In the spirit what I said below in “Standing Together,” I want to tell you something about the resource we call Bob.

My Federal Disability Report gave me a financial boost better than winning the lottery. It listed me as not only disability-level ADD, overly concerned with “offensive concerns” and an endless list of other things. Damn, that thing was LONG. It would have been MUCH shorter if it just listed what I DIDN’T have.

But I am almost legendary for giving good personal advice. As long as this old nutcase does THAT, none of this bothers me. It may be that what “offensive concerns” makes me give advice entirely to help OTHER people.

Mixed into almost everybody else’s advice, including psychiatrists’ is:

1) A desire to show how good THEY are, worthy of being put on the pedestal of Advisor;

and

2) Their pet obsessions. In other words, PREACHING.

I just want to help.

Anyway, one of the endless array of my problems was “borderline schizophrenic.”

I think this “two minds” bit showed up when my last team decided they could no longer support me. They did NOT just drop out on me and leave me high and dry in a snit the way the coat-and-tie types I discussed did. They are honorable people. The honor that made them leave me on principle was REAL. It would not let them just walk out.

People love to TALK abut honor. Damned few PRACTICE it.

Anyway back to my favorite subject, me.

My first reaction when they informed me of their decision was, to my surprise, RELIEF.

I have worked myself into two nervous breakdowns. My breakdowns were the opposite of what that word conjures up. I had pushed myself through hundred-hour, high-pressure weeks, year after year. It hurt more as I got older, but I just soldiered on. One day, something in me just QUIT.

I am NOT exaggerating when I say that if my bed had caught fire, I might have been willing to roll to roll out of it. I called my ex-wife. She got into action for me, but her first reaction was, “I was wondering when this would happen.”

I then made my second and last call to my doctor brother. He said he would get in touch with my ex, NOT “Bob why don’t YOU call her and SAY …”

But my brother’s first reaction sounded like an echo, “I was wondering when this would happen.” Everybody saw it coming and had warned me, but if I had been sensible I wouldn’t have worked myself into TWO, count ‘em, TWO breakdowns.

So when my team did their honorable withdrawal I bemoaned the end of the promotion of my book and all we were doing together, so the relief surprised me. It came from a part of my mind, a SEPARATE part I had not been listening to.

AGAIN.

Here I had gotten some top-notch people to go at things I had been desperately wanting. So I drove on with their genius, their dedication, and their ENERGY.

Do you know how hard it is to tell your Dream Team that you are DANGEROUSLY exhausted? Do you realize how hard it is, when you have worked for YEARS to GET that Dream Team, to tell YOURSELF that you are dangerously exhausted?

When the final news came, a part of my brain said tome, clear as a bell, “Dammit, Bob, you promised me a REST when you were mustered out. Now GIVE it to me!” I had always kept going by telling myself “Just ONE more thing.” I “one more thinged” myself into TWO breakdowns and was working on a third.

If this is that hard for me to understand, think how impossible it is to explain to OTHERS. And the energy to explain that to others comes out of the same desperately diminishing energy account I am trying to explain.

If it was just a matter of WILL, I wouldn’t slow down. When I feel the exhaustion, I get SCARED now. I find myself not doing things a decent man would routinely do. I get your names mixed up. I leave people dangling who are working their hearts out for us. This, combined with my “offensive worries,” makes a miserable combination.

I am sure I have said this before. I am writing it here, once and for all, so I can copy and paste it.

SysOps can explain this better than I can. She has a LOT of experience with the Care and Feeding of Bob.

I don’t just WANT you to take the ball and run with it. I NEED that. If you want to tell somebody something or DO something, just CLEAR it with me. DON’T make ME the go-between. If it’s by e-mail, I will, in a couple of days, get your go-ahead and theirs, then give you their address.

I am still your devoted leader, perfessor, and coach. If you need me to LISTEN, that puts no strain on me. If you need a clearance or advice, you using my energy right.

People keep explaining to me that THEY have a LIFE, so they can’t do things. They explain this to me as if I were a person with an inexhaustible supply of energy and nothing else to do. So am I supposed to explain this to them?

No, I just smile very sadly and put their standard statement in the Round File.

A commenter recently wrote me about his progress, and then went on to say how he was in bad shape. But he is still battling on.

He then apologized for “whining” to me. I replied to him that that is what friends are for. He thanked me, but said that when he read that e-mail back over, he felt even WORSE.

Look, gang, this is one thing I realize completely that other managers talk about but don’t PRACTICE.

Let me repeat, Henry Ford was asked what he would do if the government took away his company. He replied, “I can spare the machinery. As long as they don’t take my PEOPLE away, I’ll stay rich.” I’m sure I got the quote wrong, but that’s the POINT that was made.

We have a phenomenal machine here, because PEOPLE like SysOps set it up. What our commenter doesn’t realize is that HE is my resource. Yes, I am a friend of his, but YOU are my RESOURCE. If you are feeling down I need to know it. If I can help by listening, I would be a FOOL not to listen, even if it hurts your pride to tell me so.

Most managers are FOOLS. They insist they don’t want “Yes” men, but they expect their one real resource, the one that makes them MANAGERS, to put on a tough act.

Then there are the managers who kiss up to their people. I have probably driven people out of here who couldn’t take what I said back. This commenter is putting me down a little when he apologizes AFTER I said it was fine. All of you know very well that if I thought you were whining unnecessarily I would TELL you so.

Gimme a BREAK, gang!

I don’t hesitate to “whine” to you when I NEED to. I am YOUR resource, and if you are going to give me your attention and effort, you need to know where I am and to help ME out by listening.

When you get to be part of my team, I want you to be PROUD of the fact you have made in the world of, to put it mildly, a man whose standards are out of sight.

And with PRIDE should come some CONFIDENCE. I am too confident of my manhood, especially my MORAL manhood, to be afraid to overdo the PERSONAL gloom bit from time to time. As you know, there is nothing I DESPISE more than the Tough Guy. The Masturbation Generation gave me fifty years of that crap. It is the ONLY worthwhile lesson they taught me.

Your PERSONAL problems that affect your performance are MY concern, whether it is supposed to make you “look good” or not. You OWE it to me to “whine” if you need to. It is only when, like Mr. Webb, you let your PERSONAL depression turn into DEFEATISM that I go ballistic.

Most of the best compliments I really appreciated were left-handed ones. When I was in my teens, and the teens aren’t the most stable period in one’s life, least of all mine, a group I was working with complained to our leader about what an SOB I was.

He replied, “Yes, Whitaker is a pain in the ass. He’s always insulting, bitching, worrying out loud, being just plain nasty and he is always THERE when we need him.”

He concluded, “If any of the rest are THERE when we need them and have the guts to DO what is needed the way Whitaker does, I’ll consider your complaints.”

Now THERE’S a LEADER!

I had TWO people in DC offer to take cuts in pay to work under me. Managers brag their door is always open. But I was always there, and you didn’t need to impress me to talk to me. In fact, it was MORE important to let me know when you didn’t feel up to it and needed a listener.

WE are our resource. That is more practical even than worrying abut the machinery. This is a MORAL war and your morale and my morale is critical.