By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 4, 2013 at 8:15 AM ET  Click here to purchase e-book for ONLY 99 CENTS — this week only My own dark night of the soul. Without a crisis manager to guide me.
At the age of 22, most of my friends had graduated college and were beginning to wear suits and ties and dress shoes and carry a sleek umbrella when it rained, as they went to work at enviable places like accounting and law firms and growing businesses and established organizations.
I was doing none of those things and felt ostracized and dismissed by my peers and friends and loved ones who had run out of patience with me. I was out of all of my “second chances.”
Hope from others had been displaced with sadness, concern and eventually disgust. Friends were calling my parents telling them I needed help and that they were worried for my safety. One of my old friends had just visited me while he was back in town and saw me in shambles, in a deliberately dark and dank apartment wearing only my dingy robe (ironically decorated with Roman Empire images), as I sat disheveled, unshaven and un-bathed amid a sea of empty vodka, bourbon and beer bottles.
I had squandered my last few jobs and dropped out of college for three consecutive semesters from three different colleges. When my friend asked me what I was going to do next, I joked in my own macabre way that “I was torn between starting my own business and committing suicide.” I laughed through my pain, but he had only a look of concern and sad confusion.
A few days after that, my father came to my apartment late on a rainy Sunday afternoon and knocked furiously on my door. He knew something was very wrong, but I kept the shades drawn, lights out and refused to answer.
Finally, the knocks became kicks at the base of the door. Followed by more knocks that eventually trailed off with a sense of defeat I had come to recognize from others trying to help me. It was my father, a man whose time was precious and I’d always wanted more of; and I finally opened the door and walked outside. The bottom of the door had scuffmarks from his shoes; and my father was in his car, and I got in the passenger side.
I said, “I’ve screwed up, Dad. I’ve really screwed up, and my life is a mess.” My voice cracked, and I looked down dejectedly as I began crying tears of desperation. My father was a man of action who had built Kentucky Fried Chicken, owned the Boston Celtics, and just finished serving a term as Kentucky’s Governor. He wasn’t accustomed to not having a quick answer to solve any problem that faced him. But he was bewildered, too. I remember him saying “we’ll get through it,” and that he would help find a way. He had heard of treatment centers for problems like mine, and maybe that’s what I needed to do. He said, “You are my flesh and blood, and the blood that runs through your veins runs through mine, too. We’ll figure this out. I love you and want to help however I can.”
But, again, there were no quick fixes for how to deal with my problem.
A few weeks after that, I moved back home with my mother, since I was not functional at either work or school and unable to care for myself with the kind of minimal self-care expected of some my age. I was a listless, beleaguered and bewildered soul. Mostly, ironically, confused. I had no idea what was really wrong with me or what next to do. I just knew something was terribly wrong, and I was out of solutions and out of any help from friends or family.
One of the last nights I was in my apartment (an apartment, by the way, that the exterminator who visited routinely once told me was the worst kept apartment of the 4,400 he serviced monthly), I was standing alone in my bedroom trying to come up with a new plan. I looked at the world map hanging above my bed and decided what I needed to do was move.
Again.
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John Y. Brown, III’s “Dark Night of the Soul”: AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis
By Michael Steele, on Mon Jun 3, 2013 at 2:09 PM ET From The Huffington Post:
 Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is weighing a run for Maryland governor, a move that could put him back into the realm of electoral politics, he said Monday.
“We’re looking at it,” Steele, now an MSNBC contributor, told the network’s Chuck Todd. “You’re gonna take a look at the numbers. Maryland’s a tough state, there are a lot of challenges there.”
Steele went on to say that new taxes in Maryland over the past eight years could give a Republican another shot at winning a statewide election in the the reliably blue state. He served as lieutenant governor under Republican Robert Ehrlich during his single term. Democrat Martin O’Malley defeated Ehrlich in 2006 and again in 2010, but is term-limited from running again in 2014.
Speaking last week on WMAL, Steele similarly admitted interest in a gubernatorial run.
“I love my state,” Steele said, according to the Daily Caller. “I think the potential in Maryland is huge. I look at the last 8 years. I look at the tax increases. I look at some of the things they’ve done to drive jobs away and opportunity out the door. And you just kinda say, ‘Can you contribute something?’ So we’ll weigh it.”
Steele’s previous attempt at politics in Maryland was unsuccessful, when he lost a Senate race to Democrat Ben Cardin in 2006. While Steele didn’t win, his campaign did produce this memorable ad about puppies and political attacks.
Click here to read the full article.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jun 3, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET It’s never too early—or too late—for vindication: The ABA.
The old American Basketball Association (ABA), with all its quirkiness. eccentric characters and hilarious stories, was also home to the greatest basketball players and basketball prowess on the planet during the league’s hey day in the mid 1970s.
The NBA nervously sneered at the league that played with a “beach ball.” But as the stuffy NBA tried to marginalize it’s competitor league struggling with ticket sales and fiscal viability, the inevitable was happening. A merger. The nimble, dynamic but financially strapped ABA would merge 4 of its teams into the vaunted NBA in 1976.
Many in the NBA privately believed none of the 4 teams would be around 4 years hence.
What was the result? The first year after the merger almost half the NBA’s leading scorers were former ABA players from the merger. As well as the player who led the league in assists and steals. Nearly half the All-Stars were from the much ridiculed ABA. Even in that year’s championship series between two traditional NBA teams, 5 of the 10 starters were former ABAers.
Most notably, however, was as the old NBA league adopted the playing style of the former upstart ABA league —shorter shot clocks, run-and-gun scorning, high-flying slam dunks a la Dr J, pressing defense, and the ABA signature 3 point shot—something remarkable happened. The NBA which seemed always to be playing in black and white, began playing basketball in technicolor. The league that looked like it learned the game of basketball from an Army training video, integrated the spirit and heart of the game of basketball that was so flamboyantly nurtured in the ABA. Thanks to what the NBA borrowed and learned from the ABA. TV revenue soared and professional basketball in the US became as beloved as pro baseball and football, perhaps ever more so. And pro basketball emulating this playing style exploded on to the international scene.
 And how about those 4 teams that merged with the NBA 37 years ago but weren’t expected to make it into the 1980s? All four of them are now staple NBA franchises. And two of them, the San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers, could be battling it out for the NBA championship this year!
And our hometown team in Kentucky, the Kentucky Colonels, was the ABA’s all-time winningest team.
Many of us, of course, wish the Colonels had stayed put. I certainly did and wish a better business case could have been made for the Colonels to merge with the NBA. We have debated for years and can continue to debate the merits of that decision, but one thing that is beyond debate anymore is that the American Basketball Association was truly as great as many of us secretly imagined.
And each passing year further vindicates that belief. Even 37 years later!
I’m pulling for the Spurs and the Pacers to have a brilliant NBA championship series, ABA -style!! The way great basketball was played back in the 70’s in our little bush league—the bush league that transformed how the rest of the world plays basketball.
37 years later I believe that vindication for the ABA can’t come too early or last too long. And the world of sports is better for it.
By John Y. Brown III, on Sun Jun 2, 2013 at 9:00 AM ET  What’s it like to turn 50?
It’s like watching a play and you seem to lost track of the story line but are enjoying watching the current scene because it reminds you of something fun about your life that you like thinking about and then the audience suddenly starts clapping and the lights go up. And you think for a moment the play must be over—but it’s not.
It’s just the second intermission of a very long play and you are going to have to go outside in the lobby and talk to the other members of the audience about how interesting you think the play is even though you have no idea what is going on and are still a little rattled at what exactly is happened before the audience started applauding but tell yourself there was probably an applause sign directly over your head that only you couldn’t see— and you stand around and look like you are dignified and in control because others there are standing around in their dress up clothes talking eloquently like they know exactly what is going on but all you really want to do is find out if the concession stand has lemonade and maybe some peanut M&Ms.
And if they don’t you are thinking of asking your wife if you can slip out and watch the rest of that DVD series that you started last night because now you remember that you don’t think you’ve seen it before. And would she mind driving.
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The coolest thing about turning 50 years old is that 50 is the age that many of the statisticians working in the insurance industry start to consider us “actuarially interesting.”
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 John Y. Brown, III in best fashion mode I’m starting an Xtreme Shuffleboard league for people over 50 who still feel physically like they are only 48.
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I got a notice on my phone at 11:45 that I was having a birthday today.
Weird.
In a college psychology course I learned that skydivers feel the height of their fear not seconds before they jump …but about 15 minutes earlier when the plane is taking off and there is no turning back.
When it’s time to jump, the skydiver is ready and not afraid.
Turning 50 is a lot like that
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Tonight and tomorrow night are my last Friday and Saturday nights ….before turning 50.
Am I ready?
I think so.
How do I know?
I have no plans for either Friday or Saturday night except dinner with my wife and then possibly watching a TV series on DVD.
Why do I say “possibly watching?”
We are two episodes into the series and can’t recall if we’ve seen it already or not.
 But we should be able to figure that out by Sunday.
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Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about turning 50 is realizing that going forward everything starting with a “5” gets rounded up.
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One of the great gifts of being middle-age is realizing that others know about falling into rabbit holes.
That you really have seen flying monkeys and survived
And your best friend really is a scarecrow who has protected you.
And as irritating as they can be, Tweedledum and Tweedledee are family and you miss them.
And the person you admire most in your life right now is a Chesire cat
And that’s OK.
We are not alone. And should have tea more often
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri May 31, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET My daughter was studying for her Latin exam last night.
I tried to sound clever by telling her “Carpe Diem!” (Seize the day)
She smiled as I walked out of the room but then called me back in.
“Dad, do you know many Latin words?”
“Some. Why?”
“Tell me some of the Latin words you know” she asked in that way that suggested I wasn’t as proficient at Latin as I wanted her to think.
“Well,” I said, “let’s see….I know what, um, ‘carpe’ means. And ‘diem.’
Squinting incredulously at me, my daughter asked with amusement, “Anything else?”
After a long pause I said, “Hercules?” And pointed out that Julius Ceasar often spoke in Latin, especially when addressing Brutus.
At that point I told my daughter I would be in my office working if she needed any more help studying for her Latin exam.
She apparently didn’t need any help the rest of the night.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu May 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET It’s polite to let dads down easy.
The transition from the role of a strong, dominant , all-knowing, father-knows-best, man-of-the house to the diminished role of amusing obsolescence is hard on the male ego.
We are on our way to dinner in the care —my wife, daughter and me. My wife and daughter were talking about me and agreed I had been “good” this weekend. My daughter joked that maybe I …should get a gold star. My wife suggested we have a special board on our refrigerator to track my success.
They were laughing good natuturedly and I was even begrudgingly agreeing I deserved some sort of recognition for my “good behavior” this weekend.” But my daughter sensed I was slightly wounded by the receding role in the in the family and tried to reassure me. And that meant a lot and didn’t take a lot of effort.
She simply turned to me where I was sitting in the back seat and patted me on the leg and told me she was proud of me and would make sure it was a big gold star.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed May 29, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET It’s important not only to be grateful to be born the way we are but also to be grateful we were born when we were.
If I had been born early in human civilization —for example, during the Hunter-Gatherer era—I would have struggled to fit in.
When asked which group I was in, hunter or gatherer, I would have been faced with the harsh reality that I wasn’t good at either. And I would have aske…d if there was a third option available. Maybe for consultants?
But the Hunter-Gatherer-Consultant era just doesn’t have an authentic ring to it.
I guess I should be grateful to have been born when I was. When there are more than just those two job options. It would have been painful for me each day to have been the last one in my group picked for either the hunter or gatherer team. Like playing in a 4-on-4 pick-up basketball and you are the 8th guy and only one under six feet tall who didn’t play basketball in high school or college. That awful exasperated final pick (forced on the team stuck with you)….and hearing the captain mutter “Oh, man. Not him” as he realized after the seventh player was selected that only left you.
I would have had to deal with that kind of humiliation daily during the Hunter-Gatherer era. And this was the period in human civilization after fire had been discovered but before the discovery of affective mood disorder medications, talk therapy, or support groups. And satire. And obviously before outsourcing.
Life really would have lousy for me and probably included a lot of passive-aggressiveness toward my group coupled with a lot of difficult to explain acting out. And no one knowing at that time about intervention processes– and just writing off my bad behavior and attitude to not being good at hunting and gathering.
And no Facebook or other social media outlets to vent about my sense of alienation and being misunderstood.
What a bizarre culture to try to survive in.
I may come up short in many areas of my life, but when it comes to the period in human civilization (era-wise) for me to be born, I nailed it.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue May 28, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET How can they be so sure?
Quantifying things can be a way of creating the illusion of certainty when it really doesn’t exist.
Take for example all these helpful and often wonderfully written advice advice books and articles (on business and life) that have titles with the exact number of some uncovered mysterious truth that is about to be divulged to the reader.
The 7 Secrets; 21 Immutable L…aws, 12 Principles, or 8 Cardinal Rules (see below), and so on.
How do they know that is the exact and final ultimate number of whatever secrets, rules, laws, etc that is being disclosed?
Are they sure?
Have they looked for and ruled out a possible 8th Secret, 22nd Immutable Law, 13th Principle or 9th Cardinal Rule? Or are they lazy or perhaps had an editor pressing them with a publishing deadline and they had to stop with whatever number they had at the time?
I would be really peeved if I bought a book on the 11 Rules of Success and paid full price only to find out later there are actually 16 Rules of Success. Or, God forbid, even more? Could we get a pro-rata amount of our money refunded on such books? If it turns out we only got half the “Secrets” then it stands to reason we should only pay half the price for a book claiming to possess them all and distilled down to a single number.
And what if the Universe is less precise than these authors think? What if in some instances a happy life is comprised of both secrets and habits? It’s conceivable that the formula for a happy life could involve, say, 11 habits, 14 secrets, 3 laws, and 9 immutable truths. I’m not saying it does. I’m just saying it could. And if anyone ever proves that, book authors dispensing advice are going to have to entirely re-think they way they organize and deliver their great ideas. And might even find themselves faced by some sort of class action law suit by their readers on fraudulent claims about the exact number of important items that make up an entire truth.
What about a book titled, “Here’s a bunch of randomly culled ideas I wrote down that may or may not be helpful to you and I’m charging you $15 for it”?
It’s not a catchy title but I think I might buy it anyway. Whatever is inside the book, I at least have a good feeling about the author being trustworthy and not forcing me to risk getting entangled in some complicated class action lawsuit in the future I’ll probably never get any money back from anyway.
By Jeff Smith, on Tue May 28, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET  Q: If you were Anthony Weiner, would you run for mayor?
—L.G., Brooklyn
Full disclosure: Not being a native, I’m just learning New York City politics.
I always find irony—and sometimes tragedy—in the stories of disgraced pols who rush for immediate reinvention in the same ego-nurturing and soul-crushing arena that initially got them in trouble. It’s as if the Weiners and Sanfords of the world have determined that the artificial politico personas they have so painstakingly created are the only versions of themselves that they can still recognize. But true redemption requires you to hit the pause button, to sublimate ambition and reflect on what truly matters.
That said, if I were Weiner and felt that I’d done the necessary reparative work in my personal life, I’d run for either comptroller or public advocate. Though comptroller candidate Scott Stringer is familiar to Manhattanites, no one in either race has high citywide name ID, so both would be easier races and would be outside the blinding glare of a mayoral campaign. Of course, Weiner would still get more press than just about any candidate in the country, except perhaps the two who make the mayoral runoff.
In a nutshell, if he loses his next race, he’s done. So if he wants a career in public life, he should pick a race without a well-known front-runner like Christine Quinn. Then he can get time in a low-profile office where he could rehabilitate and position himself for a mayoral race in which his chances are better. Given his skills at self-promotion, this would seem reasonable. But right now just seems too soon to go for the Big Enchilada.
Q: I’d like to run for office in the next decade, but I’m a Democrat in a Republican-leaning area. I could move a few towns over and run as a Democrat, or I could switch parties and stay where I am. What would you advise?
—K.G., Location fluid!
You might also have noted in your signature that your principles are fluid.
I understand party affiliation can be easily shed—hell, look at Mayor Bloomberg. And I’m not averse to the concept; I helped an old friend switch parties years ago, and he may end up becoming Missouri’s next governor. But you seem a bit too malleable—willing to move, willing to switch parties, whatever it takes.
Ideally, a candidate needs a strong set of principles and a deep commitment to his community. Often candidates have one or the other. You appear to be lacking both, which is troubling.
It’s one thing to be a hungry candidate. It’s another thing to be starving. If I were you, I’d try to nail down exactly why you’re a Democrat, and then do some civic work in your community. Then write me again in a few years and I’ll be glad to help.
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Jeff Smith: Do As I Say — A Political Advice Column
By Krystal Ball, on Mon May 27, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
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