Early Start Today

Posted on | June 14, 2008 |

This morning I was up early and siting quietly outside drinking my coffee and reading the paper, enjoying the relative heat.  Of course now at just past 8am its kicking 90 degrees, so today should be another scorcher.  But that’s cool with me, I would much rather have this than ever see snow again.  Although it looks nice from the window, Pittsburgh really relieved me of any desire to live through a blizzard ever again.  Yet I digress …

So yesterday I was the subject of a coming to Jesus meeting at AVMG.  I know I have been really stressed at the office, its showing and has been for a little while now.  It may sound like this was a bad meeting but it was really quite the opposite.  I have a great team that I work with who are generally concerned about me and that is a very nice thing.  However, the stress of my personal life has leaked into my professional world and that is just unacceptable; to me as well as others.  It is time for me to find a new way to creatively and constructively release the built up stress that comes with my job.

Not many people can understand what its like to be “on” for 24 hours a day during the entire duration (usually 4-9 days) of a show.  Let alone understand the experience of a  “combat AV” show where I have basically nobody to turn to for immediate help, or even a break.  I liken it to running on a razor blade with bare feet while humping a 50LB. rucksack and trying not to get cut. Its not easy that’s for damn sure.

Normally, I am known for doing this with ease, but on this last go around I felt like I was beginning to bleed; in reality I was very close to bleeding out.  It’s my own fault for not delegating enough responsibility and obsessing over details and I know it.  Hell I knew it then too, but didn’t have the confidence in certain people’s abilities to get specific items done on a fairly insane schedule.

Sometimes I take so much ownership of a project that its schedule begins to dictate my life, and that’s when the stress really begins to mount.  When I go home and sit down, open up the laptop again, and feel like its my responsibility to resume working after an 8 hour day, that’s probably nuts, and an inaccurate picture of what my team expects of me.  Somehow I need to learn to draw a logical line between my personal and professional life and that’s the hard part.  For me, my work has always been my life.  It is all consuming at times and its always been that way, all on or all off.  But now that I am a little older and have a different set of responsibilities and priorities this juggle has got to sway a little in the other direction.  I need to be able to let go of work and try and focus on keeping my personal soul happy.  If I can’t do that, then we get what we had right here … failure for me to communicate.

When I started the job a year ago I was on medication for anxiety from the divorce.  Over the last several months I have stopped taking my medication because of the side effects and relative stupor it can put me in.  I really hate the feeling of not being in control of my own body, and in a nut shell that’s why I don’t like the meds.  There are also less desirable (and some desirable) sexual side effects that go along with it as well.  I’m not going to get into that, but its easy to figure out what I’m talking about.

In an effort to stay off the meds I was trying to get back to a spiritual/religious level through Buddhism.  Well that has kind of fallen off …  I am so weird with religion of any kind.  I just don’t trust it.  I don’t know why but my intuition has never really let me buy into anything on that level for any length of time.  I’m not agnostic, nor am I ignorant of any form of religion, as I have studied nearly all the various types over the years to some degree or another. Yet I never can fully immerse myself in one form for a real length of time.  I just see the creation and being of life much different than most people.

So what am I going to do about all of this?  Well for starters I am joining a health club today and beginning a lunch time commitment to go everyday when I am off the road.  Sure I have a freakin’ Atlas gym in my garage but you think I use it?!  No, I need to get out of the house for stuff like this.  I think I’ve used the home gym twice in the last six weeks.  Exercise is what I really need now, for my mind as well as my body.

One of the team members mentioned that he would partner up during lunch to start some serious weights, which would be a great motivator for me.  If I have a partner than maybe I can get back some definition and my six pack.  That would be nice.

I am also going to delegate responsibilities and take the time to teach people how to do something the way I want it done.  This will take more time on the front end, and I know it, but in the end the team (as well as me) will be better for it.

I’m going to take some time each day to just sit, relax, and assess the current state of things.  I have a tendency to see what’s wrong with a project or situation, and that comes from the technician side of my background and a desire to “fix” things.  What I need to do is focus on what was already accomplished and what it will take to efficiently complete a project.  And that’s a key item there, efficiency.  I must make a conscious effort to streamline the processes I use to complete certain tasks.  I must also learn to let go of some of the more detailed aspects of projects and my desire to make everything perfect.

Sometimes you just do not need to make every last detail exactly as so.  Its the ADD and OCD in me that drive that desire and its a demon I have battled my whole life.  It is something I inherited from my father and over the years I have seen him deal with the same issue.  Its time for me to learn that same lesson.

Well there you have it.  I’m not entirely sure why I just wrote that, but it seems to always help when I do so.  I may be a person who wears his life on his sleeve, but I do not always wear the full outfit and usually hide the real stuff pretty deep.  Its been that way ever since the divorce, and was probably that way through my marriage now that I think of it.  I know I’m not the only one with life issues.  Sometimes it just takes a lot for me to step back and see that.  I’m getting better at it, but I know its a long road and I’ve just begun to walk it.  It was much easier to do when I had a partner, but as someone famous once sang “I don’t want it, if I can’t get it on my own …”

Thank you to my team for their continued support, both on and off the field.  I will not let you or myself down again.

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