Last week I was off of work. I took a vacation but it was really working around the house, so not a real vacation. I did my best not to look at work email but every once and a while I would peek as the number of unread kept climbing. This was a mistake, as the number grew to two hundred over the week I would see things that I was going to have to deal with when I got back which only made me worry and think about them more. When I did get back this week most of them had worked themselves out, some still had to be handled but for the most part, nobody died, nobody was even injured! Yeah, I had to look through a lot of emails but life went on. I don’t know why I dread being gone so much, I always think that the world is going to blow up or some crisis that only I can handle will happen. That is not the truth, I have a great team and they take care of business, nothing is going to happen that can’t be solved without me. Maybe that is what I worry about more, that I am not needed or that the world can go on without me. Then I remember the book “Good to Great” and realize that my job is to hire good people who can go on without me, my job is to empower them. Maybe I should actually take that vacation time I have stored up!