David Welch Life Information
2001

2001 was a year of tremendous change. It is fair to say that I experienced more change this one year than ever before. Without further adieu, my annual top-10 list (in chronological order).

1.) Final Showcase. In what was my final project at Accenture, I managed the delivery of a $2M internal project called eShowcase. I managed three teams comprised of about 50 people, with these teams spread out over New Jersey, Texas, and California. We overcame several east coast blizzards and major software challenges, but in the end, we successfully delivered eShowcase to a world-wide audience of Accenture Partners.

2.) Singapore Fling. In April, I presented eShowcase to Accenture subject matter experts gathered in Singapore. On the way there, the travel gods were kind. Me and my french horn were both bumped to international first class on the 14-hour connection to Japan. After the conference, I spent the weekend in Singapore as a tourist. One of the true highlights was discovering a Saturday evening concert by a Chinese Orchestra, complete with instruments I had never heard before such as the Gaohu, Erhu, and Pipa. I greeted musicians at intermission and learned more about these beautiful instruments. These were sounds that became woven into this magical trip. It was the perfect way to conclude my career at Accenture.

3.) The Right Brass Quintet. On Easter, my brass quintet, the Quintessential Brass Repertoire, performed again at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. After one of the services, I looked to my right and there was a stately-looking gentleman giving a huge thumbs-up to QBR and the choir. What was so noteworthy is that this was astronaut John Glenn! The same thumb that signaled success at the end of missions to the moon was waving in approval. What a thrill!

4.) July 1992 - July 2001. After 9 years with Accenture, I went on job search after my return from Singapore. Since I had just finished delivering a major project, I had nine weeks to transition a number of non-client-facing responsibilities and to consider next steps. I used this time to dramatically decrease overall activities, consolidate finances, and focus personal goals. After traveling extensively for Accenture the past five years, the timing was right. On July 2nd, I conducted my exit interview and immediately greeted my brass quintet outside the office where we gave a "Farewell Accenture" Concert. I felt lucky to have friends, family, and colleagues to help mark the occasion.

5.) Got Beer? By July, it was time for vacation, somewhere out of my element. Among other stopping points in a week-long itinerary was the Virginia Motor Speedway in Saluda, VA. Dirt Track Racing at its best! This was the brain-child of my Father, who had gathered the Welch Family for this evening of extremely loud fun. By our estimation, we had more teeth per capita than probably 2/3 of the crowd. But, we got into the spirit of the evening. A wreck every two minutes, deafening engines, lots of screaming and whoopin' it up, and fun people to share the moment. Just what I needed -- and I didn't even know it.

6.) Sweat Equity. With my God-sent, new-found personal time, I immediately invested some serious sweat equity into my house. I oversaw finish carpentry on my deck and the construction of a concrete gutter behind my house to resolve long-standing water problems. I also did weeks of painting and purchased living room furniture. (Friends will be glad to know that they can now sit when they visit!) Regarding my new furniture, I enlisted the expertise of some dear friends -- especially Nancy Thomas. I long ago learned to just shut up and trust these southern women in matters of design. In the process, they lost an important bet which still needs settling (inside joke), but as always, great fun to hang out with them.

7.) Living Wright. After years of correspondence, I finally traveled to Arizona to visit Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, a friend who heads the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives in Scottsdale. What an experience to hear stories and perspectives from a man who studied with FLLW for a decade and who is a walking encyclopedia on matters related to Wright. Bruce also afforded me the opportunity to stay in a house designed by Wright and to see the vast archives of original Wright drawings at Taliesin West. This trip was just a few days before 9/11, making Taliesin West seem, in retrospect, all the more like another world.

8.) September 11th. The most personal moment for me was the Sunday after 9/11. QBR performed at a special service at the National Presbyterian Church. Our instructions: play as loud as physically possible. In my 25 years of horn playing, I have had some extraordinary moments and have played at some phenomenal venues. However, nothing has ever matched the moment we played "America, the Beautiful." Every voice in this packed church was filled with emotion so palpable that I just cried while playing. That amount of humanity, compassion, love, and patriotism had vast reservoirs of solace and hope.

9.) World Championship Software. So, what next after Accenture? The answer that took root was/is a partnership with long-time friends Kevin Dunetz and Doug Rutherford. Our last experience on the same "team" was in 1987 when we won the Drum & Bugle Corps World Championship with the Garfield Cadets. 15 years later, we found ourselves with extraordinarily complimentary professional skills. So it is that we are in the process of spinning out a new software company. Despite numerous economic risks, our first months have resulted in significant inroads at AT&T, Accenture, and several multi-billion dollar corporations. More information about what we are up to can be found at www.telcoexchange.com/software/lots.

10.) Michael Jordan at 51. In yet another business write-off, Kevin Dunetz and I finally, finally, FINALLY got to see our mutual hero in action. Michael Jordan has inspired us for years, and we thought we lost our opportunity to see him perform live after he retired several years ago. When Jordan came back from retirement this past year, we swore we would not miss our chance again. So it is that we saw MJ in December at the MCI Center. In his previous game, he scored a whopping 6 points – a career low. Little did we know the treat in store for us! We flashed back in time as Jordan rattled off 51 points. Have Kevin and I ever screamed louder than at that game? Well, maybe in the stands of a drum corps show, but you get the point. Well worth the 14-year wait.

2001 was rich with many more memorable events -- weekend treks around California between business trips; cold winter nights at the Asheville Arts & Crafts Conference; my cousin Rachel's Bat Mitzvah in Miami; an 80th birthday celebration/reunion for my Grandpa Miller in Orlando; actually finding space in my life to date once again; college friend Karen Doolittle's wedding south of LA (followed by a reception where Karen's Grandmother and I won the Austin Powers portion of the dance contest as best shag-a-delic dancers); continued drum corps adventures in Toronto to work on a book and in Buffalo to reunite at the world championships; revisiting my old stomping grounds of Research Triangle Park, NC with some thoroughly displaced South Carolinians; a third trip to the warm climes of Florida to visit family; a Michigan jaunt to catch up with friendships forged in Antarctica; an absolutely smokin' Stan Kenton Christmas Concert; a QBR wedding performance for my good friend Rita Bureika; and a black tie New Year's Eve Celebration overlooking the nation's capital, metaphorically signaling national hope for new beginnings.

Each of these experiences was shared by at least one family member or friend – someone reading this yearly update. In a year of great change, I find myself wondering what else could matter more than that.

"you have an opportunity to make things better and if you don't, then you are wasting your time on this earth." – Roberto Clemente

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people." – Virginia Wolf

"Listen to your heart – it always has the right answer." – Anonymous friend of mine

"If I had known what it would be like to have it all, I might have been willing to settle for less." – Lily Tomlin

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." – Catherine Aird

"I am a woman – I am ruled by my biology." – Lexann Timberlake, friend

"Maintenance is easier than recovery." – David Welch

"Have the courage to look deep and the boldness to act upon what you see." – Jean Raffa, friend and author of "The Bridge to Wholeness: A Feminine Alternative to the Hero Myth"

"Shedding your skin is a great exercise." – Ellen Kochansky, friend and artist

"Why is more important than what." – Christopher Corr, friend and colleague

"Beneath scars are muscle." – Anonymous

"It's not too late for you to become a person of substance." – from the movie Almost Famous

"I love my music – I'm not willing to give up my music for anybody." – Stevie Nicks, singer with Fleetwood Mac

"Violence has replaced the musical." – Elvis Mitchell, NPR film critic

"You are wiser when you lose your own money. I believe that." – Doug Rutherford, friend and business partner

"It is easier to find a good man that it is to find a good pair of shoes." – Nancy Thomas, friend and artist

"Don't lose your head / to a woman who will spend your bread." – lyrics from a Rod Stewart song

"Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around." – Sophia from the movie Vanilla Sky

"99% of the world's lovers are not with their first choice – that's what the jukebox is for." – Willie Nelson

"Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony." – Thomas Merton

"Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision alongside an ability to take their place in a materialistic world." – Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Excerpts from "The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America," by David Whyte. I have gone heavy on these quotes but would not have done so without merit.

• "For the personality, bankruptcy or failure may be a disaster, for the soul it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill and a condition it has been secretly engineering for years."
• "The belief has been that we can drink only on weekends or vacations and must proceed to shrivel slowly as the desiccating years roll by. Whatever strategy we employ, or whoever we choose to speak with, we are eventually compelled to bring our work life into the realm of spiritual examination. Life does not seem to be impressed by our arguments that we can ignore our deeper desires simply because we happen to be earning a living at the time"
• "To some extent, while we think we are simply driving to work every morning to earn a living, the soul knows it is secretly engaged in a life-or-death struggle for its existence."
• "We cannot neglect our interior fire without damaging ourselves in the process. A certain vitality smolders inside us irrespective of whether it has an outlet or not. When it remains unlit, the body fills with dense smoke."
• "As the current catchphrase goes, we want to work smarter rather than harder. Yet all of us are familiar with frantic busyness as a state that continually precludes us from opening to the quiet and contemplation it takes to be smart."
• "Sometimes we have so disowned our bodies in the cerebral machinations of the organizational world that a phrase like Walk back into the body may be a noncompute. I am in my body, we say, where else is there to be? But the question must then be Which body? The body we use like a machine to get everything done, or the body (William) Blake described as '...the chief outlet of the soul in our age?'"
• "The same voice that will say no to the CEO will also say no to the new car and the larger house that make us scared to death of losing our income and thus render us powerless to speak out. Not that the soul is puritanical about our expenditures, but if the voice is embodying the soul's desires it will say no again and again to the false seductions that lead us off on the path of fear and material aggrandizement."
• "If we have little idea of what we really want from our lives, or what a soulful approach to our work might mean, then often the only entrance we have into soul comes from the ability to say a firm no to those things we intuit lead to a loss of vitality.
• "Many of us can look back on our own youth to a company of friends who showed great promise and gifts and were one way or another slain by the adult world, either literally in the Vietnam War, or more subtly by the debilitating pressures of law school or a high-pressure corporation...Many of the youths it has slain are still standing in upright positions, carrying out orders to the letter, enduring their work as a form of living death."
• "But for many of us late in our careers, by the time we get to a final savoring and consummation of the act of living, we have so neglected the young innocent inside us that there is no one left to wander into the clearing at the crucial moment, no one to enjoy the precious fruits of our labors. The glittering treasures lie like lead in our hands."
• "Be it for corporation, institution, academy or army, we apprentice ourselves to something seemingly greater, wealthier, older and much more knowledgeable than ourselves. Our security gains us time and space until we can ground ourselves more solidly into our own identity. But at midlife, a man or woman feels an inner siren call like an old memory. No matter how long or how faithfully we have served, we suddenly remember our former intuitions for a possible life."
• "But how marvelous, then, at the end of long pilgrimage, to simply bow to what we have discovered, circle our accomplishment at work, and leave again, with the very minimum of fuss, turning our backs on everything to take the first steps of another long journey back toward the center of our selves, our family, and our communities."
• "As peace and quiet has retreated from the world since the wheels of the industrial revolution began to creak and rumble, this need for an insulated, almost quiescent state has magnified; we are all now unrequited pilgrims of silence, and our wish for an island of quiet is often lived out through our wish for control over others and their actions."
• "Hurrying from one work station to another, we hope the hurrying itself can grant us the importance we seek. Slowing for a moment, we might open up the emptiness at the center of all form."
• "We can have fire in our approach only if our heart is in the work, and it is hard to put our heart in the work when most of what we feel is stress."
• "...present-day corporate America is alive with movement yet filled with dark and brooding omens. It feeds our economy, our families, and our communities, yet does as much to break apart those same communities, families, and individuals who work for it as any force we have in our society."
• "Faced with the pain of...the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment, and quickly busy ourselves. But then we must live with the consequences of turning away."
• "We understand that though the world will never be simple, a life that honors the soul seems to have a kind of radical simplicity at the center of it."

  

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