Hasta La Gadget!

The craziness of the day was finally settling down to a dull roar. My kids had their baths and were watching a movie in their pajamas. I knew this would be the perfect time to call Jill.

It was 7:30 on a school night; surely, she would be home. I missed speaking with her. Aside from a few brief “hellos,” “life is crazy right now,” and “call you back,” we hadn’t had a real conversation in about six months.

After eight years of friendship, I was confident in our relationship, but worried about her. She was going through a tough time after her dad was diagnosed with cancer. She had also taken on a full caseload as a speech therapist now that her youngest was in school full-time.

Our relationship was formed on the playground of new motherhood. We had met when our first children were babies. We had seen each other through potty-training, sleep deprivation, second and third babies, the toddler years, first days of kindergarten, speech and learning delays, trips to the ER and moves to new, bigger homes.

We could spend hours on the phone talking about the latest TV show, political scandal or parenting problem, usually while we cleaned a floor or cooked dinner.

Husbands, parents, siblings and children could drive us crazy at times, but we had each other to vent to and laugh with.

As the years went by and our kids got older, our lives had morphed into the craziness of moms with school-age children complete with set schedules and tons of activities. The days of leisurely chatting on the phone when we were cleaning our kitchens, or the visits where she would come in the morning and leave after dinner had ended.

It would have been easy for me to let the friendship just slip into a yearly date on our birthdays and maybe a Christmas card. That was my typical MO with old girlfriends.

Jill knew this about me, and the few times we had managed to speak over the last few months, she had specifically asked me to hang in there with her.

So I had.

I was looking forward to hearing her voice and hoping that we could finally catch up with each other.

“Hello.”

“Oh. Hi Dave. How are you doing?”

“Great Kathy. How are you, Joe and the kids?”

“Great, busy as always, but great. How’s everyone by you?”

“Doing well.”

“Great. Is Jill around?”

“No. She’s out with some of her friends.”

“Oh, that’s great. I’m glad she’s getting a chance to go out. How is she doing?”

“She’s doing really well.”

All of a sudden, a charge went through my body. My heart sank and I felt as if I was going to throw up.

Something about the way Dave had said she was doing well let me know that all my unreturned phone calls, the quick greetings and the explanations that she had to run but would call me right back had nothing to do with her increased hours at work, her dad or anything else.

It was me.

I felt like the biggest fool in the history of fools. Sort of like the wife who thinks she is happily married, only to find out her husband has been cheating on her. And everyone knew before she did.

I said a half-hearted goodbye and a quick, “Great, let her know I called,” and hung up the phone.

I felt sick and deeply hurt. I was also confused.

Jill and I could talk about anything. Or at least I thought we could.

We had both made frantic calls at all hours of the day and night to each other when we needed someone to listen to our fears about our kids or to complain about our husbands. We went to each other’s kids’ birthday parties, christenings and communions. I knew her brothers, parents and childhood friends. We had even spoken about naming each other as the guardians for our kids.

If she didn’t want to continue our friendship, why didn’t she just let it die a natural death? I was OK with that.

She was the one who asked me on more than one occasion to keep calling and not give up on her.

We didn’t have a fight. Not even a heated argument.

I must have done something to hurt her, but I was totally at a loss as to what it was.

I started going through everything I could have possibly done wrong. I talked too much. I was too self-involved. My life was too crazy. I was too needy.

The next day, I expected to hear from Jill.

I didn’t.

A few days later, I called and left a message apologizing for anything I may have done that hurt her. I also thanked her for all the support she’d given me throughout the years.

And that was that. I never heard from her again. That was six years ago.

It took a while for the wound to heal. Perhaps because I had to talk about it in order to move on, but embarrassment made it harder.

Who gets dumped by a friend? I mean really, really dumped. Isn’t that type of breakup reserved for romantic relationships?

The funny thing is, the more I started to open up about it, the more I learned that I wasn’t alone. Almost everyone I told had a similar story in their past. I wasn’t the only woman who had her heart broken by a platonic friend.

Now that so much time has passed, I can look back on our relationship without feeling sad or ashamed at the way it ended. Jill was present for so many of my children’s firsts and was there for me at a time when I really needed a trusted friend. And for that I will always be grateful.

Editor’s note: Names and some details have been changed.

This post was previously published on My dishwasher’s possessed!

Aaron Sorkin has been performing quite the balancing act all year on The Newsroom, but with one cataclysmically self-involved, screechingly annoying episode he blew all the goodwill he’d carefully built up this season. With only two episodes remaining in the series, with every plot viewers might care about collapsing in on itself, the show indulged all its worst tendencies.

There were countless conversations that doubled as mind-numbing lectures on the state of journalism. There was lame, acidic misogyny that basically went unpunished because this show can’t help but worship its leading men. There was a closing musical montage, centered around an impromptu wedding, set to a hideous soft-guitar cover of “Ave Maria,” that just about outdid The Newsroom’s previous rock-bottom, when news team covered Gabrielle Giffords’s shooting to the sound of Coldplay’s “Fix You.”

Reese Witherspoon might be a blond Southern beauty, but she does not want to be confined by her looks.

“Don’t put me in that box. Or any box, for that matter,” Witherspoon told Harper’s Bazaar UK. “People are complex, on-screen and off. Can’t we do justice to that?”

The 38-year-old actress appears on the cover of the January 2015 issue of the fashion magazine. The word “complex” comes up multiple times in her cover story interview. One of those times was while discussing role limitations for females in Hollywood and why she launched her own production company, Pacific Standard.

“It wasn’t as if there was a lack of roles being offered to me,” she said. “It was the dynamic aspect of playing a really interesting, complicated person that was not readily available. Honestly, I don’t know a woman who isn’t complicated. It’s strange that you don’t see many complicated women on film; complicated meaning complex, I should say.”

Witherspoon, who stars in Pacific Standard’s “Wild,” admits to her own complexity while discussing her 2013 disorderly conduct arrest. The actress was apprehended after arguing with an Atlanta police officer during a drunk driving stop with her husband, Jim Toth.

“[I]t was a moment where I think people sort of realized I wasn’t exactly what they thought I was … We all like to define people by the ways the media presents them. If it shows I have a complexity that people didn’t know about, that’s part of human nature.”

Head over to Harper’s Bazaar UK to read Witherspoon’s full interview.

“If you’ve been in the game 30 minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.”–Warren Buffett

Can one person rise to the very top of his or her game in more than one area of life? Exploring various interests to enhance our personal development is generally considered admirable. Such pursuits might offer the average Joe knowledge and experience in diverse areas — musical composition and a weekend football league, perhaps. A vast majority of people (who attempt to do everything on their own) may gain the skills honed through regular practice, however; they are not sharpening their competitive edge in any given area. So our average Joe is a cool guy with varied interests — not an amalgamation of Beethoven and Peyton Manning. He is keenly aware that no amount of practice, even if he devoted a full workday to either of his passions, would advance him to professional heights in musical composition or in football. But that doesn’t stop many people from trying — particularly if they have proven results from mastery achieved in one area. This is a particularly slippery slope within wealth management where many competent individuals continue to confuse recreational interest and professional mastery.

The smartest, most successful, highly effective people understand how to distinguish and separate that which is critically important (and in their control) from that which ultimately won’t make a critical difference — or, is outside of their circle of competence and control. It’s an important distinction: highly successful individuals guard their time so as to excel at high level decision making in the areas where they have mastery. This allows them to delegate other, often critically important activities, to experts. Their goal is to have great results in all areas of life; so they build and employ teams.

What about when someone is simultaneously the average Joe and the smartest who has risen to the top? Medical doctors are known for this. Typically disciplined learners, they often try to do everything themselves, but, at their own peril. We have seen physicians attempt to create corporations using documents from a website. While it would seem this simple act saves a few bucks, it is ultimately a costly mistake — one avoided by hiring a competent attorney to write the document correctly at the onset. A recent article in Entrepreneur Magazine underscored the importance of hiring an attorney to write up a contract properly, and, in an earlier piece, the magazine covered 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Incorporating a Business. When business owners try to wear too many hats outside of their circle of competence, costly mistakes can occur. One medical doctor’s corporate documents did not fit his actual business. The result was a liability totaling hundreds of thousands of dolllars in hard-earned, after-tax dollars. This “shortcut” cost approximately ten times the amount it would have taken to go through specifics with an experienced attorney incorporating the business appropriately.

When trust documents are created by non-experts, this is also a recipe for failure. It is impossible to foresee the multitude of outcomes which might occur when writing instructions for the trustee(s) of a trust encompassing millions. Not to mention the options of the trust’s structure, purpose, application, and actual use. The same could be said for general financial decisions. The Internet has made everyone smarter, however, if everyone is smarter, this does no one any good; it’s the amount of information you have relative to others that allows you to win.

If you are invited to play in a poker game with four other people who have just begun learning to play, assuming you have played a bit more than the others, it’s likely you will win. However, if you are invited to a poker game with four others who have competed in the “World Series of Poker,” walk away immediately. Getting smarter will not help you if others are getting smarter at the same rate; it will generally be more effective to find a new game.

So is there a recipe to make consistent, well-informed, successful decisions? Perhaps avoiding statistical failure is the first step. A recent article by Damian Fowler in The New York Times, “The Dangers of Private Planes,” compared pilots’ errors:

“The National Transportation Safety Board found that in 2011, 94 percent of fatal aviation accidents occurred in what’s called general aviation. That category includes private small planes flown by amateurs. . . By contrast, commercial aviation had no fatal accidents that year. Statistics from the N.T.S.B. show that general aviation aircraft average nearly seven accidents per 100,000 flight hours, compared with an average of 0.16 accidents per 100,000 hours for commercial airlines.”

Amateur pilots are licensed under general aviation standards and Mr. Fowler’s article makes a case for raising them. A commercial pilot must fly in inclement weather; an amateur pilot is likely to have taken flying lessons on clear days. S/he might confront inclement weather for the first time while in the air. It’s not a drill; precise, quick decisions are required to keep the aircraft aloft and the pilot and passengers safe. Think of hero Sully Sullenberger’s emergency landing in the Hudson River versus the tragic deaths of pilots (and passengers) who lacked experience to make quick, precise judgments while in the air.

Homeowners are also known for trying to cut corners to save a few dollars — and ultimately it’s neither cost effective nor safe. In the United Kingdom, according to lifehack.org, 41,000 are admitted to the hospital for “improvising without a ladder.” This does not include the 87,000 people who visit an emergency room for other DIY-related injuries! And of the 2.5 million people who shock themselves with electrical voltage, 350,000 are serious injuries. And the average cost of DIY mistakes is £138.70 ($224.44) per household–a whopping £3.05 billion ($5.12 billion) annually across the United Kingdom. And it’s no better in the United States. In 2011, the National Safety Council released a report on Injury Facts:

The injury total of 21,100,000 means that 1 person out of every 14 in the United States experienced an unintentional injury in the home in 2009 that was serious enough to consult with a medical professional. Medically consulted injuries are more numerous in the home than in public places, the workplace, and in motor vehicle crashes combined. The National Health Interview Survey estimates that about 43% of all medically consulted injuries occurred at home.

Despite the statistics DIY home projects are still embraced — and a cottage industry of super stores, lifestyle magazines, reality TV, and ongoing misperception, (“With a little patience and the right tools, I can do anything!”) is supported.

While do-it-yourself tax preparation may look like an area to save a little money (and stay clear of harm’s way unlike the earlier examples), it’s a poor idea. Yahoo finance writes, “Career and financial success can lead people to think a little too highly of their financial prowess.” Just because someone has earned money based upon their talents does not automatically mean s/he has the experience to properly manage it–or plan for his or her retirement and family’s future.

According to Accounting Today, among the Ten Biggest Estate Planning Mistakes are ignoring details. “The fine print in estate planning documents can be the difference between retirement in the Bahamas or in a trailer home.” Also, if inheritances are involved, titling assets and structuring trusts appropriately creates clarity for the next generation — and can potentially avoid contesting of the will.

What remains clear is this — the newer the task is to the person performing it, the higher the likelihood of mistakes. Whether in aviation, corporate formation, home improvement, tax preparation or estate planning — it is best to hire an experienced professional. Experts who wish to best serve their clients will do this in their own way — whether that means keeping them safe, protecting them from litigation, completing projects according to safety codes, or saving them time and hard-earned money. We wouldn’t take on extra risk in our personal or financial lives; we don’t recommend it to our clients, and we don’t recommend it to the public at large. Smart, talented people may do slightly better than the average Joe; however, brilliant people consistently outsource what is outside of their circle of competence to seasoned experts. So do we.

Brian Luster and Steven Abernathy co-founded The Abernathy Group II Family Office which counsels affluent families on multi-generational asset protection, wealth management, and estate and tax planning strategies. It is independent, employee-owned, and governed by an Advisory Board comprised of thought-leading business and medical professionals. Abernathy and Luster are regular contributors to several publications and blogs. Contact them here.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.

The information above is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly. The Abernathy Group II does not hold itself out as a legal or tax adviser. If you wish to receive a legal opinion or tax advice on the matter(s) in this report please contact our offices and we will refer you to an appropriate legal practitioner.

LINCOLN. There are nearly 22,000 Abraham Lincoln books clickable at Amazon including the most peculiar Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter which turns the Great Emancipator into the Great Decapitator. To this tsunami of Lincoln lit, please add Todd Brewster’s detailed reporting, Lincoln’s Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War. This is a 7 hour and 14-minute audiobook about one president’s extraordinary executive action. (print: 368 pages) Brewster is one of the very few writers whose narration actually benefits his own material.

If you are not up on your Lincoln-alia or haven’t read anything by Prof. Alan Guelzo, Director of Gettysburg College’s Civil War Era Studies Program, you will discover that, while Lincoln believed in equal rights, he did NOT believe that African Americans were equal to whites, writing, “The two races are incompatible.” Brewster writes that the president actually favored colonization, which was an elegant term for “send them all back to Africa.”

The Proclamation was strictly a military tactic. Lincoln was very clear about his feelings on slavery, “My paramount object in the struggle (Civil War) is to save the Union. It is not to save, or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

Listeners/readers can’t help but note this epic slave-freeing use of executive power is the very same presidential action every White House has used since and is, once again, a contentious tactic between this Congress and the current President.

HART. To folks under thirty the name Gary Hart will not ring many bells. Thanks to veteran news producer and journalist Matt Bai’s essential All The Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, the Hart name will resonate for those who view politics as a contact sport – a sport with serious consequences. Gary Hart was a major player who sustained serious damage, is a significant marker in American politics and is the subject of this nine-and-a-half-hour audiobook about D.C. sex and scandal. (print: 288 pages)

Backstory. 1987, the Democratic presidential primary. Colorado Senator Gary Hart is the front runner for his party’s presidential nomination. He is ‘…widely acknowledged to possess one of the great political minds of his time.’ A graduate of a Nazarene college and the Yale Divinity School, Hart is also the guy who, when asked about marital infidelities, says to the media “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead.” They do. And the picture of Sen. Hart with a former Miss So. Carolina on his lap aboard a yacht called, ‘Monkey Business’ is like chum in shark-infested waters. A week later Gary Hart suspended his campaign.

One of the take-aways from Bai’s excellent reporting is the notion that Hart’s sexual scandal paved the way for Bill Clinton surviving his lascivious affair and having an eight-year presidency. Bai tweeks the NY Times saying that when the Hart story broke, the sqeemish editors reluctantly “…placed it there with a pair of tongs so as not to sully themselves.”

In essence, All the Truth Is Out is really about the media and the political discourse it affects. As John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate told Time magazine, “Every candidate knows that a single misspoken line, a single emotional or ill-advised candid moment can become a full blown existential crisis by the time the bus pulls up to the next rally.” As a result, every candidate knows not to “…even try to explain their ideas or theories anymore.”

Whatever became of Gary Hart? He’s currently the U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. But the nub question is this: if the Hart sexcapade happened today, would the outcome be the same? My guess: it wouldn’t even qualify as a ‘b’ story on TV’s Scandal.