Inertia, Anxiety, And A Story About How I (Almost) Utterly Failed

"A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu

"Watch out for that first step, it's a doozy." - Some Warner Brothers cartoon.

So it’s been a very long time since I’ve shared anything on these blogs (it sounds funny to write that, given some of the extended hiatuses (hiati?) I’ve taken in the past) but the last three months have been anything but dull.

Mrs. Robbins and I are saving more than ever, we’ve been away seeing relatives both sick and well, and we’re making plans to have some fun over the spring/summer and to celebrate her big 40^th birthday.

But I’m not here today to share with you my current successes. I want to talk about one of the times I failed. I want to talk about psychological and emotional inertia. Let me take you back to my late teens/early 20s.

College Time!

 I originally enrolled in an out-of-state school that cost my family way too much money. Oh, they could afford it, but I couldn’t live up to the price of the education I was receiving.

Why?

Well the easy answers would be that I was homesick and drinking too much and having trouble making new friends – all of which are true – but the real problem was that I simply stopped going to some of my classes part-way through the semester and took a low grade in them.

This was not an isolated incident – I returned to the city my family was living in and enrolled in the major public university there, where I stopped going to all of my classes altogether in my next semester.

Let me reveal something about myself that I am usually loathe to talk about: I’m of above average intelligence. Not in the Lake Woebegone sense where we all have a tendency to judge ourselves as being above average. I mean, I knew as a kid that I was a fast learner and reader and was pretty good at math both on paper and in my head, but I went to school with a lot of talented, smart and skilled students, so it never really registered that I could be of unusual intelligence.

I Am So Smart, I Am So Smart, S-M-R-T

 No, in reality, I often test in the upper percentiles of students and adults when I take something like a Wunderlich or a Wechsler or the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery – like well above one-in-ten-million level.

I should have been acing my classes and graduating early. Heck, I should have been starting companies or discovering the cures for diseases like cancer or AIDS. I should have been solving the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict.

But I was flunking out of college on my first go-around. And it wasn’t the beer (though that didn’t help) or the girls or the copious amounts of marijuana I smoked.

It was anxiety.

I was terrified of going to my classes. I would arrive on campus (often dropped off by a family member), start walking to my classroom and suddenly be crippled by second thoughts. I would turn aside and set myself up in a student lounge or other common area with a good book and spend my entire day reading or writing or listening to music on campus within shouting distance of most of my classes – but not going to a single class.

Part of it was shame, for sure – after I had missed one or two classes due to my anxiety, I felt like I would be singled out or ridiculed for showing up (of course, those fears were largely unfounded). Part of it was also indifference. Unlike many people my age, I had a family that was helping to pay my way through school without having to take on a ton of additional debt or change their lifestyle. We could afford our educations, and that made them feel less valuable and important to our futures.

But mostly it was that I was afraid of sitting in a well-lit classroom surrounded by people my own age.

I’ve never been afraid of public speaking. I captained my speech and debate team in high school. I’ve never been afraid of crowds – I love going to concerts. I’ve never been afraid of learning – I’m a committed lifelong self-learner. I just couldn’t get myself the extra 100 feet into the classroom.

Enter Mr. Motamedi

I spent an entire semester flunking out because of this inexplicable fear.

Until, one day near semester’s end, a professor whose class I was supposed to be attending recognized me sitting in a student lounge and called me out.

His name was Hossein Motamedi – he was about as Persian as men come. Mr. Motamdedi looked at me and said:

“Christopher – you have not been in my class this semester, but you are still enrolled.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, not wanting to have to go through the effort to come up with an excuse.

“You do know that you will fail my class,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said.

“And that it is too late to withdraw without a signed form from your instructors?” he said.

“I know.”

“Come with me to the registrar’s office. Let’s get you withdrawn from my class. I don’t want to have to give you an ‘F’” He said.

And we did. He literally saved me from a derogatory mark on my academic record. Nice guy, eh?

Well what he said afterward helped me get into the classroom again and turn things around:

“You are one of my most promising students, but you can’t learn – let alone pass classes and graduate – if you’re not in classes. I expect to see you again next semester, and I hope that you will be in your seat every day. You can’t afford to throw away this opportunity.”

And I didn’t. I didn’t go seek counseling to fix my anxiety. It’s still there, and I probably should go talk to someone about it, but I really didn’t need that kind of help to get my ass into the classroom and move on with my life.

I needed someone to tell me to ‘shit or get off the pot.’  I really needed Motamedi’s act of kindness and supportive words.

For the rest of my academic career, I performed well. I was in class (almost) every day. I received ‘A’s and ‘B’s. I climbed my way back as a non-traditional student.

Inertia Sucks

Emotional/psychological inertia is like having sandbags attached to your body. It’s like struggling against bungee cords to get out of the house. It’s oppressive – and the longer you let inertia dig its claws into you, the more difficult it is to escape.

Now, most people reading this will not have experienced that kind of inertia getting themselves into the classroom, or getting themselves dressed in the morning, or going out the door for a job.

But I’m sure a lot of people have experienced inertia with their finances. It’s intimidating to start tracking your income and expenses to start a budget. It’s hard work to try to boost income and usually some sacrifices must be made to reduce expenses. When one gets to investing, the range of investment possibilities is bewildering. There’s no way to learn all of it, and it’s difficult to learn enough in a short amount of time.

The easiest answer for some will be to never start.

But let me try to play Mr. Motamedi’s role today:

Your futures are promising if you do start saving and investing.  You can’t prosper – let alone achieve financial independence or retire – if you’re not taking an active role in your financial behavior and working to save and invest.  I expect that we’ll be addressing our finances together moving forward, and I hope that you’ll come back and read some of what I have to say to help you on your own journey.