GETTIN PERSONAL

For the past few weeks I've been ramblin on and on about missions, goals, and products. So today I thought I'd get a little more personal.

My name's Pat Lange, founder and "3EO" of Ingzig. I'm a pacifistic idealistic kid at heart whose favorite sports are motocross and ice hockey. Yet regardless of the type of competition chances are you'll find me rootin for the underdog. I absolutely adore music and have been playin drums and dashboards on and off since I was thirteen. I'm a deeply impassioned person with an undermining tendency to be more moved than motivated, and little if anything moves me more than seein someone successfully doin what he or she loves to do. And quite frankly, little has affected me more adversely over the years than my own inability to make the same claim.

In the short story Cafes Are For Handicapping, a story Steve Chandler refers to in his book 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, Terry Hill writes about a character named Joe Warner, a reporter who was in the press box at Belmont when the now legendary Secretariat put away the Triple Crown by 31 lengths. "I looked around me as he was coming down the stretch, and all these hardened cigar-chomping New York newspapermen had tears running down their cheeks like little babies. Of course I couldn't see too clearly myself for the tears in my own eyes."

"This story," says Steve Chandler, "brings me closer to a question I've been asking all my life: why do we get all choked up when witnessing great accomplishments?" "My theory," he explains, "is that we weep for the winner in all of us, that in poignant moments like these we cry because we know for a fact that there is something in us that could be every bit as great as what we are watching. We are, for the moment, the untapped greatness we are seeing, and we get tears in our eyes because we know that that greatness isn't being realized."

The reason I bring it up here is because this story, along with Mr. Chandler's interpretation of it, pretty much describes me to a tee. You see for most of my life I too have watched others pursue their dreams while I passively sit on the sidelines thinkin, "I could do that." And I mean that quite literally. Ya see for years I'd buy concert tickets that were far from the most coveted seats in the house, opting instead for those that were way off to the side of the stage where I could get a much better look at the drummer. And there I'd vicariously sit, thinkin, "man that could be me." The sad thing is I still do the same thing today; watchin, wonderin, what if I'd stuck with it? What if I'd kept it up?

At thirteen I honestly had no idea of the impact my on-again-off-again relationship with drummin would have on the rest of my life. And today at fifty-one I can't even begin to tell ya. But hey, the good news is that for the past seven years (my longest stint to date) I've once again been playin on a regular basis. And I gotta say it's been both moving and motivating. Like the Charmin, I'm on a roll. See ya next time. Till then, keeep it up.