I’m sure everyone knows the saying, “Don’t Burn Any Bridges.” Well, I will say it proudly right now: I am a card carrying Bridge Burner.<\/p>\n
I have burned bridges throughout most of my life. I walk away from the inferno, never once feeling bad about setting that bridge ablaze. I can take the heat because I know that you can indeed burn bridges.<\/p>\n
Now, I know there are many of you out there who will never burn a bridge. Even if you happened upon one that was smoldering, you’ll risk life and limb to extinguish it, thinking that some day you may just need that bridge.<\/p>\n
As many of you know, I’ve burned a lot of bridges in my personal life. Some have been rebuilt over the years, even though they had been consumed by a conflagration of Biblical proportions. I came by my pirate name, Hurricane, honestly. I can huff and puff and blow any bridge down, most often through fiery speech and a very hot temper.<\/p>\n
I’ve burned bridges down in my work-a-day life as well.<\/p>\n
When I worked at Associated Grocers, I regularly pushed the limit. I’ve chronicled some of my escapades in previous RobZerrvations. I still think one of my finest endeavors was going on weeklong vacation, returning Monday, writing a backdated memo asking for the time off and slipping it two-thirds down the pile of my boss’ unread mail. Sometime later that day, the Big Gajunta called me into her office and asked where I had been. I told her that I wrote her a memo on it weeks ago. She had her secretary go through her pile and low and behold, there’s the memo.<\/p>\n
Long story short, eventually they fired me. Bridge burned. I dressed up as a homeless person on my last day at work. The bridge was rebuilt three years later — they hired me to be a consultant and do writing and web projects for them.<\/p>\n
I next went to Pacific First Bank. My wonderful boss Chrisine left and they put a retail bank manager in charge of my department, Employee Communications. Ellen Morgan was a complete idiot when it came to what we did there. So, I looked for another job.<\/p>\n
The day I accepted my new position at Egghead Software, I dropped into Ellen’s office. “How’s it going, Robb?” she asked. “Great, this is my last day. In fact, it’s my last two hours.” As I said it, my friends walked by her office with my going away cake. This was not rehearsed, but very poetic.<\/p>\n
She replied that she didn’t think I was allowed to do that without two weeks notice. I replied, “No, I can quit any time just like you can fire me without notice.”<\/p>\n
Bridge burned. Pacific First was sold two years later to Washington Mutual, which itself is now out of business.<\/p>\n
In fact, every company I’ve worked for is now out of business. So when I need to prop up my resume, I can say I was the Executive Vice President of Marketing and no one can ever verify the truth of that statement. So much for the burning bridges myth.<\/p>\n
When I came from Washington to Florida, I burned a lot of client bridges. After all, I moved the whole company with me in the space of a week. Some of my clients didn’t even know I had moved to Florida until a year or two later. Eventually, most went away, uncomfortable about working with me, treating my move to Florida like I had moved to Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
But, new bridges appeared. My business is now booming again, with clients all over the world. And none of them care one bit where I actually hang my shingle. The world has changed so much that I could be on a beach in the Bahamas and no one would even know. In fact, I could be there right now writing this and you would never know.<\/p>\n
And, of course, famously I have not spoken to my two brothers in nearly 30 years now. A falling out over my divorce took care of that. While it was one of the few bridges I have indeed tried to rebuild, they decided not to do any of the work on their end so the bridge remains half built, dangling precariously over a chasm of ill will that can never be forged without it.<\/p>\n
I don’t judge others for not burning their bridges. It takes a fine line between savvy and stupidity with just a touch of bravado to just set a bridge on fire, not knowing if you’ll need it some day.<\/p>\n
But in my own experience, “Don’t burn any bridges” is highly overrated. Bridges have indeed burned and I have not experienced any dire consequences from it. I think there’s a reason why, too. I would only need the bridge if I ever planned to travel down that path again. I rarely ever do. I prefer instead to ever venture forward, much like Lewis and Clark.<\/p>\n
Wait, that isn’t quite right, is it? They would have needed their bridges to go back home. So much for a metaphor.<\/p>\n
So, bridge burners of the world. Go ahead, burn a bridge or two. You don’t have to burn them all. But as the poster child of Bridge Burners of America, I stand as a testament that you can burn all the bridges you want and still enjoy life to its fullest.<\/p>\n
At least as long as you don’t end up on an island needing a bridge that you’ve already burned.<\/p>\n
Somewhere out here on Hutchinson Island with two bridges to the mainland,<\/p>\n
— Robb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m sure everyone knows the saying, “Don’t Burn Any Bridges.” Well, I will say it proudly right now: I am a card carrying Bridge Burner. I have burned bridges throughout most of my life. I walk away from the inferno, never once feeling bad about setting that bridge ablaze. I can take the heat because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":472,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}