A Shift in Priorities

Coming back from Thanksgiving in New Jersey, I thought to myself how I got two important thing this weekend: a great pair of Steve Madden brown slouch cowboy boots (on sale!), and a renewed sense of the priorities in my life.

Shopping in New Jersey is perhaps the most fun part of going back home for the holidays. Some of the best malls are in central New Jersey, and the selection is incredible. Central New Jersey is so close to New York (1/2 hr to 45 mins, depending on the town) but many people don't relish shopping in New York. Lots of reasons for that--crowds, fear of getting mugged, and sales tax. So, the New Jersey malls cash in on all those folks who want to have New York Style without the hassles of going to New York to get it.

The other thing I got this weekend was the result of spending Thanksgiving day (or a part of it anyway) with my Father. We decided to go down for the holiday this year because I was feeling sad about my Father being alone or having to go over someone's house where he might feel uncomfortable.

But my empathy for others is sometimes what causes me to overlook situations that will end up hurting me. Maybe I didn't get hurt this time, but I did see things that were, in a term, disappointing.

My Father is most definitely an alcoholic. He can't get through a day without a bottle of gin--and by 1pm on Thanksgiving he was drinking it straight, from the bottle, and right at the dinner table. A number of things occurred, and were said, that were inappropriate and trampled boundaries. Trying any way to control the situation is like being a rodeo clown in the ring with a mad bull.

I do feel for him--that he's 80, alone for the most part, suffering from emphysema and diabetes (which he will not acknowledge.)

But I've spent a lot of my life feeling for both my parents--and in the process sacrificing a lot of my own life in various therapeutic situations, trying to figure out how to fix me and cope with them.

"This is it" I told Steady Eddie, "the last time. I just can't take this anymore. It's just too much for me to handle and it takes my focus away from where I need to keep it."

Over the years, I've met a lot of people who grew up in homes just as dysfunctional as my own. One difference between them and myself is that many of them--or, should I say most of them--put a great deal of life effort into becoming successful in one profession or another. They're businessmen, professors, web developers and designers, teachers, artists, musicians, scientists, theologians, nightclub owners, writers and entrepreneurs. So many of us with so many tragic stories.

And so many in denial.

I got to meet many of them when they were hitting midlife, when all the success wasn't making them happy any more, when their relationships where in shambles, and there weren't any families. I met many of them while they were taking steps into therapy to change that part of their lives--some after the therapy had helped them turn their lives around. They had the money, gained from those very good professions where they still worked, to spend on weekly sessions with very good therapists who would help them get their emotional lives together.

Some of them--the men anyway--married again, and some even had families. A couple of the women faced their deepest fears about their sexualities, and moved forward in their own ways.

But I got kind of bogged down in trying to get all my emotions straightened out, while totally forgetting that I needed some kind of profession to, in some way, shore up a sense of self while re-arranging another sense of self. Deep down, I wanted my sense of self not to come from success in a profession, but from success in my personal relationships. I wanted to put together the perfect marriage and the perfect social circle. I wanted those two things to be what defined me, not my job...

It didn't work out that way. I'm not sure where everything went wrong, or how, but I do know this: relationships are a heck of a lot harder than business. With businesses there are patters, methods, ways of thinking that either work or don't work. One can mix in a bit of charm and make business fun--like playing Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey or Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. One can work very hard and get "A" grades and promotions and even walk away from bad bosses without ever looking back or needing to deal with those bosses ever again.

Interpersonal relationships, however, are very difficult to control. All the plans and method that we make to change us rarely effect change in those around us. Lots of folks write lots of books on lots of ways to fix ourselves and our relationships...but the karma of others isn't particularly under our control.

So, I've decided to hire a business coach--someone who can help me organize my thoughts around business, and to pull together a business. She's very structured in the method she uses to business coach, and I like that. It will keep me focused on a business ideal that is one rooted more in thinking and communication than in bricks-and-mortar or mechanical skills.

Which means, for the most part, I can stop working so hard on my interpersonal relationships at the expense of everything else. I can't fix my Father, can't renew friendships that fell apart, can't get back the boyfriend that may have been the best one for me to have built the family and social circle that I, deep down, really wanted.

Doesn't mean that I'm going to just walk away from people and fixate on business though. I know balance is important, and I'll have to put some effort into balancing cultivating the business and not neglecting my friendships. What I won't do is go crazy with the immediate family thing. That's the one thing that will have to go on the back burner--but it's okay. The way my friends found business success to be exhausting and unfulfilling, I found trying get the family thing right to be exhausting and unfulfilling.

Neither should be so exhausting and unfulfilling. Perhaps, ultimately, it is a matter of priorities--knowing when and how to make those shifts in perspective necessary to balance both priorities of business and relationship without sacrificing one to the other.

I'm reminded of my new Steve Madden boots. Brown isn't a primary color in my wardrobe, but as I've learned from fashion magazines, a good pair of shoes or boots can make a foundation on which to build new outfits to change one's image. Maybe all that emotional work is, in a sense, like those boots--foundations for a new "outfit" or way of wearing experiences/intelligence/myself in the world.

We'll see...