I admit it, right here in front of a least 10 people, I am a success saboteur. I do not sabotage other people's success, but throughout the years I have done a good job on mine.
Believe it or not, pirate or not, I've always been a person who has pushed the limits, in school or in many other places. Always wanted to see how far I could go from what was expected and found quite definitely that this was not the road to success. Before this goes too far though I think that I need to put forth what my particular definition of success was over the years. Success to me, at the time, was not to be totally bored by what I was doing. If this was a job and boredom was on the horizon, I found ways to make it entertaining, often perhaps not that entertaining to management. When I was in school my attention would always be captured in the beginning, but if boredom broke on the horizon, my best effort went out the window. I then looked for something more entertaining or at least interesting to do.
Raising children was something that I would not say I was a success at, but it was never boring and almost always enjoyable and actually caused me to put forth my best effort. My mood still swung back and forth, but with a nice stable husband and father the kids turned out o.k.
Since I'm sure you didn't buy in for my life story, let's skip ahead to the time when I found out that there was a name for the "success saboteur" and that was bipolar illness. After a few firings and the stress of menopause, I took a break from the world for about a week in a locked floor of the hospital (where BTW I met some very interesting people, not at all boring) and started the long journey to finding out why I had sabotaged my own success and life for over 50 years. It has taken time and I'm still a saboteur, but am trying to become disciplined and use whatever talents I have for good, not evil. Writing has seemed to be that place oddly enough; in college if told to write anything I would cringe.
Here comes the "cheap applause" part. My family stood by through all of this and I have a 37 year marriage. And the people I have met blogging and writing have been so encouraging that I may have found my place in the world. I still won't turn down a plunder or a party, but it will not interrupt my success any more.
This post is part of the GBE2 blogging group.
