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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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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