Beta Testing Adulthood

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein

Why is it that any time we are in a meeting trying to solve problems, we attempt to use the longest words possible to produce the most convoluted explanation conceivable?

Sometimes, I think making a phone call can save 5 emails. Sometimes 5 emails can save an hour-long meeting. Using a group project board like Trello can save 6 meetings. Don’t get me wrong, I love talking to people. But we waste a ton of time and energy in our business culture simply trying to look competent and busy. This is a huge pet-peeve of mine.

There are the staples we all go to: silos, task force, steering committee, group-think, synergy, low-hanging fruit, drill down, process flow, flow process, critical path, _________ committee, standard operating procedure, buy-in, swim-lane, move the needle, offline (as in to take), moving parts, customer centric, risk averse, paradigm shift, core-competency, rightsizing, process/policy/procedure (this one is used anytime we have a miss and while relatively simple – is beaten to death), and so on.

There are compound or created phrases (yes these are all ones I have heard in person): vicarious liability, secondary affect, finished but not done, formal informals, informal formals, cross-contaminated cores, interdigitated intermediaries (I am pleased to take credit for this one, and I enjoyed weaponizing it to reply to a similar statement), process-centric, holistic adoption, orthogonal metrics, onboard accurate quality vectors, granular channels, granular to aggregated results, monotonectally benchmark, and so on a thousand times.

In some cases, these conflagurations were used to mask unfinished work, misunderstanding the work, or having no idea what was going on. In others it was to convey an air of knowledge that was nonexistent. Nobody wants to look stupid or behind. I get it. Wouldn’t it be great if we could admit it though?

I am a big proponent of saying things like: “I don’t know,” “I haven’t gotten to that yet,” “I need help,” “I don’t know what that means,” etc. And even if one does know what they are doing, why not say it in universally understandable terms? Instead of silos or vectors, say, “for some reason these two groups are not playing well together?” Instead of “granular to aggregated results” why not say “total results?” It says the same thing. The difference is that half the room won’t be staring at you, lost, while nodding in fake approval.

Sitting in a meeting I heard a question about why one cluster of business locations was not feeding customers to another. The term “inexplicable invisible silos in action” was tossed out (followed by a group harrumph and consensus nod). I was compelled to ask, “these smaller businesses are in different communities, right? Maybe they don’t feel comfortable referring to the business partner because they don’t know them and don’t identify with them? How many of the front-line employees at these places could give you directions to the partner without using Maps? Maybe the time is right to invite them over for a barbecue and let them meet each other? Create some contacts?……..Um……..create common bonds?”

As you might have guessed I was met with blank stares. There was no way this could be that simple. From some people I saw interest. But from most I saw faces that read “look new guy, we’re all glad you are trying to participate. But we know what we’re doing so you just sit this one out.”

It has been several years and the issue remains unfixed. Don’t worry, I am not done with this topic. Not by a long shot. There is a lot more fluff to dig out.

There remain some things irreconcilable between me and a large swath of society. Country music makes that list. I get it. I really do. It has a fun beat and the lyrics are easy to digest for most people. That’s not enough for me. I need variation and some complexity.

Humans have an inherent tendency to want to belong to something. We often like things clean and simple for us to understand. And if we can dance to it then we have ourselves a profitable industry! As I have tried (and I have more than once) to listen to modern country music, I get frustrated. It is like listening to the intellectual version of a highway. It is just noise that is reconfirming our beliefs. That isn’t entertainment (alone), it is personal propaganda.

I enjoy bluegrass. I have not heard a Johnny Cash song I did not enjoy. Most Willie Nelson music works well for me. Sweethearts of the Rodeo and Patsy Cline also work just fine for me. It isn’t that I dislike all country. I just can’t stand the beer drink party boots truck basic-bish-broken-heart fluff they call lyrics. The intentional twang drives me a bit nuts also. Lady Antebellum is one I like but the Nashville folks seem to be the cream at the top. I like the Dixie Chicks’ politics but their music doesn’t always grab me.

I guess my point here is this: I don’t care for what most people call “Country Music” and I’m probably not going to. It is okay if you listen to it. I won’t think less of you. But I DON’T want to listen to it. I won’t “like it if I just give it a try.” So please, in the nicest way possible, I beg of you-stop asking me to.

Once I heard “Honky Tonk Badonk a Donk,” the fate of modern Country was sealed for me.

We are taught (most of us) from a young age to be available for others. We are to be generous beings and take care of anyone who needs our help or attention. In some cases this means we sacrifice ourselves to the needs of others. In the process we lose something of ourselves. We become dependent on the well-being and sustaining of others to the point where is comes at our expense. We (generally) do it for the right reasons but it can become a habit.

This constant giving has some air of fulfillment but it has a dark underside. We eventually become dependent on the giving. We take hit after hit and get hurt only to try to keep helping. It is not a healthy thing when it gets to this stage. As we continue to sell ourselves it cheapens us. We get used by those who recognize our giving and in some cases it is unconscious but in others it is exploitative.

We get carved away a gash at a time until we look and realize the damage. I know this because I have learned this about me. I wear an open heart. There is no one one for whom I can’t feel empathy to help. What’s worse, I often don’t know when I have sacrificed myself to the other and wound up in a self-deprecating situation. It smashes our self-image and replaces it with a new construct where we are in service to help and/or protect those who “need” us. Once this occurs the situation become cyclic in that escape or even removal to reset is daunting if not nearly impossible.

And what happens when we finally hit the wall? What happens when we see how much we have given away not to have returned and we shriek? It is a sobering feeling when it happens. You suddenly become aware that you’ve been fed on and worse you offered yourself up willingly.

Do you keep giving? How much should we give? Is there any level that is healthy when you are in this state? Or do we slam the breaks, get out of the car and say “enough is enough, I am a person worthy of love and care too?” This is especially hard because at that moment we are torn by our two options. Stop altogether or keep on giving. I don’t know the answer. I only know that my own journey has opened my eyes. It has shown me that at some point you have to put up your hand and say “you can’t keep taking and not giving.” You have to protect yourself. You have to ensure that those that ask you to give also give in return.

Remember that little bit I wrote on self love? This is when it is time to practice. Stop selling yourself for the love, affection, or praise of another or others who will not repay it. Relationships of any kind must have symbiosis and reciprocity to survive and be healthy. Without these things they are worthless and possibly parasitic. Don’t sell yourselves for others. Only you can recognize the pattern and change it. Only you can decide that it can be repaired to a healthy state or that you must extricate yourself. But at some point, a decision becomes imminent. When it happens, remember, the only one who can help you is you. So fight for you. And above all, remember to love you. It is the only way you can make the hard decisions for the right reasons. You are worth it. If you are not enough for somebody else that is their problem, not yours. You are enough. You are worthy of love and affection. Don’t ever forget that.

I’m trapped in my head tonight. It literally won’t shut up. So I decided to post something about my mom. This is the eulogy I wrote and spoke at her memorial service. I still tear up when I read it. But she deserves to live on in whatever way I can make that happen. I really miss her tonight.

Janet (McBride) Keller – January 5th, 1943 – August 19th, 2019

As I am the last reader of the day, I apologize for covering some of the same topics as others who have read here, but these things bear repeating.

Janet Keller-McBride – My Mom & Resilience

This is going to be harder than I thought. I’ve said that a lot to myself in the last 3 weeks.

I would have hoped that at my mother’s memorial service the speaker closing the event would have been the most talented public speaker reading the product of the most adroit writer we knew of. But alas she is unavailable being also the honoree of the event. With that said I will try to utilize a few of the myriad things she taught me so that this may be at least passable in comparison. I think Janet’s only regret were she aware, would be that she was unable to attend a gathering of so many that she loved and that touched her life.

            In the past few weeks I’ve had substantial time to contemplate things. In the fickle way we perceive time it felt as though each day was more than 24 hours in length as we sat around and watched mom in hospice, yet in retrospect the last 3 weeks seems to have passed in about 10 minutes. During that time, I read an unattributed quote, “at some point in your childhood you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it.” As odd as it seems at our ages, we all grew up a lot this week. More so, it reminded me how sophomoric we’ve become. Each event like this we go through reminds us that we’re not as wise or as advanced as we thought we were. And today I miss my mom.

            But that’s not what I came up here to talk about. Anyone that met Janet in any capacity will feel sorrow at her passing. With the exception of, Charter cable and the Permits section of City Hall, I can’t recall anyone with whom mom had any lasting feuds. She was always one to keep things lighthearted and funny. Funny was the most important. Her humor could be cutting or it could be uplifting. But mom could find the joke in any situation. She once pulled up to the Keller & Associates office on 2^nd street having damaged the car in a parking garage. Laura was standing outside and asked her why the bumper was in the back seat. Mom replied “because it wouldn’t fit in the fucking trunk.” A notoriously bad driver – especially when it came to parking near immobile objects – this was the third in a three-week stint of expensive body damage to the 1988 Honda Accord. She couldn’t help but laugh when she drove (with my then inconsolable father) to Neibling Auto Body only to discover they had changed the marquis lettering in front to read “welcome back valued customer Janet Keller.” No matter the reason, she loved a good joke.

 And boy she could write. Reading her old ½ A Bubble Off columns over the last two weeks I’d forgotten just how good of a writer and how funny she was. As I typed and read this aloud, I kept thinking to myself, “Keller, don’t go over on your time and make sure you read this thing clearly.” There was a smile on my face as I recalled getting in trouble once as a kid when I found and absconded with my mom’s stopwatch for some game I was playing. No ordinary stopwatch, this thing was huge, chrome, and shaped like a pocket watch. She was angry because this was the crucial tool she used when she practiced reading radio spots she’d written for some of many St. Louis names. She would write about an upcoming show at the Repertory Theater, seasonal happenings at the Missouri Tourism Commission, events at Laclede’s Landing, and this list goes on far beyond what I have allotted time to cover today. I would hear her practicing the correct diction for the piece so she could then convey and teach it to whomever she was working with that day.

            I learned something else during these past few weeks. After 40 years, I met Janet Keller-McBride. I had always known my mom, but that was not all of her, that was just a fraction and a small one at that. Some people say that parenthood is a new chapter of our lives. In Janet’s it was more like sequel and I was in the third or fourth. She had done more by the time I came along than people could do in two lives. Before she went to college, she was a champion in debate (which anyone that has ever argued with her will completely agree), an actress, she knew how to hunt and fish, she could write stories, she could paint, she was an accomplished pencil artist, she could play the accordion, she could play the piano, and she should sing. In college she added set design and costuming to the mix. Following her time at SMSU she added singing jazz in Gaslight Square and then she became a mother for the first time. She worked for the department of mental health as a social worker. She returned to and finished her bachelor’s degree…with two kids in her now full-time care. She started not one but two successful businesses in Bright Ideas and later Keller & Associates. She wrote for local publications. And she tirelessly promoted Saint Louis and the Shaw Neighborhood where she finally found what she would call home.

            I knew some of these things. But I was affected by all of them. As I sat there contemplating, I imagined the resilience of a young woman at 22 moving from a small farming town to a new city where she knew virtually no one and started literally from scratch. I later thought of the 31-year-old single mother working 2 jobs and finishing her degree while raising two incredible, and incredibly energetic kids. I thought of the woman opening a business in a 400 square foot office space on 39^th street with a Leading-Edge computer, a secondhand metal shipping clerks desk, a stopwatch, and small client list. She managed to hold all these things together (plus raise me) when she faced the death of her 23-year-old son and both parents within 29 months.

            Janet taught me resilience. I opened my first business when I was in my mid 20’s. I returned to college when I was 36. And I remember the smile on my mom’s face when I handed her the picture of me receiving my degree. By then she was too sick to attend the ceremony. I saw this same smile every time one of us kids or the grandkids accomplished something great. The smile grew even bigger when we accomplished something against the odds. For the longest time I thought my accomplishments in difficult situations were my own. In recent weeks I discovered these were the result of a resilience I inherited, that I was taught, and that I have come to rely on. Janet taught me that there is no hit so hard from which I cannot get up.

            In closing I want to remember the most important echoes. The sound of her voice echoing torch songs and ballads though the old Cleveland house as she tapped the keys on the grand Schuman piano. The sound of her voice in perfect diction as she read 200 words in 60 seconds that would later bring a crowd to some event or place. The stories she told of smoky jazz clubs, hot summer shows in a tent theater, and the McBrides sitting in the living room of the family house in Lebanon, MO telling tales of family exploits spanning a hundred years. And the sound of her infectious laugh that our neighbors on Cleveland heard on a daily basis.

Most importantly I want to remember her sense of humor. How in the most morose of circumstances she could find something ironic to make light of. How she could laugh at herself. How she could come up with something off the top of her head to light up a room. I think it is this I will think of and miss the most. So today I leave you with this quote by Groucho Marx; “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Tonight is a struggle. It happens. There is a gorgeous sunset and the air is perfect. So why feel disconnected from it? Beats me. The mindfulness just isn’t hitting tonight. I’m trying, I promise.

Is there a perfect recipe for feeling connected and grounded? I’ve yet to find it. Sometimes it comes so easy. And sometimes you feel like your life is an aquarium you are looking back in on.

I can’t describe the feeling. It’s kinda numb but not. I think it could be the stirred silt of the last month, two months, or two and a half years. It’s like standing in the eye of a tornado yet everything in my reach is calm tonight.

The tortured ADHD brain just can’t stop and smell the flowers. We’re not wired that way. God I wish I could. I’ll be better dear friends, I know I will. But the unknown is really fucking with me tonight. No time for melancholy though. There is laundry to fold.

“It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, that to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be as simple and consistent as one pleases.” – George Santayana

Whew. That quote hits you right on the screws. It aligns with the whole “perception is reality” thing. What one sees as truth may be fabricated for the benefit of their own ends. Or they may have constructed it to insulate themselves from a truth they don’t want to face.

We do this unknowingly in our daily lives. Sometimes it is for good reasons, but sometimes it is not. Think for a moment of those who claim to be devout Christians but are nearly the opposite of Christlike. Or those who believe in fiscal conservatism but suddenly aren’t worked about a rapidly swelling deficit. In these cases it is a matter of convenience. One pretends to be one thing for the purpose of reconciliation with their self image but really they are a philosophical chameleon.

You could even take this to the extreme such as a case of an abusive partner who beats his partner because he/she doesn’t love him enough. A positive would be to believe that humans are inherently good when the evidence is sketchy.

For me the best option is to define my own ethical code (which often aligns with the mainstream but is not lockstep), embrace my own scruples, and then trace my own boundaries from this. The trick is avoiding thick-skulled rigidity. Change is one of the only things we can assuredly expect in life. It is through openness to adaptation that we can grow. If we don’t, our minds will wither even faster than our bodies. I for one am not seeking Ibuprofen for my soul.

Some change is healthy. A lot of it can be if we approach it right. But first we must know the difference between a self-serving prevarication and a solid hypothesis. Don’t fall prey to the nonsense of others or yourself. Seek truth in the real world and in you. Everything else is just wasting time.

It seems like this title is instructing you to give yourself a hug. Or perhaps to do something morally unmentionable in a general audience.

Relax, I’m not pinging on either of those. When I talk about loving yourself, I talk about knowing yourself and protecting yourself. Caring for yourself. But this isn’t supposed to come from vanity or ego. Think about it more like external shields from negativity and an internal housekeeping on the same team. We don’t do this enough. We don’t draw boundaries when we should and we beat ourselves up for things beyond our control. This little note is about self love and eating.

Is it bad to eat double-stuffed-candy-corn-fudge-dipped Oreos? Not necessarily. But those who market them know how to make foods that target our neurobiological sweet spot. And then they give us a package of 30. Our bodies are already pre-programmed to prepare for the famine that is forthcoming. We don’t have to deal with that problem much in the modern first world but the evolution of our beings takes time. We’re not there yet.

So you take a bite of the first DSCCFDOreo and it immediately rings the mental bell. EAT MORE OF THAT! Your body detects sugar, salt, fat, and calorie richness…the very things we need to store up some fat for the famine! We didn’t have this problem before the advent of packaged junk food, or at least not nearly as much. Now we wrap it in advertising so it hits another neurocenter and reminds us that those are the Oreos we loved last year. You know, the ones we ate 3 packs of in 2 days and laid on the sofa hating ourselves while moaning in discomfort? Yeah, that’s the one.

So we are left to get past this section in our local target by using willpower. As I type this it seems pretty easy. But in the real world it is not always so. That’s why the junk food is usually placed strategically around cash registers. It is an impulse buy and you are usually forced to stand there and stare at it for a bit. It is really diabolical if you think about it. Even cruel when you think about the people who struggle with self control or are battling food addiction. You can go deep into the store to get the bananas but you still have to run the gauntlet to leave.

Back to self love. It makes the self control easier. The thought of “I’m not putting that in my body because it won’t help me and may hurt me” sounds like a terrible oversimplification, but it really is a thing. I only started thinking this way about junk food recently. I always knew it, but i didn’t think about it. You have to. You have to mindfully think through it a lot if not all of the time. It is not always easy and your inner jerk will fight you.

But I tell ya, success is really sweet. Not because you skipped the Muddy Buddies, but because you were strong and you proved it. Each little victory is about strength. Passing on a second helping, picking the least-greasy thing on the menu at the burger joint, selecting a healthier restaurant choice, sticking to the outer perimeter at the store, and so on. This doesn’t mean you have wolfed your last McNugget. Far from it. But for me, I have had to have three or four victories before I could allow a slacking. I have found it is better to pick the slacking before I get where it will happen. That way I can better manage my outcome and not fall prey to the power of modern marketing and my own lizard brain.

You can call all this moderation but it is really more than that. That oversimplification has cost us a lot. Moderation is maintenance and it works if it is ingrained. But if it is not then we have to make the choices. I didn’t realize my own battle was rooted in 30 year-old compulsions driven from deep in my psyche. But the interesting thing is, once I began unraveling the mess – it became easier. I stopped planning my meals so far in advance (from fear that if I didn’t I might starve). If I am hungry I eat. When I eat I (mostly) do so slowly. I avoid the calorie bombs. It isn’t always easy but each day is a step. How do I know this works?

I have tried all manners of diets. Like compulsively in some cases. I was keto for over a year! I usually lost a few on the front but eventually it came back. Then I decided to try not treating my body like shit. The results have been mind-blowing. I have a whole new wardrobe (I already owned these items but they were too tight). It is pretty amazing. Granted I’m riding a positive wave at the moment so this may not always be this clear. But that is why I am writing this down. So I can read it later and find sanity.

Part of loving yourself is not internalizing all the pain, anger, bullshit, stress, and anxiety in the world. Part of it is keeping out the toxins. Part of it is treating your own body like you would that of your kids. Do you want them living on ho hos and overeating? Of course not. So why the hell would you do it to yourself? Because you don’t love yourself enough. You may even hate yourself a little. I get it. I really do. This is all kinda new to me too. But I feel like I just rounded the first lap. Thought I would wave. Thought I might say, it’s okay to be okay. It’s okay to be not okay. But if you take baby steps, one at a time and every day to love yourself a little bit, you’d be amazed what can happen.

Stay strong, you’re worth it.

“Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is..and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss. ” -Milton from Paradise Lost

I wanted to write something lighter this evening. As you may have guessed, I’ve already accepted failure. John Milton was not prone to writing light extemporania. And if that’s what you dig on, “Paradise Lost” will not disappoint you.

The battle between what is good and what is evil has generally been framed as a simple case of black & white. Pick the right one and you have chosen wisely. In reality, this is not so easy a task. What you find evil another may find exhilarating and passable. In human terms, not everyone wants the same flavor of the existential ice cream.

The reality is more complex than that. I have my scruples, and even what may be passable as a belief structure. I have recently stopped trying to ensure it can be interdigitated with the societal mean average. It remains a living document but, through process improvement, I feel I consistently get closer to a core formed of substance. I try not to apply it to others but sometimes the shoe just fits.

The dividing line between narcissists and sociopaths is drawn in invisible ink. The two are not always mutuality exclusive and sometimes they exist in a committed relationship. Narcissists want and view things their way at all costs. If you don’t agree you are wrong. With their brand of psychoses control is central. They try to exert their influence over everything they have any concern about. If they don’t care or if they cannot achieve said control then the thing is a statistical outlier, or more concisely, weird to the point of disregard.

Sociopaths share some of this but they focus on the thing, the object, the person. They want to watch it squirm and bend it to their will much like pulling the wings off an insect. There is no predetermined reason other than feeding a sick pleasure. Sociopaths get off on the compliance and eventual pain of their targets. It’s about control to some degree but only as a means to eventually injure.

Still with me? Good. I promise this is going somewhere.

So why am I talking about this cheery topic? Because we must establish our own good and evils. Those personalities are disordered. This means they won’t change. This is how they are wired now and egosyntronic; they don’t realize what they are doing is disordered. To them this is so natural, that if you don’t agree with them you are the one they perceive as wrong or disordered. These feelings are so intense that there is little chance in cracking them. Don’t try, this is one more avenue for manipulation that you open to them. You have something that feeds their disordered needs and once they extract that (or you refuse to give it) they break away. And they will most likely call you names on the way out.

This is where the Hades reference comes in. Both of these personalities hate a mirror to their disordered thinking and they hate that which they covet & control. They hate that which they crave to consume. Don’t let it be you. For whatever reason, they draw something from you. You may not be able to get it back.

I encounter these personalities a lot in my work. Sometimes I encounter them outside my work too. I diligently try to watch out for them. Sociopaths are harder to spot than narcissists. They are very charming. This is the hook. Then they toy with you in some way. And usually they discard you, or you repel them for your own sanity. And to be honest, there are a lot more of them in the world than we think.

For me, these people are part of an evil. I know they don’t realize it but that does not give them the right to me or my mind. So many of us are vulnerable people and these are the hardest to handle.

Be careful out there. The water looks safe but there’s a lot you don’t see.

WHY CAN’T WE INVEST IN OURSELVES IN ORDER TO BE BETTER?

“A cynic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” -Lord Darlington

Pain sucks. Our society has no real clue how to deal with it. In trying to reduce pain our pharmaceutical industry has created an opioid crisis because we just want to be comfortable. We cannot stand pain. This is true for both physical and mental pain. Drugs, alcohol, sex, or anything else that we can fixate or leverage ourselves to that reduces pain is our shield. We want to feel comfortable and life sometimes makes us uncomfortable.

The trick is recognizing this. The challenge is then not caving in to the immense desire to reduce the pain. Therapy can help. Trying to even reduce the frequency of use helps. But something has to help. Looking at our species and our US society it is frighteningly obvious how much pain is there. Obesity, homelessness, rampant behavioral health shortfalls, heroin, meth, prescriptions sold illegally, prescriptions given legally but without comprehensive treatment plans, sex addiction, it is all around us and we have become numb to it (Xanax helps).

I have pain. Not much physical these days (thanks physical therapy) but lots on the mental side. And it is time to talk about it. I’ve buried a brother, a mother, all grandparents, a few friends, and so on. I knew too much loss at too young an age. But I am not special here. Too many of us have suffered loss beyond what we deserve or have the constitution to withstand. It doesn’t give us an excuse to check out. That is unfair to those that depend on us, and to ourselves.

It’s damn hard to see that when you are mired in it. You feel that your worth no longer exceeds the threshold of pain you can withstand or come back from. Enter the behavioral modifications we make to survive. They get us by but they don’t really work all that well. We get through the meetings and the PTA meetings. But then we hop in a bottle, pill, pipe, person, or whatever we can find to shield us from it all. It DOES NOT fix a single thing. It buys us another day.

Putting one foot in front of the other is an admirable thing in times of trouble. But to be this sad? What are we doing wrong? We are skipping the hard work. We are looking only at the price and not the value. We are cynical curmudgeons who’d rather be a landfill fire for years rather than suffer a bonfire for a short time. The price does not explain the willful sacrifice of the value. And in the process we hurt those we explicitly don’t want to.

We need to pull it together and crawl through the pain. We need to smell it, hear it, feel it, taste it, throw it up, hear it, and see it. We need to shed the tears. There are times it feels like pulling oneself naked across a cheese grater. But if we don’t face it and release it, it will kill us eventually like an agonizing undiagnosable cancer. Reach out and find the resources to help. Groups, counselors, therapists, IOP Centers, or whatever you deem to be a treatment (and provided it is not another crutch masquerading a treatment). I use journals a lot and they help me to track my thinking patterns and look for the flawed pathways. From this I learn my triggers and avoid them. I tell people what I can and cannot give. I am learning to say no. I am learning not to set such stretch goals for myself that success is completely impossible. And in some instances I am learning to love myself. But I have a long way to go. I will have to crawl through a river of shit before I come out clean on the other side. But I now believe I am worth it. And so are you.