A Day at the Shredder

The shredding hour is upon us. Or maybe it's just me.

Every April I go through this exercise, attributable to my inordinate fear of Identity Theft. And because I come from a family of Accountants. Meaning, I save paper, in the form of receipts, invoices, healthcare statement, utility bills, and various clippings I tear from the newspaper about sordid Floridians engaged in bestiality. 

I can't help myself.

In my garage I keep a huge plastic tub with about 10 years worth of accordian files stuffed to the gills with the recordings of my life. I sometimes think these paint a more vivid picture than the ten thousand or so digital photos crammed into my iPhone.

As I was shredding credit card bills from 2014 I took a moment to scan the charges. $54.91 from that not so clean Guatamalan restaurant on Venice Blvd., that we had hoped would be an undiscovered jewel in the rough, it wasn't.

There was also a charge for $17.25 from the Boulder Parking Garage. That's from I went up to visit my daughter at the University of Colorado for her sorority's Father Daughter Thigamajig. That was a surprisingly fun weekend.

I also came across a computer readout from my day at the Richard Petty NASCAR School, where I strapped myself into a 600 horsepower land rocket and took the high banked turns at Fontana Raceway at speeds close to 130mph. 

This last piece of now-shredded paper was most interesting because it detailed my performance on each concurrent lap and I could see from the data how I increased the speed with growing confidence.

I bring this up for a reason. Another surprise. 

Because my current job with Honey has me involved with Performance Marketing. I'm not ashamed to admit, this is new to me. Granted I did spend many years writing ads for Nissan, Lexus, Jaguar and Acura dealers and those efforts were gauged against subsequent sales. 

But this is different.

It's more direct and instantaneous. And the feedback couldn't be clearer. As such, when the numbers are good, I'm a little ecstatic. And when the numbers are not so good, that's when the self-loathing kicks in.

I'm almost three months into the job and like to think I'm getting better at this. Time will tell.

But it's also proof that you can teach an old 44 year old new tricks.