As the year winds down, I find myself in a similar position. While feeling very thankful and blessed at all there is around me – I am living in a state of beyond exhaustion and somehow managing to put one foot in front of the other and keep plowing to the finish line. Every year, exhaustion sets in sometime around October and with traveling for the year-end, working with dealers on 2020 plans, prospecting for new business and trying to tie up all the loose ends from this year, while AT THE SAME TIME spending time with my family and friends. I usually end up like this:
That was me, Sunday night when I was faced with making the decision to fly out of town while dealing with a serious stomach flu or cancel a day of meetings which would have been like knocking over dominos, which would totally disrupt my week and the flow of the company.
I made the decision to fly out at 4 p.m. while still throwing up and somehow made it to the plane to be wheels up at 6 p.m. This got me to my destination in Virginia shortly after 9 p.m. where, after getting checked into the hotel, I began to throw-up some more. Everyone I know would have and did say “just cancel the trip – they will understand.” But it’s not the “them” that I am worried about as much as letting myself down by not giving every ounce of energy that I had to give. Notice the plastic container sitting next to me, the roll of paper towels and unopened Ginger Ale that prove I really was about as sick as one can be.
This is what it is like to live in a room that nobody ever sees. Not many people know what it is like to have to look outside and see people having fun outside of work and setting social calendars and planning fun things and you can’t let yourself out of the room because you are so truly dedicated to what you do. Not many people ever see all the pressure or stress that comes with owning and running different businesses with a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on your every decision, and where a bad decision could cost someone a career. Nobody feels the thrill of winning something big or the catastrophic sense of failure that comes with not winning and the agony you can go through with that. There is a lot that goes on in a room like the one I live in that people just don’t understand, and in some ways, I am glad that many of them don’t have too.
So while I am flying tonight, I feel better. I have passed the stomach flu, yet am still only keeping to liquids and crackers for my diet. I’m not branching off into anything fancy quite yet. But the finish line is a little closer, and the exhaustion just a little bit more, but dealing with more things in my own room. The one that nobody ever sees.