Fear and Loathing in the TSA Line

It’s rare that I connect the things I write on CSOonline.com with this blog. The two are separate entities dealing with different subjects. But once in a great while, the two intersect. The uproar over the TSA’s more “invasive” security tactics is a good example.

Last time the two intersected was over the summer when I got hassled by the U.S. Secret Service (the cops on bikes, specifically).

I look at this TSA controversy and I’m immediately reminded of my past battles with fear and anxiety and how something like airport security would freak me out.

So please indulge me and click on the column below. And if you agree or disagree, please do weigh in.

Thanks.

TSA and the freedom thing: We’re the problem

The nation is in an uproar over full body scanning and pat downs in the airport TSA security lines. Is it a necessary security measure or a violation of our freedom and privacy? Bill Brenner weighs in.


Mr. Danny

Just got the sad news that the mom of my friend Danny Goodwin passed away yesterday. No doubt he could use some bucking up right now, so here’s my contribution…

Mood music: “Creep” by Korn

I periodically write about friends who have helped me heal and deal over the years and Danny is one of them. It didn’t seem that way at first, because when we first met I was busy trying to be someone else.

I was night editor at The Eagle-Tribune and he was the obituary writer. Early on in my time there, Danny was out sick for a few days. When the obit writer calls out sick, the night editor has to find someone to replace him for the night. Nobody ever wanted to volunteer for that task.

One day during his illness, I was ordered to call him and lay down the law, so I did. Danny wasn’t taking it. He didn’t call me any names, but his tone had “You’re a dick-head” all over it.

After that, we had an uneasy yet peaceful co-existence in the newsroom.

I backed off, because if he quit, I would probably be writing the obits myself. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

Besides, other editors were already pushing him to the brink. One particularly snotty editor was marking up his obits with red pen every day, and, of course, I had to show him the markup and tell him to clean it up.

The top editor at the time, Steve Lambert, was writing a daily narrative of kudos and criticisms for the newsroom staff, praising the wins of the day and pointing out things that could have been done better. One such note proclaimed: “This obit page needed Last Rites.”

Steve, if you read this and still have copies of that one, I want it. I’ve been meaning to frame it and give it to Danny. I bring it up every time I see him, because it was one of those classic moments.

It took a couple years, but me and Danny started to grow on each other like mold. We bonded over music and shared newsroom stress. The most fun I had as night editor was in that period just after midnight Saturday, once the paper had gone to the printer. Me, Danny, John Sullivan and John O’Neil would sit there and slay each other with our witty newsroom observations of the day as we waited for the first papers to come off the press.

I remember a lot of laughter, pizza and boxes of MSG-laden food from China Wok. I always binged on extra helpings when no one was looking. On my last Friday night there, I downed 2 of the five boxes of pizza by myself, one piece at a time when heads were turned the other way.

By then, my unhinging at the hands of OCD, fear-anxiety-depression and addiction was well under way, and sometimes the only thing that got me through it all were those early-morning newsroom hangouts.

He stuck around at The Eagle-Tribune for a few months after I left, and it was around this time that we met his wife, Danielle, who we love. Every time they’re in town we have dinner. Those two have lived all over the country since then: Texas, Florida, California, South Dakota (or is it North Dakota?), Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Danny eventually started working for the company Erin worked for. In fact, Erin was one of the people he reported to. 

“Give him hell,” I’d tell her. “The more you do it, the more fun it is.”

It’s really something when you think about how some friendships evolve.

That the friendship between me and Danny developed out of the initial distrust is one of the greatest blessings for me.

Thanks, Danny. Thanks, Danielle. Erin and I will be thinking of you in the coming days.

The Snow-White Mind That Drifted

I’m like a proud papa every time I read the “Crazy Love” blog from former Eagle-Tribune colleague Grace Rubenstein. She focuses on a topic near and dear to me, and despite the torment she surely suffered when I was her night editor, she honored me early on by asking for my feedback. Her latest post is particularly good, and I have thoughts about it.

Mood music: “Driftaway” by Motley Crue…

She writes about how a drifting mind can be an unhappy one:

I can over-think, over-analyze and worry with the best of ‘em. My mind is constantly moving. Yet in the past few years as I’ve learned the practices of meditation and yoga, I’ve found what peace can come with quieting what yogis call “the monkey mind.” Of course, my mind is still scratching fleas, swinging from branches and throwing bananas most of the time. I have a long way to go. But the more I practice, the more often I can catch the monkey in the act and calm him down.

A mind adrift is one of the most debilitating parts of OCD. Everyone suffers from a limited attention span from time to time. It’s part of what makes us human.

But when you’re a clinical OCD case, that mental drift doesn’t go away after you’re done with whatever boring activity caused it in the first place. It grows as the day progresses, like a tidal surge that leaps over a sea wall and floods out the road so traffic can’t get through. That’s how it happens in the brain.

The obsessive thought floods that critical part of the mind a lot of other mental traffic needs to pass through. From there it’s nothing but disaster.

Grace is lucky to have found meditation and yoga. The truth is I’ve never had any interest in either of those things. My therapist, who specializes in stress reduction exercises, is always pushing yoga on me. Between sips of the coffee he tells me to stop drinking, I tell him there’s no way in hell I’m going to do yoga. 

Am I being an ass about it? I’m sure I am. But that’s where my head is at for now.

I’ve also been lucky enough to find other tools to keep the drifting down to a minimum. There’s the medication. There’s the years of extensive therapy and a change of diet. There’s my 12-Step program. And there’s prayer, which I guess is to me what meditation is to Grace. Without my spiritual development, I’d be nowhere today.

My mind still drifts, especially during a long conversation with just about anyone. It’s much better, but it’s still there. And when it is, I find it almost impossible to stop.

So if my eyes glaze over as we’re talking, try not to take it personally.

And please accept my apology in advance.


My Program at the Crossroads

My mood was all over the place yesterday, but I couldn’t figure out why. I chalked it up to the usual things: too much to do, too tired and not enough down time. On the drive to work this morning, I started to realize what the real problem is.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqHv3L7e8-U&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Now, yesterday wasn’t all bad. Mass was good, I got up and did a reading without incident, and Duncan and I marched in Haverhill’s Santa Parade, helping Scout Pack 27 and the Betsy Conte Food Drive collect food for those who are having trouble finding enough of it.

The day was sparkling, and once we got going, I enjoyed the three miles of walking.

It was also nice to get some quality time with Duncan. He wore his pink hat, and no one gave him crap about it. I’d like to think more than a few people learned to keep their stupidity to themselves after reading this post.

Probably not, but that’s OK.

Unfortunately, he spent two hours before the parade grousing about having to walk three miles (he stayed in the Radio Flyer wagon most of the time while I pulled him along) and I lost my cool trying to talk him off the ledge.

He had a great time, so all that difficulty amounted to a waste of a couple perfectly good hours.

But that’s life — the normal ebb and flow of family life. Back when my demons had me by the balls, I would sink into major depressions over this sort of thing. In the last couple years I’ve had a much cooler head about moments of parental challenge.

Yesterday I let things get to me more than I should have, though.

Erin chalked it up to everyone being overtired, and that’s certainly part of it. She made sure all three Brenner boys were in bed before 8 p.m.

But on the drive in this morning, I started thinking about a few things, and then it hit me.

I’m hitting a wall in my recovery program.

The things I do to manage the OCD are working fairly well.

But the program to keep my addictive impulses at bay is at a crossroads.

I don’t know what the answer is.

But one thing is certain: If I don’t figure it out and make some changes, I’m headed for a relapse.

Since I’m not about to let that happen, I’m going to figure out what I need to do. I took the best possible step forward once I got to the office: I talked to my sponsor about it. Together, we’ll figure out the right adjustments to make that’ll keep me sober and abstinent.

One area where I know I’m having misgivings: The sponsorship thing. I’ve sponsored others in the program for more than a year now, but one of my sponsees has turned out to be a lot of work. The emotional baggage with this guy is immense. We’ve also become good friends, and that might be part of the problem. He needs me to be a friend more than a sponsor. He just doesn’t realize it yet. He requires so much of my time that I’m starting to worry about him getting in the way of my own recovery. 

That sounds selfish, and it is. But in the end, my first responsibility is to my own recovery. My family, friends and colleagues deserve nothing less.

So I’m going to talk to him.

We’ll see how that works out.

Stay tuned.

Saturday Punk Songs

This Saturday, I share some of my favorite punk songs. Some of it may not be punk from a technical standpoint, but to me it’s all about the vibe.

NOTE: I’ve noticed a crackdown on what you can embed from YouTube, so for now just click the “watch on YouTube” link and the music will play in a separate tab while you read. I’m trying to select videos that are in the clear, but at this point it’s a luck of the draw. I’ll come up with a solution soon.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSih4o2YfmA&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvxrYm4nxXY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKYALsp-sIg&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNMnBhf-Ds&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSTT3eVbzv4&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eyROvw6zbY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wizKUrUgFOw&fs=1&hl=en_US]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gsad-kiveU&fs=1&hl=en_US]

How Marriage Saved Me

A couple days ago I compiled some of my posts on how being a Dad helped me move beyond addiction and depression. My marriage to Erin changed me for the better in similar fashion. These posts are about her.

The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2009/12/17/the-freak-and-the-redhead-a-love-story/

I wasn’t looking for a soul mate when I met her. It was the summer of 1993 and I was doing just fine on my own. I was in a band and we were busy pretending we were really something. This was long before I woke up one day, realized I really don’t know how to sing, and decided to spare the masses the agony of me trying to play vocalist.

Back in the Real World, Emotionally Drained

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/10/11/back-in-the-real-world-emotionally-drained/

Transcript of a talk I gave at the Oct. 2010 Men’s Cursillo Weekend at St. Basil’s: My name is Bill Brenner, and this talk starts like many stories do: With a girl.

Me and My Wall

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/11/04/me-and-my-wall/

When I get tired and angry, I have this wall I put up. Erin is usually the one who crashes into it.

Learning to Fight Well

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/07/25/learning-to-fight-well/

In every marriage there are arguments. They can be good for you, but only if you learn to do it with skill. I’m working on it, but I’m not there yet.

Love Hurts, Love Stings, Love Endures

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/10/12/love-hurts-love-stings-love-endures/

I remembered something the priest said during his Homily at ourwedding: “You marry the person you think you know, and spend the rest of your lives really getting to know each other.” Another priest at another wedding eight years later told the bride and groom: “Your job is to get each other into Heaven.”

The Better Angels of My Nature

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2009/12/18/ocd-diaries-12-18-the-better-angels-of-my-nature/

It’s not hard for me to write about OCDbinge eating and pills. These are a part of life for people across political and religious divides. Depression and anxiety will hit you whether you’re Catholic, Baptist or agnostic; Democrat, Republican or Libertarian. Religion and politics. Those are tough. But I’m gonna get into it here anyway.

Facebook Follow Friday: Penny

Welcome to week four of this new tradition of mine: Giving the nod to some of my Facebook friends for giving my spirits a lift and teaching me new things.

A reminder on what this is about: There’s a thing we do on Twitter called Follow Friday, where we list people we follow and suggest others do the same. I figured Facebook should have something similar, so here it is.

There’s a lot of crap on Facebook. Some people might consider me part of the problem and unfriend me over it. That’s OK. My brand of insanity isn’t for everyone. But there are a lot of giving folks on there as well; friends that lift the spirits and teach me something daily.

Next week’s list will be long, because it’ll be Thanksgiving and I’m thankful for all of you.

But this week’s entry is dedicated to one person: Penny Morang Richards.

Mood music (click the YouTube link to hear):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DNJTEuGimA&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’ve been thinking of Penny a lot this week. A year ago today, her beautiful daughter died in a motorcycle accident. I’ve followed her struggle very closely, online and in person. She doesn’t like when people call her things like brave and courageous. I can understand that.

But here’s why I have to piss her off and argue that those words DO apply: When God forces us into a horrific situation, we have choices on how to react. We can collapse into a pile of rubble and stay the hell away from society, or we can share our ups and downs so others can learn from it.

Penny has done some of the former. Who can blame her? It’s part of the grieving process. But she has done the latter in abundance.

She has chronicled almost every day of her life since her daughter’s death in the blog Penny Writes…Penny Remembers. I hope she makes it into a book like she did with her blog chronicling her breast cancer battle. There’s just so much to learn from her.

When I see other people going through their personal hell, it hits me hard. Some of it is the old fear of loss I’ve mentioned before. Some of it is that when I see someone else going through grief, pain and depression, my own bad memories bubble to the surface.

I feel like an idiot when this happens, because it’s a typical reaction for someone who gets self-absorbed, which is one of the basic ingredients for someone with OCD.

Here’s the really whacked out thing: I only met her daughter a couple times in person, during The Eagle-Tribune days. And she was still a kid at that point.

And yet, when I heard about her death, I went into a depression.

Again, I think it’s because these events trigger my own fear that you can lose everything at any time, without warning. And since we were at the start of the holiday season, that depression wasn’t going away any time soon.

And that, in part, is why I started this blog. I had planned to for awhile, but the blues I was experiencing at that moment compelled me to do something to get out of my funk. THE OCD DIARIES was the result.

Only a self-absorbed bastard like me would react that way to the death of someone he didn’t know particularly well.

But I know her mom, and this whole experience has driven home what a strong, giving woman she is. Strong because she didn’t run away from life when that darkest hour hit. Giving because through her sharing, we’ve all learned a lot about how to bounce back from adversity.

Penny’s ups and downs are far from over. But she teaches me every day that you can’t hide from your pain and problems. 

Well, you can.

But there’s always another way.

Thanks for teaching me that, Penny.

My thoughts and prayers are with you and Dave today.

Peace be with you both.

Be a Hard-Ass, Lose Every Time

I used to think I had to be a tough-talking, pushy bastard to get ahead in life. Instead, that behavior nearly destroyed me. I’ve learned a lot since then.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mn-3EqaO0E&fs=1&hl=en_US]

When I worked at The Eagle-Tribune, some of the editors carried on with the mindset that reporters always needed an ass kicking. If a sentence wasn’t written perfectly, the story got rewritten and the writer got a knuckle sandwich by way of e-mail.

Once, when the obituary writer was out with the flu, my bosses decided he was faking the whole thing and ordered me to call the guy and let him have it. I made the call, and the obit man, Danny Goodwin, was taken aback. Today he’s a close friend and we laugh about that call frequently.

No disrespect toward my former colleagues intended. I made some of my most lasting friendships there. And most newsrooms can be a cut-throat environment. It’s just the way it is.

The point of this post is really about how I tried to be the hard ass some bosses wanted me to be, and how — fortunately for me and everyone else — I failed miserably.

Before I go further, I should point out that this isn’t all about The Eagle-Tribune. When I was an editor for Community Newspaper Company, I thought I was really something. I treated reporters like my personal whipping boys. It didn’t make them better reporters. It just made me a bigger asshole.

When I worked for TechTarget, I had the same problem. I was nobody’s boss there, but I had the feeling I was superior to writers in other groups because someone stuck the word “senior” in my title.

Why did I carry on this way? Because I worried about everything all the time — as OCD cases are known to do — and I couldn’t control my addictions.

This made me feel like the scum of the Earth. Somehow, I reasoned, trying to be — or at least pretending to be — better than others would help me feel better about the absence of control in my life.

If I was going to suffer, I figured, I at least deserved something out of it, like being seen as the golden boy by everyone around me.

How’d that work out? Not so well.

You see, it’s one thing to hurt yourself. But when you hurt someone else to mask your insecurities, an evil is let loose that you can never control.

One New Hampshire reporter from the E-T days, Sally Gilman, got a taste of that evil.

In late 2000, early 2001, I was the assistant editor of the paper’s New Hampshire edition and reported to a manging editor who made my brand of control-freakism look like a minor, passing cold.

His attitude was that all the reporters were children who needed their ears slapped back on a regular basis, and he expected me to carry out his will. It was against my instincts, because I wanted to be known as a nice guy. But I pushed on. When he told me to take a reporter to the woodshed because that person wasn’t performing as he felt they should be, I did.

Sally was one of those reporters who was always in his sights. It was ridiculous, because she was older and wiser than we were. She had been covering New Hampshire for many years. She lived there. We should have just let her do her thing, because it was good enough.

But he wanted more. If an idea wasn’t something you could turn into a multi-story enterprise package with seven sources per story, then it was crap. Community journalism was a mark of laziness, apparently.

He was always on Sally to come into the North Andover, Mass. office to work more often. She resisted, because New Hampshire was where the action was. She lived there. She once noted that the New Hampshire plates on her car increased her credibility with sources, and she was right.

Still, it became my job to push her to come to the office. It seems absurd in this day and age, where you can easily work from anyplace that has a wi-fi connection. But even back then, e-mailing in a story was simple enough.

But we wanted the stories inputed directly into the newsroom’s Lotus Notes-based system. We felt we shouldn’t have to reformat copy on deadline. Perhaps we were the lazy ones.

One morning, Sally filed an incomplete story. I can’t remember exactly what the problem was. But the boss was pissed off about it, and he told me to give her a kick in the ass. Her husband was having some serious surgery that day and we both knew it. But he ordered and I got on the phone and gave her a talking to.

An hour or so later, Steve Lambert, the top editor, called me to his office. I went in there to find him, my direct boss, and editor Al White. Considering what I had done, they went pretty easy on me. There was no yelling. Steve just asked me what happened and I told him. The N.H. managing editor sat there with a very red face. It was always red, mind you. But it was particularly glaring in Steve’s windowless office.

It turns out that Sally had called to complain. She was really upset. How dare an editor call her early in the morning to give her a hard time about something trivial on a day when her husband’s life was hanging in the balance.

Steve agreed with her, as well he should have. But he was still calm about it. He told me I needed to ease up. He didn’t want reporters to see me as the newsroom ass-clown. I said I’d keep that in mind and left his office, feeling like I had just been simultaneously stabbed in the side of the head and slammed in the gut with a brick.

Ten-plus years later, the way I treated her is one of my biggest regrets.

It would be easy for me to blame that managing editor, and make no mistake about it: I’ve spent most of the last decade thanking my lucky stars that I don’t have to work with him anymore.

But I always had the choice to behave the right way, and I did the opposite because being the office rock star was too important to me. I needed that status to fill the hole in my soul.

I thought it would fill the hole. Since I did a ton of binge eating back then, it’s safe to say being a hard-ass didn’t fill the hole the way I thought it would. I binged away and worried about every little thing to the point of paranoia. I started to see conspiracies against me all around. I started getting sick a lot.

Here’s the other problem with being a hard-ass: The world becomes a lonely place.

People don’t want to hang out with you. And on the rare occasions that they do, you don’t have the slightest idea of what to talk about. When you try to be superior to people on the job, you have nothing to relate to outside the building.

Somewhere in my recovery program, I lost my appetite for all this stuff. Out of pure exhaustion, I just started treating people the way I WANTED TO BE TREATED. I just didn’t have the energy to be a hard-ass anymore.

My spiritual conversion was a big part of this, too. My religious beliefs were simply no longer compatible with riding people and trying to control them.

Do I slip up today? Probably. I’m still a control freak to some extent. I guess I always will be.

I’ll always have to work on it, reminding myself that I’m no better than those around me.

All I know is this: When I’m treating people with respect, I feel free. I’m not weighted down by animosity. 

More people want to be in my life.

A lot of problems take care of themselves.

You don’t have to take what I say as Gospel. In the end, I can only explain where I’ve been and what I’ve experienced.

And what I’ve experienced since changing my attitude is all good.

How Parenthood Saved Me

When I first became a parent, I’m pretty sure I sucked at it. I had no patience for the things babies do because, back then, it was all about me. That’s how it is when you have OCD and out-of-control addictions. You’re too self absorbed to see the blessings around you. But my wife and kids helped me break the cycle.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcfTpHa0nOw&fs=1&hl=en_US]

That’s the thing about children. When God puts them in your care, the only way to succeed is to surrender the “it’s all about me” attitude. Many fail. Some succeed. In the beginning, I worried that I’d fail. Nearly a decade later, I guess the jury is still out.

This much I know: Sean and Duncan have taught me a lot about life.

This collection of posts is about my kids. Hopefully, the writing adequately expresses what they mean to me.

To Sean on his birthday

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/21/happy-birthday-my-sweet-boy/

To Duncan on his birthday

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/09/14/happy-birthday-precious-boy/

Things my kids say, Part 1

When life gets you down and you feel like shutting out the world, a child’s perspective will always give you a mental boost. That’s what Sean and Duncanhave taught me.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/10/21/things-my-kids-say/

Things my kids say, Part 2

Sean and Duncan continue to give me a fresh perspective on a world that can be full of trouble. Life getting you down? Feel like shutting out the world? Read this instead.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/10/26/stuff-my-kids-say-part-2/

Duncan likes Pink. So What?

My 7-year-old son is raising a few eyebrows in church and school because his favorite color is pink. Apparently, it’s only OK for girls to like this color. Right off the bat I’m annoyed, because girls don’t get the same crap for wearing a so-called boy’s color like blue.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/11/09/duncan-likes-pink-so-what/

Too Young for the Truth?

Sean learns more about the man he’s named for than the author intended at this young age. All things considered, he took it well.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/06/09/too-young-for-the-truth/

Fear of Loss

The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly. Also, how Sean and Duncan helped.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2009/12/20/ocd-diaries-snowpocalypse-and-the-fear-of-loss/

Like Father, Like Son

The author finds that OCD behavior runs strong among the men in his family.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/07/like-father-like-son/

The Brenners Invade The White House

The author on returning from a journey that would have been impossible a few years ago.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/05/17/the-brenners-invade-the-white-house/

Parental overload is no big deal

Nothing like a week of screaming kids to realize OCD aint what it used to be.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/25/parental-overload-no-big-deal/

Happy and Productive in the Debris Field

A work-at-home morning with Duncan goes better than it used to.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/20/happy-and-productive-in-the-debris-field/

Black Rain

Rain is pelting my living room window as I write this. As a child, the sound was comforting. Today, it’s the opposite.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=663L-GWQdws&fs=1&hl=en_US]

As a kid, I found comfort in a cloudy sky and rain. I suppose it made me appreciate the inside of my house and gave me a cozy feeling. The overcast sky was like a blanket. I wanted to hide from a lot of things back then: the Crohn’s Disease raging inside me, the unhappy chatter coming from my parents as their marriage fell apart, the sound of my brother gasping for air during one of his asthma attacks. The sound of my mother yelling at my sister and slapping her around.

For some reason, the clouds felt like a blanket I could pull over my head to blot those things out.

Somewhere along the way, something changed.

Now the sound of rain hitting the window makes me feel uneasy and a gray sky fills me with gloom.

This time of year it’s worse because it gets dark so early.

Part of it is age. As I get older, I prefer hot, dry weather and maximum sunlight. Deprive me of that and my mood tanks.

The rest of it is about the twists and turns my mental health has taken with time. 

Does weather impact one’s mental health? You bet your ass it does. My moods almost always hit the depths when there’s too much rain, snow, cold and darkness.

In the book Lincoln’s Melancholyby Joshua Wolf Shenk, we see how long periods of gloomy weather drove Lincoln to suicidal thoughts in the 1840s, two decades before he was president.

I’m doing what I can to combat the weather problem. My medication helps. My program of recovery from compulsive overeating helps a ton. Occasional visits to the therapist help. Writing helps. And yes, the happy lamps Erin bought help.

I feel much better overall than I have in past Novembers.

But in the end, you can only do so much. So despite all the work I’ve done on myself, this morning’s weather has me in a rut.

It’ll be a brief rut. I don’t fall over from depression for days and weeks at a time like I used to. Now it’s more like minutes and hours. That’s progress.

The best medicine is to move along and get to work.

And if I can get a nap in somewhere, all the better.