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Some days are so overcrowded with crises that it gets hard to take any of them seriously. I reached this critical mass about an hour after I got up this morning, so that by the time I was already 45 minutes late getting out for my daily sprint up street and down alley, I gave up worrying about how it was all going to get handled.
As much as I portray myself as the downtrodden, overworked office elf, I don't have to endure many days like this. If I did, I wouldn't.
In fact, I've reached the point (maybe today, maybe fifteen years ago) where I don't believe in life-or-death crises at all, at least in the business sense. It's not brain surgery, after all. It's not even podiatry. It's just a construction company that builds things people could probably do without. If we didn't do it pretty well (and pretty cheaply), there would be no company to worry about.
So when the Boss tells me his personal checking account is overdrawn, I've learned not to volunteer to run down to the bank with a deposit. "I'll put some money in the bank tomorrow," I told him when he phoned today from the dentist's office to tell me he'd just written a bad check. "Tell them not to try to cash your check today."
In the old days, of course, I would have asked him what he wanted me to do. If this hadn't happened countless times over the years, I wouldn't know any better than to panic right along with him. As far as I know, all his anxiety is for nothing. I think the only time he's actually bounced a check is when he forgot to record it. Not. My. Problem. Even he agrees with that.
So the key to maintaining equanimity in the heady world of business and finance is not to care. Everything will happen in its own time, and when you try to make everything happen at once, it usually ends badly. There's enough chaos in the world already. I don't need to add to it with things that in the long run don't really matter all that much. | 
