Becoming a Brown Belt

The hardest part about writing this is undoing two decades of perfecting the art of Nothing's Wrongism. A good friend of mine who worked with me on campaigns introduced me to the concept of Campaign Judo. Simply put, it's the ability to take a chaotic, half-baked mess and spin it into something that sounds successful and free of concern. This keeps the malcontents slightly less malcontented and controls the amount of scrutiny that's placed on your operation. As a campaign manager, I was a solid Blue Belt, as an individual, I'm a lethal Brown Belt.

The last thing most of us want is people looking into our lives and pointing out the flaws and shortcomings. I think I started doing it when my parents got divorced because I didn't know any other kids in my 2nd grade class who had divorced parents. It got worse after my mom remarried and we moved to a new school because I already felt like a novelty being the "new kid" and the last thing I wanted my new friends to think was that I was a freak. Thus began a new and intensified quest for perfection.

The problem, at any phase in life, with building up a facade of perfection is that eventually you begin to buy it. Suddenly things that would merely disappoint others devastate you. Elementary schools are set up to instill these kinds of complexes in children. Simple human error like forgetfulness earns you strikes against reward. Usually this reward is pizza. Now, my brother's attitude was, "Why should I work my ass off for pizza here when I can eat that anytime I want at home?" I, on the other hand, was ready to flog myself for bringing the wrong folder to science class by accident, which resulted in an unnecessarily stern lecture about responsibility and my name on the board for all to see. If I'd given my desk mate a wedgie, I would've gotten the same punishment. If this system is designed to teach important life skills, I would like to know which workplace they studied where the consequences for forgetting your notebook for a meeting was equivalent to humiliating your coworker. (Probably Google.)

The point is, I was exactly the kid those systems of approval and reward were designed for. Every gold star, every pizza party, every ribbon or certificate, brought me closer and closer to what I thought would be untouchable perfection. While Westwood Elementary School was setting me up for success, I was setting myself up for failure.