Runnin' on Empty

The first of December brings a confluence of emotions, feelings and worst of all, apprehensions. We'd had a pleasant Thanksgiving having actually succeeded in not thinking too awfully much about my economic fortunes. But, as December came on, frigid and bleak my mood began to mirror the weather. I had been off the payroll for 4 months now. The Christmas season was in full boil and I was flirting with the blues in ways I hadn't in years. When you spend most of your professional life working, even conscientiously in a bank its easy - no, I'll go so far as to say normal to lose track of what it means to be truly, economically productive. In a big, mature organization transactional business happens largely because customers know to call when they need a financial problem solved. A responsible bank employee simply takes the call and fashions a response from the ample resources that employee has at his or her disposal and that's called "sales". By using just a little initiative that employee might even qualify for sales rewards - a trip or a campaign prize and if you're really well employed, incentive compensation. Well, during my banking career, I had come to fully understand how that process worked and was, not only paid enough to keep my comfortable life style in tact, I'd gotten completely used to making bonuses on top of the ordinary compensation that did everything from enable consistent philanthropy, to treating my family, including young adult children to extraordinary trips and of course living well. (By upper middle class standards, anyway) But there is a dark psychological aspect to becoming accustomed to receiving such compensation without ever truly processing what it means to earn it. Its called entitlement. I had come to believe that I was entitled to be so compensated and that the things I chose to buy, creature comforts, admiration from others for doing so "well," a tangible sense of accomplishment and above all a feeling of security all get rolled together. I had become a person disconnected with self reliance because my well respected employer assumed that position. Now, all of that was gone. Only now was I beginning to understand how a slave could get comfortable with his circumstances and not want to change them, even if he could. The hardest reality though was my professional identity, my professional self concept was dissipating before my very eyes and, on the darkest of days I was terrified that I didn't even begin to know how to get it back. I realized that the irrevocable loss of such self respect meant certain failure. On some days this reality motivated me but by early December I was nearly depressed, longing for the salad days of working at the Bank, planning the office Christmas party, looking forward to shopping for others, the Christmas feeling. The only person who seemed to understand as well or better than me was my wife, Jill. its a long story but her adolescence was rudely interrupted when her Dad, a well respected football coach lost his job and simply couldn't find another one. Her nuclear family nearly disintegrated as a result and each carries the scars from that trauma, even to this day. The prospects of a merry Christmas seemed just as remote to her as it did to me. Oddly though there was real comfort in knowing that my wife understood. And, comprehending that she too was suffering psychologically was completely motivational. I simply could not let the blues over take me as I had too many looking to me to solve this problem. Of all the things that I couldn't afford, feeling sorry for my self, the ages old indulgence of the entitlement generation could not be the option I chose. I had to find some way to force-ably reject that.

Running on empty
Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe
I dont know about anyone but me
If it takes all night, thatll be all right
If I can get you to smile before I leave

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I dont know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But Im running behind

Have you ever seen the rain?

I never had the clearest of ideas how Rick S. ought to be involved in this initiative but being associated with someone of his reputation and intellectual horsepower seemed like a good idea. For his part, Rick S. seemed happy to meet every 10 days or so and be brought up to speed while he mulled his options. He was, after all a real estate developer and this was a real estate oriented endeavor. My long time partner, Mark - who had by now gotten on board this train was consistently wary of Rick S. as he wasn't sure enough of his motives to suit him. I suppose down deep, I was still resisting the notion of going out on our own without the financial backing of some institution or at least and institutionally sized individual. I had enough cash to keep body and soul together for 6 months, I estimated and I had not, as of yet committed myself financially to this wholeheartedly. The cold hard truth was, it was approaching Thanksgiving, we'd been at it virtually full time for 60 days now and I still couldn't see how I or any of the rest of us was going to get paid.

Dallas , Mark and I were meeting at least once a week at a Starbucks on Lake Lanier, as that was roughly central for each of us. When I met Dallas, he was considering buying a 100 stall barn in Acworth, Georgia due north of Atlanta. Part of my first impressions were formed in the enormity of a barn that size. having little frame of reference in the equestrian world, I'll just say that one could easily park a 747 Jumbo jet in it! Well, as that purchase had fallen through and Chuck's admonishment to look for a failed subdivision instead of a farm, we began to ponder our land options toward the lake and closer to Atlanta's equestrian heart, an area call Birmingham Highway, in Alpharetta. In another of what seemed like Providential intrusions, one day I was wandering back from our Starbucks, looking for a scenic route back to town and I stumbled onto Birmingham Highway. As I had time on my hands, I drove north until I came to The Canton Highway (Ga. 20) and randomly turned toward home. In just a minute or two I came over a hill and there stood "Belmont Downs." Truth is stranger than fiction.

4 years ago, I was with a bank client who was trying to market a development called Belmont Downs. I remember it because my hometown was Belmont, NC. Here it was right in front of me and it was beautiful. There was about 2000 feet of frontage on Canton Highway that was lined with 4 rail, black creosote fencing, just like the modern farms in Kentucky are fenced. behind the fence was 30 acres of bluegrass and then a sweep of pine trees that ran over the hill and out of sight. The gate of the now derelict subdivision was locked but a faded sign had the developers name and phone number. Believing that I might just have found, or been pushed toward the exact site we needed, I called the number and got the developer, Tim Rice on the phone and made an appointment for Dallas, mark and me to see the property.

Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm,
I know, Its been comin' for sometime
When its over, so they say, it'll rain a sunny day
I know, shinin' down like a water

And I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain - John Fogerty of CCR