If Dishes Were Wishes.

This is the time of the year when, if you run your own business--and a project-based business at that, you begin to really worry about the year to come.

Even if you have a six-year-running-my-own-business track-record as GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company does, and each year has essentially been an improvement to the year before, you worry if you've finally played out the string. 

I suppose there's an (un)healthy heaping of Jewish neurosis in this. But I cant imagine that successful generals don't worry if, despite hundreds of successful battles, this is their Little Big Horn. I'd bet even a Warren Beatty worries now and again about getting turned down, running fallow and unable to get a date.

Ted Williams, the greatest (white) baseball hitter of all time, hit 521 home runs in his career. He hit one in his last at bat at age 41. I have to believe he worried he'd strike out if he went up to the plate again.

Just now I was doing something no one likes doing around the house, and I'd imagine most people schluff off hoping their spouse will lose patience, give in and do it themselves. (A lot of work is like that, too.)

A lot of work is like emptying the dishwasher. 

I was mid-cereal-bowl-to-the-cabinet when the Ameche rang--and I could see from my caller ID, that it was a prospective client to whom I submitted my 2026 proposal around Veteran's Day. I was more than a little annoyed that the proposal she asked for and said she'd get back to me on in two days took her two weeks to respond to. 

You learn through the years not to let shit like this get you crazy, or to be "judgey" because of it. If you do, your 120/70 will quickly ascend to Himalayan heights and those little veins at your temples will start ululating like Salome in front of Herod.

My (new) client and I--in dishwasherus interruptus--had our phone call and had a telephonic handshake. My first tranche of 2026 revenue seems to have been booked.

Touch wood.

Quickly I went back, as I do, to emptying our too-expensive Miele. 

I realized that emptying the dishwasher is a perfect metaphor for why I'm surviving in business. 

Dishwasher-emptying is the kind of task that no one gets promoted for. You don't even get the 'but-I-did-the-dishes"-credit. If vacuuming the floor gets you uxorial points, emptying the vacuum-cleaner bag gets you uxorial fuck all. Dishwasher-emptying is dumb, dull, prosaic and as glamorous as clipping your nose-hair on the Lexington line.

Many years ago, probably the mid-1990s, when I was starting my second-decade in the business, I wrote the list below on "How to Be a Good Account Person." I was running my own creative group thenand I wanted my account team to know what I expected.

I remembered just now, number nine. It's probably the point that's gained the most commentary through the years.  I suppose the metaphor is old-fashioned, maybe gendered and besides, who washes windows anymore.

Nobody really.

But some of us empty dishwashers.

It's what we do.

We're better for it.

So's our work.

And our business.