PERFORMANCE PRESSURE SELF INFLICTED

Performance pressure starts with doubt.

Will you be good enough?

Have you trained to win?

Can you do it?

These are the same questions asked when people decide to get married.

Do you deserve someone as good as your partner?

Have you shown you’re ‘The One?’

Will you make it past the seven year itch?

If you see marriage as a competition, the winners stay married, or get banned from the institution.

Getting banned means hanging out with other banned guys who say things like:

 

“It wasn’t me, it was her.”

“I did everything right and it still went wrong.”

“After four wives you’d think I knew better.”

 

The main thing with guys is nothing is their fault and if they keep running from the truth they can keep spewing their bullshit.

Do their ex-wives make the same claims?

Let’s ask them, ‘Why did you break-up?’

 

“He was barely home for us.”

“All he did was play video games all day.”

“His gambling problem turned into a drinking problem.”

 

Were the ladies right in banning their husbands and getting divorced if those are the reasons why?

To young married men: You need to be around to establish a male presence. If you’re the man of the house you need to be in the house enough for your wife to remember who you are.

Too often we think, ‘why bother,’ when it comes to wife-time.

One newly wed said to his mother, “My wife is hard to be around, always telling me what to do.”

No joke, a guy complained about his wife telling him what to do, but it is funny.

One solution? Run away, run away.

 

Starting Over? Is That The Plan

Once the epitome of manliness, Ernest Hemingway had quite a run.

Some people are wired to run, to travel, so see what’s never been seen.

Me? I was a runner, a real runner in shoes and a race number pinned to my shirt.

10K, 15K, half marathon, marathon, Hood to Coast kind of runner.

But not a relationship runner, and that’s important.

If you run off, they may come after you.

If they run off?

Then you have a choice.

You can run off to another country, if you’re that type. Run off to another woman, if you’re that type.

Or you can take a moment and reflect on what you want out of life.

Do you want chaos, confusion, and worry? Run, boy, run.

If that’s your life, and you blame others, take a moment.

But if you have calm, security, and vision?

You don’t need to go to Paris to find that.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Performance pressure eventually caught up with Hemingway in Idaho.

A sixty-one year old man decided he’d had enough? Seems a little early sitting here at sixty-nine.

 

Your Moveable Feast With Performance Pressure

A writer needs to prove themselves one way or another.

It’s money, clicks, likes, retweets, money, adulation, fame, and money.

People understand money and best sellers and fame better than any explanation you might offer.

‘I write because . . .’

Do you make any money?

‘I need to write for mental health.’

Cool. Do you make any money?

‘I write to kick-start my day.’

Yeah, but . . . ?

 

Writers get it. We stay at it in case something happens, like clicks, likes, fame, and money.

For me it’s all about spam. I get the most inspired spam.

If I had a donation button they would contribute, then I’d have a better answer for ‘Do I make any money.’

My spam loves my website design, my content, the works. But spam is spam for a reason, which seems aimed at writers needing feedback no matter what.

If I had an offer to do what I do here, but do it for money, would I do it?

If I had an offer to sell boomerpdx for a good price, would I sell it?

 

I recently watched a documentary that featured a young man in his apartment filled with banker boxes.

When asked what’s in the boxes, he said, “My research.”

What a loser, I thought, then remembered my file cabinets full of ‘my research.’

Apparently I’m one of those guys, but I keep a lid on it.

My research goes back forty or fifty years. Why do I keep it around?

In case I hit it big, and it’s just around the corner, the far corner, I’ve got the receipts.

I’m no flash in the pan dabbler, but a committed personal blogger.

The time and money spent on this enterprise is rounding out to be a nice legacy.

Will one of my sons or daughters in law pick it up when I’m done?

I’d read them if they did. I’d read them if they started their own site, and they’ve got enough material to go long form.

How many times have your heard a man say his father was a stranger to them. I’ve heard it enough to retire the notion.

My kids will never be able to say they don’t know their old dad.

“Well, we really don’t know him because he ignored us and stared at a computer screen.”

“No I didn’t.”