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Celebrating Erin

Today is Erin’s birthday, and it feels like a national holiday to me. My life is crammed with blessings because of her, so it’s perfectly appropriate to celebrate her life this way.

Mood music:

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A few things you should know about Erin:

She’s the best mom on the planet. Our two boys have hearts and minds of gold. Their faces are always buried in books, they pray to God daily and spread joy everywhere they go. If you think they got that from me, you’re out of your mind.

While many people stay in jobs that make them unhappy because they fear change, she took the dive, started her own business and made it a success in less than two years. That should inspire anyone who labors under the delusion that they can’t do better.

She turned the Brenner house into a green zone. No paper napkins or chemical-laced cleaning agents around here. It’s all cloth napkins and organic cleaners. She’s teaching the kids to respect their planet and treat it as the God-given gift that it is. Her efforts have even rubbed off on me, and that’s no easy feat. I grew up on Revere Beach before they built the water treatment plant and restored the coastline to its pristine glory. Home to me included trash in the sand and slime in the water. You get used to living that way, and change comes slowly.

She’s a tireless servant of The Lord. Everything she does is based on her Faith. Being kind to the planet because God gave it to us. Raising kids to do the same, and bringing her husband closer to God.

We’re getting older and have more wrinkles and gray hair than we used to have.

That’s a gift, too.

I have the perfect soul mate to grow old with. What more could anyone ask for?

Happy Birthday, Sweetie. 🙂

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Financial Fear and Anxiety? Try This Four-Step Exercise

An old friend is racked with fear and anxiety. A clinical OCD case like me, he obsesses about the family budget, which he recently took over. He’s obsessed about everything that could go wrong with him in control. I know exactly what he’s going through.

Mood music:

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Early in our marriage, Erin was chief budget keeper and bill payer. She insisted I try doing the bills so that I could get a better sense of what I was spending and how it fed into the bigger picture. I was scared shitless, and I made mistakes. I dreaded every morning.

Erin and I now have a system where I handle the finances for six months, then she does six months. She remains a far better budget keeper than me, but I have learned to pay the bills on time most of the time. Progress is progress.

The treatment I’ve had to bring my OCD under control was a big factor in my progress. I still have daily OCD moments, but the fear and anxiety are gone.

Which brings me to a little exercise worth trying in fearful moments. This is mainly directed toward my friend and people in our mental situation. If you really are living in poverty and it’s not all in your head as it is for us, this won’t change things. But if you’re like us, maybe this will help.

  • Remember that most people struggle with money. Even if you’re filthy rich, you struggle to manage all the money coming in and going out. If you’re middle class or lower, there’s never enough money. The budget is always out of alignment because life happens. Cars break down unexpectedly. Water heaters die at the most inconvenient time. Your situation is unremarkable. Remembering that will at least give you the comfort of not being alone.
  • Ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen? So you discover that you forgot to make the monthly car payment. What’s the worst that can happen? Will your car get repossessed? Unlikely, since you pay on time most of the time. You just fix the mistake by paying up and move on. Will you end up homeless because money is tight? You haven’t been tossed out up to this point and you’re financial situation is basically the same as always, so I doubt it. When we ask what’s the worst that can happen, we find that the worst isn’t so bad.
  • Seek out people smarter than you. Worried that you don’t have enough to pay every bill on time and having trouble prioritizing? Get help. Find the smartest financial brain in the family and get their advice. They can help you prioritize and make the best of what you have to work with. Read up on finance basics (Erin recommends Get a Financial Life, a book she worked on.) Get a financial adviser to guide you along. We have an adviser, and he’s been very helpful when it comes to assessing the full financial picture and how to work with what you have. If you keep your concerns inside and don’t get help, you’re setting yourself up for trouble.
  • Appreciate what you have. Money troubles may persist, but if you stop to remember what you have, things look a lot better. Your family still loves you. You still have your health and the ability to make positive changes in your life. Remember those things, take a deep breath and get back to the task.

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Five Steps for a Less-Irritating Facebook Presence

Editor’s note: This is a sequel to yesterday’s post, “Stupid Things People Say on Facebook.” In this installment, Bill outlines the steps he takes to be less of a jerk on Facebook. He admits he’s not perfect, especially when it comes to the fifth example.

Mood music:

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My personal rules for using Facebook:

  1. No bitching. If I’m having a bad day, I don’t complain about it in my status updates. Since I hate it when other people do this, I figure I’d be a hypocrite to do it myself.
  2. No badmouthing. I never badmouth people from work (not that I have reason to; my colleagues are awesome) on Facebook. People who trash the boss, the HR department, the customer or the coworkers risk being alienated and ultimately fired. I also abstain from badmouthing family members and neighbors in my status updates. I do tear into people on this blog, which gets posted on Facebook, but these are longer commentaries that take a critical look at human nature. No hateful hit-and-run one-liners in my updates.
  3. No threats. If you threaten to badmouth someone, beat them up, scratch up their car or flip off someone’s children, for example, you are a bully who needs to get kicked off Facebook. Fortunately, Facebook appears to be on top of the bullies.
  4. Be creative. Most of the time, I just share posts from my two blogs and the occasional amusing quote from my children. Once in a while, I’ll share a clever meme or a rock album I’m enjoying. In other words, I try to share the creative stuff. I’m not perfect, though. Which brings me to number 5.
  5. No excessive posting. I’m guilty as charged. One of my OCD habits has been to post my blog pieces by the ton. I know I’ve been unfriended and unfollowed for it, and rightly so. But everything is a teachable moment, and when I entered a writing and posting blackout in the two weeks before the relaunch of this blog, I found that traffic was just as consistent without all the repeat posts. So I’ve made a conscious effort to dial back the reposting significantly. I still repost stuff, especially on the weekends when I usually take a writing break. But I think I have the frequency down to a trickle.

If I still have work to do there, I’m sure some of you will let me know.

Facebook Bizarro

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Stupid Things People Say on Facebook

On Facebook, I try to conduct myself just as I would in any other social situation. People who go on there to whine and throw around vitriol disgust me, and I confess to a sick enjoyment of sites that make fun of those posts. We Know What You’re Doing is a new site that documents how stupid people people can be on Facebook.

Mood music:

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I often fall victim to the Facebook Unfriend Syndrome: that nagging feeling you get when someone unfriends you. You wonder if you offended the person and want to ask them why they left. It’s a stupid state of mind, to be sure. But having OCD is partly about developing stupid compulsions.

Indeed, I have offended people over things I’ve written in this blog. A close friend got mad at me for something I wrote and ditched me, though she recently added me back. My own mother unfriended me because she couldn’t handle my version of past events. I long ago accepted that I’m going to lose people along the way. That’s life, especially when you’re the outspoken type.

But there are depths I will never stoop to, and We Know What You’re Doing is full of examples.

Take this rant from Jimmy, who hates his boss:

I hate my boss. He cut off my pay cauz I slept in for one day, and now I’ll not have enough to go out for tha 12th :@

Or this one from Anastasia R., who has homicidal thoughts about her boss:

Im getting so mad right now I hate my boss Jay I hope he dies better yet I feel like killin him if you in a bad mood don’t take it out on everyone at the job like wtf its way to hot to take your shit-_- #Piss off

A lot of people captured on this site like to brag about their hangovers. As annoying as that can be, I think it’s better than trashing your boss. But really, Lukey D., I think you might have a deeper problem going on:

fuck it, im hungover again so im going to buy some shoes. and probably drink a lot more.

Mike D. wants you all to know about his new phone number. Call one, call all:

ok folks. New phone number is 07770xxx6xx

This isn’t the first site to aggregate dumb Facebook posts. One of my personal favorites is What the Facebook. I particularly enjoy the responses it captures with the original post, including those from bosses who have been criticized.

The security journalist in me is always warning people to watch what they say on Facebook, because there’s no privacy to be had in the land of social networking. You have to police your own mouth.

There is one unexpected side effect of We Know What You’re Doing: It’s made me feel a lot more tolerant of those posts where people complain about being depressed, alone, unloved and burdened by difficult family members. It sure beats watching someone blather on about their sexual prowess or drunken escapades.

Facebook for Dummies

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Nikki Sixx, Michael Jackson and Pedophiles, Part 2

Last year, Mötley CrĂĽe bassist Nikki Sixx created a Twitter shitstorm when he opined about Michael Jackson being an alleged pedophile. At the time, I wrote a blog post about it being a fascinating case study in human nature. This week marks the third anniversary of Jackson’s death, and the case study has taken an interesting turn.

Mood music:

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I knew something was up when my post from last year started getting a ton of traffic. I also started getting fresh comments on the post, all of it defending Jackson and panning Mötley CrĂĽe’s chief songwriter. So I explored Google and found another interesting Twitter exchange, this time between Jackson’s daughter, Paris, and Sixx.

Jackson sent him this tweet: “Heyy quick question dude – and this is coming from a huge fan of motley crue – but why do u feel the need to hate on talented ppl [people]?”

To which Sixx replied: “Hello parisJackson. My snarky humor and sarcasm sometimes gets the best of me. I sincerely apologize to you and your family. God Bless.”

According to published reports, she accepted his apology and he invited her to come on his radio show. “If ya ever wanna come on SixxSense and talk about what Your working on would love [to] have you on,” he tweeted.

I had forgotten about my post from last year, so I went back and read it. It mostly stands the test of time in terms of how I feel about the subject. I think Jackson did a lot of good in his life but that the cloud hanging over him was hard to dismiss.

True, he was never convicted of being a pedophile, but the reports of what went on in his home still make me uneasy.

Watching a childhood friend become a pedophile definitely colored my reaction to the Sixx-Jackson controversy. But I fully admit that I’m basing my views on all the things that were reported in the media. For all I know, everything that happened behind closed doors was harmless. The media has a long history of getting it wrong.

I still find it curious how the masses were ready to tear Jackson down at the time of the allegations yet conveniently forgot about all them when he died. I guess we all suffer from varying degrees of hypocrisy.

One thing’s for certain: Nikki Sixx seems to have had a change of heart — at least in how he chose to give his opinion on the King of Pop.

I’m glad Paris Jackson challenged Sixx the way she did. And I’m glad he apologized.

Nikkie Sixx

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It’s All Fun and Games Till Someone Breaks an Elbow

Duncan is sporting a pink cast on his right arm again, the result of a tumble off my bed last week. He was horsing around with Sean and took a spill over the side, landing on his elbow and fracturing it.

Mood music:

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Duncan went flying when Sean put up his hands to keep his brother from landing on top of him. Now every time someone asks what happened, Duncan points an accusing finger in Sean’s direction. Call it what you will — brothers being brothers, parental fail (I was on the other side of the bed reading, oblivious to the accident about to happen), Duncan being accident prone.

When Duncan came home in another cast, Sean felt terrible about it. He doesn’t like to see his little brother in pain and was equally upset last fall after Duncan fell off a set of monkey bars and broke his right wrist bones.

In addition, there’s a fair amount of guilt swirling around the Brenner house. Sean feels guilty because his reflexive action during a moment of horsing around caused Duncan’s spill. I feel guilty because I should have stopped the horseplay sooner. Erin feels guilty because she was a floor above us during the incident, talking on the phone.

There are teachable moments in all this.

The first is that feeling guilty is pointless; nobody conspired for this to happen. But we can be a little more alert in the future. For my part, the second horseplay starts, I can lay down the law and stop it.

The second lesson is that beating yourself up won’t change the outcome. Bad luck will always show itself in a split-second, before you’re fully able to process what’s about to happen. The tumble off the bed happened faster than the blink of an eye, and that’s the way life is sometimes — fast and sloppy.

As an OCD case, I’ve had to work at that last one. Those of us with clinical OCD are masters at second-guessing ourselves and everyone around us. We’ll replay the event in our heads repeatedly, looking for that quick moment when someone screwed up. But it never helps. In fact, it just makes matters worse because we let the obsession incapacitate us.

The best I can do now — the best all of us can do — is be there for Duncan and help him through it.

Fortunately, Duncan isn’t letting it get him down. He’s still every bit as active as he usually is, and yesterday he even enjoyed a string of bowling.

Despite the cast and sling, he won.

On to the next thing, which will hopefully be a lot less eventful.

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Former FNX DJs Get Second Chance on Boston.com

In a recent post about WFNX being sold and gutted by Clear Channel, I predicted that this would not be the end of the story. It turns out I was right. Boston.com announced this morning that it’s launching a live streaming radio station featuring alternative music and well-known personalities from WFNX-FM.

Mood music:

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In a Facebook exchange this morning, longtime DJ Henry Santoro told me: “All I can say right now is that they came to us, and the magic started happening from the very first meeting.”

“The Boston.com station will have a presence on the website’s homepage,” reported Boston.com, “and it will feature a variety of live programming: music, commentary, contests, interviews, and exclusive online content.”

Effective today, the following former WFNX employees will become Boston.com employees: DJs Henry Santoro, Julie Kramer, and Adam 12; former program director Paul Driscoll; former sales rep Johnny L. Lavasseur; and former operations and promotions director Mike Snow.

The launch date for the new streaming radio station will be announced later this summer, according to Boston.com.

As a kid who received a lot of solace from the music these DJs played during the darker periods of my life, this is great news to wake up to on a Monday morning.

Raise your coffee mugs, and toast a second chances.

WFNX Logo

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Four Tips for Prepping for a Colonoscopy

I wasn’t going to write about going for a colonoscopy. Not because I’m embarrassed or because I’m worried about grossing you out. But because it’s been done so many times by so many other people. What could I possibly add to the discussion?

Mood music, in honor of my only nutrient for the next several hours:

http://youtu.be/BLKcDiOspsY

Since most of you will have to go for a colonoscopy at some point, let me help you make the best of it. After all, thanks to a lifetime of Crohn’s Disease, this is old hat to me. I have to have the procedure every two to four years because all of the scar tissue in me has raised my colon cancer risk significantly.

If you have to have a test like this, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Your ass is nothing special to the doctors performing the procedure. They see scores of butts every week, and to them that’s no different than the car mechanic who stares at scores of tires, timing belts and radiator hoses every week. When’s the last time you got excited about staring at those things?

I’ve developed my rituals over the years, as any good OCD case will do, and they have made this procedure a lot less dreadful. This is a good time to share.

  • Drink plenty of black coffee, tea and water. Black coffee and tea are among the liquids you’re allowed the day before, so drink lots of them. The caffeine will keep you going in the absence of food. But drink a lot of water, too, because too much caffeine will dehydrate you. I normally don’t worry about that, but fasting is a different story. I have a steady flow of black coffee on hand today, and while I prefer a little cream in there, black suits me fine.
  • Watch good TV to distract you. During the clean-out part, you’ll have to drink massive amounts of water or clear juice loaded with a laxative. I have to drink four big bottles — 8 ounces every 20 minutes or so until it’s gone — of green Gatorade with a mountain of Miralax dumped in. That’s actually a lot better than the 2 gallons of gross salt water they used to prescribe, but you still need a distraction. This time, I’ll watch the American Masters episode on Pearl Jam’s 20 years of music making.
  • Move as little as possible. I’ll spend most of the day sitting at my desk working, another welcome distraction. When I get home, I won’t do much that doesn’t involve lying on the couch, until the bathroom trips commence. You won’t have much strength, so don’t blow it all early in the day.
  • Read about other people’s colonoscopies. Reading about others’ colonoscopies will make yours seem a lot less scary. Ozzy Osbourne’s account is worth the price of his memoir, I Am Ozzy, all by itself. Also worth a read is this account by author Laurel Hermanson. My favorite part is her account of the recovery room, where farting is a sure sign of success.

Boy in Giant Colon

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I’m Not a Guru, a Doctor or a Cult Leader

I’ve been getting an increase in messages asking me for advice on how to deal with family challenges and addiction. Whenever that happens, I start to get a little scared. Not for me, but for you.

Mood music:

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One of my relatives recently suggested I shouldn’t be telling people what to do, that I am not a doctor or a drug counselor. She’s right, but I was also a bit floored by that because that’s not what I see myself doing. I simply write about my own experiences and how I deal with them — successfully or not. I tell you how I live, but my goal isn’t how to tell you how you should live.

Despite that, I often get messages asking for very specific advice on how to deal with certain problems. I appreciate the faith you put in me, but I need you all to remember a few things:

  • I’m not a guru. If your goal is to be more like me, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m just a flawed human like you, trying 24/7 to make my way through life without hurting myself or others. True, I’m better at that than I used to be. But no two people are the same, and you have to find your own way. If my posts help you do that, I’m glad. But if I’m your only source, you got problems, because I still screw up every day.
  • I’m not a doctor. If I were, I’d probably be in jail for killing patients. Not on purpose, but because I have no idea what it takes to be a doctor. I know what I need in a doctor and have written about that, and I know what medications work for me and don’t. But only a real doctor can tell you what you need. Trust me, I’m not that guy.
  • I’m not a cult leader. When people come to me for advice like I’m some Jedi master, I start to worry about cult leader syndrome, that if I’m not careful, with both feet planted on the ground, I’ll start to believe what people say about me having all this wisdom and insight. People who get high on the advice seekers end up starting cults the way Charles Manson. If you’re looking for direction in life, my posts might give you some ideas. But my way is never the way.

If you have questions for me, please continue to ask away. Just don’t expect the answers to your problems.

That said, Erin and I are building a resources section in this blog, where we’ll offer a collection of links for everything from dealing with children’s issues to addiction. Those links will take you to the real experts. We’re hoping to launch that section very soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Charles Manson

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Wakes Are for the Living, You Selfish Bastard

My post “Death Etiquette: Pay Your Respects, Even If They Hate You” got a lot of response — all of it disagreeing with me. All who commented made good points, but some details require clarification.

Mood music:

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My point in that post was that if someone you love dies and someone else tells you not to attend the memorial services, they are being selfish and you need to do what you feel is right to honor the dead. Here’s what a few close friends said in response on my Facebook page (with my responses included):

Ken White: If someone closer to the deceased specifically does not want you there, I think it rude to go anyway. You can say goodbye in your own way. The dead will not be insulted and I see no reason for you to upset someone during such an upsetting situation just so you can feel better about “paying your respects.” In your case, no one specifically asked you not to attend, so I think you are correct. In the other case, she could call the ex-mother-in-law directly and ask. If she can’t summon the courage to ask for permission, then she shouldn’t be at the wake/funeral.

Paul Bowen: Send flowers if you think folks don’t want you there but you want to pay your respects. Wakes are for the living not the dead.

Me: I think that is a good point in regards to the wake. But the funeral is all about the dead and a person should be able to go and sit at the back of the church, temple etc.

Ken: Bill, it’s not about you. It’s a family thing, and if you are guaranteed to cause a problem, well, I just think it is selfish.

Some clarifications:

I agree the wake is a family thing, and that if you’re not family you should probably just send flowers. I also agree that if someone is a loose cannon around certain people, they should stay away. Nobody should go to a wake or funeral knowing that they will cause mayhem.

But the person I wrote about was part of that family and was close to the deceased. Telling her to stay away is selfish, too (selfishness can go both ways). I do agree with everyone commenting that a good middle ground is to skip the wake and go to the funeral, hanging at the back of the church. The person I wrote about is being discouraged from doing even that, and since it’s family, I think that’s unfair.

I also should have been clearer about the wake vs. funeral. It seems that readers thought I was talking mostly about the wake, and that since wakes are for the living more than the dead my arguments are invalid.

But I was talking about the funeral as much as the wake. Unless the obituary calls it a private service, anyone should be able to go and sit in the back of the church. Wakes are another matter. I agree that if you know you will cause a problem, you should stay away. But then this post wasn’t directed at the loose cannons. It was directed toward reasonable people who never willingly inject chaos into a wake.

I also think people missed the full picture in the example I gave. That’s because I held back a lot of detail to preserve the anonymity of those involved. In doing so, I didn’t give you a clear picture of where the dysfunctional family fault lines are.

It’s hard to give an informed opinion when you’re not fully informed.

At the end of the day, I think this is a useful discussion to have if it helps us conduct ourselves better going forward.