Marvin&Company: Stories About Death And Entrepreneurship

August 14, 2020

Chasing Rainbows

I once employed a subcontractor who had lots of opinions about how I ran my business. He was quick to point out how he’d do something better or different, and what, in his opinion, I was doing wrong. Of course this grew tiresome, but this man was good at his job and put in lots of billable hours for my company. So I would smile and thank him for his input.

It’s not that his ideas were bad. In fact, many made sense in the short term. Most of his ideas were good, just not fully formed. Do this thing, it will make money. Market yourself this way, you’ll get more clients. In his mind I was obstinate for failing to chase my company’s full potential and limiting its growth.

He had once owned a brewery which ultimately failed because, among other issues, it expanded quickly without a stable foundation upon which to rebuild should new growth become untenable. One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned as a small business owner is that just because something can make money, doesn’t necessarily make it a good investment.

Sustainable success is achieved with balance between big ideas and carefully calculated risks. Some of the best ideas can easily turn out to be rainbow chasing.

What my well-meaning colleague didn’t recognize is that going in a million different directions at once erodes the foundation upon which a company is built. A good idea only has true merit if it can be reasonably implemented without siphoning too many existing resources. If doing something new will make money, but doing the new thing means doing less of something that already makes money and already has a strong client base, that growth is not sustainable.

Even the best ideas will have setbacks in the implementation phase. This is the place where so many new businesses stumble. Ideas are great – we need a constant flow of new ideas for our businesses to remain relevant – and not all great ideas are a good idea. These two truths are not mutually exclusive. That part is really important.

August 13, 2020

Great Expectations

Growing up, my mother had high expectations. If I didn’t live up to the ever-moving target of her standards, it wouldn’t occur to her to soften the blow of her disapproval. Everything was pass-fail, no in between, no participation trophy for an honest effort. It sounds like I’m spinning a sad tale, but my mother is one of the reasons why I’m a small business owner.

From her I learned single minded focus. How to read a room and give everyone in it whatever they needed to feel at ease. Because of her, I learned to be ruthless with myself.

I have had the pleasure of working with many smart, driven, successful people throughout my career. One of them once told me I am a double edged sword. “We always know where we stand with you,” she said, “and most of the time that’s good. The thing is, you have no poker face. We all know when you’re disappointed.”

I don’t know if it was meant as a compliment, but I took it as one. My perpetually dissatisfied mother taught me to never stop moving, because nothing will ever be good enough. I don’t slow down for those who can’t keep up. Even if I want to, I don’t think I have the emotional capacity or patience. As a result, I am surrounded by high-achieving workaholics. If your feelings are easily hurt and you want bankers hours, I’m not the boss you’re looking for.

When I started my company, my business plan was simple: I know how to do some things, a few of them really well. It may be my Magnum Opus, or it could all end tomorrow. Either way, I don’t have any regrets.

Without my mother I wouldn’t have crippling anxiety or a pathological need for constant reassurance that my friends actually do like me. I also wouldn’t have been fearless enough for this entrepreneurship adventure. She taught me how to be (mostly) impervious to failure. All in all it was a fair trade.

When failure is the only air you breathe for seventeen years, it loses all its sharp edges. My success is built on a mountain of failure. How lucky I was to have learned to fail with tenacity, faith, and a little grace. I appreciate my mother for giving me that.

August 12, 2020

Friendship In Crisis

Grief affects our friendships, sometimes like ripples in the water from a carelessly tossed pebble, sometimes like a tsunami. The worst part is how we can’t ever really predict how relationships will weather the storm.

Without warning, one of my closest friends and I were on opposite sides of a wide chasm for twelve incredibly long weeks. So far apart we could barely hear each other. The person who has seen me at my best and worst and still chooses me. We solve problems; it’s who we are in a friendship built on years of common goals and camaraderie. So when our state shut down with no clear end in sight, I assumed whatever happened next would be just another problem we’d solve together.

The thing is, we had vastly different grief languages. I needed evidence that the heartbreak I felt was mutual; that I, and the friendship, mattered. My friend needed stoicism, reassurance that we would be fine on the other side of whatever this was, for me to hold space without holding him accountable for my big emotions.

In retrospect, continuing to show up for each other under extreme stress, even empty-handed, underscores the strength of our friendship. The kind of strength that predicts longevity. We did the best we could, there is no blame to be placed or assumed. The greatest challenge of maintaining a meaningful friendship is continuing to choose each other, even through all the hard parts.

I also ended up with an unexpected new friend during the shutdown. As professional acquaintances we enjoyed each other’s company a few times a year and collaborated on some projects, one of which had recently failed so spectacularly that we’d started texting every day. At first as the pandemic progressed it was still mostly about the work but soon we were talking about more personal things: fear of an uncertain future and a shared inexplicable crush on our governor. I started looking forward to our daily stream-of-consciousness texts: here’s a blueberry lemon curd muffin recipe, we’re strong like a Kelly Clarkson song, you’re pretty. Her trauma-brain mirrored my own. We spoke the same grief language so I didn’t need reassurance from her. Our mutual anxiety and affection were obvious, cards all face-up on the table, nothing more to discuss.

Forging adult friendships is hard to begin with and gets even trickier in a crisis with all the raw emotions and visceral reactions. Some of us need to compartmentalize our fear and wait it out; others, like me, need to talk through our fear. Neither reaction is wrong. Our challenge is to offer up whatever comfort we can to our people even when our trauma brains trick us into feeling like we’re too far apart.

Next time – and there will certainly be a next time even if the crisis has a different name – I hope I have the presence of mind to meet the people I love where they are, without expectations for where I wish we all could be.

August 10, 2020

About Marvin

When I tell people about you, those who never got to know you when you were in the world, this is what I say:

You were brilliant. Able to take a building apart and put it back together in your head, then write the instructions. You loved architecture, history, and railroads the way a potter loves clay. You were one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and yet you possessed the charisma to speak with anyone without a hint of superiority. You could command a room with a look or a word. This was the best of you.

I also got to see the worst parts of you. Your temper, that deep fiery rage with teeth and claws. How your eloquent words, when turned loose in anger, could tear your opponent apart, even when, especially when, you didn’t raise your voice. I saw your insecurities, how you hated yourself more than anyone else ever could. Our shared fear that the world would find out the secret to our success was just pretending to have a plan.

Most of the time, though, you showed up for our friendship with your best self, and challenged me to do the same. Problem solving was our language. We built a company and a life like an old couple working through a crossword together.

August 9, 2020

COVID-Grief

Grief is a whole-body experience. It’s different than sadness and depression. It bathes our brains in a unique chemical cocktail unlike anything else we’ll ever experienced. So even if we’re not necessarily feeling overwhelmingly sad, those feelings of “not quite right” can still be a manifestation of grief.

Maybe you wake up each morning with a vague sense of dread, unable to pinpoint the exact source of that fear. You feel fine sometimes; grateful, even, for the chance to slow down, spend time with family or hobbies or pets. You walk more, notice nature more, really pay attention to how much you enjoy toast and tea.

But it all feels off, somehow. Everything seems surreal. The events by which you’ve marked the passage of time throughout your adult life no longer exist. Sometimes you feel like you’ve got this – it’s only for now, everything is probably going to be fine. And sometimes deciding what shirt to wear today is just too much.

You have all of the emotions all at once. You’re inexplicably enraged over some things yet totally Zen about others; you cry when the cat doesn’t want to sit on your lap. You’re tired all the time and have trouble staying asleep.

Everything feels unsettling. Like you’re supposed to be doing something but keep remembering there’s nothing to do – nothing that feels like it matters. Most of us aren’t used to sitting still. It’s hard work for which we were entirely unprepared.

You can feel all of this, or none of it, and that’s okay*.

Grief changes us and acclimating is difficult, but this part really is only for now. Later we’ll talk about how we can learn to sit with and move through grief. Today please just know that you’re not alone and you’re not losing your mind.

*If you are having thoughts about harming yourself contact a mental health provider or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-271-8255.

August 9, 2020

The Beginning of Everything

We’ve been friends for less than a year, and you’ve just quit your job. Well, sort of; you’ve told the executive director to perform an unlikely sexual act upon himself and stormed out.

I follow you, of course, like I will for the next fourteen years.

I know you’ll be at our project. It has walls now, and a floor, and we’re both wearing shoes this time, so things are already looking up. I find you pacing around the skeletal interior walls. You need to rant for awhile so I listen. For what it’s worth, the disagreement spinning out of control wasn’t your fault. We work for a temperamental man whose grandiose ideas aren’t always rational or legal. You pointed out the flaws in his latest shenanigans and it was not well received. He is an asshat. If you want to keep your job, though, you’ll need to apologize.

You pause the tirade to ask me what I think, so I say “are you ready to go?”. For a moment you think I mean are you done complaining, can we leave the building now, and the hurt look on your face shocks me. Your entire body deflates at the realization that I may not be on your side this time. Up to this point I still suspected you were just letting me follow you around because I typed fast and you felt sorry for me. I understand, finally, that this friendship was never about pity.

So I continue, explaining how you should not give our boss the satisfaction of quitting unless you are ready to leave on your own terms, sure of a brilliant and successful future. We aren’t quite there yet, so perhaps an insincere apology will buy you the time to plan what’s next. You smile, thank me for listening, and we leave.

Later, after an apology so sarcastic I still cannot believe it worked, we are downstairs in our little closet office. Sitting beside me you quietly say, “I can’t do this alone” and hand me a coffee stained business plan created on a typewriter in 1979. The cover says, simply, Marvin & Company.

This is the beginning of everything.

August 8, 2020

Navigating

We are arguing about a map. I’ve spent half a year completing a housing condition survey of the entire West side of Saratoga and now that the map is complete you don’t like where I’ve drawn the target area boundaries. A brilliant idea, I thought, a bit of gerrymandering to ensure a high score on the grant we’re about to submit. I’ve created a target area that includes the lowest income areas with the worst housing conditions and I’m too proud of my work to consider who that choice has left off the map.

You’re listing names now: all the people who need roofs and furnaces and accessible bathrooms, elderly ladies who make you cookies and tea, who you’ve told you would try your best to help. I’ve unintentionally excluded them in favor of statistics, and you are enraged. Your fists pound the table and your eyes are on fire. I’ve never seen you so upset – although this is nothing compared to our years of arguments to come.

Too angry and hurt to say anything, I walk out. Through the back door and down the street, headed toward the project we’re currently managing. It’s an abandoned building, torn apart with two walls and no roof, on its way to becoming three rent controlled senior apartments. While grinding my teeth and imagining witty comebacks, I’ve overlooked the fact that I walked down the street and onto an active construction site in a dress, with no shoes.

You follow me, of course, because you always do, and for the next decade you always will.

We’re calmer now, making tentative eye contact. You, a mountain man in a purple polo shirt, smiling in mild frustration. Me, blue silk skirt and bare feet, balanced precariously on a metal I-beam, surrounded by all the reasons I should have updated my tetanus shot. “Well…” you say, raising your eyebrows and spreading your hands. “Yeah” I respond. It’s as close as we’ll come to apologies today.

In two steps you’ve expertly traversing the space between us. You pick me up, flinging me over your shoulder with more force than I believe is truly necessary, and carry me back to the sidewalk. When I am back on the ground, you hand me my shoes.

I look up at you to say something, anything, to redeem myself, as this is clearly not my most professional moment. Before I can speak you say “They poured concrete this morning.” So we walk to the back of the building where a new concrete pad cures in the late afternoon sun. Without a word you take the pencil from behind your ear and write your initials, pass it to me so I can write mine. Somewhere on Washington Street in Saratoga, there is a utility room crawl space where MO & MRD is forever inscribed on the rear left corner of the concrete.

Later, we will revisit the map, add the missing data, give up a point or two so that a dozen more people are eligible for the grant program. I’ve learned the importance of valuing people over scoring criteria. Years from now you’ll tell me this was the day you knew ours was a friendship destined for longevity.

August 8, 2020

Retelling Our Story

~~You dismantled the world piece by piece.~~

We fell apart.

~~You made me watch~~.

I chose to stay.

~~You broke my heart~~.

We break our own hearts.

~~You were my partner and you changed your mind.~~

Addiction is a monster that stole the best parts of you.

~~Why wasn’t I enough for you?~~

I loved our life. I know you did too.

~~I stayed longer than I should have~~.

I stood with you.

~~You destroyed the life we built together~~.

You changed the trajectory of my life.

~~Why did you leave me?~~

Your addiction was not my fault.

~~What did I do wrong?~~

There is nothing I could have done differently.

~~You changed our life without acknowledgement~~.

You were drowning.

~~You never said you were sorry.~~

You were ashamed and afraid.

~~You didn’t say goodbye.~~

I know you loved me.

~~I don’t think I can ever forgive you~~

I forgive you.

August 8, 2020

The Best Parts

Simple truths. You adored my children as if you were their beloved crazy uncle. Never missed a play or concert, carried their school photos in your wallet and hung their school achievement certificates on the wall above your desk. From the first day you met six month old Elder Child, you were in love. You talked to Younger Child throughout my pregnancy, wondering if she’d recognize your voice when she was born. You showered them with gifts and praise, fed them junk food and life lessons. Sat beside them to read the same book a dozen times. You held YC when she’d been in the world less than a dozen hours. When EC walked to the office after school you stopped work to ask about her day.

One drizzly February day, when EC was at daycare and Husband working days during winter break, you came to my house with a Vivaldi CD you’d bought at a truck stop. I sat in the rocking chair, nursing my five week old infant while you tactfully averted your eyes. We talked about NPR and funny bumper stickers you saw on the road. I sang all my favorite James Taylor and Barry Manilow songs to soothe the baby and you asked me to keep singing long after she slept. Later you brought me lunch and made me tea.

I didn’t realize how I longed for the outside world, still immersed as I was on the hormone cocktail of breastfeeding and new baby smell. It was just an afternoon filled with simple acts of love and it was magnificent.

Some people asked why I played Vivaldi at your memorial service. Why not Grateful Dead or Talking Heads? Surely that was more your style. It was my selfish desire to remember this day. The tenderness with which you handed me the heavy hand-thrown pottery mug of mint tea. The way your shoulders relaxed and your face became peaceful when you held my babies. You were absolutely head over heels for the small humans I love more than everything. That’s maybe the best part of our story.

December 3, 2013

You Are Gone

You are gone and now you are everywhere. All over my town, the places we worked, the streets where you parked your truck. I drive down those streets every day and I see you. The day before Thanksgiving 2008, it was snowing and you bought me an orange canvas coat. It doesn’t fit anymore and I was about to donate it but now I’ll keep it forever. Because you died, and death hardens the edges of things, makes them turn into stone so that a street will never again be just a street but a monument to the life that was us, before.

The day before Thanksgiving. Two site visits, then lunch at the diner. Turkey and cranberry sandwiches with green apple slices and cheddar cheese. I always gave you my pickle. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember the sandwiches, and the snow, and you. Always you.

Why did you leave me? Not just the death, that happens all the time, and death by itself could have rolled from tragic to bittersweet to nostalgic in a reasonable time frame but this is something else entirely. I lost you a little bit at a time, so slowly that I didn’t even realize it was happening at first, until one day you were Gone.

I don’t remember when I lost you, when was the exact moment that you were out of reach. At a conference in 2010 we were happy. We watched TV and ate too much candy and played pinball until 4AM. You stayed awake with me because I have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms alone, and even though you never once said the words out loud I didn’t doubt for a second that you adored me.

That was the last Good Time. We had other little glimpses of how it used to be after that, but by then you were well on your way to being Gone, so the times you were you became more infrequent until one day I realized it had been a very long time since I had last seen you. I mean, I saw you shuffle in and out of the office, I heard you scream profanity and make delusional accusations, but it was like a you-shaped zombie in the room. You weren’t there anymore.

I try to remember the last Good Time as a sweet, perfect memory, preserved like Snow White in her glass shroud. But there was the next day, when you didn’t come out of your room and yelled at me for knocking on your door. I told people you weren’t feeling well, the chlorine from the pool made your sinuses act up. You didn’t come out of your room, bleary eyed and angry, until it was time to go home. I thought you were mad at me, and I couldn’t figure out why. The night before, we had been us, like we had been for years. It changed so fast.

Later, when it was time to go, you stopped at every rest stop with me. You know I generally have to pee every five minutes, and that I feel embarrassed about it, so you called me every time a rest stop was coming up and tell me you needed more coffee. We had dinner at the truck stop at exit 28 and you bought little presents for my kids. You seemed like you again, and so I started to believe my story about the chlorine and your sinuses. That sinus infection lasted for two years, until you died. Now I know why.

Before I understood that addiction was beyond your control, I would often wonder, what part of our life together made you so unhappy that you had to use cocaine and prescription narcotics to get through the day? Did you hate me? Did I do something to make you need to escape?

When it got to the point where you were angry and yelling all the time, you said it was all my fault, I was a nagging bitch that just wanted you to work harder. I cried and begged you to come back to work, come back to me, and you screamed things at me which made no sense. You said I stabbed you in the back, ruined everything, with no further explanation. Back then I believed you.

You disappeared for weeks at a time, lost track of inspections and clients, misplaced documents in your truck or didn’t remember doing them at all. I covered for you – I did your job and kept your secret for as long as I could, made the clients and the contractors believe that you were super busy and that’s why no one had seen you in public for two years. How did I end up being the villain in your story? You barely left your house and when you did it was in the middle of the night to go to Schenectady.

Well, now I know what you were doing in Schenectady, why you left me alone to watch helplessly as our company fell apart. Now I know that you probably didn’t even realize how hurtful your words were in the end, couldn’t see the hell you dragged me through. I want to believe that the Real you would have wanted to beat the shit out of the Gone you for being so mean to me.

Back when you liked me, you never would have stood for anyone treating me that way. You would have unleashed an army on them – eviscerated them with your words, that was your special gift. The Real you was my fearless defender, my knight in shining armor, my very best friend in the whole wide world. The Gone you said it was all in my head, that you were the same as always and I turned into a nagging psycho bitch. You told me you couldn’t take me or my bullshit emotions anymore, that we weren’t friends, it was just business.

You broke my heart into a million pieces the first day you said that. Our company was built around our friendship. It was a perfectly choreographed dance. People who met us thought we were married, so in sync we were with each other. If not for our friendship, why would I stay? Why would I turn myself inside out trying to keep the business running?

I tried to give you the time to get better from whatever it was that made you turn into this mean, absent person that I didn’t recognize. I paid your personal bills when your propane stopped being delivered and your house phone kept getting turned off. I paid the business expenses with my credit card when yours started being declined. I quietly did the inspections you forgot about, kept up the façade that you were okay because I couldn’t stand the thought of you losing your dignity. I stayed longer than anyone else would have, because I was your friend. It was never just business.

I know in my rational mind that addiction is an illness. But in my heart I am raging with anger that you made the choice to ruin your life, made a choice to fall apart for two years, leave me to clean up the mess you made of our life and our business, all the while making me feel as if it was all my fault. I want to remember how much I love you, grieve for my dear friend and honor your memory. But then I think of the screaming, the name calling, the accusations. I think of the thousands of dollars you sent via Western Union to that Schenectady gas station while you left our company destitute, all the white powder in perfectly proportioned little white envelopes all over your truck and hotel room and bedroom closet. And I hate you, I hate you for the past two years, I hate you for systematically destroying the company we raised up together as if it was our child, I hate you for choosing to leave me. This didn’t happen because of heart disease or cancer. Discovering your addiction after your death leaves me in uncharted territory. How do I live with this horrible ending?

I thought you were happy. I thought we were happy. The company was successful, we were well known and highly respected in our field. If you were unhappy with me, or with the company, you could have told me. We could have changed something, anything, to fix this. I would have walked away from you and never looked back if that is what you needed to be happy. Whatever you needed, whatever you wanted from me, I would have done anything for you. Anything to save you from the awful indignity of the past two years. Dirty clothes and slurred speech and never leaving your house. Hallucinating gypsies and minions and other crippling paranoia. Dying alone in your truck in a Walmart parking lot.

Oh my dear friend, my partner, my person. Where did you go and how did we get here? I don’t have the words to explain what happened and now it doesn’t matter anymore because you are dead. Now I am the zombie, going through the motions of my life but not really here.

I’m so lonely. And I don’t know what to do next, or who I am now, or how to live in the world without you.