July 8, 2020 – Walking on a wire in the circus
I was never a great engineer. I’m really good as asking the right questions and removing variables but when its comes down to the nitty-gritty I can’t follow the technical details. Sitting here today, I can see how senior managers get checked out. It’s hard to feel useful when you feel like nothing you say matters and you couldn’t answer the hard questions.
Roberts is so confident about what matters and what doesn’t. He follows the details and adds to them. I feel left behind. I used to be that person, leaving my management behind. The thing is, I never saw them as being lesser managers for it but I do feel like a lesser manager. I feel inconsequential. I can’t even help run interference right now. And I’m tired well beyond my years. Sometimes I think my team is the only thing that keeps me going.
July 6, 2020 – The mold that clings like desperation
I find myself so challenged to forgive myself. Not for any one thing but for everything. For all the things I am not. The last 4 weeks have been a “flood the kitchen” kind of struggle. The kind I told myself I was going to handle better this time. I’ve learned that I lack the perspective required to know these things; and I think I might be close to flooding my kitchen again.
My feeling of obligation is so strong and I so hate to disappoint those who depend on me. I know I have not dealt with Shelby’s death. I can’t even bring myself to tell anybody that it happened or affected me. Instead of leaning on those closest to me, I have isolated myself more. Then the RMA issue blew up and, even though I know I have very little to add to the effort, I am now spending 80-hours a week on it because I can’t stand the thought of dumping it on Robert. I promised Kate I would help her with her lights. Afterwards though, I felt really used. I knew I needed somebody to do something to help me and I don’t know how to ask. I’m actually incapable of asking or even implying that I need help. The feeling I had when I got home was complete despair. I felt drained. I felt like I had left everything of myself for others. Even though I hadn’t really done much of anything physical that day I just wanted to curl up in a ball. I don’t sleep, or not well anyway.
Today I didn’t even look at my TP. I couldn’t bring myself to have to skip another workout; or worse, fail it. When I logged on, I found that my coach had given me the week off and some kind words. Instead of relief or joy, I felt dejected. I couldn’t help thinking I was capable of better. I am my own worst enemy. I am destructive. I am broken.
Pandemic – Day6
I stood in line to get into the grocery store for 30+ minutes yesterday. I never thought I would see that in the US. While everybody was generally polite there was definitely an underline tension in everything. Like mental band about to snap. I was not prepared for how mentally challenging it would be to not fall prey to the panic. To move slowly through the store, to smile and say thank you. I kept losing track of Brian who, at one point declared that all the food was disappearing, even though it simply wasn’t true. I felt it too and had to focus on stopping myself from being overrun by panic as well. My whole body wanted to cry, scream, hit something but all I really felt was numb.
At work, the whole team was settling into working remote. In theory everything was going well. The team stated multiple times that they were fine and, while inefficient, able to work. Underneath it all though I have one employee home with his wife and 4-kids, one packed in a small house with his parents, wife, and 3yo son. One is caring for his elderly parents at their home in San Antonio, and one is a young millennial living on his own clearly missing social interaction. While I appreciate them holding it together I’m also deeply concerned about their mental health and I’m worried about how much I can reasonably ask of them right now. Next week, I also take on 6 more employees and I am in no way prepared or enabled to do this. I worry about my own mental health as well.
Pandemic – Day1
As expected, I woke to a company wide email asking us all to work from home. While I totally expected this, it also weighted heavy on my mind. This is it.
Even though we were good about stocking up on items weeks before the panic of Friday, there are still things we like to have; things that don’t last months. We finally made a trip to the store again Sunday. It wasn’t busy and the people were respectful about distance and touching items. The shelves were still very bare. Only four items on our list weren’t in stock but I still feel like we’ll have to go again in a week. Maybe not “have to” but we’ll want to and we’ll have to stress over whether we should.
We are a higher risk group. Brian is at work today and they’ve had folks coming back from China as recently as 6-weeks ago. I raced with a large number of folks who’ve been on planes recently. One of whom was quarantined and tested in the UAE when the first bike race was cancelled. Another one had just stepped off a plane from Italy 3-days earlier.
So much is still unknown.
“When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire”
I’ve always heard people talk about the breaking point. Being pushed past their limits and having nothing left. I thought I knew what that meant. I’ve spent three days trying to come up with the best analogy for what happened to me. Shorting a system, boiling a lobster alive, burning out a motor. I am a fully-functional disaster. The problem is that I cannot control my fire. I set myself, and everything in my path, on fire. I do it often and with the same reckless abandon every time. Like a drunk, I lose my ability to judge my own capability. I have no flight instinct, only fight; always fight!
I skipped OKC Pro-am because nobody from the team was going and there was just too much happening for me to handle that and then a trip to Tulsa. Jo was all in on Tulsa, so I skipped OKC. Then Jack crashed and Jo pulled out of Tulsa with 3-days notice. All of a sudden, I was left to handle a trip to Tulsa on my own with little time to prepare for the details. I had already been low on sleep and feeling exhausted for over a month but I thought, “I can push through this”. Then the charz data came in for the June launches and it was bad, very, very bad. Instead of it being an obvious pull back of the launch date, the VPs made it clear we were to persevere. They had full confidence that we could find a way. The employee assigned to this launch injured himself Wednesday and was bedridden Thursday with no idea when he would be back at work. Still, I told myself I could handle it, I could “push through”. Even as I looked to my management for help and guidance on a difficult launch situation and found myself left standing alone, I said “You can handle this!”. Even as I found myself forgetting what I was doing seconds after getting up from my desk to go do it. I would find myself walking down the hall and I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I was going or what I was doing. Still, I told myself I’d been through worse. That this was what separated the good from the great. I would not fail.
I left work 2-hours after I intended which left me scrambling for time. I hadn’t packed, had at least 5 long emails to send, needed to find food, and had to get my openers in. I started filling my brand new cooler bag and found it was just taking more time than I had. I thought “I’ll just get my bike off the trainer then I’ll turn the water off”. I stood next to the sink getting my bike ready, headed out on my openers, and only realized something was wrong when I got home and found a stream of water running down the driveway.
The immediate reaction was, again, to fight. I moved furniture by myself, I shop-vac’d, toweled, and moped water with energy I didn’t have. I lost even more of my ability to concentrate and stay focused. I did what I could and shut down. I haven’t touched my bike in 2-days and don’t know when I will again. The line I need to draw is at work but I don’t know how. I love my job but I’ve quit it 5-times in the last 3-days and I need to be honest with where I’m at right now before I burn this whole place down.
Lazy Sunday
I love lazy Sunday mornings that are slow to get going. The cloudier the better. I sip my coffee and listen to music as the sun comes up. I reflect on where I am.
I am leading a group ride clinic today. I’m thrilled for the chance to ride easy and teach others how to ride better. I’ve barely prepared because all of this is second nature now. I know my legs are capable, I know my my body will be ready. It’s no longer a stressful experience. I’m a cat 2.
This year I am more excited about racing than I’ve ever been before. I don’t want to crash, but I understand that it is what it is and I don’t fight it anymore. I don’t worry about getting dropped or not getting good results. I know when I’m ready to race and when I’m not.
The truth is that we’re all dying… the lie is that we’re all living
Wade passed away last Tuesday. While I knew the end was near I didn’t realize how near. His death, the cancer that took him, the three and a half years we worked together on a hellish project have dominated my idle thoughts this past week. Now that I’m sitting in front of a screen all those thoughts have run from me. I haven’t even remembered to take a photo of the “scotch glass†he gave me. Like Missy, Wade was a force on this world and on everybody he interacted with. He changed people just by being. I think “being†meant something more to Wade than it did for most people. I’m sad that I won’t miss him on a daily basis. The evil of cancer is that is isolates people from their lives before they die, making their passing feel like they just moved away. Wade didn’t hide from what was happening to him. He didn’t hide from the inevitability. I regret not reaching out to him more. My problem is that I don’t keep connections that move past convenience. I’m a terrible person in that way but I find too many people condemn themselves to living in the past by holding on to stale connections rather than accepting a new, and better, future. I wish I was as good with words as Wade was but I don’t commit the time it takes.
To the Missy in all of us
We gathered at Kim’s house at 11:30 as if it were any other road trip. We coordinated what we were wearing, made sure we had snacks stocked, and hit the road. Navigation and witty banter started almost immediately as we settled into a familiar way of life. For all of the familiarity though, there was a cloud hanging over us. This 2-hour drive to a Waco suburb was no regular road trip. There were no bikes, no kits, no bottles filled with mix in coolers. We were dressed in our darkest Sunday best with our jerseys packed in bags to wear at request of the family of Missy to show that the cycling community is large and all of us are vulnerable.
It was difficult for us to stay too serious or sad as we drove to the funeral home because it’s not what Missy would have wanted. We spent a ton of time remembering Missy and even more time creating those types of memories that drew Missy to cycling in the first place. I’ve never left a race without at least one new inside joke spawned from some hilarious series of events you just had to be there to understand. Missy had a million of those. We know because everybody at the service had at least one Missy story. She lived to live.
We also had the opportunity to make a new friend in Katherine who ended up riding with us because Kim saw her at the shop and asked if she knew anybody who needed a ride. Just like that she’s one of us. It only takes a few minutes to totally connect with somebody, which is worth doing because they can be gone again in a second.
“Do you want to go all the way?”
I’m now “one of the girlsâ€. I never got this in high school. I would watch the cliques of girls take endless photos together, throw out constant inside jokes nobody else got, and giggle constantly. I realized today that I have a clique of girls now.
Kim has been planning Kate’s wedding shower for months. Really, this is Kim’s first party at the new house… that she’s lived in almost a year now. This wedding shower will be more extravagant than some people’s weddings. Today I took off work to help Kim with the preparation and to just keep her occupied. The plan was that I would pick up water and Topo Chico at Costco and take to Kim’s before 11:00 so we could pick up the keg together.
The Topo and water must have weighed 300lbs. I moved them into the cart, into my car, and into Kim’s garage. I wanted to take a nap but Kim was running late to get the keg. When we get to the brewery Nick leads us to where the kegs are stored and has Kim drive up a huge concrete ramp into a raised warehouse. The minute we park Kim has me take a photo of her car in this warehouse, I think she’s pretty proud of driving up the ramp. Nick comes out with the keg and has Kim take one side to lift it into the car. They lift it straight up and Nick says “Do you want to go all the way?†Kim looks at me and looks at Nick and replies “Weeeell, what do you mean by that?†Nick responds by rocking the keg up into the car. I laugh and tell Nick “Don’t worry, that’s nowhere near the first time Kim’s been asked that.†I think at that point Nick realized what he had asked and couldn’t stop laughing.
We get our shit together and Kim starts rolling down the ramp. She stops halfway and tells me to get out and take a photo. At this point, we’re about 5-feet off the ground and there’s nowhere to walk next to the car so I have to shimmy along the wall so I can close the door and jump down so I can go take a photo. We celebrated our successful keg getting with fabulous margaritas and everything about the day felt right.
Cowardly Haters
I suppose one of the worst feelings in the world is realizing that everybody you know may totally hate you behind your back. Even one “friend†deceiving you can call into question everybody else in your life. When all Kim’s shit hit the fan I took up for her. I never once questioned that it was the right thing to do. She had my back completely when I caused a crash and would do the same for her. On facebook, things go bad quickly, but with everybody posting in the open, it fizzled quickly. The anonymous forums are another beast all together. Early on I checked them just to see when the news hit but then I never when back; and I never told Kim. People who won’t post with their names are cowards. When Kim found out she was devastated but I told her she needed to stay strong and just let it go… I hadn’t read the posts yet. Either these folks trolled months of my facebook history or they are friends on facebook and have been taking notes on the things they hate about me for a while. Even after everything I told Kim, it did make me feel a little sick inside to see my name and quotes from my facebook called out on another forum. I felt a little violated and it did take me a few minutes to force myself past it. The damage is already done as I don’t think I’ll look at my cycling acquaintances the same ever again.