Delray Beach, FL –About 55 years ago, I won second place in a solo contest for the French horn. I played a tune called Mighty Major. I got back into it about five years ago and then dropped it. I’m back into it again… and I’m wondering why I stopped. It is thoroughly enjoyable. It may be the only thing that gets me completely away from my head. I’ve been trying to achieve a bit more equilibrium in my life through meditation. But it’s hard for me. Playing this difficult brass instrument is faster and, at least for the time being, more satisfying. I am fully absorbed while doing it, and calm and happy with myself when I’m done.
There are three social environments when it comes to your career. At one end, is the formal atmosphere of your professional business life. Here, all eyes are on you … and to succeed, you must conduct yourself with the utmost energy, enthusiasm, and decorum. At the other end (if you are lucky), is a personal life that is free from business relationships. Here, you do exactly as you please. In the middle, are the social events that surround business functions — the dinners and dances and cocktail parities that often follow conferences, trade shows, and seminars.
It is this middle ground that is difficult for some people (like me). It’s easy to convince yourself that anything goes in such situations – but it doesn’t. Like it or not, you will be judged by your behavior at these events, and although your actions will be given much greater tolerance than they would in your daytime business life, you will not be excused from everything.
Here is a partial list of things I have done and/or observed that are probably inadvisable at such functions:
Passing out from drink
Telling your colleagues what you really think of them
Commenting (positively or negatively) on your colleagues’ body parts
Any form of “dirty” dancing
Forcing people to play volleyball/water polo or do that YMCA thing
Telling your boss’s wife what a prick he is
Telling your boss’s husband how hot all the guys think she is
Confessing your love to anyone except your spouse
Dancing on, standing on, or toppling over furniture
Yodeling, Tarzan calls, or hyena laughing
Disrobing, even if it’s “so fucking hot”
Leading a conga line
Showing your supervisor your tattoos
Taking the “after-party” to a karaoke bar
Doing anything that in any way resembles John Belushi’s behavior in Animal House
Jason Gay, at the Wall Street Journal, has compiled his own list of rules which you can read here.
Cocktail conversation is wonderful because there is a sort of ironic twist to it. The best conversations tend to be about the most trivial things.
Oscar Wilde seemed to share the same view. He said, “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects.”
One such conversation, enjoyed recently after drinks with my sister Denise and son Patrick, was about the greatest solo folk rock artists of all time. We decided we needed to name the top ten. Here are mine, in order of greatness:
