Why George Costanza was a genius

Season 9, episode 16: The Burning.

George decides that anytime he feels he has hit a high note (be it in conversation, a meeting, whatever), he's going to use that opportunity to leave - always going out on a high note, with the audience wanting more. It's a beautiful strategy. Simple, yet effective. Something I need to learn.

Employment university is in the process of putting together a large, multi-institution grant and there was a conference call yesterday to strategize. Since the conference call was originating on campus, I took the opportunity to go to the source and found myself in a room with a small group of people in charge of the writing of the grant, surrounding the conference phone-thingy with about 20 callers. It made it a lot easier to communicate my ideas to the group, which I did, but I did not listen to my inner George.

Once the call was over and the phone turned off, the people in the room continued discussion on ways to craft the grant. What will be the central themes? How do we structure it? How do we get useable input from all the players without being buried in text? Since I have a vested interest in much of what this grant would support, I stayed and opined rather than walking out when everyone else hung up their phone and went back to work. Shoulda left on the high note.

Suddenly, my name was being woven into the list of people writing the grant. Suddenly I am part of the "core group". Before I knew it, I have two meetings next week before the group meeting on Wednesday and I have 8 emails already this morning about this. What the fuck just happened?

I guess it's good because I can ensure that the pieces of the proposal that will most affect me will stay off the cutting room floor, but damnit. As if my summer weren't flying by fast enough already, now I'm basically taking on a service role for this massive proposal? No one gets credit for building the pyramid, no matter how great it is. Dude. Fuck. Sigh.