The Emotional Balance Sheet

The Ego and the Id is the second part of the title of my book Mr Internet TV for good reason. The book is about personal discovery and identity. It is a memoir and so covers many aspects of my life and career. It is a cross over of business, politics, society and my family and personal relationships as they cannot be seen separately. They all gel together, as they do in all our lives. We do what we do according to our circumstances and our emotions. Success and failure in what we do depends on them.

One day in New York when I was seeking funding for a new listed start-up company creation of which I was founder and CEO, a stockbroker asked me “what was my emotional balance sheet”. It seemed an odd question at the time and typically one from a neurosis concerned NY, but it was one with hindsight that was an essential piece of knowledge for a rational investment decision to be made. That I was now aged 63 and on my fourth marriage did not not tell well for a balanced business oriented chief executive. It was an example of how our private lives affect our judgement and our careers and finances in an emotional balance sheet.

I have tried to bring out these considerations in my memoir and I named the first part of it “Circumstance” for as much as our later life affects our choices so too does our childhood. Whoever we are they are matters that are deeply meaningful in our overall existence whether we recognise it or not.

By detailing my relationships, sexual or otherwise, I have demonstrated how their lives and circumstances have intertwined with mine. From escort girls to society heroin addicts to strippers to alcoholics to royalty to billionaires and banksrupts I have accounted the whys and wherefores of women and men. I consider them to be every bit as important as my own in my attempt to interpret my life to myself, and to my family and readers of my book who may perhaps understand themselves the better for its insightful revelations.

What it is that spurs ambition? Are we over dependent on others? The choices we make in our careers and in our private lives. From the highs to the lows and to the natural disasters we cannot avoid. The accidents of life over which we have little control. But above all I hope I have given reason to live life to the full. Not to be entrapped by the views of others. We are each of us who we are and we are the making of ourselves. The need for the courage to risk re-invention and to accept challenge as part of survival of ourselves and our species as nature intends and the desire to find a place in the world we live in while we can.

I hope my story will give the reader a better understanding of personal idenity by comparison to others and to realise no-one is alone in choices that need be made.