It's Easter. I'm a metaphysical skeptic, and I love believers. At this point in my life, the holiday's celebration of redemption and rebirth couldn't feel more relevant.
I'm 60. That fact disturbs me, or means nothing, depending on my mindset at any given time. I have, despite a lifetime of injuries, and with effort, never been better overall, both mentally and physically. (Vanity alert: my arms and shoulders have never been more cut or buff. Kinda crazy.) The bad news is that my skin is starting to lose its snap, and product isn't keeping up. Crushing. I'm too old for that reaction, but hey, I'm just getting started.
I was not born girly; I came out feral. Realizing at age four that I could outcompete my entire family at memorization tasks, and then excelling against my classmates in school, I effortlessly became an outspoken, arrogant, child asshole. Needless to say, that was a double-edged sword. In my teens, when I realized I was offending people I liked, and being hypercritical of everyone, including myself, I made a conscious decision to suppress my voice. It's high time that I try to retrieve some of the authenticity I forfeited with that decision.
The skin thing: this can't be happening to me. That — the inexorable physical diminishment of muscle and function, day by day, from ALS — can't be happening to my brother, my oldest friend.
I feel chained to a career that serves me too well, and badly. I'm an individual contributor who would rather be leading. My leadership activities are constrained to project management, and whatever back–channel influencing of higher–ups I can achieve, based purely on personal rapport. I get immeasurable joy from working with wonderful friends and colleagues I've known for decades. They come attached to work I can do in my sleep, but said work is based on a relatively obscure technical skillset demanded by only the largest science and engineering organizations. My current position exists inside a contractor org that simply doesn't know what to do with my bizarre talent stack: analysis, leadership, non–fiction communications, art direction, and a complete lack of tolerance for human resources performance–management bullshit.
(If and when I lead an organization again, I will do it on my terms. There are ways to make an org work efficiently and cohesively, but HR serves a toxic, liability–avoidance agenda that simply lowers morale and productivity, instead of lifting people and their enterprises up. I should note, I know great people who work in HR. What I'm saying is, I've watched HR function across all sizes of organizations, for decades. It is a force for evil, everywhere. Please, anyone, show me a counterexample. I would genuinely love to see one, but please make sure that your example is goodness from HR, and not from its absence.)
Where were we? There've been two times — at age 19, and again more recently — when certain men in my life have commented on what they saw as my state of anxiety. They weren't wrong. It's interesting to note that both men possessed a notable percentage of psycho–spiritual fuckboy* in their personalities. So there you have it: fuckboys can, by their very arrogance and detachment, be valuable truth–tellers. One of those men introduced me to the term fuckboy, and I'd wager that if he read this, he'd see the humor in my applying it to him. He smacked me like a cue ball in the direction of what turned into extraordinary growth. In his unique way, he looks out for my soul, wants what's best for me, and is an incalculably valuable friend, despite (and because of) the cost of his detachment. (*Sorry, UrbanDictionary: I'm making fuckboy a compound word.)
The anxiety — which most people do not recognize in me as such — initially came from earliest childhood illness and loss of control therewith, and from psychologically (and sometimes physically) abusive older brothers; and from a brain that (still) spins too fast for my own good sometimes. Starting in my early twenties, I began working to address all of these. I'd made huge progress; thought I had it dialed in.
So, how did the aforementioned cue–ball friend smack me? By asking me to learn a combination of completely new disciplines and skills very quickly, for his startup. (A poor skills:challenge ratio, in HR parlance.) He knew the cocky, competent me, and overestimated the speed of my learning process. I let him. I was not prepared to handle the ego–depletion of being unable to accomplish that learning and apply it fast enough to meet the necessary schedule.
I'll note that if anyone I cared about had described the setup of this engagement, I would have adamantly recommended against them taking the gig. My real mistake, though, was that, instead of just accepting the folly of the original proposition (or how it actually played out), I initially considered that inability as a failure on my part. I was not okay with anyone thinking I'm a failure: especially me, and especially him.
I bounced back and learned other useful stuff that contributed to the startup's product architecture, but that's not the point: I struggled under my own gaze, and projected it onto him. Not by coincidence, this is the period during which he said to me, repeatedly: "You worry too much."
He prodded me in the direction of a rigorous process of defining my personal mission statement. I gave it a perfunctory go; he thought my effort weak, and could see the depth of crap I was slogging through better than I could. He urged me to go deeper. (Herein lies the value of having a clear–eyed, battle–tested coach.) And with that long look inward began the redemption and the rebirth. Despite my prior deep exploration and healing of past traumas, I had allowed myself to slide over a precipice with my brother's illness, and the landing had broken me. It was time for a re–up of introspection and self repair.
Cutting to the chase, what did the resulting progress entail? Realizing that I'm still as capable as I ever was at learning, but that realistic constraints must exist. Monitoring my inner experience on a minute–by–minute basis — whenever I'm not in a flow state — for negative self–talk, and replacing it with a corresponding, positive vision of what I want for myself and my team. (Raise myself up.) Reframing that notion of failure to match what the experience actually was: a lesson in the need for contingency planning. I had no plan B for how to be of use, and how to think of myself, if I was unable to deliver what the team needed. I'm the only person who could have arranged that plan B. I accept full responsibility for my experience. I encourage you to do the same. (There's that word again, courage; it keeps coming up. I'll talk about its meaning and challenges sometime soon.)
It's the origins of the ideas that I relied (and continue to rely) upon, and the ideas and practices themselves — the how of redemption and rebirth — that have been most surprising. (And to my fellow skeptics, don't be afraid: you need not be a card–carrying member of any faith to take this journey, Easter metaphor notwithstanding.)
I hope you'll stay with me for blog entry #2, On the Precipice.