The Oil Drum

Alan,
It going to be a huge problem. As the oil exploration business crashed in the late 80's and 90's, I had a lot of chronic depression and substance abuse problems. As I came back out of the problems, I inventoried my values and attitudes so I could change away from my most distruuctive problems and learned some interesting things about myself. A lot of the root problem was low self-esteem, and I acted out seeking chemical relief. But my self-esteem problem meant I had to change my behaviour to do things I liked myself for doing.

I learned that I got a huge amount of my previous self image from my profession and monetary success. The money and things gave me a place in society that I couldn't easily replace, and as I sold the big house and had my first marriage break up, i couldn't replace the interests in wells that I'd given up so easily to my first wife, whom I affectionately call ol' what's her name, and kept having reoccuring bouts of depression punctuated with bouts of substance abuse. It was a self distructive down spiral.

In order to break out of it comepletely I had to do several things. The first was to realise that no matter the cause, it was my behaviour that was the problem, and I just plain had to stop, and I did it by going to A.A. and following their directions. As I said, my reoccuring bouts of depression were a large part of my problem, and I had to get treatment for my depression which included medication for me, but it required my going to a doctor to get help. Next, i had to have the humility to be willing to listen to others and receive instruction from them. Then I had to examine my own behaviour, and change my life so that I incorporated the life lessons that I learned.

As bI noted, one of my problems was low self-esteem after my life had fallen apart. Sowhat i did was look at people that I respected and try to find out why I had these feelings about them. I discovered that they were kind and tried to help other people. They were honest, and willing to look at themselves. And the ones i respected most were creative and tried to add to life rather than take away, and they were generous rather than trying to maximize their self-interest.

At any rate these are useful life lessons for me. I try to practice them even though things have turned around and I could just go back to being a self-saisfied landman with a good hustle. Now, I never take a lease unless its going to be a good deal for the landowner as well as my employer (s) as I figure its in my employer's best interest to have a happy lessor. I'm trying to assemble a shallow oil field redevelopment deal, and i'm taking care of my investors at least as well as I take care of myself. I have a number of excellent shallow ideas, and I'm interested in building up some investors that invest in multiple prospects. And even though the idea is mine, I'm cutting in the Geologist and the Engineer when we find one, and the other guy raising money because everyone does a better job when they get an interest in the prospect Bob Ebersole