Finding a babysitter for our son was harder than we ever thought it would be.  We wanted somebody that would come to our house the hours that my husband and I were at work.  Since we didn’t know anybody available for the position we looked online.  We were nervous about hiring a complete stranger, but after hearing about kids being abused in day care and even dying we didn’t feel we had a choice.  We started on Sitter City. We emailed sitters but no one’s schedule worked with what we needed.  A big problem was that most of the sitters were looking for full time hours, but we could not offer that.  We just needed someone for a few hours a couple days a week.

So we decided to try another sitter website, Care.com. They monthly fee was cheaper and there was no initial membership fee like with Sitter City.  Fortunately we had much better luck with this website. We had to weed through all the profiles of possible employees.  Some were too young, some too old, some lived too far, some seemed weird.  So we set up interviews with women that we felt would be a good fit for our family.

We had a couple of quite memorable ones.  A girl in her early twenties was supposed to meet with us one Saturday afternoon.  When it was passing the time of her appointment my husband decided to give her a call and see what was going on.  When she answered the phone said she was running late because she was driving home from Indiana and would be about another hour.  We were new to this whole interview thing so we didn’t know what to do.  So we told her to come as soon as she could, we did not realize at the time what a huge red flag that was.  When she finally got there we sat down and got to business.  We asked her questions about her experience with children and what she planned on doing with her life in the near future.  The interview was going ok except for use of profanity. Don’t get me wrong, my husband and I are no saints when it comes to language, but at an interview you should show some respect!  We quickly showed her the door.  Needless to say we did not hire her!

Your ego was bruised by this individuals capabilities? Has it crossed your mind that this is the perfect opportunity to embrace a challenge to learn from this individual? See, competition is about drive, and motivation, but what is your agenda? Must you be perfect because you were abused as a child, or is your motivation to be perfect because you are passionate about the pursuit of excellence, that you wish to constantly go higher and higher because you love what you do?

If you do what you do because you feel you must, else your sense of self is injured and your identity threatened, then you have a lot to learn. That is not love or passion, that is fear. Fearing that you don’t matter, if you aren’t the best. Yet you will find an endless race with no end in site. You may master guitar and be the best in the world, but if you lack passion, you’ll merely move onto something else which will bring you pain, because then you must master that.

That is truly unfortunate that you see others as a threat. Who you are isn’t dependent on how well you play a guitar. Who you are is dependent on who you choose to be in relationship to other people. Are you respectful, loving, sincere, honest, trustworthy, compassionate, proactive, positive, dedicated, motivated in these pursuits? Are you pursuing character, or a reputation? For a man’s reputation is based on what others think of him, but a man’s character is based on what he thinks of himself.

Who do you want to be? A ghost chasing endless empty pursuits, which have no bona fide true passion, or activities which reflect a love of who you inherently are? The best of the best in the world, become the best, because it’s a reflect of who they are.

You aren’t what you do! You do what you are! Do you understand? No one who truly loves you will embrace you for the former.

Then it is clear you are controlled by your ego, losing both opportunities and the ability to create who you want to be, because of a limiting belief you hold. You think that you’ve learned to walk by yourself? That you’ve learned to use the toilet alone? Do you think that you’ve learned Mathematics, History, English, by your doing alone? Others have and others always will affect and impact your ability to learn, whether you wish to accept that or not. You can either deny yourself this truth, or exploit this truth and dwell in the immense information and knowledge that other people have to share. Reinventing the wheel is a foolish way to achieve success, when you can easily build on strong foundations laid by others before you.

Guitarists before, and after you will allow you to create (Note the word create) your music. Music is an art, it is not a science. You may learn rules, and theory — but the end result is not a matter of perfect science. It is the capacity to create using information that came from outside yourself. You’ve got a classic Les Paul guitar. Continue to play it but realize that you will always be influenced, and you can accept that consciously, or deny it consciously, but it will always remain the truth independent of your thoughts about it.

Look at this:

“Selfish is not realizing that people communicate in different ways. You assume that my reasoning for it is because I want to avoid the situation — which is not the truth. As I’ve said before, I naturally assume that I’m going to remain friends with an ex unless it proves to be impossible (and in the case of my ex-wife, I STILL maintain a friendship with her even though she’s a manipulative, liar).

I just know that all my life, I’ve been doing things the way you’re “supposed” to do it, all because people are stuck on some convention that we’ve made up. It’s not OBJECTIVELY better to communicate face to face. That’s something we’ve made up. And it’s hilarious because most people are actually NOT verbal communicators. Most people are visual and/or kinesthetic communicators.

See, I would much rather write my feelings down and let her read them, and THEN meet for coffee and discuss it. But I know there’s absolutely no way that would or could ever happen. So, I’ve done it the “acceptable” way in the past…stumbling over my words trying to talk about my feelings, only to have them miscommunicated and create arguments. Granted, this past year has helped me to strengthen my verbal communication quite a bit (and I must do really well with it because I’m getting awesome feedback from teachers and students about my teaching), but I STILL prefer to communicate in text-based forms of communication. And it has nothing to do with being a coward or afraid or any of that. And it has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that I’m a visual and tactile communicator, and that when someone is TALKING to me, I don’t hear everything they say because my brain isn’t always fast enough to process verbal communication. I’m always asking people to repeat themselves when they talk to me for this reason (which annoys the heck out of them). That problem goes away with text communication.

To be honest, I only wish I had known all this stuff about myself before I got married, because I would’ve done a whole hell of a lot of things differently. I spent 6 years in a relationship where I hardly ever engaged in written communication with my wife. And because of that, there are MANY things we discussed that got miscommunicated on my part because of that.

But you assume that my reasoning is to avoid the person. When the truth is, I’ve maintained friendships with all my exes to varying degrees (even the one that everybody continually told me was insane). It would be cowardly for me to breakup so that I could avoid the person. But I never break up to do that. When I break up with someone, I wholeheartedly expect to remain in contact with them in varying degrees.”

And that’s why you’re crazy!

Next I had to try on many different types of professions and say that every single one of them is OK. Even if it means that at the end of the day, I end up working in a totally different profession. When I say try them on, I researched the heck out of a lot of professions (kind also ties into the whole “If not this then what” thing above).

Then I had to realize that this was going to be a journey, not a destination. It’s not like I would switch jobs and everything would be perfect. Nope, because there is work related stress and difficulties in every single job out there…..especially ones that pay really well.

Then I had to pick one of the careers that I had selected earlier and then I had to figure out how to bridge the gap from where I am to where i wanted to be.

For me, my new chosen profession was computers and my first goal was to learn how to put one together. I got books and started to study when something strange happened. If found that I was happier at work because I knew I wasn’t trapped anymore. now nothing had changed except my focus. I was now focused on correcting the problems in my life and that was tremendously empowering.

Every day I’d come home from a hard days work and look at that computer book and think, “That’s my way out of my current life”. I would eat then read for 3-4 hours a night then sleep, work, repeat. This went on for a long time but was really helpful and fun.

My next step was to finally start telling people about my new chosen profession. Not in an, “Is this OK?” kind of way but more like, “I’m going to work with computers in a much more technical way in the future.” And they’d usually ask how, when all that stuff. I’d just say, “Not really sure yet but I’m definitely moving in that direction.” If they said anything like, “Well are you sure that’s such a good idea? I mean look at your life now.” I would just say, “Yep” and end the conversation. If someone tried to mess with my head and tell me I was making a mistake, I’d tell them to screw off. It’s my life and I’ll live it any way I please and if they don’t like it….that’s their problem.

Finally, I had to have courage enough to stay the course because no matter what…..when you’re in transition, it will become difficult. Also to those that love us….it might look like I’m screw up and it’s really messy. That’s ok….but I needed to be prepared for NO ONE to understand where I was going. It didn’t mattter.

So that journey began on May 28, 1999 and I’m still on it. I ended up becoming Chief Technology Officer for that same company I worked for…..when we sold the company, I went back to University to get a CS degree. I got that and now I’m back out working again.

I never thought that I would ever be able to go back to school when I started this journey…..I mean other than part time night courses. But fate is a strange thing and my circumstances changed more than I ever thought they would.

I just got off a 12 hour day and I’ve been working 60-65 hours every week for the last 2-3 months and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. However, I’m much happier than I’ve ever been before and i love what I’m doing now. I love the fact that I’m in charge of my life…..ME…..not friends, family or some motivational speaker……ME. Sink or swim, I’m running this ship now and everyone else can go away.

So if you made it this far in your reading, will you make the changes you want to make in your life? I don’t know…most people don’t. That’s why Shakespeare said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” I didn’t want to be that guy…..and thankfully, I’m not.