I am not amazing

One of the toughest challenges I’ve faced in the last few years is feeling “burnout” and it’s worsened by a year like 2020. I see it all around me, especially in my friends with new families. Having a four-year-old; an 18-month old; a business that just turned 3 in an emerging and highly regulated industry; a relationship that is also a business partnership; then add on my own particular dash of perfectionism, plus a pandemic—it’s overwhelming to say the least. 

After my latest fight with Chris, I scrolled upon an article in Elle, entitled “Stop Telling Women They’re Amazing.”

“It’s really time for us all to stop telling women they’re amazing. I saw a cartoon recently that summed it up well: A haggard-looking woman is attempting to work, clean her house, and watch her kids, while the people around her say, ‘You’re amazing!’ ‘Please, I need help,’ she begs.” 

There was a lot in the article that you could relate to. Is it because we’re women that we feel the need to do it all, without asking for help, without saying no, without setting boundaries? 

I’ve been crashing and burning one too many times to not realize, something’s gotta change. Just because I can do it, doesn’t mean I should do it. Just because you can’t do it, doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do it. And just because you realize change needs to happen, doesn’t mean it will be easy, quick and painless. Most likely, you fail repeatedly and give up a lot, but the best and most persistent beast in you will push you to keep trying.

Owning a business, I have to take responsibility and be accountable for everything, and I mean, E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G, especially when something goes wrong. Someone else make a mistake? My fault because I didn’t train them enough. Someone doesn’t come in on time? My fault because I didn’t set rules and consequences. Someone didn’t do what I asked of them? My fault because I wasn’t clear enough in my direction.  The product went out mislabeled? My fault because the processes need improvement and there is lack of oversight. Oh fuck, the insurance lapsed a week ago?

Mistakes will always happen. Things will always go wrong. But not learning from them, not fixing them, not OWNING them, is the deadliest mistake. And it’s the hardest part. 

Chris and I used to watch shows like Kitchen Nightmares, Bar Rescue, and The Profit back in NY. The shows underneath the premise and editing were always about the dysfunctional people and relationships that had to be fixed in order to fix the business. That’s the entertainment of this type of reality tv, and by far the finest, IMO: flawed characters with a chance for redemption, and the more dysfunction, the greater the payout for the viewer if they get fixed, and the better the tv. After our fight last month, Chris said to me, please get high and watch this episode of kitchen nightmares. I had to laugh at the wife screaming, Fuck you, I quit! But on another level, I also felt deeply uncomfortable and disturbed that, no, the thick Italian accent isn’t you, but to some degree, at your most emotional, this was a caricature of you on your worst days. Who knows what was left on the editing floor, or what was a set up, but at the heart of every single problem, in the arc of every show’s story, the source is always traced back to the deeply flawed owners.

Of course, everyone is flawed in some way, but when you do a crazy thing and decide to start a business, the flaws are reflected in it (just like when you do a crazy thing and have a kid). And you can either choose to stick your head in the sand, or decide it’s time to redeem yourself. 

One of my biggest flaws is my inability to control and cope with my emotions, and then responding to situations with emotion instead of rational thought.  With two young kids, I’m learning quickly that emotions are hard to handle, and if it’s something I never learned to handle as a kid, or never learned to handle effectively, then I bring that with me into my adult life. And greater than the need for great television, greater than the need to succeed in business, is the greatest mission of all: to learn, so I can teach my children all the things I always needed to learn.