My wife has been out of town this entire week. Two weekends before, she was out of town for four days; this time it'll be eight in total.

Over that long weekend she was gone, I didn't know how to take care of myself, and it was somewhat embarrassing. My wife does a lot of things for me that I hadn't really paid much attention to. I was a fairly independent person before I got married, and I was older when I got married.

I never noticed just how many things my wife took over, as I started getting on the road and being gone most of the time until that weekend. The first full day she was gone, I didn't eat breakfast because I didn't know what to eat. I didn't end up eating anything until very late in the evening, when I remembered there was a canned ham in the cupboard. The next morning I was lucky that I had a meeting to go to; that took care of breakfast. I still didn't eat lunch, and I ordered dinner from a restaurant to be delivered to the house. Over the next two days, I remembered that I knew how to make eggs, and I'd gone to the store for some bacon and peanut butter and bread; that was it for that weekend.

This time, though, I had a week to think about it. So, the day she left, I went to the store that evening and bought actual groceries, something I can't remember the last time doing on my own. I picked foods that I knew how to cook, food that I knew I would eat. I didn't only buy junk food, which means no cans of Spaghetti O's, though I like them, or other processed foods of the like. The only concession was some beef hot dogs for a quick meal; I figured I deserved that at least. When my wife comes home, she'll find me relatively healthy, well fed, and I didn't gain any weight from the week; she might be proud.

When it comes to management, sometimes one gets locked into a position where they manage so much that doing the job becomes more of a memory of what the job used to be than what the job actually is. I have met many managers who have forgotten what it is they actually supervise people doing. They forget how to actually put their hands on something and do the job, and that's dangerous. When I was a manager, every once in awhile I would claim some bit of work and do it, just so I could keep my skills up in some fashion, though I didn't have a lot of time to do it. And I would learn just what I'd forgotten; passing out new rules and regulations is one thing; remembering them when you don't do the job all the time and decide you're going to pitch in is another thing entirely. It can be embarrassing; it can also be a great learning experience.

Always try to find time to get your hands dirty, so to speak, so that you can at least identify in some fashion with what everyone else is doing. At least, in my home example, I was happy to learn that I still knew how to cook; thank goodness for small things, eh?