Cleaning up the mess

I started a new journey a few years ago.  In this new journey I am becoming a person of integrity.  That means I'm setting my chameleon aside.  I'm being who I truly am no matter who I'm with or where I am.  I'm learning to tell others the truth in a loving way, even if it isn't what I think they want to hear.  I'm learning to be comfortable with things that are uncomfortable.

One of the things that is very freeing to me on this journey is that being a person of integrity is NOT the same as being a person of perfection.  I'm not perfect.  But being a person of integrity, when I screw things up, I apologize.  I accept responsibility for my part in what got screwed up, AND (this is the part that really sucks) I do my part to clean up the mess.

So, I produce improvisational theatre shows on the side.  It's crazy, I know.  In fact, it may be completely insane.  I love it.  I had a show last weekend and I really wanted to pack the place out.  I hired a marketing person and delivered postcards to a bunch of bars in town.  I pushed my show on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and everywhere else who would have me.  And the audience turn out was small.  It was a good crowd, but I hadn't budgeted well and I dipped into our family savings to cover my losses.

I have a good job and make decent money.  One of the agreements we've made in our marriage is that we both pay for extraneous stuff that we want personally out of little side jobs and extra income.  That way we focus our main income on paying the big bills and putting some money away for incidentals.  Maybe it sounds weird, but it works for us.

So now my personal stuff (improv shows) has cut into our joint stuff.  And not in a small way.  I'm not going to be able to pay it back with my usual odd side jobs.  I would really like to ignore this fact and not have to live with the consequences.  After all, I worked my butt off to market the show.  But I'm not that guy anymore.  I'm committed to cleaning up my own messes.  So I drove by the local pizza joint tonight and filled out a delivery driver application.

And my internal dialog was rolling the entire time I was contemplating going back to doing some pizza delivery:

"C'mon.  Really?  This isn't that big a mess.  Just forget it."
"I'm better than this!"
"I have an MBA for Christ's sake, I don't need this shit."

That last comment finally pushed me over the edge.  Because I know that is NOT who I want to be.  I don't want to consider myself better than ANYONE else.  I don't want to think I'm above ANY job.  Just because I'm working a good job for a good company today doesn't mean I'm promised a job tomorrow.  So I'm going to be slinging pizza again for a while.  And eating some humble pie for a while.  And that's good.