Leadership Part Two

As I've already talked about earlier this semester. I'm in kind of a leadership position in my running club, Team Blitz.

The problem is I'm not a leader person. That doesn't appeal to me. Leaders are people who can confidently tell people how to manage their lives. You have to know what's good for other people.

I know what is good for me  and I basically want everyone else to fail so I can laugh at them. Not my friends, obviously, but outside of that I really don't like watching people succeed. A leader has to use people and get something out of them. I just want to see failure. I love failure. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I think it's the coolest thing in the world. To experience or watch someone experience failure.

Watching someone succeed is like watching someone play with a dog. It's fun for them and they're happy but...there's not a whole lot to it. All I can think about is, "I wish I had a dog. But...you know...dogs aren't that much fun anyway. I'm gonna go stick my mouth on the hose and try to inflate myself like a cartoon character." Point is, I don't want to watch you play with your dog. If the dog starts biting your ear and won't let go, I'll record that for later but otherwise: not interested.

But failure, failure is incredible. Failure is like watching someone uncover a terrible smelling dinosaur skeleton in a pile of manure. It's amazing. And it goes on and on. They keep digging and digging and they find more bones and it hurts but they keep digging deeper. And you're like, "Can you believe this giant skeleton of failure was underneath you the whole time?! Look how big it is! How did you not discover this until just now?! This goes all the way back to your childhood and you've finally uncovered this terrible smelling beast that you'd tried to bury!" And then you take the skeleton back to your living room and set it up and invite them over all the time and be like, "Look at that stanky dinosaur skeleton! Ha! You thought you were a good person." But it's cool at the same time. It's interesting. It's worth talking about. It's painful--and stinky and a little scary but it's interesting.

So anyway, I can't be a leader because I like failure too much. Yesterday I was running with like six other people on this really narrow trail that we don't run on very often and I'm in the front, trying not to fart on everyone, and I see a left turn so I yell, "LEFT!" and I make the sharp turn and it throws everyone off and very shortly after I take the turn I realize this trail doesn't lead anywhere. We're going to have to turn around and go back. So I immediately yell out, "I MESSED UP! SORRY EVERYBODY! I MESSED UP!" Not in an apologetic way. In like a loud, obnoxious, I know what I did and I'm proud of it way.

It'd be like if I just ripped the whole dinosaur skeleton out of the ground and said look at this! You don't get any of the fun of me crying over it as I slowly chip away at the bones.

So the trail dead ends and I abruptly stop. Everyone behind me, in a single file line stops. And then I turn around and just run through everyone to get back in front and go back to the trail.

Then I do it two more times in the exact same way.

Every time, "I messed up! I messed up! Look at me! I messed up."

That's not what a good leader should do. A good leader should have an ego. He should want to succeed and do well. He should get quiet and angry or pass the blame on someone else. You shouldn't be proud of failure. What kind of message is that?

Realistically, would you want to join a group that's lead by a group that runs around the woods in short shorts yelling about how he's messed up. Saying stuff like, "I'm full of surprises! I'm like a card covered in clown pictures and on the inside it says, 'SURPRISE! YOU HAVE LUNG CANCER!"

That guy doesn't have his priorities straight. If I lead an adventure to the North Pole, by the third day the ship would be trapped in ice and be like, "Aww shucks guys. I thought this might happen. Oh well. Ice, right? It's crazy stuff. I've got some coloring books and crayons if anyone wants them. There's also a single harpoon we could use to kill a seal or something. I would've brought more but I wanted to make room for empty photo albums and chunks of ice that look like states or people's faces."

DON'T FOLLOW ME INTO THE ARCTIC CIRCLE!