Don’t Get Bupped

………but by the time you’ve decided not to, you’ve usually already been, dang!

Many moons ago, when I was still submerged in the unforgiving and treacherous waters of the association management industry, I was sitting late at night in a bar in a city far from home. Which city doesn’t matter which is good because I have no idea due to the blurring of just about everything during that part of my life. I do recall a strong feeling of loneliness and really missing my family, which I tried to make up for with one more beer and then another. I was at the community review event in the final leg of my PCAM education, the case study. I was sitting alone when a familiar face walked in.

This was all oh so long ago, but it came to mind for me just yesterday as I sat in a hospital waiting room. My adult son was in the hospital for a fairly routine surgery. While my wife and I were in the waiting room, my wife was recounting with great detail the other times during our son’s childhood that he had been in the hospital and she in the waiting room and I………… well, you may be able to guess. Let’s just say that with each of my wife’s detailed recollections, I would tell her that I didn’t remember much about it. My wife would say, “well you were working”. You see details are much easier to recall when you lived them rather than when you heard about them when you got home from work at 10pm, after a 16-hour day at the office. Indeed, once again, long after my chance to avoid it, I was reminded of the sever “Bupping” that I had endured.

During my waiting room wait I had lots of time to recall, to some degree, so many other similar life events which occurred throughout the crazy, whacked out days of my career in the community association management industry.

I recalled the day that I was able to sneak out to one of my son’s little league games, well part of it anyway. He was pitching that day and not having his best day at it. I will never forget the feeling in my stomach as I had to leave during the third inning to the cracks of bats and screams of crowd with each pitch that my son threw. I knew he was devastated, but I had to get to my client board meeting because they had a beef with their manager. I surely didn’t feel like going to a get-my-ass-kicked meeting, but I felt that I must.

I recalled the day when I was on stage at a CAI event as part of a panel. I was seated at the panel table about to take my turn at the podium. I heard the buzz of my cell phone as a text came in. I glanced at it seeing it was from my wife but before I could read it, I was up to the podium. When I returned to the panel table, I glanced at the text which said, “I found our dream home, you need to come immediately, tons of interest so we must act quickly, can you come right now?” You probably know the answer.

I could go on and on with other recollections, some much more painful. And there are probably even more that I have long ago ejected from my memory banks because they were far too painful to even store.

However, my mind did have the fortitude to recall that night at my Case Study event oh so many moons ago. That familiar face which walked into the bar and pulled up a stool next to me sure as heck was familiar because I had been staring at it all day long. He was the administrator of my case study, a seasoned veteran, much more so than I at that point in time. He spent the next couple of hours musing painfully about his past thirty years, all but the past five of which had been mired in the slippery slope of a life thrown fully into the community association management industry. He reflected on many similar situations, eerily similar to those that I reflected on at the hospital yesterday. He reminisced with melancholy about his kids’ sporting events. I recall vividly one description, “Even if I was at one of my kids’ ball games, I wasn’t there. Rather I was at tomorrow’s staff meeting, at least my mind was.” Today, I would say, “Yes! Yes! I hear you! I hear you!” See this fellow had owned his own company for most of those years growing it from a small mom and pop to a very large company. But he had never really made any money, in his description. Finally, five years earlier he had discarded most of his clients and returned his company to a very small one enabling him to put more of his focus on life outside of the community association management industry. As we left the bar, so grateful was I for my bonus education that I wanted to hug the guy, but rather, I just professionally offered my hand and said, “Well Steve, thank you so much for all that you have shared.” Having taken note of certain aspects of my personality during our discussion, his parting words were, “Please don’t do what I have done Jim. Don’t you get bupped too.”

As I walked out of the bar, just in case I needed an exclamation point on Steve’s message, the bar’s band which I had barely noticed until then, screamed at me, implored me, Eric Burden style,

“I SHALL NOT!“ I promised Steve, Eric and myself, “I SHALL NOT!” But then I did. At least for the next 30 years. Indeed, I spent another 30 years completely bupping myself at every chance, six days a week, 12 hours a day. I missed most of the good parts of life. Did the value of a very successful career make up for it? No. So now, as a Bupp disciple, I implore all of you reading this blog, DO NOT GET BUPPED like Steve Bupp and I did.