The Breathing ATM

My personal blog has been going great, probably my greatest accomplishment since I decided to write again. It has become such a success that I had to take it off blogger.com yesterday. It’s extremely honest and I don’t want to get into any legal trouble because of what I say. So I keep it offline as kind of a Microsoft Word diary.

My personal blog helps me understand my sociopath-type nature and hones whatever skills I have to my advantage rather than my detriment. I’m currently at the stage where I’m looking at the way I associate people with actions. For example, when an employer interviews for a job, there can be something that turns him/her off to the point that the applicant doesn’t even get a chance to speak. Let’s say Employer meets Applicant, and Applicant has smoke on his breath. Employer hates smokers and sees only insurance costs rise and Applicant has already lost the job without even knowing it. Applicant is now seen as Smoker by Employer. It doesn’t matter if Smoker is qualified or has 2 kids or shits Lucky Charms, Applicant is always seen as Smoker.

For a sociopath, understanding how I can block out everything about someone except that which is important to me has been a challenge—a challenge that I’m slowly winning. I bring this up on this business blog because the question of how I view a tenant came up. What is it that I see in a tenant that I can focus on and block everything else out? After some thought, I came to the conclusion that I, like most landlords, see a tenant as an ATM. Every month at a certain date, my ATM has money for me. If it doesn’t have my money, then there’s something wrong with that ATM and I have to get a new one. (I also thought about tenant/landlord as prostitute/pimp, but that would mean that I consider a tenant as a human being—which I don’t).

You can do either amazing or extremely dangerous things when you can block out the aspects of a human being at will, and focus on only one or two traits. A man can hate blue haired men, for instance, and focus on killing blue haired men. It doesn’t matter that he is a father, a son, a brother, a great friend, or anything. He’s has blue hair. That’s it. But you can also do amazing things. I can be a great businessman by focusing only on what a tenant or another businessman can do for me. What’s the track record of this ATM having money on time for previous clients? Can this ATM make money? My sociopath-type nature can make me a great businessman and I can ignore excuses and variables, focusing only on making money.

I didn’t ask to be a sociopath. But since I am one, I might as well make sure that I can use it to my advantage. I have to be careful, though. Too much tinkering in the head can cross the line, and I have to know where that line is.