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I’ve had several conflicts lately with a woman I have to deal with at work. I could explain each of the conflicts — and I could tell you why she’s the problem, not me. But what if I’m wrong?

Someone else I work with talked with the woman to see what was going on between us. It’s a business relationship we would all like to save if we can. He tried to explain what he saw happening.

“You intimidate people, David,” he told me. “For a lot of the people you deal with, it’s great, because you seem dominant and forceful. You get people to do what they’ve agreed to do when they would run over other people. But your personality is so strong that some people are just intimidated.”

If I hadn’t heard different versions of this discussion for my entire life, I would have been angry. Maybe insulted. Me? Intimidating? There’s no way. I’m super nice to everybody. In fact, I’m constantly afraid of letting other people down. How could anybody be intimidated of me?

But I’ve heard it since I was young. I remember hearing it in college. Two different newspaper publishers told me — when I was working as managing editor for each of them — that I was right in pretty much everything I said or did on my job. But they said I was so intense and intimidating that people were afraid to disappoint me.

After all these years — and all of my many attempts to be kinder and gentler — I’m still having that effect. And I’m baffled about why it happens.

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I’ve never wanted to be popular. In fact, I’ve always been pretty prideful about going my own way and not trying to get people to like me. I saw it as some perverse badge of honor.

But I recently had a disturbing thought. What if I believed I never cared about popularity simply because I was afraid I couldn’t be what other people wanted? What if I told myself I didn’t care about being popular because I didn’t think I could do it?

I’m asking myself some difficult questions lately, not because I’m smart or wise, but because I’m desperate. I’m not happy with the results I’ve been getting in my life. After an early life that seemed to promise an easy ride to incredible success, I somehow got off track. I stumbled and humiliated myself.

I’m sick of not becoming the success everyone thought I would be. I’m sick of trying to force myself to accept lowered expectations. And I’m finally sick enough to ask myself what I’m doing wrong — and what it’s going to take to become the success I wanted to be.

I fear that might require me to care — for the first time in my life — about making myself popular. And that terrifies me more than I can explain.

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I never cared much for the late Rush Limbaugh. I didn’t know him in person, of course, so when I say that, I’m really saying that I didn’t like his performance persona.

I thought he was pompous and arrogant. He was overconfident and seemed to think he knew everything.

But I heard an interview Sunday with producer James Gordon — known on Limbaugh’s show as “Bo Snerdley” — that made me realize I hadn’t been evaluating a real person. Gordon worked with Limbaugh for three decades as a producer and call-screener — and he saw the man as something very different than the one on the radio.

Gordon described Limbaugh as humble and eager to help others. He told a story about Limbaugh giving him $5,000 early in their association, when Gordon was deeply in debt. The man he described sounded nothing like the bombastic personality that Limbaugh presented on the air.

And something clicked with me, maybe because it addressed something I’ve been wrestling with for myself. Limbaugh was playing a role for his audience. He was successful because of the public persona. He entertained his audience. In fact, I realized that he couldn’t have been the ultra-successful performer he was if he had shown his true self to the audience.

And that made me wonder — probably for the first time — whether someone performing for the public must play a role for the audience. Maybe he can’t be his real self.

Does this suggest that I need to play a role if I’m to be successful in the ways I’d like? Does it mean I need to invent a persona for myself — and save the “real” side of me for my family and friends?

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