Just like your parents, I am sure, my parents had a bunch of annoying lessons they tried to teach me growing up.  Lessons I tried real hard to ignore.  One of the more annoying I refer to as the "Three Learning Points Buzzkill."  This was courtesy of Dad, who generally interrupted a decent rant right when I was getting good and worked up, with the annoying, "Fine. What were your three learning points?"  Clearly, he did not get it.

Fast forward many, many years (what, are you counting or something?) and I now often end a good frustration-o-rama with the thought, and I am serious:  Well, what did I learn here?

Yesterday, I learned thus:

1. Journalists (and by journalists here, I mean writers who claim to be journalists rather than actual journalists) are often going to write the story, no matter if you are ready, if you have released the info or even have verified facts or not. So, be prepared with something, ANYTHING, to give them something to write so that they don't end up printing something that is completely factually incorrect.

2. If everybody can win in the end then everybody wins.  Losing sucks, seeing someone lose sucks, wanting people to lose makes you suck.  Go with the win whenever possible.

3. Chefs have super big (and by super big, I mean super fragile) egos but really, they want to hear the truth and they'll respect you more if you just tell them what needs to be said.

Sure, these are lessons I learned before, lessons I will learn again. But the lessons, those aren't really the important part of the post. The important part is this:  Some days are just whackadoo but you can make them worthwhile by taking a few moments to think about what you learned in the midst of the hot mess.  By acknowledging your three learning points.

Thanks, Dad.