Like anyone else, I have lines that when crossed will cause me to break the deal.  I remember once I had an agent say to me, “I’m dropping you” and I thought, ‘that’s it, I am out of here.’  He crossed the line and he lost a pretty valuable client as a result. I broke up with a girl because she called out someone else’s name while having sex.  She was having sex with someone else at the time and that’s pretty much where she crossed the line.

It’s always disappointing when these deals fail because of a transgression on someone’s part. It’s never more disappointing, however, when it is a deal you have made with yourself and the transgressor is you.  I’m embarrassed to say that on more than one occasion I have crossed my own line.

It should be noted, incidentally, that crossing the line is not the same as re-drawing the line. Re-drawing the line does not break deals it amends them.  It renegotiates them.  And so long as you’re amenable to the new terms of the contract, there should be no problem.

As an example, about a year ago I decided I wanted to stop masturbating.  I was doing it way too much and I felt it was time to cut it out.  So I made a deal with myself.  In return for not masturbating, I agreed that I could eat more sweets.  I love sweets so it seemed like a fair trade-off.  When I gained 15 pounds, however, I knew it was time to renegotiate.  I cut the sweets back out of my diet and agreed that masturbation was acceptable, provided that I wasn’t masturbating to porn. With its associations to drugs and abuse, the porn industry was not one I wanted to support.  So… no porn, no sweets, masturbation OK. Those were the new terms of the agreement.

But then a problem!  Masturbation without porn was not as easy as I thought.  You see, I don’t have that much of a sexual history to draw on when I masturbate.  I found myself fantasizing about previous masturbation experiences.  It was time to renegotiate the deal yet again.  Here’s what I came up with.  I could eat ice cream and soda - no cookies – And I could masturbate to porn - so long as it wasn’t teen porn.  I have a daughter, after all, and at the time teen porn made me very uncomfortable. Today, teen porn doesn’t bother me so much.  Which is why I put teen porn back in the matrix - provided the girls are Asian only.  And I cut soda out.

So… I think you see my point.  Though the line was being moved, the agreement remained in tact because the line was never crossed.  I wish I could say all of my self-made deals went that smoothly.

December 31^st 1999, 11:55 in the evening – The brink of the biggest New Year’s in my lifetime.  I’ve always enjoyed New Year’s Eve, but I’ve always felt somewhat cheated celebrating it here in Los Angeles.  The clock strikes 12, it becomes the year 2000, but in Arizona it was the year 2000 already an hour ago.  In New York it was the year 2000 3 hours ago.  In Israel it turned 2000 3,761 years ago.  It seemed unfair.  And quite frankly, I just hated being last.

Which brings me to my point.  Five minutes before the stroke of midnight that New Year’s Eve, as is common to do that time of year, I started to take stock of my life and evaluate not only what went right, but also what’s been going wrong and how to rectify that.  And I started thinking I might be too competitive.  Though clearly I wasn’t competitive enough.  In the race for the new millennium I was coming in 3700 years behind Israel.  Still, I started thinking my competitive nature might be a problem.  Which is ironic because being competitive is quite normal.  Quite innate.  That’s why it’s called the human race…   Not the human… just for fun!

In any case, I was watching Los Angeles’ pitiful fireworks display and thinking, ‘why couldn’t ours be as good as New York’s or Paris’ or Moscow’s?  Why do we suck?’ And then I realized why it’s particularly bad for me to be so competitive.  It's because I always lose!

It’s a horrible combination of traits – highly competitive, loser!  But the realization became a catalyst for what I felt was a very important New Year’s resolution.  And let me add, New Year’s resolutions, in my mind, were not to be taken lightly.  They were contracts you made with yourself and thusly must be adhered to accordingly.

The agreement that I made with myself that year was as follows: I want to stop feeling so bad when I lose.  In exchange for that I agree to stop being such a loser.

I must tell you my wife would take serious issue with me calling myself a loser, be it past or present.  Ironically, in her defense of me she doesn’t point out any of my attributes or accomplishments, she merely says she would never marry a loser.

I so hope she’s right.

Last year I found a lottery ticket in her purse. What that said to me was my wife was no longer thinking of me as a sufficient provider - which took a lot of pressure off of me having to find a job.  But that’s neither here nor there.  What’s important was, and maybe it’s because I was unemployed for as long as I had been, I got to thinking that perhaps playing the lotto might be just the thing.  A few million dollars would be nice.

But unfortunately, as everybody knows, Jews don’t win the lotto. And sure enough we lost.  And when we lost, for some reason, I became very angry.  And I began to curse out Jesus Christ for not giving me a break.  Now perhaps cursing out Jesus Christ was a bit inappropriate, but I figured, screw it; he’s not my saviour.  And quite honestly, if he was willing to die for my sins, I don’t think he’d mind taking the rap for me losing the damn lottery.  I mean, he’s a martyr, might as well blame him!

Anyway, it was at that point that I got to thinking about that deal I had made with myself in the year 2000.  Didn’t I promise myself I wouldn’t get upset if I lost?  And didn’t I also agree that I wouldn’t lose?  Isn’t losing the lotto a form of losing?  And isn’t cursing out Jesus Christ a form of being upset?  In fact, haven’t I lost numerous times in the last few years and been upset about it?  Come to think of it, wasn’t the deal I made with myself so many years ago destined to fail from the start?

I have an uncle who’s a rabbi.  He’s a very wise, insightful man.  So I decided to call him and see what he thought about all of this.  The only hitch was, he’s located in Israel.  With a time difference of 3700 years, you can imagine what a bitch it was to get him on the phone.  I managed.  The conversation went something like this:

“Uncle Moishik?  It’s Oded.  What century is it there?  Oh my God!  I’m sorry.  Did I wake you?  Listen, in the year 2000 I made a New Year’s resolution that I just realized I haven’t kept at all.  What should I do?  OK.  Thanks.  Bye.”

With the exception of everything he said, I’ll never forget that little talk we had.

This last New Year’s Eve my resolution was as follows: I resolve not to make anymore New Year’s resolutions.  I resolve not to make anymore deals with myself.  I’m going to accept myself as is.  I refuse to put myself in a paradigm where I’m setting myself up for failure.

As it turns out, that deal I had made with myself at the turn of the century had consequently become the deal breaker for all other deals.  I didn’t lose interest in self-improvement, mind you.  It just occurred to me that all the true improvements I’ve made in my life didn't have to be negotiated.