My PRIDE has been CURBED!

November, oh November! You were supposed to be better than October, but alas, all you have brought me are men that look like douche-bags with their Mo competition, which has become more about proving their manhood than about actually raising money for the cause. Oh and yes it has also delivered me EPIC FAILURE!

If there is a lesson that was finally drilled into my head in November it was this: humility.  Scrap that. It wasn’t drilled, but curbed into me. Actually, I think it was my pride that was curbed. Professionally speaking, 2011 has been a catastrophe: first the $10,000 charge-back in January, then being sued and finally the cherry on top of the crappy cake that has become my life, I lost my biggest client on Thursday.  You know what, 2011? IT IS ENOUGH! I’ve been kicked out of my house, estranged from a family member, forced to share a bed with my mother for the better part of half a year – and NOW THIS!!! You know what life is – it is a big old douche-bag!

Part of me thinks the professional defeat has been my most crushing failure because what else do I have?  I am 32 years old, roommates with my mother, with not a man in sight, and I rent. I don’t even own a car anymore. I am on the peasant wagon (aka the bus) where 3 out of 5 mornings there is a serial farter. By the time I get to my ass job, my hair actually smells like that -  ass.  Oh the irony of it all. It is not like I want to be married with 2 kids and a mortgage right now; however, my profession was something that I relied on to define me.  I look at my friends and see their successes and think, wow, they are so much further along in life than I am. But then I think to myself that I have built a profitable business (well, not this year – thanks again 2011) from the ground up.  However, this year I failed at that as well.  And to be honest, it is humiliating and devastating.

Last Thursday I was crushed when I lost my biggest client. I reached out to a few of these professional successful people who to be honest I assumed would have little idea of the pain I was in because they were so much further ahead in the game of life.  It is surprising what you discover when you actually open up and talk to people about things that have gone wrong in work.  I discovered I was not alone.  Lucy, with her strong will, determination and intellect, revealed that she had lost three cases in a row once.  She was she told by a partner “there are winners and there are losers, and when you lose four in a row, you are a loser.”  I’m sure that did wonders for her self-esteem as she thought “One more to go”.  I would have never known.  My most shocking conversation was with my buddy Gurpreet.  The man is one of the best ambulance chasers in the city.  He fights, he battles, he wins – and when I called him crushed on Thursday he shared his stories of lost cases and clashes with clients. I believed failure was a myth to this guy!  All this got me thinking that perhaps my idea of failure may be a bit perverse.  Lucy and Gurpreet are extremely successful people in my eyes and even this new information about their setbacks didn’t change my opinion of them.

I had worked my ass off for this client. I had the relationship and offered a good product, but in the end, their business went elsewhere.  It got me asking why have I decided to be in business for myself?  To be a professional with pressure?  It is not all about the money, although, yes that is nice (when I make it). But I could be a postal worker and make $80,000 a year to sort mail.  I wouldn’t have to worry about RSPs because my pension would be sick. I could have massage therapy paid for through my group plan. Heck, I wouldn’t even have to buy work clothes – they provide a uniform.  Lucy posed the million dollar question to me one day: “Why can’t we just be simpletons?”  You know the simpleton mentality: government should take responsibility for something you could do on your own, your world view is what your ‘friends’ post on Facebook and what the Kardashians are wearing this week.  This describes my father – he doesn’t work, has lived off my mother for the last 13 years and yet he believes he is supporting her.  He does the same thing every day – for an unemployed man his schedule of gym, eating, drinking and napping is pretty inflexible.  But my point is that the man has it made. He seems content.   The reason he never fails is because he never tries, but it’s working for him, so he’s content with his life.  Why can’t that be me? There was a day when both my parents quit trying to get ahead in life and just exist. They had a rental property with friends of theirs that went sideways, ending the friendship and leaving my Dad blaming my Mom for the next 30 years for the failure. From that point on, my Mom quit making decisions for herself out of fear of failure and being ridiculed, of having this event hung over her head every meal, every conversation.   That is why when I think about just existing and not trying – living the simpleton lifestyle – I just cannot do it, because to me wasting the potential to live is the saddest thing ever.

In retrospect, I may have been giving 2011 too rough of a time.  It has blessed me with an epic SUCCESS – the opportunity to remove my father from my life swiftly and fairly painlessly because he thinks he is not speaking to me, which I am sure he isn’t – if I saw the man in the street (a massive fear by the way) I am sure he would walk right by me.  2011 has given both me and my mother freedom – the freedom to fail without ridicule and blame, but also to succeed with support and love. I no longer have this fear that hangs over me which resulted in me not trying unless I knew I could perform perfectly, because the consequence of failure was too much to bare.  It is impossible to move forward and learn in life this way.   With this last failure, I tried and put my best foot forward, and while I still lost, what I got on the other side was support and love from those around me.  As they say, the winner is the one who falls off the horse 7 times and gets back on the 8^th.  Lincoln, arguably the most famous and one of the most influential American president to date, declared bankruptcy, lost countless elections and was seen by some as an epic failure. But he never quit trying and look now at what he was able to accomplish and where he sits in the history books: he redefined a nation. I am not saying I will ever have that kind of influence, but if I fall off the horse and continually get back on, then it is always an option.  Last month when I went into see my doctor about my depression he asked me if I had had any suicidal thoughts, and I laughed, responding “Uhh, yeah, that’s why I’m here!”  He looked at me startled, asking how I could say that and laugh.  I guess the reason was that I didn’t feel like jumping off the bridge at that moment.  You have to be able to look back at your failures and laugh, or you won’t be able to move on.  That is why on Monday morning I didn’t dwell on the nail in the coffin of my professional goals for 2011. Instead I woke up, put on my suit and a smile, swallowed my mood altering drugs, listened to the words of Rocky Balboa and got on the bus to work, because to fail and never stop is to succeed.

Ah Horse Tranquilizers!

Sitting at coffee the other day with yet another one of my gorgeous single friends, we began discussing our weekend.  Going out with friends, great restaurants, entertaining night life, but despite all this we confessed that we found it all quite pointless.  Despite the fact that we had a nice time, it did not make us happy. After blowing a couple hundred dollars, both of us woke up hungover and feeling like crap. In our twenties, nights out were worth the hangover and the abuse to the wallet, but now in our thirties, I could have just as easily sat on my couch with my mother and watched old 80s movies.  Before this conversation I figured, maybe it was just me.  Maybe I make my life too difficult?  Maybe my expectations are too high?  Is it because I lived my twenties to the max and now everything else seems like a letdown?  Did I take a wrong turn someplace and that is why I am on this never-ending road of apathy and what can only be described as drudgery? 

It feels as though I have been treading water for a very long time and it is starting to get tiring.  What is worse is I feel as though I am beginning to sink.  I spent last week at work fighting to keep a contract I had already closed, simply because of ignorance and a misconception. So I basically spent all my time not making a dime and trying to keep the few I had already earned.  And still, we will see what Monday brings in terms of retaining my meager wealth.  This is just a small example of what life has been like.  A series of irritating occurrences that aren’t necessarily moving me backwards, but are definitely not aiding in moving me forward.

I’ve begun to reach for straws. I read my horoscope religiously now and cling to believing when it says things are going to change and my life will move forward. I was especially hopeful when it alluded to a contract being settled.  I have been working on a case for a year that would be the biggest single success of my career, yet like my life, it too is stagnating.  It feels like sitting at the red light in the intersection ready to make a move, yet the light is not turning green.  In the end - horoscopes SUCK!  They are totally inaccurate… well, partly.  They are like predicting the weather in Vancouver – the predictions are only right when it is raining.  Weathermen go to school for this?  The only time my horoscope has an ounce of accuracy is when it says my life will be tough.  Duh!  Didya go to school for that too?!  I’ve started to turn around and around in my head why things seem to be stalled. You know these thoughts: maybe it is not meant to be and in hindsight I will be thankful I did not get my wish.  Or my favorite: work hard and life will unfold as it should.  But what if this is all bullshit and this is just life?  Maybe these are just things we convince yourselves of because we need some excuse for why our lives are stuck in neutral.

Well, three weeks ago these thoughts were proving problematic. It was not a good day.  You could say it was an awful day.  Let’s put it this way:  the Second Narrows bridge seemed like a very feasible option. This coincidently might be the reason why I am now medicated. I assume my doctor thought my new home being so close in proximity to the Second Narrows bridge was a bit of a health risk!  Clinical depression runs in the family and explains a lot about my father’s behavior – except he’s decided to treat it with alcohol and cruelty towards his family.  So now instead of wishing to not wake up in the morning, I wish that when I wake up, my life will magically be better.  Some may call this progress, but it depends on your perspective.  One bonus of what I have determined are horse tranquillizers is for two weeks I was high as a kite! With no munchies!  It was kinda fun, except that I lost my car three times in the haze.  But again, I was stoned and therefore not really bothered by it!

Depression is a difficult thing to understand by those who are able to grasp logic on their bad days.  Everyone gets sad and deals with crap, and I am not saying that other people’s lives are not in the same situation as mine; however, they have the ability to keep perspective.  A person with clinical depression cannot.  Most people think that crazy pills will make you happy.  In fact, all they really do is prevent you from hitting those severe lows.  When I reveal how I feel about my life, people are often shocked.  I am not lonely, I have amazing friends, I’m outgoing and I can appear to be functional.  If I list the amazing people and support I have in my life, it is difficult to believe that I have suicidal thoughts.  Yet for me, the reality is that at times the negative eclipses the positive. I have had a whirlwind year of difficult change, something my horoscope shockingly got right.  Though I have so much to be thankful for in my life, more change needs to happen because I cannot go on living like this.  I am now faced with the challenge of what that change is and how to make myself happy… But at the moment I’m stoned (remember the horse tranquilizers) so the current situation is sitting in a hazy holding pattern.  Not a long-term solution, but infinitely better than the bottom of the Burrard Inlet.