I’m having an identity crisis.  I am not sure who I am anymore. I don’t know Myself and I simply don’t feel like Me.

Now that I’ve recently retired, many folks have been asking me what I am doing to keep myself busy. No one wants to see me without something to do after all, least of all my wife (“Ok, honey, why did you mount a singing fish in the kitchen”.  Yes, I did this). You’d think that with all the spare time I should be jetting off to faraway places like Phoenix, Arizona to see the Ostrich festival (yep, got that one covered, and it will not be the first time I have been there).

But what I really did on my first day of non-work was, to be precise, work.  Really.  My wife trundled off to her place of employment on January 2, and I sat down at my computer to work on an industry paper.  Turns out that, if I were still employed, this would have been a company holiday and I would be not working at my computer. Apparently I am a terrible boss. Perhaps I should fire myself. That would be fine with me.

Which is why I chose to do this exercise; to try to prove to myself that I (that is, Me) “still got it” (as opposed to “I never had it”).  But miracles do happen and that article is now about to be published.

What you also should know is that, in addition to being an author, I am one of the editors for this particular publication. It is well written (except for the part I contributed) by scholarly gentlepersons that I have the upmost respect for. It has never been clear to me why they allow me to write or edit anything.

The process is fairly straightforward: I sit at the computer for a few days typing in a scholarly manner, which is not what I am doing at this point in time (yes, you knew this already). I only have the bandwidth for being scholarly a few hours a day; the rest is spent trying to figure out what my iPhone is doing and how Siri seems to always know where I am.

I then send this to the editorial board of smart people, who proceed to explain to me that my writing is comparable in its style to a herd of wild baboons sitting at computers while drinking beer and eating nachos. Fair point. After these fine folks try to rescue me by providing helpful suggestions like “add commas and periods to your sentences”, I turn it over to the publisher. (Point of truth; I could never have gotten through the process without their help.)

The publisher puts out a copy-edit copy, and this is where the story gets more interesting.  You see, as the editor I must send it to the author.  It seemed silly to me, but I emailed the email with the copy of the paper that I had written and stored on my computer to myself so that I could compare it to the paper that I had actually stored on my computer in the first place.  In true editor fashion, I gave myself a deadline earlier than the one the publisher wanted, as I know that I’ll not be timely otherwise. Clearly, I know better than to trust myself.

So, I copied me to so that I, myself, could check my own work. Fortunately, with a few back-and-forth emails, I managed to agree with myself that the work was fine with a few minor edits.

The final article comes out ready for publication with “my” ok.  This is when I notice that the publisher has added a disclaimer that reads as follows:

Statements of fact and opinion expressed herein are those of the individual authors [“Me”] and are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editors [“Myself”] or the respective author’s employers [as a retired person, “I”].

Silly Me. I thought only I had to sign off on the final article, but now I’m not sure who I am. As you can imagine, getting “Me, Myself and I” to agree on anything is, at best, a difficult task. Doing this on a timeline is, let’s face it, darned near impossible.

But as Myself, I (in this case, not Me or I but Myself) needs to contact both Me and I. Hopefully the author (Me) will understand that we do not have to agree with ourselves.  But as our mutual employer, I am never certain as to what I will suggest.

I decide that the first item is to simply send an email along.  Maybe this will be easy and everyone involved will agree.  So, I send an email to both parties

Hey folks, you know that the publication has to be signed off by next Monday. The last thing that we need to review is the disclaimer that the publisher has added to the article. I personally don’t see anything controversial in the disclaimer, but if you want to discuss it I will arrange a time to do so.

This is where my years and years of experience comes in handy.  I have learned that, if you say something that infers that “this is no big deal” the very first thing that will happen is that this will become a very, Very BIG deal.  But the point of sending this message is because if you don’t send it, everyone will assume that you do consider it a very big deal, and therefore you have to solve the problem all by Yourself. (Sidenote – Yourself is not to be confused with Me, Myself or I – rather this is a highly paid consultant that will review the disclaimer. Since we are on a fixed income, we do not want to talk to this person.)

As predicted, I sent Myself a strongly worded email of concern over the relative roles and responsibilities of the parties and the need to reach an agreement with Me.  As the editor, I can, by Myself, moderate and provide suggestions to both.

Which means a meeting.  There may not be an I in Microsoft Teams, but there is a “Me”, so “I” will arrange a Zoom call. (note to self  – not Myself but self – we are clearly not being a good Teams player.)

So, we setup a Zoom Call. You just know that one of us is going to be 10 minutes late, and another will be trying to figure out what background to use. Having these meetings is always an interesting phenomena, as a Zoom call is basically a glorified speaker-phone call where you’re constantly checking the video to make sure your hair is brushed properly, but where the entire meeting is spent with one person cutting off the other.  It goes something like this:

Myself: “Hi folks glad you could join us on the call. I wanted to talk about…”

I:  “Do we have an agenda so that…”

Me: “I don’t have the agenda, I thought the editor was doing…”

I:  “Really, I have a 10 and don’t have the time to figure…”

Myself:  “The agenda was sent to…”

Me:  “I didn’t see the agenda…. It’s fine by Me”

I:  “OK I see it now on the screen.  Why are we using PowerPoint for this?”

Myself:  “GUYS.GUYS.. FOCUS!  OR WE’LL NEVER FINISH TODAY”

I:  “It’s 10 and I gotta go. Looks fine as is.”  [Click]

Yep, not a single change was made. It’s a wonder that I ever get anything done.