How to not self-destruct

How to not self-destruct A famous person emailed me to ask about personality type. I don’t get a lot of emails  from famous people. But I do get some. Like, when Melissa was being an executive  assistant to billionaires, I was Melissa’s reference. I could write fifty posts about giving those references, actually, because I was like,  â€œDon’t hire Melissa, because she’ll quit. She can’t work for anyone for more than a  year.” But the thing about famous people is they think they are different. Well, I mean, they  are different. They are famous, right? So they think the rules of working with  Melissa won’t apply to them. One person brought up a time when he was on the front of the New York Times for  his divorce. And I thought, “Wait, I was on the front of the New York Times for my  divorce.” But the thing is: he was news because he’s a billionaire and I was news  because I’m a bad parent for writing about my divorce on my blog where my kids  could read about it. My kids can’t read. That’s what I would have told the reporter if she had called me for the story. But the  thing about writing about famous people is that the writer never calls first. The  writer just writes. So he said to me, in his email, “Hi, I’m [name]. You can read about me here.”  And he  linked to his Wikipedia page. Right away I thought. Oh. I should do that. Maybe if I link to my Wikipedia page  when I send people emails then they will  do whatever I ask. But then I thought, “Forget  it, because my Wikipedia page says I’m crazy and a liar even though I have worked  very hard to have the editor of my blog also edit my Wikipedia page.” Wikipedia is good at sniffing out if you are having someone who is your spouse or  boyfriend or whatever editing your Wikipedia page. They don’t like that. And really,  my editor has been my editor for so long that at this point, he counts as a boyfriend. Are you wondering what it’s like to work with me? I call you my boyfriend in public. You would hate it. Probably everyone does. Speaking of boyfriends, you know that feeling you get when you lose an arm or a  leg? You get that ghost feeling or whatever it’s called where you think you can move  your appendage, or it itches or something. Well, I have that for dating. As soon as I read about this guy on Wikipedia, my brain starts planning on how to  get him to want to date me. And then I remember: oh, that doesn’t need  scratching.  I’m married. (Well, okay, not married really. See, that’s the kind of thing the Wikipedia whiners  say I lie about. Because we are not technically married because my finances would  make my husband have a heart attack if he had his financial life legally tied to mine. And look: is it better to spend a paragraph in the middle of my post nitpicking  details like this or should I just let people tell Wikipedia I’m a liar? It’s a fine line.) The famous guy is at a company that has been on my list of companies to convince to  buy Quistic. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the backend of Quistic that is  expensive and I hate funding it and a big company should come in and buy Quistic  and fund all the development. And fund my son’s bar mitzvah. (Let me just be clear,  here, that if anyone is thinking of buying Quistic could you please buy it in time for  me to not have to stress about the catering bill?) I call one of my investors and tell him I got the email and I’m so excited and I make a  plan for pitching the company. The,  when I call Mr. Famous, guess what he wants?  Coaching. So I have to adjust pretty fast on the call. I answer his questions. I tell him what I  think he needs to change about his career, because luckily I read a lot about his  career when I was thinking I would be selling my company to him. The guy is an INTJ. Like all INTJs he is good at everything and they get so much done. I console myself with the fact that INTJs are rude and the only personality type that  is more unlikeable is my husband’s (ISTP). So of course I love him on the phone. And we set up a time to meet. I never ever do  coaching in person, so if you are reading this and you think I’m going to coach you in  person, forget it. I won’t even do coaching on video because I don’t want to have to  comb my hair. But for this guy, I turn to mush. I agree to travel. Now it’s three days before our first meeting, and I wake up with a migraine. I don’t get migraines often. Maybe once or twice a year. I  get migraines only when I  have a big problem that I’m ignoring. First I try to deal with problems that I wish were my biggest problems. I send Melissa photos of proposed outfits. She tells me most are terrible. She approves the one in the picture up top. Then she sends me a picture she took when she dressed me last because she knew Id never remember. Then I have outfits picked. But the  migraine is getting worse. So I go through my list of big problems: 1.         I’m spending more money than I’m earning right now. I know, you guys always  ask where my money goes. Here’s a sample. $2500/month for a driver $2500/month for a household assistant/nanny $1000/month for a weekend nanny $1000/month for music lessons 2.         My youngest son asked my husband if he thinks I’m going to kill myself. My  husband asked why, but I already know why. My youngest is an ESFP and his idea of  a fun is a party where he is dancing on the table. My idea of fun is working, which I  can’t really doeverbecause I’m home with my kids all day. (Like, right this very  moment my older son is building Bionicles  next to me and I told him he can’t show me the shooting chest plate until I’m done  writing and he said, “You’ll never be done writing, you never are, and I stood my ground even though Cat’s In the Cradle plays in the back of my head.  And maybe my  kids can tell that the song playing in my head all day is about parenting regrets and  the kids know I’m constantly sad and disappointed with myself because growing up  with a mother who has emotional problems is contagious. Really.) 3.         Item number three should be that I am causing congenital depression in my  kids, but number three is that I have to meet with this guy in person. I have to meet  three days in a row, so I can’t pretend that I am not wearing the same outfit every  time he sees me. If you want to know why women opt-out of the workforce and men  don’t, it’s because when men don’t change their clothes every day they are crazy  geniuses and when women don’t change their clothes every day they are just crazy. I am not sure which thing I’m most worried about. I think it’s all of them. Just trying  to think about which is the problem that’s giving me the migraine gives me a  migraine, and I had to shut my eyes three times while writing this post to keep  myself from throwing up from the migraine nausea. I took this picture when I was at my son’s violin lesson. It’s the first time I noticed  that his hair on his legs is getting darker. Right around that time his voice started changing, too. I recorded him each morning  at breakfast. “Say something!” I’d tell him. “Quick. Before your voice is totally  changed.” I have this sinking feeling like my life is going and going and I’m spending it worried  about my worries instead of enjoying it. I have been meditating because I read that  it transforms your life blah blah blah. Here’s the  link to that. I read that it transforms your life and I did it for ten days in a row and it did. The  research is right. So, like all self-destructive people, I found something that works,  and I stopped doing it. So my migraine returns because I don’t want to be that person that stops doing  things as soon as I find out they work well for me. And I am worried I’ll get to  famous person’s office and while I’m coaching him he’ll discover that I’m one of those people who self-destructs at the wrong times. Is there ever a right time to self-destruct? I think if there is, it might be at the bottom  of a blog post. Good for traffic, probably. Don’t hate me for this, but sometimes I  think about how if I died, Melissa would write some blog post about it and post it  here and it would get so much traffic. But I’m telling you this, instead. I am going to resume meditating today. And I am  going to dance with my son to his Dub Step music that I can like if I choose to like it,  and I’m going to have a fun time coaching Mr. Famous because I’m lucky that people  like him hire me. And I’m not going to self-destruct.