masking & unveiling

I heard an ad on the radio tonight for, well, radio. Radio is free, and it should stay that way, it said. Just support your local advertisers, and this very adequate, very free radio will do the job it's always done, it said.

Translated, however, this ad says something quite different: "You don't need that silly HD radio stuff with more choices, or that crazy subscriber-based radio thing, or the Internet, mp3s and media players in your car. We are trying perpetuate what we've got going here, no matter how much change might work for your life. This is what we've invested in. Change will waste all the time and money we've put in. Change will create so much work for us that we might die in the process."

It's like the phone company trying to force you to carry a landline when the world's going wireless. Or Polaroid cranking out film and hoping that digital cameras are a fad.

There are many ways and patterns I've poured a lot of time and energy in over the years that just aren't working for me any more. I need to stop letting my past investment dictate the present reality. I need to let them go, take the loss, absorb the hit, and move on to what works now.