Beginner's Mistakes

I've been thinking a lot lately about a scene in one of the later seasons of The West Wing, to which I was quite addicted before I moved. The cute young guy is running the election campaign for Jimmy Smits, and the old guy who later that season very tragically passed away is counselling him after a miscalculation. The young guy is feeling despair at the failure and thinks he's all washed up. The older, mentor guy says something like "Nobody expects you not to make mistakes. It's about how you recover from mistakes that shows your true character."

I've had a week of making beginner's mistakes. I realize I was too soft on my web development agency at the beginning, all "I'm from the agency side too, I understand you, I will make your life easy." I needed to start out as a hardass and then work with them as things went along. I will do this next time, but for this project the mistake is already made.

I got drawn into the world of a colleague who has a tendency toward the apocalyptic in his view of things. We got a design that was less than what we wanted, and he was ready to fire the company who did it and smear their name from coast to coast and start the project over. But it turns out the next day we got something much better, and they are adequate after all. I got drawn into his world view and lost the reins of the project and forgot that it's my project, I'm answerable, if it slips it reflects on me, and I have to control all the interested parties. I think I'm getting hold of the reins back, but the slip was a mistake, and I can't let it happen again (truth be told, though, my colleague is a new colleague and I didn't know that he always reacts this same way, I trusted that there was a catastrophe but I now think there's probably not).

Also, when I first started the job I had plans to stage a revolution in quality, because my sites' content was not being managed very well, I didn't think. I wanted to read every word, know every page, click on ever link, make sure it was all up to standards. I don't think I'll be able to keep this up. My job is to be strategic and analytical, and I don't have time for details. I'm too senior for details. I have to delegate them, and it's hard because that was going to be the gratifying fun part. I don't yet have vendors I can trust. But I have to figure it out, because otherwise I will be still doing the junior job, dragged down into work that is beneath me, not at my level, and I won't get the my-level stuff done and I won't flourish in my job or career. I know I can do it, but it's hard hard hard. Takes all my strength to lift myself up and be the manager. This is more senior than my last job, and old habits die hard. This focus on details is another mistake, and I haven't fixed it yet, can't quite see my way out of that particular cave, but I have to find it.

Tonight I have just come home, and I'm going to sit and do easy things. No expectations on myself at all. One night off, when I will just sit passive and still and so I am unlikely to do anything wrong. Because in fact the pressure of having to recover from mistakes in a way that demonstrates one's superior character is just too much pressure, and too much opportunity to make new mistakes. One night off.