Emptying My Notebooks: Always Do Your Best

NOTE: I recently unpacked my hodgepodge of notebooks about gun culture to begin thinking about writing another book in 2025. Seeing John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa in a local bookstore inspired me to empty those notebooks here. Be advised: These are truly notes and not composed ideas.

This last post of 2024 has more to do with life and work generally than my work on guns specifically, but it is an appropriately broad theme on which to end the year. In this note I am reflecting on life/work in the depth of my misery trying to get Gun Curious published (so this undated note is probably from May 2023, plus or minus).

When I was young, I was fortunate to work with my dad on the road in the summers. He installed telecommunication equipment (microwave radio) for customers like the Los Angeles Rapid Transit District. For example, in the summer of 1982, when I was 13, I helped him in the radio room on the top floor of the ARCO Tower in downtown LA (pictured below).

One of my jobs was to connect a 25-wire cable to a terminal block, hardwiring our equipment to the system. That is a lot of wire to keep organized, and it looked impeccable when my dad did it. When I did it, it looked sloppy. I would connect the wires and ask him what he thought. He would always respond the same way, “Did you do your best?”

This profoundly affected me then and has stayed with me my entire life. The lesson was clear: Always do your best.

My work may not be the best, but it is my best. (Aside: This has also led to a great deal of frustration in my life with the half-assed work of other people.)

Little did I know that this life lesson my dad taught me was part of the ancient wisdom captured in Mexican surgeon Don Miguel Ruiz’s best-selling The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (1997):

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best

I’ve certainly done better with #4 than with the other three agreements in my life. But I suppose it’s never too early to start.