times.

God decreed that 6 days man shall work, and the 7th he shall rest, so that’s what I’ve been doing today.

Resting.

I was working far too late last night (again) so today I decided to sleep until I was done, and then sleep just a little more.

It’s been excellent. I finally managed to open my eyes in time to turn on the stupid box and catch the last ten minutes of the Dallas Cowboys – Detroit Lions football game, and am I ever glad I did, although not for the reasons you might expect.

The last ten minutes of the game were exciting, to be sure, but they could never have happened if the entire Detroit Lions football team hadn’t done one simple thing for the entire preceding 50 minutes of the game:

Their jobs.

They did what was put in front of them to do.

They didn’t let outward appearances get them down. They didn’t let a silly thing like the scoreboard dictate how they would do their jobs, or indeed IF they would do their jobs.

They simply did what was put in front of them to do for an entire 60 minutes, and in the process they won the game after being down 24 points, and handed the Dallas Cowboys their worst implosion in franchise history.

How fun is that!

But as I lay in bed watching the Detroit quarterback toss the winning touchdown with just over a minute left to play, I began thinking about what they had just accomplished, and what lessons I ought to be taking from that awesome performance.

The lesson itself is mind-numbingly simple:

Do what is put in front of you to do.

Period.

Do it until the job is done, or time runs out, whichever comes first.

How many of us can truly admit that we do this?

At our jobs, do we truly do what is put in front of us to do for a full 60 minutes? Or do we mail it in after half an hour or so, or worse?

All this got me to thinking about the people who I write about here and the reasons why I write about them.

Bear in mind that the vast majority of the people I write about are people I have never met, never spoken to on the telephone and have never even shared an email with, yet among them there are people who I look up to because they do like the Detroit Lions did today… they do what’s put in front of them to do until the job is done or until time runs out.

The most recent example would be Union Bay blogger Mary Reynolds.

Anyone who’s been following my writing for the past few months will be well aware of Mary’s case. Mary believed her local government was corrupt and not working for the best interests of the people they were elected to represent, so she began an education campaign aimed at her fellow Union Bay residents and the people who were supposedly elected to work for them.

Mary did that until time ran out.

No, she didn’t die, but she was sued by every member of the Union Bay Improvement District Board of Directors and the District of Union Bay itself. The District finally came to its senses and realized that it’s against the law for a government to sue a citizen for criticizing their actions and dropped out of the lawsuit.

Other articles have delved into the specifics of that, so I won’t get into all that again here.

The specific individuals involved, of course, with their egos in full bloom did NOT drop their lawsuit and even though I believe Mary Reynolds could have won the case, she was faced with the very real possibility of being bankrupt if a judge disagreed. She accepted what I believe to be some very poor advice from her lawyer and signed an agreement that would have the lawsuit dropped in exchange for her agreeing to basically abandon her Right to Freedom of Speech.

That’s what I mean about time running out. For Mary the game ended when she took that very bad advice from someone I would only describe as a really crappy lawyer.

Up until that time, however, Mary simply did what was put in front of her to do, day in, day out.

She was determined.

She was relentless.

She was going to bring integrity and honour back to her local government if at all possible, and she wasn’t going to give up that fight until she had accomplished that task.

Here’s the thing…

Mary Reynolds won.

Read complete article here.