There Really Is No Try

You don't have to know the difference between Dagobah and Bajor to have heard the phrase “do, or do not, there is no try.” But even the biggest Star Wars fan has said “I'm trying.” But, you have to really examine that phrase to see how true it is. Yoda never said “Perfectly, you must do it, the first time,” or “Within you, the power already is.” (He's a Jedi Master, not a Good Witch of Oz”) No, what he said was just this: You do, or you don't. When you say “I'm trying,” you're just making excuses for your failure. Your failure to practice, your failure to believe in yourself, and yes, your failure to execute. Yoda is a process guy, not a results guy. He's always about training, about self-discipline, about preparing for all possible outcomes, even the bad ones.

Try watching a baby as he learns to walk and talk. Now there's someone for which there is no try. He makes sounds and faces with his mouth, as he learns what his own body is like, and what reactions he gets. He'll take a few steps, walk, then fall. Sometimes he'll cry, sometimes he'll get downright determined and get right back up, just to take a few steps more. He's not “trying” to walk, he's walking!

Ever try something new and completely screw up? That's OK. Ask Albert Einstein, who said “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” This is the same man who said “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

It's important to break down your goals into small, achievable steps, so you don't get overwhelmed by the fact that you're not achieving the results you want yes. If you do, you're better off than someone who didn't. Because who learns from doing nothing? You don't have to succeed every time, nor do you even have to achieve the results you set out to do before hand, if you recognize opportunities. (How many scientific breakthroughs started as complete accidents?) Once you can tell the difference between “trying” and “learning,” you'll learn... there really is no try.  

The Three Types of Salesmen.

I've come to the conclusion that there are three basic types of sales people: The first cultivates long-term relationships, and builds trust over time; the second will treat you like you're their best friend, then drop you like a bad habit once they get what they want from you; and the third are outright scammers.

An example of the first is Ben, my sister's husband. He's a great guy. I see the way he treats his children. He loves them, he makes time for them, whenever there is a problem, he is firm and doesn't lose his cool. He is a little scatterbrained at times, and I've seen my sister lose her temper at him, but deep down, she must love the guy to death. He owns the family business, which is selling travel-sized toothpaste, shaving cream and the like in getaway kits or gift sets. His clients, or potential clients, are big name chains like Walmart. Since he is often the representative of his company, it's to his advantage to keep his name, and his company's name, in high prestige.

The second type comes from the carny tradition; they'll make you love them, but as soon as you've bought what they're selling, they have to move on to the next potential mark—I mean customer. It makes for sad mental conditioning, as they don't necessarily make deep connections in their personal lives. At least from the ones I've known. The one I knew best was Chace. Even though I knew him since high school, I hesitate to call him a friend, since being a friend requires trust, and I never trusted him. Every time I did, I always ended up getting let down. With me, the situation that kept repeating itself was this: He would get me in some bad situation, I would react, or usually overreact, and then he'd put the whole thing on me. It's that slippery sense of being able to be able to deny all responsibility for anything bad that happened if someone else makes the slightest mistake.

The most striking example of getting someone to love you until you get what you want, then dropping them was his own marriage. I can't say he married too young. He had lived on his own since he was 18, and had plenty of girlfriends in his time. The girl he married also had plenty of boyfriends, good and bad, and they really seemed to compliment each other. So, they knew what they wanted, and they wanted each other. Great. Happily ever after right? Well, then they had a baby. They probably should have waited a few years before that one. I don't exactly know the details, but, the short version is that he just dropped a total bombshell that he no longer loved his wife and wanted a divorce. I helped him move out the week after. I didn't see much of his soon-to-be ex-wife, but she was there, with the support of her family, and she had a very bitter look to her. I can't say I blame her. Now, he says he never cheated on her, but when the same “friend” that helped him unpack was later listed on his Facebook page as his girlfriend, you draw your own conclusions. Here's the real kicker: the last time I saw him, he had just come from a custody hearing. He was awarded weekend custody of his child. “I got exactly what I wanted,” he said with a smile. Now I don't have kids, and I've never been married, but I'm pretty sure when you leave family court, you're not supposed to get “exactly what you wanted.” Since he moved, I've heard from him maybe half a dozen times. Every time, he wanted something from me, usually to show up at some show he was doing. I've done my last favor for that guy.

Which brings us to the third kind: the outright liar. The scam artist. I've covered this some in an earlier essay, but I'll go into more detail here. The most famous con artists are household names: Ken Lay, Bernie Madoff, Prince whatshisname of Nigeria. But the thing is, there are smaller pyramid schemes and con artists, and they put out ads in the paper or on Craig's List every day. Sometimes they attach themselves to a cause, something difficult to disagree with like clean water, or curing cancer; sometimes they'll sell an over-powered and expensive product, like a vacuum cleaner or blender that really has no residential use at all. Sometimes, they just panhandle.

I applied one time to the Citizens Campaign for the Environment. It seemed like a charitable notion: mobilize the community, get support, signatures, you didn't need to get any money. It sounded like being part of a democratic club or something. Well, my brother told me how ten years prior, he had worked for the same company, and all they did was get in a van, go to some rich suburban neighborhood and shake down old ladies for money. At the end of the day, he made a big stink about it being a scam in front of everyone. He told me to stay away from them, so I did.

Then, about six months later, I answered an ad about promoting clean electricity. I had done a final paper for one of my classes on clean electricity. The job was in Manhattan, not Westchester. I figured it was different. Well, it turned out the only thing different was that, instead of going door to door, they stood around in Time Square or Union Square, or wherever, and flagged down people asking for “support.” Well, so much for that.

Over the next four or five years I gained some real work experience, and so, when I wanted to try moving to another state, I secured a job as a product representative. Unlike the sales job I was doing at the time, there was a base pay, and I didn't have to worry about setting up appointments. I would come into someone's house, demonstrate the product, and either they'd buy or they wouldn't. If my other job was anything to go on, they'd probably get some kind of gift for their time. Well, it turned out, I was lied to. Plain and simple.

There was no base pay. But, if you went a certain number of demos without making a sale, you'd get some compensation money. How do you get appointments? By going door to door offering a “free room cleaning.” Or, by handing out cards offering a chance at a free prize of some kind. What I knew for sure is that the people who turned in those cards would get sales calls, and that giving out those cards on private property, such as supermarkets, was against store policy, so I got shooed away on more than one occasion. I felt pathetic.

The job itself called for getting into the office early in the morning, then some motivational yelling. Yes, motivational yelling. “What do we sell? KIRBY! KIRBY KIRBY!” It was exactly the sales bullshit and groupthing/sportsthink that I had tried so hard to avoid. I remember a sales strategy tip that the person who made the most sales would get some kind of free trip. It was a good idea to pass along this information to the mark—I mean customer, so they'd identify with you. The instructor literally came out and said to the sales team, “they'll buy if you say you want to win a contest, they won't buy if you say you need to pay your rent.” And of course, even though you started early, you had to stay late, because most of the sales would happen after people got off of work, after 6:00. I got a sinking feeling, and fast, but I didn't see any other options. You know, with that whole trying to move thing, and I couldn't just turn around and head back to New York for a few weeks. Then, just when I thought things couldn't get worse, my car broke down.

A few months later, I had indeed moved back to New York, and was looking for jobs. I answered an ad, and by the time I had the interview set up, I could tell from a mile away this was a scam. But this time, I knew their tricks. I was free. I had absolutely nothing to lose. So I tried an experiment: I would intentionally bomb the interview. I would see just how far I could push the boundaries and still see if they needed warm bodies to fill up the lower rungs of their pyramid. I came in completely unprepared. I filled out a questionnaire and some forms. Q: How much did I know about the company? A: Nothing. Q: Have you ever been convicted of a felony? A: Not yet. I told the guy a story that I was on trial for statutory rape. The only way I could have looked like I gave any less of a fuck is if I showed up for the interview in my pajamas. He said I was the first person to ever answer those questions honestly.

What a fucking scam.

Any Second..Something Terrible Is About To Happen

Your life is a ticking time bomb. It is only a matter of time before something will go terribly horribly, wrong. It'll happen more than once in your life, and it'll get progressively more severe the older you get. Your beloved pet could die. You could get a horrible disease, be arrested, justly or unjustly, lose all your money, have your spouse leave you suddenly, or die, you could lose your job, or your house could be foreclosed on. When faced with these intractable problems, the only thing you can do is deal with it. That's it. Live with the pain. You can want to “give up” but really, that option doesn't exist. Think about what happens when you lose your car keys. You have to tear through the house looking for them. You throw your hands up in the air and say “where are they?” You just say, “I give up.” But...can you really? Your keys are still lost, you can't just appeal to a higher authority or wish them into your hands. You gotta rethink the problem, look somewhere you haven't looked, or double check somewhere you have, and sooner or later you'll find them. Or what? You'll break down in heap and cry? Slit your wrists? Transform into a butterfly and fly away? Go into your time machine?

So let's get back to our problem. Our problem is called life, and the strange thing about it is, it can always be worse. And the less you have, the more grateful you are to have it. Everything you have is something you can lose. Can anyone realistically prepare themselves to lose everything they love in life? Of course not. But you have to realize that everything outside your own mind and your own body is an accessory. Not just material possessions, but girlfriends, wives, your job, you can lose it all. But it's all secondary to your mental health and well-being. Even more so than your physical well being. For example, while it's not a life I'm jealous of, Steven Hawking has one of the greatest scientific minds on the planet earth, caged in a body that can barely move more than his eyeballs.

The only thing that cannot be taken away from you, at least not with without some major trauma, is your sense of self, your abilities, your memories, your aspirations. No matter how low I feel, I can always look up to the sky and see the moon. Unless I go to jail, no one can take that away from me. I've got ten fingers and ten toes. I bet you do too. I can sell my guitar, but no one can take away my love for music, and my skills at playing (even if they do get a little rusty without practice.)

Everyone loves a story of redemption. How many actors or musicians have had their careers blow up in a fiery ball of doom, but came back a decade or so later? How many times has Donald Trump gone bankrupt? (I think it's four. Does he have some kind of deal that whenever he gets out of bankruptcy he also gets a new wife?) Whatever happens, you have to be strong, because you don't have a choice. That doesn't mean you can't have help. It doesn't mean you can't seek out ways to deal with the problem, be they psychiatric help, a night on the town to take your mind off your problems for a while, maybe if you want to meet someone and the bar isn't your thing, there's always online dating; there's always the library. Just know when you're crossing the line between “retail therapy” and “hoarding,” between “having a bad day” and “being a dick to everyone.” Know your limits, but also know that you will be pushed beyond them whether you're ready for them or not. Know that limits you accept are a figment of your imagination, And if you push hard enough, for long enough, anything is possible.

A girl can give you her body, but you can never own her emotions

I've learned from painful experience that you cannot control someone else's emotions. You cannot turn them off. You can never assume they will not be fluid. They will change. How you feel one moment can change, and change suddenly. There is no logic behind emotion. They are polar opposites. And you simply have to accept that, and work within those boundaries. You cannot control how someone else feels. In fact, it's almost impossible to control your own feelings. Sometimes, you can see something, or smell something, or be reminded of something in a conversation, and before you know it, you're feeling anxious, or depressed, or happy and excited.

What you can control is the way you act on your own feelings, and how considerate you are of others' feelings.

I've struggled for years to just figure out how other people think, how other people feel, how other people just plain function in the world, because my mind is just so different than everyone else's.

As near as I can figure, good therapy helps to figure out why you feel a certain way, so you can act ON the thing making you feel that way, rather than act OUT, and do something stupid and impulsive. It's rarely one thing that makes you do one other thing. It's the buildup of tension that makes you flip out, act out, act rash, say angry or hurtful things. You can get yourself into a negative feedback loop if you keep telling yourself how shitty things are for you. Or, just as easily, you can stop, take a breath, and realize, "this too shall pass."

There are a number of examples that stick out in my mind of looking for a way to vent frustration, even in an unhealthy way. One of the times that sticks out was when I got my car towed. I had been in The City auditioning for a New Year's gig. I made it clear to the host that I had to be out by 11, since they'd tow my car at 11. I said that as a figure of speech, I didn't think they'd literally tow my car at 11. Anyway, I got my spot switched with someone, so I played at 11:40 instead of 11:20, and I came to my car at about 11:02. Or maybe 11:04. Or maybe 11:06. Well, by every reasonable measure, if I met you for dinner, you wouldn’t say I was “late.” New York City cops? Well, they aren’t so forgiving. By the time I got to my car, it was already on the truck. We’re not talking about cops heading out for the night and I was the first on the list, they must’ve been waiting down the block counting the seconds. But, whatever the case, I was good and rightly fucked. I didn’t even have my jacket, I left it in the car because the club was so warm, even though it was a cold, November night.

So, despite my pleas, the only thing the cops could do is shrug their shoulders and say “get it at the pound.” Now, here comes wonder of decentralization. The guy who towed my car? He’s gone, and he’s just doing his job anyway (funny, that line worked so well at Nuremberg). The cop who wrote the ticket? Well, I shouldn’t have been late. The people behind the desk at the tow pound? They’re just trying to help, don’t give them any guff.. Basically the whole situation everybody's got one part in it, so no one person can give you a break. Of course, they do take their sweet fucking time.

So, you wait. There’s no option to do otherwise. You just wait. And pay the $185 to get your car back, and you still owe that ticket, don’t forget. There is nothing you can do about it. Period. End of story. You’re just fucked.

So, at my absolute lowest, I act out. I called up my girlfriend and started screaming at her. I was so low at that point that I just wanted a reaction. I wanted to make her cry, or feel bad, or just something awful, and maybe the worst part of it is:  I even knew it while it was happening. That's low. To hurt someone, and know you're doing it...to someone you love? I apologized the next day, but... It was wrong. She may have forgiven me, or at least said she did, but it's still wrong.

(Side note: I never paid the actual parking ticket, I pleaded "Not guilty," sent in the form, and never heard back from anyone.)

But there are other ways that I thought I could control her emotions, and again, usually in a way that favors me. One Valentine's Day, I didn't get her anything. I said ahead of time that I wasn't going to. But... why? Do I have something against Valentine's Day? Did I think it was alright that just because I was in this Dominant role, and she's submissive, well...Dominant doesn't mean being a dick, it means taking care of someone. And maybe she didn’t need roses, or an expensive, crowded restaurant , but the truth is, I should have done something. It could have been something small. It could have been something within that role, like a set of handcuffs, or a toy, but...I was just being an asshole, and I thought I could get away with it. When she called me on it, I took her shopping for shoes, but the truth is, it was a half-hearted measure, and also one that I didn't make clear was for a gift. Next time, I'll get something ahead of time. Just like you buy a Halloween costume ahead of time. Maybe it won’t be a surprise, and I’ll show what I’m thinking of getting ahead of time. Maybe I’ll play it safe that way. But, whatever it is, I'm not going to hide behind some role. Valentine’s Day might be an over commercialized, artificial holiday, but so what? Show you appreciate someone. Show that they’re who you want.

When you make someone feel that they aren't enough, well, it hurts. You can't make it not hurt, you can only not do it. If you're the boyfriend who always pushes for a threesome, or always wants your girlfriend to be just a few pounds thinner, or tries to change the way a girl behaves, thinks, feels... it isn't going to happen, or if it does, the change won't be the way you want it. Maybe you can get your girlfriend to quit smoking. If you’re into a certain sport, game, movie, whatever, you can get to like it too. I think that's about as far as any person can change another person.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise when she wanted to grow, and I didn't want her to, that I acted out. I wanted her to stay in this little box, and she dumped me and called me abusive. Was I abusive? I don't think so, but she had been abused in the past, and she was sensitive. I, on the other hand, was insensitive to her needs, and kept on doing what I was doing, even though now I knew it was hurting her. Maybe she realized that she wasn't going to change me. She did the right thing.

You can't force someone to love you. You can't even force someone to hate you. You can, of course, through your actions, cause someone to do either. Under the best of situations, you can make someone happy by just being yourself. But, you have to be your best self. You do have to put some work into it. People can forgive you if you slip up, but you can't be at your worst all the time. If you want someone to love you, make them happy. If you want someone to hate you, make them unhappy. Getting any more specific than that...well there's no trick to it. Just be your best self. No matter how someone feels at one time, they won't feel that way forever.

So don’t take someone for granted. Don’t make a calculated risk that you can treat someone like shit, and they won’t find someone better. Don’t make someone take the bad with the good any more than you have any control over. Just don’t play with someone’s emotions. Be genuine, make them feel safe, make them feel secure, and the rest will mostly fall into place.