Nuanced, you really have to pay attention and listen - things are not binary.
-Dave Chappelle
Much of this mind dump is highlighted in italics where I mash up lyrics from my muse the Avett Brothers and the voices in my head. When you really listen and process the words, you are moved. A business trip to Chicago, the clarity of my mind in the clouds yet again, its funny how plane rides help ground me.
6 months passed since I last put fingers to keys, afraid of losing grip on a semblance of control. A foreign concept or language but only marginally in my grasp. Many times, my hands slipping off the bar, but overall leaps and bounds above all prior performances with stable footing at the moment.
Mother’s Day yesterday I’m not proud of - sure I texted but didn’t call - such a stubborn-grudge holder and recent talk of my familial relationships with visiting friends didn’t help. There is still so much about my early family life I haven’t been able to overcome. But I will call today from Chicago, I was a nasty enough only son waiting a day. I feel satisfied and ashamed again, a common bipolarity in my mind. But that’s not where we are going today. I did it, the voices inside my head, and I knew I was wrong….but still mama I just don’t believe. But after talking to her I will feel more shame, boatloads of shame, but it’s another thing I can’t undo.
And that is part of my story - I don’t see the need to speak, I don’t see the bright side quite as clear. Happy days and accolades, they don’t ever last long. My mind clouded up with fear. From victory I try to find and accept defeat! Am I sad or am I sick, what’s at the root of it. Do I throw my hands and quit, T tells me no. For there is eternal light and energy if your system is open and that will make you whole, complete.
As the days go by, more and more memories and thoughts cloud my mind however, and I need an offload, a data dump or hard drive reformatting, restart. This reminds me of giving blood, sure we say we do it for others as a selfless Samaritan act, but many of us think more of the leeches dating back thousands of years and the withdrawal as a mere form of cleansing, resetting our system. As a type O hero, according to the American Red Cross, I love the feeling of donating more for the latter reasoning. The giving part is mere justification, a shroud. There were even times when I focused secondarily on the assisted escape a donated pint offered - it saved a few pints later in the night when I wanted to visit a far-off alcohol-induced land in my head to silence the disorder, to escape again and again.
Well as the ides of May strike, I’ve seen a spring that has brightened my outlook but at the same time my self-destructing mind has told me all this means is the cold, dark days are inescapably, ever closer. So, enjoy what u have in front of u, make the most of a short season of clarity.
Any time I feel positive, the reminders of life’s fragility scream loudly - every day it seems…. Unfortunately, all exits look the same.
But I want to go somewhere positive here, perhaps at the same time resonate with the challenges of individual sport such as track and field vs team sports. The energy of a team and team-thinking in all aspects of life is critical. I was able to communicate that message to a group of early career leaders at my company recently - in a privileged talk about leadership and how to grow your mindset, cultivate your leadership style to make the greatest positive impact professionally. These are the over achievers and future high-flyers at my company, perfectionists and eager achievers, so I wanted to ensure my message was sharp, meaningful and indelible. For I wasn’t sure when I would have a chance to catch as many ears as this again with their full attention.
So, when putting together the bones of my talk I wanted to ensure they understood taking a team approach, how to manage collective energy, the perils of operating as a singular system. I went back to thermodynamics and the 2nd law, my greatest foe for so long and now my greatest teacher and friend. I also highlighted the recent fusion breakthrough that firmly reinforces my conclusions on energetics in the universe (thank u for a timely demonstration of energetic breakthrough at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/12/us/fusion-energy-livermore-lab-climate/index.html ).
When I started by cautioning the room that great leadership may not be what you think, I used a story to illustrate. The GE adventure series – where a state-of-the-art pediatric imaging system may have been the cats meow from a technological standpoint, but was a frightening tiger from a delivery standpoint for the children whose lives this instrument was set to save. Technical correctness is not success, delivery, packaging and considering other factors is necessary to deliver a positive breakthrough. Ask Doug Dietz about this.
We work in a highly technical and scientifically-forward, complex pharmaceutical industry where PhDs and chemEs work in genetic-alteration, trillion cell count cultures with miles of filters and piping to deliver ultra-pure proteins that can save your life. So, u might think it’s all about scientific or engineering muscle - well it may not be farther from the truth. That was my point - leadership is more about the universal unknowns and gray, navigating soft skills to drive teams and press buttons optimally from a personality perspective, adapting under situational awareness and going from a singular tool to collective steward mindset. Reading your team, the room, knowing that conductors must be capable of playing every instrument perfectly but working as a guide and coach to deliver a symphony.
Selflessness, something that comes from my crippling internal struggle (but certainly no mention of the origin here), servant leadership and creating an optima environment were areas I hit on. Being mindful and empathetic also key. And alone - we alllll fallll down.
Then I wanted to share the real message and pitch of opening up, never closing off as a true guide to success. Thermodynamics - state your basis and put a box around your system, ensure your system is a team. Ensure that your system is not a singular closed system - that’s the only way to survive. It took me 25 years to evolve my understanding of entropy from the certainty of failure and loss to the epiphany of energetic ecstasy. I aced thermo as a chemE but flunked out of life until only recently, yet even after cracking a fundamental flaw in my life’s thought trajectory on the conservation of energy and entropy I still oscillate back to my old ways and must fight that. Yet I hope my bounce towards a positive energy trajectory will begin to make up to myself and those around me for all the losses, and avoid future meltdowns for others. I tell myself that often to continue forward.
So what is the message - it’s Mindentropy - mental energetic management. One person as a closed system and you lose, a collaboration team-based system inclusive of others and you win the energy game, you grow, you persevere collectively. This is proved out by fusion where we have recently demonstrated that net energy gain is possible. In a closed system 1 + 0 = less than 1, a diminished value over time eventually leading to zero or death. In this case entropy or disorder wins. An ice cube melts on the table, a fire eventually burns out, a single star implodes as a supernova. The entropy of a closed system will always increase until reaching its lowest state.
An inclusive open system is another story - completely different. For when you add wood to the fire you keep the flame going, when the ice cube is safely placed in a freezer with energy pulled away to keep it cold, there is no melt. The condenser and insulation act on the ice to preserve its state of order and survival. But for so long I was a stubborn goat seeing that ice cube melt no matter what it did, a frozen heart and mind convinced by a downward spiral, not understanding the open system central theorem.
Locked up - seeing all the shades of cynicism, filling my mind with criticism. Locked myself up.
In an inclusive open system and team approach, 1+1 = at least 2 and will always generate the needed energy to continue forward. Sometimes you will greatly accept energy or wisdom, insight or directional push as needed, much more than you could ever know; other times the role will reverse. You can defeat entropy in this way and when you come together net energy can be created - for we demonstrate fusion every day when we uplift one another - the first time everything lines up to defeat entropy and disorder. Left side bad and futile, right side the only way we survive.
This was my epiphany 16 months ago when I said I would either get to my internal root cause or end it all. The answers were all there pieced together much more easily than I thought possible when looking at the trash pile of clipped and shredded memories and misgivings of my life’s times and tribulations. Perhaps I am finally educated to a functioning level. Perhaps I never wanted to understand until now, or wasn’t ready, or this is the path, the lessons learned in the most difficult ways being the most meaningful.
Well, that is how you pass a few hours on the way to Chicago for a 4-day business trip, letting your mind go and listening to the Avett Brothers 2020 concert from Charlotte, NC. The last time I was here felt like ages ago - in fact it was just over a year, but it feels like such a different space. My mind still wanders to shadows and screams to escape the light and go back to where you think you belong, any minor challenge feels like a nucleation site for a major slip up - but I am trying. I owe that to those around me who have included me in their system and give me so much positive energy. Perhaps the truest reason my wife can never sleep and is incredibly tired more frequently now – the endless energy and support she has for me.
Thankfully she has also recovered from a medical challenge (a physical one unlike my mental hundreds) and while I am happy this potentially life-altering issue appears behind us I also go to a negative place with a praised outcome - that now if I lose hold of myself she is even stronger and more capable to push on to a new direction finding exactly what she deserves. So, while it may seem to be smooth sailing and all smiles on a Caribbean day on the water, it feels like I am heading to that same particular harbor mindful of the rocky coastline and thinking that is where I’m truly heading.
My mind jumps back and forth so much. Jumping back to the leadership talk I have a few more thoughts. Within that open system, its also important to emphasize allyship and leadership is an action not a title or position. What you say, promote support or do not - is the environment you create, the energetics of the system you reside in - with a different energy barrier to entry or density in the air that is your shared reality. Recognizing when you are needed as an ally or to direct energy to others, when you must be attentive to energy dips blips and loss in your team. We must embrace both a player and a coach mentality with a fundamental process and system that provides structure and stability, an environment where everyone can be truly system-open, and an adaptive observant eye to pivot and absorb, reset and redirect to continue forward when challenged unexpectedly. I have read so much about and believe in many forms of inclusivity as our next evolution forward from single cell being, to ape to cave people to civilized society and I believe this system energy inclusivity principle should be one of our laws of collective existence. Psychological sociological emotional thermodynamics 101 for dummies perhaps.
It’s a lesson I hope we learn over and over and over - hear it and embed, process it, hardwire and live by it.
I don’t think anyone in the room at that leadership talk, even the chemical engineers, expected a thermodynamics lesson - but that was also part of the message - this life and thriving is not always what you expect. The things that matter most may not be obvious, how you interpret universal truths more complex than at the surface. But the tools, processes and experiences you have can serve your team and tribe in so many different tangential ways.
I also wanted to make it clear that leaders also have to learn how to properly care for themselves before others – something I have to recognize, I must be in a proper place to have any chance at anything beyond. Leaders are listeners, observers, empathetic, energy monitors, looking for effectively and area under the curve, agile and adaptive, data and a diligent developer of ideas and others.
That’s my #wordivating for the day today!
For the first time on a plane in quite a while I didn’t watch Roadrunner or A Star is Born. I will see the Avett Brothers again in little over a week, so re-listening to their 2020 Charlotte pandemic show fortuitously popped up on the in-flight entertainment and was a good way to pass the 2 hr flight. Really wasn’t their best show but under the times and circumstance it was very much needed. And much needed for me today. Going to Providence, RI next week to see them will be a great journey with great friends who are part of my core team, part of my open system, along with the words of the Avett brothers – they are worth an acute listen, and can be lifechanging. All my favorite songs are Scott, reminded again. Providence.
There’s a whole lotta reasons to be sad let’s not pick one. Ain’t no man who can save me or enslave me - so true, I have tried to do both and muddled through – it’s taken a superhero strong and stubborn loyalist, brilliant heart the size of a horse woman and a team to have any chance to save me. She came down from Cincinnati (oh that’s Buffett sneaking in) - she needed to look out for sharks! And she’s given me a second and four hundredth start, and I promised (lied) that I would do my best. All I wanted was for my existence to go away, especially when she held my hand and I was ashamed. When I broke and fell apart I needed that helping hand. When I leave her arms, the things I thought of, about never coming home - that is a self-created tragedy.
For 20 years it was more of the same, but perhaps now we have made it stop. My heart was always very cold - but I’m getting over this internal world filled with guilt and overwhelming shame, no more of the same, getting away from blame. I can’t be locked up like this, not this way - not the worst ship Newport News ever built.
What are you thinking of, dreaming of - say love ! And I’m happy now I’ve learned what I need to know - and I’m happy with you and nothing, I don’t need another memory or for this world to see that I’m not crazy. No more games, fighting to stake my claim. Baby I’m not searching anymore. But I do need to go from mental exercise to some semblance of physical shape (I know)! I’m happy letting so many things go. I’m happiest with u and nothing! I hope u can tell that I am now alive.
Just under a year ago I headed north, one foot in and one foot back - but now I’m committed and to the darkness I will never return. Using my words to fight - it’s just a waste of time. That woman she’s got eyes that shine - like a pair of polished dimes, my love and my life, even though sometimes my heads still spin. She always takes me in. T I and Love and U. I hope I never stray from you again, I believe I have changed, feel it in my heart, but also never have thought I could stop this spiral I was heading for. And I know now you need a guarantee and not another broken promise.
The problem I’m feeling now and seeing now when I go through my daily notes is I have hundreds of pages to write about - but I will save that for another day - meetings and leadership team sessions are the priority here. And on the side slowly but surely I’m working on the devil in my head.
Happy birthday today to the moon and ocean! Our Luna Mar.
I kept telling myself that it will all be fine, never seeing the truth or knowing the real time! I had found myself in a place I have never been, a place I never thought I would be. In my dreams I’m grinding up my teeth into pieces over and over and I keep telling myself I’ve always been wrong, spitting out the pieces and choking on them. I kept secrets from u - no more will that be!
Brevity, clarity of thought and verse - not yet improving.
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