“Delayed reaction from this weekend: No I haven’t lost weight. Stop asking every time you see me.”

My thoughts on this the following day:

Not much else needs to be said here I guess, hence the simple beauty of twitter. I wonder at what point this trend goes from annoying to just plain insulting. It’s starting to tip the scales.

Even a simple, albeit vapid, “lookin good!” [*wink* and/or * thumbs up*] would be better. Pointing out sore spots isn’t complimentary. Save your sentiments for when you can actually, genuinely see a difference, then I’ll appreciate it.

That was a deciding moment. It’s been 7 months and 28 pounds later and I’d love it if you asked. Ask away. Thanks

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Well kiddies, the message seems to be "When in doubt, eat tranquilizers"

Well, Xmas was a success. Small fun gifts all around, just enough to have a laugh and not get real wrapped up (no pun intended) in compeditive shopping or one-up gifting. Spent some time in East milly with the fam. Mom’s baked ham rocks as always. Nice.

Realized last night that I’d felt a little out of sorts all day because I hadn’t taken my Ativan both nights when I was home this weekend! A quick flash of panic preceeded the swift realization that I felt fine, in fact, I may only be loopy from the long drive home I thought.

So I skipped it last night as well. Once I finally got to sleep, I was amidst some of the strangest repeating dreams I can remember in a while. Tossing and turning all night, then salivating profusely all morning for no apparent reason to the point of near vomiting, I took a hint and munched one (I only take a measely .5 mg now). I felt better, but also way tired, pretty much immediately. Scarily so.

Not this time, but at least I know what layer of hell I’ll be weathering when the day finally comes for me to kick lorazepam outta my life for good. Now it’s time for a nappy nap and hopefully sound sleep. Weird dreams are still ok though, bring em on.

- mobile entry

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My imagination runs wild sometimes..

It’s that part of the show where Shawn is old enough now so that he has to get his prostate checked every so often and even more unpleasantly, get a colonoscopy. Pretty exciting I know! Glad I shared?

I have been having some hellacious cramping and um ..urgency for 2 or 3 years off and on and I finally got tired of just dealing with it and went to a Gastrolenterologist. He did exactly what I thought he would, tried to blame dairy, prescribed me Bentyl and called for a colonoscopy. It’s not the discomfort of having a long tube shoved up my pooper that’s got me fretting (well not entirely), I mean I’ve been through a few fairly intrusive surgeries. My new health insurance Deductible is 5 bills so I was hoping there was some other way. I kept a food diary and returned a month later, the doc and I still mystified decided it might be best to just go ahead with it.

Over the past 2 weeks I decided to try something I hadn’t thought of yet. My brother’s answer to everything I say about my health is always what I eat. I eat bad Ryan I get it. I think it clicked somewhere in my stubborn head this time that I needed to try soemthing new, namely Ryan’s staple food group that we tease him so much about – Fiber! Well, my system has undergone a renaissance these weeks. I haven’t been this long without the ol ‘yucky guts’ in a long time. FiberOne, by the way, makes the best bread ever.

I’m going to forgo the spelunking trip and see where this takes me. What a relief, seriously.

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This concept was brought up at work, by way of an email from our Sr. sales manager, expressing what we, as a team, and as a sales organization need to do to continue the successful run we’ve enjoyed over the past few months. The reason being, is that this month we are behind. Looking at our activity as a whole, it’s not hard to see that we have been “resting on our laurels” so to speak. Steps have been taken to increase our activity levels and to stimulate an atmosphere of urgency and excitement by all of us in the past week now and behold! As if by magic, we are back on track.

Then, I thought about it on another level.

Since 1/1/2007, I have made some major changes in my life that desperately needed to be made. I attacked them, as I often do, with a passion and gained ground. I got to a place where I was happy with my progress… and (as I often do) I stopped. From that point on, I have fallen into a slump and have now gotten to a point where I feel so crappy and guilty about it that it’s all I can think about.

In this case I am talking about my goals involving my health, specifically my weight. This ties in so heavily with all my other goals, and to and extent, every aspect of my life, that it must become my major focus this year. At least to where it starts working for me and more time opens up for other goals. For example, work has been going well for me now that I am a “veteran” and am up to speed. Now that it doesn’t require most all of my time and attention, I can keep it working for me. I can move forward easier with some time and energy to devote to other pursuits.

So again, I thought I would share this essay. I know it’s about why businesses often fail, but it’s much more than that. This applies to you as a person as well. I hope this motivates you if that is what you need. You are the Boss of your own “business” anyway right? It’s the same thing really.

Why Successful Companies Often Fail

By Edward D. Hess,
Distinguished Executive in Residence and
Adjunct Professor of Management, Goizueta Graduate School of Business
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia

http://www.edhltd.com/successful.htm

We all know the general statistics that most companies, ~ 70% fail within five years of start-up. Why? Many companies fail because of deaths, illnesses, divorces, loss of a key customer or supplier, inadequate capitalization, or failure to attract enough profitable customers. Let’s assume you made it through the start-up phase and have reached a successful level of greater than $5 million in revenues.

YOU CANNOT STOP!

Based on my 30 years of working with growth companies, many successful businesses fail because the business builder loses his or her focus, intensity, and passion for managing the details of the business on an everyday basis. Businesses decline because the entrepreneur quits doing what he or she did to make the business successful. This occurs because of fatigue, boredom, laziness, or arrogance.

Operating at a high level of intensity and focus every day for years is hard. It becomes harder as you achieve some success. Entrepreneurs are human, too, and they can become bored, lazy, or tired. Unfortunately, when owners lose their intensity, passion, and focus; employees see it, feel it, and consequently, employees lose their intensity and focus, too. This is the paradox of success. To stay successful, you cannot stop doing what made you successful. Success is never a permanent state.

Having the business lose its edge is bad enough. But sometimes, the decline does not end there. What do entrepreneurs do when they get bored? They may miss the thrill of a challenge or they may miss the emotional high of living on the edge. So some do unwise things to regain the thrill – they diversify. They diversify either the business or their personal life – or both. Acquisitions, territorial expansions, new investments, golf, horses, or an active social life are all possibilities. All of the above are not necessarily bad; it depends on the circumstances. If they take more focus, time, and capital away from the core business, they may hasten the decline of the core business. Destruction of value can come from losing your edge. It comes much faster when you diversify and dilute your efforts. “Stick to your knitting” is not bad advice.

STAYING SUCCESSFUL IS HARDER

To stay successful, you cannot stop doing what made you successful. Staying successful is harder than becoming successful. Let me make sure you understand what I am talking about. I am not talking about a successful entrepreneur who gets tired or bored, and as a result, makes a conscious life choice to exit the business and reap the value he or she has created before the business slides or plateaus. I am also not talking about an engaged entrepreneur who grows the business by expansion or acquisition. I am, however, talking about a successful entrepreneur who gets bored and instead of facing that challenge directly, decides to diversity his or her business or personal life and, as a result, begins to destroy the value he or she has created.

How do you avoid destroying the value which you worked so hard to create?

1) Recognize the Problem – Be honest with yourself and deal directly with boredom or tiredness, or arrogance. As soon as you lose your fear of failure and start feeling comfortable, you should look for warning signs, e.g., starting work later; leaving work earlier; taking longer lunches or having a beer or glass of wine more frequently at lunch; working four days a week; and losing patience with employees more often. Having recognized the problem, what can you do?

2) Change the Game - Recognize that you will get bored and your employees will get bored. People need new challenges. You, as the leader, have to change the game frequently – redefine the goals. Change what is measured. Look at what Jack Welsh did at General Electric. He changed the goals at GE; he changed what was being measured as the company kept improving. He went from measuring being #1 or #2 in every product line to measuring 6 sigma to pushing digitization and then to being a learning company. Every initiative was followed by another new challenging initiative. It is your job as the leader to make work challenging and fun for your employees. Another way to keep the intensity and the game going is to focus on the bottom 25% of your business, those customers or products or divisions or locations that are in the bottom quarter of profitability. And keep rewarding employees for new ways to increase productivity and efficiency.

3) Create A Villain – Make it personal that your competitor wants to put you out of business and your employees out of their jobs. Creating a villain works. Look at the Oracle, Sun, and Microsoft competition. They fight each other in the marketplace like cats and dogs.

4) Create a Check and Balance – Have independent, objective board members or advisors who can tell you, “No, do not do that.” Tell them that their job is to prevent you from doing something really stupid. Create a disciplined business and personal investment review process which is followed rigorously.

5) Find Role Models for your employees in the sports or business world – people who have performed at a high level of excellence consistently for years such as Coach Pat Summitt, Coach John Wooden, Michael Jordan, Nolan Ryan, Wayne Gretsky, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Richard Petty, Jack Nicklaus, etc. Read Sam Walton’s or Howard Schultz’s books about Wal Mart and Starbucks. How did they maintain the edge even after they became very successful?

6) Be Humble – Remember how you got to where you are and who got you there. You cannot expect your employees to stay intensely focused, dedicated and working long hours if you start coming to work late in a new BMW or Mercedes, wearing a new Rolex watch and new designer clothes. I cannot tell you how many times in working with growth company problems, that employees and managers have told me that the leader is not the same person that he or she has changed and not for the better.

7) Every Day Is Showtime – Every day, your employees, your customers, and your family depend on you to do what is right and to do your job. Just as your employees owe you 100% effort every day; you owe them 100% effort every day. Win in the game of business one day at a time. Every day is showtime. Every day is game day.

You and your business will reach plateaus along your business lifecycle. Recognize them, deal with them directly and intelligently. Ask yourself why you are doing something different and make sure it is for the right reasons. You will get bored. You will get tired. You will change as you become more successful. Recognize that this will happen. Plan for it and develop a way to keep the challenge, intensity, passion and fun going for you and your employees. To stay successful, you cannot stop doing what made you successful. If you cannot do that, then find the right valuation and liquidity cycles to exit before you lose the value of what you have built.

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I decided that I needed to quit, and that I would. The story isn’t a sad, cautionary tale of woe. No “hitting rock bottom”, no “pink elephants” or bugs under my skin, no car crashes. No meetings, no clinics, no prayers to any gods. Just some self-actualizing and serious introspection. I know, pretty boring huh?

I wrote this on my myspace blog on April 8th this past year, I think it sums things up pretty well:

“Been outta the picture for a while. I was unemployed for a stretch there and pretty broke. Unemployment gave means to survive but not much else, so I had to lay low. It was boring and seemed like an eternity but somehow became a routine like anything else. But now I see that if it weren’t for all that down time, it would’ve been much more difficult to make the changes in my life that had needed to be made for so fuckin long.

Mainly that I quit drinking. For so many reasons that I’d rather not even list them all as they would take up the entire blog here, but sufficed to say, it needed to be done. I have also been on a higher dosage of a prescription tranquilizer drug called Ativan for over 3 years per my old school pill-happy Doctor. Btw, you’re not supposed to be drinking while on this medication… hehe Anyway, between the 2, my head was a mess, not to mention my health and spirit. I couldn’t think straight, my health was deteriorating (hypertension, obesity, abnormal liver function, cholesterol, migraines, yikes huh?), and my life had been passing me by. Worst of all I had kinda justified it all to myself so well, and my head was so cloudy anyway, that I only realized it for a fleeting moment here and there.

It’s been 98 days now dry as a bone. And from 2 to 3 milligrams per day of Ativan (picture 10 times that of Valium and you’ll get the picture), I’m down to 1/2 mg at bedtime. Already in 3 months my blood pressure has dropped dramatically, I haven’t had a headache or so much as a cold, and I’ve dropped 20+ pounds. Not to mention I can keep a coherent train of thought for more than 30 seconds, it’s been a clear blue couple of months. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like.

So here I am with a track to run on, my health is improving, I’m gainfully employed (more on that later), starting to create artwork again, sorting out my finances, and facing shit with a positive mental attitude. I know, it sounds like a fucking commercial or something, like some preachy non-smoker or born-again. But I really feel that it’s what my life needed, I really don’t care how anyone else feels about it, or how everyone else chooses to live. I’m just excited to get on with it, you know? So to those I haven’t seen in a while, I hope this explains why I’ve been so reclusive…”

I’m not saying it has been a piece of cake. It’s been trying at times, but I finally feel like I can get on with it and fully see beyond it now. I’ve stepped beyond my strained perception of myself, all the lies I told myself, all the fear. Once I realized that I wasn’t going to turn into some boring old man, some dried up old square, that I wasn’t really missing anything if I didn’t go out to town every single night, there I was: in the really real world. I think that’s been the hardest part, dealing with the mess that has always been here, all the things I continually ran from. I feel I’ve made headway there too, for the first time in a long time.

Upon realizing that I’ve just been drinking soda all night, the reaction outside my close group, has been a round of “yeah right..”, “yeah me too haha..” then a look of puzzlement. The encouraging pep talk usually ensues, and then the question: “Wow, what’s that like?”, said in such a way, like they couldn’t imagine how I could go without. I felt that way too at first, but I got thinking, what was it like? How did I feel about it now?

Again, it wasn’t at all like the obligatory after school special/AA litany I’d heard so many times before. There were a handful of times where it was a struggle at first but now I’ve made it to a point where I don’t think of alcohol in the same way anymore. I’ve detached myself, I’ve written it off. I’ve explained it as an allergy or trigger recalling a traumatic event. I just blocked it off. For example, I once ate so many of those nasty orange circus peanut candies one night when I was a kid, I thought I was going to die. I was super sick to my stomach. I haven’t eaten one since, just thinking of them now makes my stomach turn. Extreme example I know, but you get the idea. I shut them out.

I’ve been venturing back out to the clubs more and more to socialize, see bands, and hear friends spin. It hasn’t been a problem for me, which is cool. But NYE at White Heart sure tried my patience. Amateur night. I realized that drunks are really annoying. And that I was one of them for a long time. I was mad at these people more for reminding me of this, than spilling their drinks and shit on me. And I think realizing then, that this may not be my scene anymore, made me mad at them too. I left early.

So the tide turns. Change is tough for some people, I’m one of them. But it’s gotten much easier now. Nearly every aspect of my life has improved because I made a hard change, now I look forward to new ones! ~S

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