I have a history of ignoring signs that warn me it’s time for change

By David McElroy · January 26, 2022

I’m not good at ending things that really need to end.

It’s one of the enduring mysteries of my life. I like to think I’m a bright guy, but when it comes to my own self-sabotage, I might as well be an idiot. I never can see the stop signs. Or if I see them, I ignore them — plowing right on toward a disaster of my own creation.

When you see a stop sign — whether you’re driving a car or trying to get to where you want to go in life — it tends to be well ahead of time. You see the bright red sign in the distance and you know it’s time to put on the brakes. It’s for your own good and for the good of those around you.

People who ignore stop signs can hurt themselves. Their recklessness can hurt others, too. I’ve never done this in a car, but I’ve done it with my life over and over. I’m doing it again lately. And even though I see this, I’m sabotaging myself by ignoring the stop signs. Again.

I’ve told you before about the changes I need to make in my life right now. Some of them are no surprise, even if the details are fuzzy. But once I’m moving in a certain direction, it’s easy to stay right on course, even when there are warning signs all around me.

When I started my current job, I didn’t expect to keep it more than six months. A year at most. I was joining a new real estate company for the sole purpose of setting up internal business systems and procedures.

(The irony of me hating this sort of bureaucracy but setting up a system for someone else was truly the one-eyed man being king in the land of the blind, but that’s another story.)

I’ve somehow stuck around for more than five years. I run the brokerage operation and manage rentals for the company and it’s an easy job. I have a lot of flexibility. Everything runs smoothly.

I’ve known for years that I need to leave, not because the circumstances of the job are terrible — but because I’m just treading water. I’m not going to repeat everything here that I’ve already told you recently, but if I’m going to get back on course toward being who I’m supposed to be, it’s past time to move on.

Almost two years ago, I decided that I was about to leave the job and pursue film full-time. Early in the spring of 2020, I told the owner of my company that I was leaving by July 1. I was nervous, but I was determined to find a way to do it.

One of my friends — someone who had known me only casually as a teen-ager — surprised me then by volunteering to pay for my first month of living expenses. Just to kick-start the process.

But that was the spring when the COVID-19 pandemic started. There was business uncertainty everywhere. The odds of being able to raise money for my projects — moderate under normal circumstances — became pretty much zero at that point.

So I’m still here. And I’m seeing the stop signs every day. I really need to leave. It’s time to move on.

I’ve been really good at self-sabotage for most of my life. I’ve done it with jobs. And I’ve done it with romantic relationships. I once almost married the wrong woman because I wouldn’t stop something I knew I needed to stop. When I was in my 20s, I let a dead relationship drag on for at least a year after it was dead — because I wouldn’t obey the stop signs in front of me.

The most dramatic consequence of me engaging in such self-sabotage was when I left political consulting. I knew I had to get out of the field, but I liked making $150,000 a year and I wasn’t sure what I’d do next. So I kept putting it off.

Then my self-sabotage kicked in. I stopped returning calls from candidate who wanted to give me money. I turned down work that I easily could have taken. I failed to decide what I was going to do next. I just kept sabotaging myself and running off clients — until I found myself with no income.

My big fear now is that I could do something similarly stupid. I’m not doing my best work. I’ve been sloppy and allowed myself to make mistakes — omissions, for the most part — that I would never have made before.

I know my history well enough to know that I’m sabotaging myself. It’s just little ways right now. But I know what I’m doing. If I keep ignoring the signs, it’s going to get worse.

I think inertia does this for most of us. We aren’t sure what we ought to do about a problem, so we keep living with the mess we want to clean up. Things gradually get worse, but we keep putting it off. And one year stretches into the next — and we’re not sure why we haven’t fixed the problem.

Before long, it seems too late. It seems easier just to ignore things and keep letting inertia take its course. But if we do that long enough, we wake up one day and find our self-sabotage has blown all the chances we once had.

I need to be doing something very different. I need to leave real estate behind. I’m going to do that, one way or another. I can do it in an orderly and rational fashion — with a good plan that makes me happy. Or I can slowly sabotage myself — to the point I have no other options again.

My history says I’m likely to keep ignoring these warnings. To keep sabotaging everything I’m doing. But I keep hoping that I’ve finally learned my lesson.

I keep hoping I can stop safely at this obvious stop sign — and then turn toward where I really ought to be instead.

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