This week I lost my shit

This week I lost my shit and I’m not sure I’ll get it back in a hurry.

I lost it literally in the form of leaving a suitcase in the bathroom of a venue I ran some training at mid-week only to realise when I was late returning the rental car and then late for my flight. On Wednesday I was THAT guy and that flight was to another city to deliver yet another workshop for which I needed the contents of the suitcase the following day. It was a right cluster but as usual I made it work in a way that will see me not learn my lesson.

But I lost it emotionally too as I dumped my bag with a powerless laptop in my home office late at night. My youngest daughter had taken the initiative to run through a little process we all do to help with her anxiety. She has worked so hard for an 11 year old on herself these last six months; harder than most adults could work. She had left that checklist on the whiteboard. The warm glow of pride in me that she decided to take the raging bull of terror by the horns herself quickly dissipated as I read a hard-hitting but otherwise innocuous line as she triaged the things that made that day tough: “Dad was away”.

Dad’s always away.

While I'm super-appreciative that 'Mum' is listed first under the category 'What helped', it stings that I'm not listed there too.

To say COVID has ruined her is an understatement. She’s a shell of the bright-shining, energetic, fun-loving button she was at the start of the year. Having more empathy than the sum of a small nation she took on board the national messaging that we should act like we had COVID so as to not infect others, and having a mind that connects more dots than possibly exist she can imagine all the ways the virus can spread even though for many months now there’s not a sign of it within hundreds of kilometres around her. With hands raw from endless scrubbing, a body in constant pain from the tension of not being able to touch or sit on any surface, the hours-long struggling to get out of bed let alone out the door each day and the need to strip-off at the door and not bring anything into the house that left it each time is exhausting for us and crippling for her. 

And, she wasn’t the daughter we were worried about. Isn’t that always the way?!

So, “Dad was away” stops today. Next week was my last trip for the year but a couple of quick calls this morning to some very understanding clients saw that cancelled. Dad’s not going to be away for a while. I’ll be away from here though – LinkedIn that is.

I have an unhealthy relationship with LinkedIn. A somewhat necessary evil, it generates a lot of work for me with very little effort but that work tends to be away from home. The work I do can be supported by webinars and zoom sessions from home, but the core connection that generates any lasting impact is from being physically together where we can see, touch, smell and experience each other – and actually see each other’s legs - so I travel. Its a little ironic these are the things that drive my daughter to hysteria and not being home means I have limited experience of what its like to be her.

LinkedIn is the professional keeping up with the Joneses. It’s useful to position yourself, your skills, your point of difference and your personality. As someone whose work requires I dip into lots of organisations each year I lurk here a lot to see what past, present and future clients are talking about and interested in. I post occasionally and don’t do much with or about the engagement posts get. I should be more interested in ‘the numbers’ but I’m not.

No, my vice behaviour with this platform is comparison. I scroll for people not content. I look for names and avatars I recognise – always the same people and I look at what friends, colleagues and others in the Consultant/Contractor/Specialist/Expert game are doing and I compare. I never judge their stuff it always seems slick; mostly I look at their angle and how they’re doing, saying, being in posts.

Often this is useful as it’s how innovation and iteration happens – you see something you like and have a crack yourself. But most often it makes me feel shit and inadequate for what I’m not doing even though I know full-well its all smoke and mirrors. All of it. What’s in front of the camera bares little resemblance to what’s behind it, just like those key phrases you read say more about the author than their audience. But that’s the game. I’m a bit tired of playing that game – even if I’ve only been playing from the side-lines lately.

Last night I realised I’ve done a bloody good job of supporting lots of people this year. Online coaching and mentoring skyrocketed through lockdown as a chose not to convert my multi-day programmes into online offerings. They just wouldn’t work. People buy my content; but they repeat buy the experience in the room. So I was hanging out for the ability to travel after lockdown and have made the most of it since – I’ve flown more in the last four months than nearly all of 2019. That’s not impressive – that’s neglectful. I’ve supported lots of the right people while also neglecting a lot of those who really matter too. I think a lot of us have - in choosing to acknowledge (or not) how we’ve coped (or not) in a year that nobody chose to have the way we have had it.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve asked those I’ve coached this year what that’s been like and what real impact, if any, I’ve had on them. That was humbling, validating and reassuring that I have an ability to do some amazing shit with people. Next year will look a lot more like that.

My big word for next year is likely to be a whole lot littler that it usually is. Enough of the BIG, the stretch, the goals. I’ve had an issue with ‘striving’ for better for a while now but I kept going because that’s what the people who look like they have their shit together are saying I should do. Fuck that.

I’ll keep my little word simple. Maybe that’ll be it: Simple. Or Real, or even just ‘Here’.

Take care of yourself. Hug your kids.

See you in February.

Out.