There are times when you have to do what you have to do, even if you're not fully into having to do it. As this article posts, I'm either just getting ready to leave or I'll be on the road heading to Washington D.C. for a meeting with this national organization I'm a part of tomorrow. It will be an all day meeting, and once it's over I'll be driving back home.

Every once in awhile we do what we do because it's the right thing to do. I'm the president of an organization called Mid York, which is a medical organization mainly for patient accounting people. Ours is the local chapter of a national organization, and for the past 15 years that I've been on the board, we try to set up educational meetings for people in our industry, while the national organization has its yearly big to-do in various places around the country. This year's event will be somewhere in Florida; I can never remember where since the first 3 times we were in Fort Lauderdale, and this time it's elsewhere.

I'm not big of volunteering for almost anything because there's always a time commitment one has to be ready to give, and frankly my time is kind of tight most of the time. It's hard working for oneself; you have to beat that drum more consistently than someone else might, especially when you're in an industry where it's hard to have regular, recurring clients.

And yet I feel it's important to do something, to belong to something, and if you're going to be a part of it you might as well be a part that gets to have a say, right? I'm not going to be the guy in the kitchen making sandwiches; I'm going to be the guy in the meeting talking about what kind of sandwiches we should serve.

Try not to stay secluded within your own circle too often. Branch out and do something for someone else. When you do, you're really doing it for yourself, and you might even enjoy it.