DAY 18: DEAR WHO I WISH I COULD BE

Dear The Pieces of Me,

This letter is supposed to be written to the person who I wish I could be. There isn't any one person I wish I could be. However, there are quite a few people who have qualities that I wish I could somehow understand so comprehensively that they became a natural part of who I am. I am going to be embarking on an important task. Actually, it is more of a mission, and having these qualities would make things run more smoothly. So, let's get down to brass tacks.

I wish that I had my next door neighbor's bullshit meter. You can read about that here if you want a chuckle. She could smell a lie before somebody finished a sentence. She was that good. Having a fine-tuned bullshit detector is an invaluable instrument, and should be handled with care. I do believe that Life has tried to hone me with this skill by sending several extremely talented liars my way. Time will tell the tale if my meter beeps as clear and true as my neighbor's always did.

You know that line in the song The Gambler, "You gotta know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, Know when to run." Well, from the reading that I have done thus far, running a non-profit is a lot like that. You move too soon and it falls apart. You don't move soon enough (aka take the risk) and it stagnates. Timing is everything. So, I guess I want the quality of the gambler. Obviously one who knows when to move and when to stick.

Most people are not born with the art of listening. They just aren't. That quality is often developed. Nurtured even. It's important to know how to sell your organization. But, you have to listen first to understand the need. If you don't know what the needs are, you don't know how to meet them. I think of Mother Teresa. She did a lot of listening. She didn't run a non-profit insofar as I know, but by listening, she helped people one person at a time. She was so devoted to helping, that you could put her stats up next to any doctor's and... I bet her patients had a better quality of life in her care when she was done with them. Just sayin'. Don't ever underestimate the value of listening.

There is no I in TEAM. I am a serious Type A personality. I am one of those people that would rather do it myself than take the time to explain to you how to do it, just to watch you screw it up anyway. Or not do it at all. Or do it late. College projects were a bitch. I just did them and told my other project mates to go home and watch TV. Or whatever. They weren't lowering my freaking grade with their lameass work. Crap. I am cursing again. Sorority projects were worse. During pledging it was all too much. I had to delegate crap because I was the Pledge Captain. Did you doubt that? Come on. Seriously? I about killed one of my fellow pledges. As in dead as a freakin' doornail. I hated her until I graduated. Sorority love be freaking damned. I just cursed again. This is a bad subject. We had to do something for pledging. She volunteered to do it. Day comes for it to be turned in and she didn't have time. Say What? You don't tell me at the last fucking minute that you didn't have time. If you didn't have time, you tell me the day before, or the day before that, when I can take that bitch back, and do it myself. You biotch hoe with bad hair. As your Pledge Captain I take the SHIT for the stuff you don't do. I am gonna mop the floor with your ass after we come out of that pledging meeting. Let's just say I have delegation issues. I still loathe that biotch and would hit her with my car if I saw her walking down the road. Not kill her. Just break a leg or something.

I think I made my point about delegation issues. This is a toughie. There is no I in TEAM. Well, the good news is that I get to pick the TEAM. I got stuck with the teams I had in class and who the sorority picked for my pledge class. That ain't happening again. So, the key here is to pick people I feel comfortable delegating important tasks to, and not worrying about it afterwards. In other words, I know that these people will do what they say they will do. And, if they can't do it, they will delegate it to someone else, or they will let me know, so that I can redelegate it, or do it myself. Whew. Maybe cursing is therapeutic. I feel tons better. Or maybe it was just the idea of breaking her leg with my car. Broken legs heal people. Don't judge.

I believe that most people will resonate to this non-profit in a really beautiful way. I think it will help so many people, and will be greeted with an armful of love. The flipside of that is there is always someone or several someones who are the haters. There are people who look for ways to hate and try to turn good things bad. Always have been. Always will be. I have no doubt that organizations like the Red Cross, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts, etc. get hate mail. Why? Because there are people out there who hate all things good. They hate organizations that try to make this world better. Ignoring the haters will be hard for me. Someone in the organization will say, "Robin, you shouldn't take this personally." They are right. I shouldn't. However, it will feel personal. My idea come to fruition. So, yeah, I am taking it personal. Maybe I should take it as a sign that I am doing something right. If you haven't pissed somebody off, you aren't working hard enough.

The last two are biggies. Yeah, like the others weren't? This one is really hard. Accepting the fact that I cannot save everyone. Change that. Accepting the fact that I cannot save anyone. The only thing I can do is provide tools, and hope that they use those tools to save themselves. That is it. I cannot even get too closely involved in somone's illness if I see that they are not using the tools they have been given. That is me trying save someone else. I have this personality that wants to band-aid the world. It is ironic, since I am having a really difficult time just keeping my head above water right now. That is how I know that each person is responsible for their own recovery. You have to fight for it. You have to use the tools in front of you.

Letting go. As this organization gets bigger and bigger, it will become vital that I train more and more people to do all of the things that I am doing. No one person can be indispensable in a non-profit. If you create a non-profit so that one person is vital to keep it running, and that person dies, the non-profit dies, too. That cannot happen. We all like to think we are indispensable, but it is critical to a non-profit that no one is indispensable.

So, Robin, you need to work a bit on your personality. You are a flawed human being that needs to make some changes in order for your non-profit to get off the ground. However, you really believe in this project and want it to work, so I know that you will do what needs to be done. I have faith in you.

Love,
Your Inner Self



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ARE MY PANTS ON FIRE?

I was going to go one way with this post and then I hit a detour. I got in the Think Tank and had a revelation, of sorts, and now I am a bit confused. So, I am going to throw it out there and see what you guys think. Is that passing the buck? I like to think of it as information gathering.


Yesterday I said that I didn't have any issues with my parents. That is true. I do think that I have learned some things, by example, that might not be so healthy. I also think that I might not have even realized I was learning it. I want to clarify that this isn't a blame it on the parent blog. This is more of a this is what my dad did, and I have caught myself doing it, too. Unfortunately, this isn't very healthy behavior, for him or me. So, let's examine this crap. We shall begin with dad.

My father was a social worker. He is now retired. I think that sometimes people pick occupations like social work because they are trying to get a handle on their own relationship issues with their family members. I think that is the case with my dad. My mother says that when my father went to get his Masters in Social Work that they told him that they really didn't think this was a good career choice for him. In other words, he had too many issues of his own. Unfortunately, I don't think he found the answers he was looking for in the textbooks; he also didn't listen to the guidance offered and got the Masters in Social Work anyway.

Since my dad didn't find his answers in the classroom, he buried all of those issues about his mother, and his other relatives from that branch of the family, really deep. So deep that he began to believe that he was fine. Eventually that became his truth. He sold himself on his fineness with his family, and was able to maintain that fineness, so long as he was able to maintain a reasonable distance, and limited contact. That all came to a screeching halt when my nanny began failing and decisions needed to be made about her care.

At that time I was living in GA, so I wasn't there for "the event." In fact, getting the specifics wasn't an easy task. However, my understanding is that my father and my aunt (his half sister) got into an ugly argument that probably went something like this:

Dad: I am not happy with the way you all have been handling mom's money. I have concerns about her long-term care.

Aunt: This is rich. I have been the one who has lived within spitting distance of the woman my entire life, could never do anything right, and you have always been the golden child. You are never around, and now that mom needs long-term care, here you are to tell us how to run things?

Dad: (taken aback by the attitude even though he did throw the first volley) I am not looking to fight with you. I just want to sit down and go over things to make sure that mom will be taken care of, and make sure she has enough money to keep her in a nice place. And stop being so dramatic.


Aunt: (working up a head of steam) Dramatic? You think this is dramatic? You have barely come around here since you left as a kid and now you want to call the shots? I have taken care of our mother my entire life. I have been the one to make sure that she is all right. Where have you been? It hasn't been here. And you are still numero uno and I am sick of it!

Dad: (the madder he gets, the calmer he sounds) You are acting like a child. Grow up.

Aunt: (interrupting) Grow up? You don't have any idea what you are even talking about!

Dad: You are acting like a crazy woman.

Aunt. (waving hands around, now screaming) Crazy? You think this is crazy? You try taking taking non-stop care of someone who doesn't appreciate you for years and then you'll see crazy!!!!

Dad: I'm done. I will go see mom at the nursing home, but you are not my sister. I am disowning you.

Aunt: (furious) You are disowning ME? YOU CAN'T DISOWN ME BECAUSE I DISOWNED YOU BEFORE WE EVER STARTED THIS CONVERSATION!


Of course, I don't know that it went down exactly like that, but it was something like that. I hit all the major points. After the disowning, about once a year I would ask my father if he was ready to make peace with my aunt yet. His response always was that he didn't have a sister. My dad always was ice to her fire. When she got terminal cancer, I thought that he would change his mind. He didn't. She died and he never went to see her because he didn't have a sister. My cousin says she cursed his name until she died. I think she cursed his name because she knew that he knew she was dying of cancer, and he didn't come to make amends, and it made her so angry she could spit nails. I can understand that. I stopped asking my dad about it because it was over. He couldn't make peace with her and there was no point in making him feel bad about it.


When we all got together this past spring I had to know exactly what was said in that conversation that could make him so angry that he couldn't get past it. We didn't get very far for a couple of reasons. The biggest one was that my dad now has these holes in his memory. If you want to compare his brain to a computer and each memory has a wire hooked up to it, a bunch of his wires have gotten pulled. Some have been pulled all the way out and others partially. He remembered being angry and he remembered the part about her lamenting their "statuses." He said to me that was so wrong because her father treated her like a queen. I said to him that she wasn't talking about her father; she was talking about nanny. It was clear that thought never occurred to him. Of course, he was really angry about the money at the time (and he had forgotten all about that when we talked). We got interrupted and we never got back to that topic, but I wondered if that rift might have been reparable. As it was, it was another thing that my father told himself that he didn't care about. It didn't bother him in the least to cut his sister out of his life. He didn't regret it. He wouldn't change it. *All of these statements were made when he still had his memory.*


I wrote this blog and that alerts me to the fact that I do the same thing. The only thing that woke me up on this one was the fact that I physically could not do what my brain was saying that I could and would do. That is it. Otherwise, I had convinced myself that something was true, but it wasn't. The only place it was true was in my imagination. (This was another early blog that got 0 comments. My blogs were shorter then, too. Hmmmm.)

Sometimes we can pretend something for long enough and it becomes the truth. Pretending to be strong is strong. In that case, it is a good thing. It's fooling yourself into becoming strong. That is all well and good when you're selling yourself something that helps you. What about when you sell yourself something that hurts you? What about when you ignore something or push it down long enough and deep enough and say enough times that it is not an issue that you believe it? You believe it. How do you disbelieve something? The only way to disbelieve it is to catch yourself in a lie. A lie to yourself.


Lucy March (are you tired of her yet?) says that her therapist sometimes stops her mid sentence or story ~ whatever ~ and says that everything she has just said is complete bullshit. Apparently her therapist has an excellent bullshit meter. Lucy and I are afflicted with the same problem of selling ourselves on stuff that is not true. I have no idea what Lucy's bullshit crimes are, any more than I know what mine are. And therein lies the problem.

I just wanted you to be prepared. If you read something and it smells like bullshit. Hit the button and call it. You are all now blog therapists. Enjoy the feeling for about two seconds. My mental stability is in your hands. See how fast that euphoria wore off...

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