Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 334: A Sick Day

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Yesterday was a first for me since I started Purposed worKING in October of 2008. Yesterday I missed a day because I was sick. I went to get up at my usual early waking hour and I couldn’t get out of bed as the flu or something that had been brewing for the last few days, hit me full-on like a Mack Truck. I spent the day trying to get up to write and I would end up back in bed within a few minutes. After the fourth try I figured I wasn’t supposed to be getting up and writing but rather in bed resting. So, I had to take, what all of us have to take sometimes; a sick day. I am not a big fan of sick days because as I continue to learn, they just throw you back in your schedule and with the changes in meetings, etc. one day can throw off a whole week. Not to mention the emails that just stack up and the people on the other end of the messages wanting to know why you haven’t replied. It’s just not a good thing, but it is part of working. Of course, there are the stories of the people who work their entire career and never miss a day of work. They are amazing stories and amazing people; the few who can claim that type of streak. It has to be a bad sickness to knock me down, but it happens. Sometimes God may want to have us slow down a bit to remember and recognize some other things in our lives. How many times do we run ourselves into the ground and find that we have opened ourselves up to becoming susceptible to the thing that is going around, just because we haven’t rested enough, eaten right or taken care of ourselves? And then when we find ourselves flat on our backs, we really have no one to blame but ourselves. This lesson is a good one in that the same can be said about our spiritual lives. As I was spending the afternoon in the state between awake and asleep, I was reminded that God wants to take our burdens and our weariness and take the burden from us. But, if we don’t take care or ourselves spiritually either, like staying in the Word, praying, worshipping and turning our burdens over to God, then we are just as susceptible to losing our spiritual healthiness as we are when we lose our physical health. So, do right by yourself and stay in God’s Word and stay strong and healthy spirtually and as it comes to having to take a sick day now and then, I pray that no other will have a sick day like I had yesterday.

Reference: Matthew 11:28-30 (New Living Testament)