I’ve never been one that was short on ideas. I typically don’t follow through with any of them because I barely have time to keep a journal (as you all know pretty well.) I’m actually OK with this. It’s the having the ideas part – thinking about them and planning them and dreaming about how successful they would be – that is the fun part. I can’t imagine that following through on any of these ideas would be fun, because it would be too much like work.
 

But, I had a good one last night – a really really good one. This idea was so good that I thought this time I might really clear some time on my schedule and see it through. It was going to be a long road – twelve to eighteen months – but it would certainly pay off in the long run. (Note: for those of you thinking of starting a project or hare-brained scheme, you need to start talking about it in months, not years. Sixty months sounds like a walk in the park – five years sounds like a lifetime.)
 

This idea was so good that after I’d rolled it around upstairs for a day, I was still excited about it. So, I took the opportunity this evening to share the idea with my family.
 

I will pause here and say that this does not happen often. I get a lot of ideas, and if I bounced each one of them off of the wife and kiddos, they’d start to think I was a little off my rocker.
 

But, I knew this one was different – it had so much common sense and real-life application that it could have come from Bill Gates, or at least Melinda Gates. So, I figured the wife would say something like “That’s a great idea. Why don’t you quit your job and work on that. I love you honey – you are so brilliant.” (The kids would be too in awe of me to actually speak.)
 
That is not what happened. In fact, let me just quote my ten-and-a-half year old daughter.
 

“Daddy, that’s like saying ‘Hey, see that cloud? If you give me $20, I’ll name it after you.’ And then the cloud disappears. Daddy, it’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

So, yeah, I was a little crushed. But, I had to laugh at the analogy. How did she come up with that? Clearly she is exhibiting signs of her inherited brilliance. Plus, her mom is pretty smart too.
 

I still think it is a good idea. No, a great idea. But, I’m not going to share it here, obviously, because I’ve been belittled enough for one day, thank you very much.
 

Do you think people would pay to have a cloud named after them?
 

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.