Systems Versus Goals.
Also, facts don’t care about feelings.
It’s been six days since I watched Scott Adams do his last podcast, hours before his death. His vast library of wisdom will help fill the void I’ve been feeling since then, starting with this show dated August 28th, 2019.
I’m sitting in my bedroom on a drizzly Sunday, with Cracker’s Golden Age piping through my Bose QuietComfort 35s via SOMA FM’s Boot Liquor Radio, doing something I love and do well, writing… and struggling with something I don’t, namely typing.
The Scott Adams episode above appeared a good four years before I’d heard of him, apart from Dilbert which I’d always enjoyed. I believe Jack Baruth mentioned him in his Avoidable Contact Forever Substack around 2022. From then on I was hooked. Perhaps confirmation bias played a part but exposure to Scott provided me with a system that helped me “reframe my brain” to salutary effect.
So, what’s next? I’ve been divorced longer than I was married, childless, with two subsequent relationships on my resume. The most recent one ended when my fiancé died of OxyContin/MillerLite/FranziaSunsetBlush/AmericanSpiritBlue abuse while I sat in the Citrus County Detention Facility after she’d had me arrested on false charges of domestic battery. Her name was all over the paperwork for the villa at Royal Oaks Estates in Inverness, Florida that I’d purchased ENTIRELY with my income and credit using a zero-down USDA loan for $99K eight months earlier, in September 2018. She was nine years younger than me and had no will, nor did I have life insurance on her even though she’d insisted I buy a policy on myself with her as beneficiary, an oversight entirely of my own making… particularly in light of her complaint, “You need to buy more life insurance! How long do think I can get by on $100,000?”
Thus began a nearly four-year odyssey of extrication involving accountants and attorneys, along with mortgage company lawyer humor (“That’s why they call it the legal system, not the justice system”) hampered by my consumption of vast quantities of cheap vodka, often served warm from plastic pint bottles. That exercise culminated in near poverty, especially since I’d rashly quit Apple so that I could concentrate on drinking while living off my considerable Apple stock.
I got sober on August 24th, 2022 – my 70th birthday – and remain so, one day at a time. I sold the condo in January 2023 and split the meager proceeds with Pamela’s three adult children and I’ve been renting ever since.
Both rentals have been lovely but instead of sitting on property that more than doubled in value in the eight years since I purchased it I’m now supplementing my Social Security income by watering plants at Lowe’s. Time to step up my game so I can get back to “investing” in E46s like the two above, long since sold.
The common thread tying together my three serious relationships – that I permitted to happen – was the womens’ relentless attempts to erase me. From insisting that mementos from my past belonged in the landfill to discouraging my talents, decades passed while I subjugated my nature to keep the peace.
When I started at the Apple Store in Hingham, Massachusetts in 2010 after sacrificing my last ad agency art director job to alcoholism, I began receiving positive comments on the timbre of my voice, especially when I was on phone duty… along with suggestions that I do something about it! News of this did not sit well with Pamela who refused to entertain any thoughts I had of developing my apparent talent. A non-romantic woman friend/design client had once noted, “You are the LEAST aggressive man I’ve ever met!” and she did not mean it as a compliment. So in order to avoid conflict I never pursued voice work. Now’s the time.
Thus, behold:
The above is a Focusrite Scarlett Studio Pack, a very basic professional voice recording system I just purchased that’ll arrive shortly. If nothing else, it will come in handy as a hideously expensive voice-to-text input device for an all-thumbs typist like me!
Systems, not goals! Stay tuned!
Today’s Tunes
Mark and Chet!
Even better!
Merle does Bob Wills!
Inimitable!
Your description of the extrication process really resonates. The legal and financial entanglements that come with these situations are rarely discussed, but they're often more exhausting than the emotional aspects. It's interesting how you mention the system helping you "reframe" - sounds like having a structured approach to extrication (rather than just a goal of "get out") made the four-year odyssey more manageable.