Good morning from New York City. I keep thinking about two separate conversations I’ve had over the past month or so. If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you know, I’m always looking for clues in the form of recurring thoughts and basically anything that happens more than twice. It always calls my attention.

That’s why I find myself thinking about a conversation I had the other night. I went to an event at Christie’s. It was a book launch for Martin Fletcher, a veteran NBC war reporter. During the course of the evening, I interjected myself in a conversation and I was introduced to a gentleman who told me that he had recently retired from NBC. As our conversation started to wane, I said to him ‘I’m very intrigued by the fact you own the word retired’. He burst out laughing “oh, don’t tell my wife, she hates that word.”

“Say more”, I said. “I have a lot of thoughts, but I’d like to hear yours first.” He continued “I’m not retired. I’ve recently retired from NBC.” He went on to tell me that he is up for a political appointment and secretly hopes he doesn’t get it. This intrigued me. Again, he made the joke “but don’t tell my wife.”

Read More…