Failure Isn't Final

I recently had the privilege of meeting CDR Scott Waddle, USN (ret) and listening to him speak.

If you don't recognize the name right away, CDR Waddle was Commanding Officer of USS Greenville (SSN-772) the day Greenville collided with the Japanese fisheries training vessel Ehime Maru in 2001. Nine people, including four teenage students, were killed. (If you want further details of the collision and the aftermath, the Wikipedia article is not a bad place to start, but it shouldn't be where you stop, either.)

CDR Waddle's topic was "Failure Isn't Final"

He started out by sketching his career and discussing his time as Greenville's CO up to the time of the collision. He then detailed the events leading up to the collision, emphasizing his own mistakes and failures. Even seven years later, he still gets emotional when discussing what happened and how his decisions led to the deaths of nine people.

CDR Waddle closed his short presentation by discussing how he personally overcame the tragedy, in large part by taking personal responsibility for what happened. He even traveled to Japan, at his own expense and over the objections of Pentagon brass, to personally apologize to survivors and to family members of the nine victims.

CDR Waddle also proudly pointed out that several of his officers and crew were able to overcome the effects of the tragedy and some had even been able to remain in the Navy and obtain promotions.

CDR Waddle's primary points were:

• Failure Isn't Final
• Take Personal Responsibility
  
• You Need Family, Friends and Faith

It's hard to disagree with any of those points.

Hats

A couple of things have had me thinking about identity, specifically self-identity.

I guess I'm a little different from most 40-somethings. I've held more jobs, and lived in more places than I really want to count, but what kept me sane throughout was my experience in High School in Carroll County, Arkansas in the early 1980s.

The summer after graduation, I held down three different part-time jobs. From 8am until midnight on Monday and Tuesday and from 8am to noon on Wednesday, I was the darkroom guy for my local weekly newspaper.

Wednesday night, Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night I was an actor in the "Great Passion Play".

Thursday afternoon, Friday day and afternoon and Saturday day and afternoon I was a cook at a locally-owned fried chicken place (not a KFC).

I got used to changing my persona in the car as I drove from one job to another. At the newspaper, in the darkroom, I pretty much supervised myself. I knew what the standards were, I managed my own workload, and the Editor really didn't want to see my face, just the finished prints. At the chicken place, I was a grunt, the junior man on the staff, the guy who got all the jobs no one else wanted to do. At the play, I was just another face in the crowd. As long as I was in the right place at the right time making the right motions, my boss could have cared less (and probably didn't know my name).

Oh, and at the same time, I was still living on my parents small farm, getting up not much after dawn to milk goats, collect eggs, weed a garden, etc.

On top of all of that I was trying to sustain a relationship with my first girlfriend and my first love.

In many ways, I lived the song "Hats" by Amy Grant ".

The one thing that sustained me, then and now, was my personal values. I'm not a deeply religious man, but I have strong personal values and convictions, and no matter how often I changed "hats", my values and convictions remained the same.

I remember a professor, Captain Ford, who's motto was:

"A professional is the person who does the job they are supposed to do, and does it right, even when no one will ever know, even when no one will ever care, and even when, if someone knew, they would belittle them for doing it."

Background

Note:  This post updated on October 3, 2021

For those of you who might stumble across the blog from various places, I thought I would start with a little background about ME. I'm a former Gunner's Mate (Guns) First Class in the U.S. Navy / U.S. Naval Reserve (hence the name of the blog...Gouge is naval slang for rumor, as in "what's the gouge?" I'm also a former Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. I'm a graduate of Texas A&M at Galveston (TAMUG), also known as the Texas Maritime Academy (TMA). I have a BS in Marine Transportation and, at one time, held a Third Mate's License for Steam or Motor Vessels of Unlimited Tonnage (Oceans). I've worked as a:

• Actor
• Janitor
• Darkroom film developer for a newspaper
• Cook at various fast food restaurants
• Warehouse clerk
• Midnight shift clerk at a convenience store
• 9-1-1 Dispatcher (midnight shift)
• Clerk at a hobby shop
• Maritime Cargo Inspector (sort of a stevedore) 
• LAN Manager
• Analyst
• Webmaster
• Program Manager
• Business / Financial Manager (twice)
• Museum curator
• Director of Operations at a (small) museum
• Emergency Planner
• International Trade Specialist

I grew up in St. Louis and am a lifetime Cardinals Baseball fan. My family moved to rural NW Arkansas just before my Freshman year in High School. I learned a healthy disrespect for authority in High School (long story) and barely managed to get into college where I had the amazing good fortune to meet my beloved wife of 35 years, to whom I was devoted and faithful from the day we married until the day she died, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. 

I've lived in:

• Central Arkansas (twice)
• Northwest Arkansas (twice)
• Houston, TX
• Washington, DC area (twice, and don't intend to leave)

I've bought and sold five houses and am living in the sixth (and hopefully last).

I have recently learned about the concept of "radical honesty", which is a process of being open and honest about both my virtues AND my faults.

So, in my opinion, some of my virtues are:

• Loyalty
• Honesty
• Fidelity
• Compassion
• Empathy
• I over-tip when I eat out and I treat clerks and wait staff with the respect and courtesy they deserve (and so rarely get)
• Generosity
• Curiosity
• Strong work ethic

Some (probably not all) of my faults are:

• Stubbornness
• Easily distracted
• So, I have LOTS of partially finished projects going at any one time and I will start and stop projects, but, because I am also stubborn, I rarely abandon a project, I will finish it - (eventually).
• Impatience
• Inflexible about some things
• I tend to follow most rules pretty strictly (for example following speed limits; not drinking and driving (not even one drink); sticking to my work schedule; etc.)
• Indecisive
• I may have a hard time deciding what to do, and I may (probably will) not immediately finish what I start, but once I DO decide to do something, I stick with my decision (see stubbornness above)

New Blog

After a couple of attempts to start a personal blog, I'm back at it.

It seems the parts of me that think I have nothing to say are, at least for the moment, being drowned out by the parts that HAVE something to say. We'll see...