ACCORDING TO A
business principle espoused by Lawrence Peter, employees tend to rise to the
level of their own incompetence. A good worker, for instance, might be promoted
into a lousy boss.
By late 1977, I’d
become a boss. My employees would have to rate my competence. All I knew was
that I’d come to dislike this job because it had separated me from the work I
loved.
My training was as a
writer and editor. Now I did less and less of that work directly – and more and
more supervising of those who wrote and edited. I was spending my days in
meetings and on the phone, with little time left over for making up stories of
my own and massaging the manuscripts of other writers.
Two negatives
combined with two positives the same month of 1977, pointing me toward an exit
from the Runner’s World offices. The
negatives were the twin tensions created by Jim Fixx’s Complete Book of Running (where I seemed to steal credit for RW’s success from its founder-owner, and
my boss, Bob Anderson) and the controversy swirling around the magazine’s
latest shoe issue (where we were charged with rigging the ratings).
The first positive
was that my income from book royalties now exceeded my salary as editor. The
second positive: a replacement editor, Rich Benyo, was already in place as my
newly hired assistant.
One September
morning, my courage buoyed by my son Eric’s recent birth and the latest
book-royalty figures, I walked into Bob Anderson’s office and handed him an “I
quit” letter. I’d cleared out my office early that morning, knowing my welcome
here would end as soon as Bob read that note.
Our few moments
together were predictably unpleasant. Then I went home to start creating a new
office space where I would try to salvage a writing career.
To his everlasting
credit Bob did some heavy pride-swallowing. Just a day later his staff
attorney, Bill Green, called to say, “Bob has a proposal for you. Can we meet
at a neutral site to discuss it?”
Runner’s World signed me as an independent contractor, working
outside the office on a prescribed list of writing and editing projects for a
fixed monthly fee. This contract let me reverse the Peter Principle by
retreating to the level of my competence.
WHERE WOULD you live
if you could live almost anywhere? The likely answer: somewhere other than
where you now are and must stay, at least until retirement frees you from the
current home-near-job.
If you’re young, as
I was in the year of turning 35, the dream move is usually a long time from
coming true. Unless you get lucky, as I did in 1978.
I wasn’t retired,
but my job was now portable. I could work anywhere with mail, phone and airline
service. My improved income made resettlement a real and immediate option, and
the choice came down to the final one during my now-annual trip to the Boston
Marathon.
A random assignment
of roommates by our tour leader placed me with Bob Wright from Monterey,
California. I told him this was one of two places my family might move.
Our talk about his
hometown was exceeded only by our discussion of the race. Bob, a civilian
employee of the army at Fort Ord, said, “I know you’d love it here. And I know
a realtor who can give you a look around.”
Within a month we met the
real-estate agent named Annie, who spoke with the delightful accent of her
native France. In July we moved 80 miles south to the Monterey Peninsula.
The actual address was
Pebble Beach, a private development within the gates of the 17-Mile Drive.
Visitors weren’t excluded. They just had to pay an entrance fee, as if to a
theme park.
This area sounded more
posh than it really was. I like to say now, “We lived in the slums of Pebble
Beach,” far from the mansions (including Clint Eastwood’s) surrounded by the
golf courses that border Carmel.
Our house was small in
size and modest in price. We settled less than a mile from the unseen ocean, on
a quiet street amid a forest of Monterey pines. I worked in our guest cottage,
which would become such a magnet for visitors that we had to impose a
one-night-stay limit except for immediate family.
Most of our
neighbors were retired, many as ex-military officers. Ours was the only young
family within miles.
I heard second-hand
that the older folks wondered why I never left home for local work but
disappeared on mysterious trips for a few days every month. He doesn’t look like a drug dealer or CIA
operative, they speculated. So he
must be either independently wealthy or a house-husband whose wife supports
him.
Janet, the nurse,
had found a job right away at Planned Parenthood. Our bright and beautiful
daughter Sarah had started to school in nearby Pacific Grove. Our son Eric was
healthy and happy.
I could run to my
limits and beyond on coastal trails and fire roads through the forest. Life here was
dream-like as 1978 ended. But too soon I would start waking up to hard
realities ahead.
Photo: I handed the torch to Rich Benyo, literally at
National Running Week and figuratively as he took over editorship of Runner’s World.
[Many books of mine, old
and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks
from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home
Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow
Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We
Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]
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