Business as Un-usual.

One of the perks of real estate? No day is ever the same. Massive, frenzied activity or absolute dead silence with no in between.
One of the downsides of real estate? No day is ever the same. Massive, frenzied activity or absolute dead silence with no in between.

I like working in real estate for a lot of the same reasons I enjoyed reporting the news: no day is ever the same. I have absolutely nothing going on or I'm inundated with massive, frenzied information overloads which I must comprehend and regurgitate...factually and accurately.

It is a lot alike in a lot of ways. Lots of time management, lots of careful planning in down times for the madness to come. And it is madness. Sane people suddenly turn irrational and foolish.

In news coverage, I dealt with the aftermath of foolish, impulsive, reckless folly. In real estate, I try to prevent it while at the same time staying just an inch outside the circle, in my own professional bubble, because it is not personal for me. It is business.

I learned this while reporting news. No matter what I saw, what I heard, I had to keep my feelings out of it. The minute I put some of my me-ness in to the mix? I'd be busted for personalizing, editorializing the moment. It is called Opinion/Editorial and there is a place for that: In columns, in editorials, in moments where the audience knows....it is personally effecting me. Otherwise I have have to use the "royal we speak" of journalism. That silly way of speaking: "This Reporter witnessed no less than 55 puncture wounds to the victims chest at the autopsy."

See how I stayed in that bubble? And, yes, I did attend autopsies and, yes, I did have to report like that. Even in those most intimate of circumstances, there was no "I" -- for it was not personal for me -- it was my actions on your behalf. The reporter is to become the eyes and ears of the listener/reader and put you in the room without personal emotions or feeling.

"This is how it happened. This is how it smelled at the scene. This what it looked like when I was there today at noon. This is how many, how much. This what authorities say happened. They don't know who did it or why."

That doesn't mean I don't feel it. I got sick at autopsies. I cried when babies died. But I dried my eyes and wrote the story. Read the copy on air and cried afterwards. Cried while writing the newspaper accounts in the factual, dry, script of news. It takes a while to learn how to put the emotion into the accounts with quotes from firefighters and paramedics as you describe their intense, consuming and very personal sorrow.

I can tell you about their grief and share my own distress through them.

Again, with real estate, just because I must keep my shields up, it doesn't mean I don't feel it, too. A lot of times, with clients, they become friends and I do get to divulge my true feelings. But -- I have to keep most of my clients at arm's length. I'm not their friend. I am their trusted confidant with a fiduciary responsibility. <sigh>

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Really, it is. I think my clients know I am working hard to do what's in their best interests. Trying to do the right thing on their behalf.

At least.....this reporter...I mean...

Me. I.

I hope so.