I recently read an article called Nothing Works and Nobody Cares by Robert Ruark, the famous big game hunter and author. Published in Playboy magazine in December 1965, it was the last thing he published. (As an aside, his book Use Enough Gun is excellent.) What was interesting about the article, apart from how hard it is to find a copy of a pre-digital article published when your own father was three years old, was his complaining about things which, were it today, would be considered quite the luxury. ‘The cook’s off sick, my castle in Spain is leaking again, my english sports car cost £400 to repaint.’
Admittedly he does so with such grace and humor that you side with him anyway and its worth mentioning that not all his complaints are frivolous - I’m not sure I’d want to choke out a charging leopard because the gun went click rather than bang. But it did make me think. Google tells me just one magazine paid him $18,500 per monthly column in today’s money ($222,615/annum), what did he really have to complain about? And what do I?
Perhaps surprisingly for a keen hunter and sportsman; I run a vegan, ethically sourced, no and lo, gut health soft drink company. And in the process I’ve never had a day without some new catastrophe.
Currently it's that some of my customers' subscriptions have stopped processing randomly after years of smooth sailing. The problem lies somewhere in the invisible web of ones and zeroes between (i) Shopify, (ii) our third party subscription software, and (iii) our three different payment processors. I have spent in excess of ten hours on the phone with them collectively. Without fail each is pointing the finger at the other. I can’t exactly call them out on it - I read code about as well as I read Braille.
When I took on the business in 2021, I brought this up with my father - a self-made-man who sold his first business at an age I think was specifically chosen to make his future sons struggle with thoughts of inadequacy. It went something like this:
Me: “Dad, this is brutal! Every day there is another pothole in the road that might break the axle and kill the business. It's jarring as hell. I've been working eighteen-hour days, getting no sleep. Tell me that it gets easier!”.
Him: “Nope! But the potholes are good: your job is to be the suspension and insulate your team, customers, creditors etc from it all. The moment you stop hitting potholes is because you’ve stopped moving forward.”
Which sounds like a reassuring thing to hear but mostly sounded like confirmation that Tyson wasn’t going to leave the ring. Woe is me! A moment’s silence please for the private school educated, first-world business owner with no mortgage.
If I spent my life focused on the bad things I’d be catatonic by tea time. The price of good whisky has almost doubled in the last 5 years, but who cares? My wife bought me a Chapuis double rifle in 9.3x74r for our anniversary and with it I spoke for 10 running boar at a friend's driven shoot in France in January. We flew air france from where we live in Scotland and bringing a rifle added 5mins to our check in time and didn’t cost a penny more. The matched pair of vintage Dickson and sons 12guage shotguns I share with my brother will shortly be worthless once the UK ban on lead shot comes into play in 2029. The cost of lining the barrels is significantly more than their total value. But so what? I used one at another friend's grey partridge shoot (their first since 1945 but now thriving) and the partridge burst beautifully over the hedges as almost as many hares ran through the line. A day's grouse shooting was something special but attainable growing up in the Scottish Highlands but now is nearing £25k (£57k of company profits before the government takes its pound of flesh) so I’ll never be able to afford to take a day. But on the other hand we were Skiing in Val d’isére earlier this year when there was a dump of snow and had our first deep powder day in a decade. They’re ripping out all the vineyards in Bordeaux, but the drinks I make are stocked in the Ritz Hotel and on the same wine list as 1959 Château Lafite Rothschild. And there is a mushroom growing in my new ensuite bathroom but I made biltong for the first time with a red deer hind that I took over Christmas and it turned out amazingly.
I think Ruark’s problem here is a common one (not his dying of cirrhosis at 49), but focusing on the things he couldn’t change. Really, who’s served by yet another article about a celebrity scandal, or an alleged cultural shift away from traditional values. Rage-baiting I think it’s called. Bring back ‘The old man and the boy’, I’m sure there are lots of would-be Ruarks who can spin a dit about personal growth, and wisdom and humour to inspire readers to become better colleagues, teachers, parents and friends. I’d read it. Hell, for $200k a year I’ll write it too.
Admittedly he does so with such grace and humor that you side with him anyway and its worth mentioning that not all his complaints are frivolous - I’m not sure I’d want to choke out a charging leopard because the gun went click rather than bang. But it did make me think. Google tells me just one magazine paid him $18,500 per monthly column in today’s money ($222,615/annum), what did he really have to complain about? And what do I?
Perhaps surprisingly for a keen hunter and sportsman; I run a vegan, ethically sourced, no and lo, gut health soft drink company. And in the process I’ve never had a day without some new catastrophe.
Currently it's that some of my customers' subscriptions have stopped processing randomly after years of smooth sailing. The problem lies somewhere in the invisible web of ones and zeroes between (i) Shopify, (ii) our third party subscription software, and (iii) our three different payment processors. I have spent in excess of ten hours on the phone with them collectively. Without fail each is pointing the finger at the other. I can’t exactly call them out on it - I read code about as well as I read Braille.
When I took on the business in 2021, I brought this up with my father - a self-made-man who sold his first business at an age I think was specifically chosen to make his future sons struggle with thoughts of inadequacy. It went something like this:
Me: “Dad, this is brutal! Every day there is another pothole in the road that might break the axle and kill the business. It's jarring as hell. I've been working eighteen-hour days, getting no sleep. Tell me that it gets easier!”.
Him: “Nope! But the potholes are good: your job is to be the suspension and insulate your team, customers, creditors etc from it all. The moment you stop hitting potholes is because you’ve stopped moving forward.”
Which sounds like a reassuring thing to hear but mostly sounded like confirmation that Tyson wasn’t going to leave the ring. Woe is me! A moment’s silence please for the private school educated, first-world business owner with no mortgage.
If I spent my life focused on the bad things I’d be catatonic by tea time. The price of good whisky has almost doubled in the last 5 years, but who cares? My wife bought me a Chapuis double rifle in 9.3x74r for our anniversary and with it I spoke for 10 running boar at a friend's driven shoot in France in January. We flew air france from where we live in Scotland and bringing a rifle added 5mins to our check in time and didn’t cost a penny more. The matched pair of vintage Dickson and sons 12guage shotguns I share with my brother will shortly be worthless once the UK ban on lead shot comes into play in 2029. The cost of lining the barrels is significantly more than their total value. But so what? I used one at another friend's grey partridge shoot (their first since 1945 but now thriving) and the partridge burst beautifully over the hedges as almost as many hares ran through the line. A day's grouse shooting was something special but attainable growing up in the Scottish Highlands but now is nearing £25k (£57k of company profits before the government takes its pound of flesh) so I’ll never be able to afford to take a day. But on the other hand we were Skiing in Val d’isére earlier this year when there was a dump of snow and had our first deep powder day in a decade. They’re ripping out all the vineyards in Bordeaux, but the drinks I make are stocked in the Ritz Hotel and on the same wine list as 1959 Château Lafite Rothschild. And there is a mushroom growing in my new ensuite bathroom but I made biltong for the first time with a red deer hind that I took over Christmas and it turned out amazingly.
I think Ruark’s problem here is a common one (not his dying of cirrhosis at 49), but focusing on the things he couldn’t change. Really, who’s served by yet another article about a celebrity scandal, or an alleged cultural shift away from traditional values. Rage-baiting I think it’s called. Bring back ‘The old man and the boy’, I’m sure there are lots of would-be Ruarks who can spin a dit about personal growth, and wisdom and humour to inspire readers to become better colleagues, teachers, parents and friends. I’d read it. Hell, for $200k a year I’ll write it too.
