This week at work we got vending machines. Friends, if you were like me, you don’t much think of just how those vending machines stayed stocked with chilled beverages and salty snacks. But seeing its sign glow caused my mind to race back to the time when I stocked vending machines. In fact I was part-owner of a vending machine route for a few long days.

My father has a business named Snakman. He owned a dozen or so machines. My mother took over the business when he passed away. I helped her stock the machines, inventory the business, pull together the records and count the cash that came in. I will never forget what hard work taking care of those machines was. Fortunately we sold the business to a local business owner. With joy I returned to my life as a software engineer.

Allow me to share a story from one place on the vending route. There was a house for mentally challenged folks. I smiled at the director as she asked me to only stock the machines with decaffeinated soda. While I filled the machine a man appeared in the doorway. He wore a captain’s hat and clutched an empty pipe. I wondered what he was thinking as he silently watched me. When I closed the machine back up, he left without a word.

There ya go, captain, enjoy the 7UP!

photo credit: Stéfan

Today I am in a funk. I failed to make a strategic change at work. I could complain but that’s too easy. I’m getting up again and dusting off.

I think back to my youth. I remember lying in bed reading a book. In the other room my father was practicing guitar. He was tackling the song ‘Riders in the Sky’. As I listened I could hear him start and stop the song as he made mistakes. Subconsciously I learned disappointment happens when you try to accomplish new things.

The cowboy in ‘Riders’ is asked to change his ways or be damned to an eternity of chasing ‘the Devil’s herd across the endless skies’. I believe in order to get people to change you must present them with a future which compels them to escape the emotional gravity of the present. Unfortunately, we don’t often have anything as powerful as eternal doom to compel change. I certainly didn’t.

Eventually my dad mastered the song and played it through entirely. I’d like to think he gave me the value of being persistent in the face of frustration. Friends, I will try again to introduce innovative change. But for now I’ll wait until the sound of the ’steel-hooved cattle’ is closer.

photo credit: eye of einstein