I’ve been studying up on Akamai Technologies’s history since starting work in the InfoSec department earlier this month. One of the coolest and most moving lessons has been a study of company co-founder Danny Lewin, who died aboard Flight 11 on 9/11 when terrorists drove it into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

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Lewin is actually considered the first casualty of that terrible day because he was killed during an attempt to stop the hijacking. I wrote about it in “InfoSec Central To Lewin’s Legacy” in the Akamai Blog. Check it out!

Thanks.

One of my biggest struggles has always been impatience. I hate waiting, whether it’s being stuck in a long line at Starbucks or getting adjusted to life’s changes. Since I recently started a new job, the challenge has grown particularly steep in recent weeks.

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It’s all good, really; I’m enjoying the new job. But I’m always obsessed about where I want to be in the process, and that has made for a world of hurt in past jobs. That hurt is usually all in my head, thoughts that run wild and make me sick or irritable.

The normal thing to do is take it a day at a time, learn the ropes and realize that it takes several weeks to start hitting the right groove. But that’s not me. I come in with a long list of what I want to accomplish and get bummed out if I haven’t burned through half the list after the first two weeks. If I write 5 blog posts, I feel like I should have done 10 or 15 by that point. If an idea for a new web page isn’t live a month after I’ve laid down the first design, I start to feel adrift.

If I were a carpenter instead of a writer and editor, I’d be bummed out about not getting an entire house built in the first month.

The reality is that a person usually has plenty of time to get acclimated. Some jobs ramp up faster than others. When I worked in a record store in my early 20s, I only had a few days to learn the ropes. By the end of the first week, I was expected to be restocking shelves and working the cash register.

But that’s retail. In the world of writing and editing, the ramp up is a longer process, especially when you’re doing the job in a setting that is not based on an editorial operation.

What I need to do now is going to take time. Relationships must be made and solidified. Ideas have to go through multiple channels for review. That’s as it should be. Push things through too fast and you’ll create a legacy of half-baked works. Push too hard on people you’re just getting to know, and they’re not going to want to work with you much.

So I’m working on taking the new job a day at a time. Doing so should be easy. My new workmates have made me feel welcome and comfortable.

My only enemy is in my head. He’s an old adversary, and I suppose he’ll always be there. It’s an enemy born of false and impatiently conceptualized expectations. He pushes me to move fast and recklessly. But I can’t let him win.

I’ll be working the coping tools hard in the coming weeks as I find my footing. Waiting is hard. But more often than not, it’s necessary and you have to accept it.

And so I’ll continue trying.

Get this: The latest version of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), has added caffeine withdrawal to the list of mental illnesses.

Ridiculous, you say? I did at first. But on further reflection, it makes sense.

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Those who know me are well aware of my ability to consume large amounts of caffeine. I drink coffee all morning and, when possible, I switch to Red Bull in the afternoon. I know it’s an addiction, but I gave up just about everything else, so I cling to it unapologetically.

But I have quit it at various times in the past, and I remember what the first few days were like. The headaches. The fatigue. The depression. Yes, I did feel depression.

It makes perfect sense. Consider that when you suffer mental pain, it usually becomes physical pain, and vice versa. If you’re deprived of a substance you’re addicted to, you will fall into a depression. I was depressed as hell when I first gave up flour and sugar, and the real cigarettes I eventually replaced with e-cigs. With that in mind, the APA’s move makes perfect sense.

But I do feel the need to throw cold water on the idea that the sufferer should be treated like a victim. A lot of articles about this topic drop lines like “It’s not your fault.” The thing is, it is your fault.

True, I wasn’t necessarily in my right mind when I chose to binge eat and get tanked on bottles of wine. I certainly wasn’t in a healthy mental place when I sought comfort in cigarette smoke. But each time, I had a choice: I could do it or not. I gave in to weakness each time, and when I gave up the other things and suffered withdrawal, it was indeed my own damn fault.

That’s fine by me, since these experiences make us human and, ideally, we come out stronger and in better control of our actions. But let’s see this for what it is: mental illness triggered by one’s inability to control the intake of addictive substances. A self-inflicted would.

From there, the APA’s move could lead us to some useful action items for dealing with the withdrawal.

Tonight I’m doing something I never do. I’m going to a midnight movie premier, for Man of Steel. I’m no night owl, so this ought to be an adventure. But Superman has always been important to me.

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It seems ridiculous, having such devotion to a fictional superhero. But to be honest, the Man of Steel came into my life at a time when I really needed a superhero, even if he was from a world of make-believe.

It started in 1978, the first time I was hospitalized with a mystery disease that robbed me of a lot of blood and strength. Back then, Crohn’s Disease was still a rare thing, and the doctors were feeling their way around in the dark when it came to treatment. I spent six weeks in a hospital bed, and the TV was my only solace. That’s when I discovered the Superman series from the 1950s. I got lost in the images of the man in red, white and yellow, outrunning trains and speeding bullets.

When I got out of the hospital that December, Superman: The Movie had just come out, and we went to see it. I was hooked. I identified with the hero’s feelings of being a misfit, trying to fit in somewhere. I’ve since watched that movie thousands of times.

Right after my third six-week hospital stay, Superman II came out. I saw it opening day. I saw all the Superman films that followed. Some were pretty terrible, but I didn’t care. By then, I was hooked.

We’re often taught that it’s silly to spend too much time buried in fantasy. But if the fantasy gets you through difficult times, I say so be it.

This new movie is supposed to be a radical departure from the Superman stories we’ve grown familiar with. It’s supposed to be darker, edgier. Sounds like a fun couple of hours to me.

The Man of Steel has always been there in my time of need. Seeing his latest movie at midnight is the least I could do to return the favor.

Wherein the author stays still and rocks out.

Only a week into the new job, I got blasted with the stomach bug from Hell. It started coming on Monday night and kept me up all night and in bed all day Tuesday. Those who know me will tell you I get up before 5 a.m. and am usually working by 6. To spend a whole day in bed is unthinkable.

Yet that’s what I did. The bed and then the couch. And I had the company of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, three of the four original members of Black Sabbath.

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They just released their first album together since 1978. The whole thing is available for free on Spotify, so I figured why not? I wasn’t going to be able to do anything else.

Wow. They really nailed it. Made being sick a little less frustrating. That’s what music does for me, helps me cope with life’s unpleasantries.

When I listen to a new album from an old band, I always start thinking about the musicians’ back stories. Ozzy’s battles with drugs and booze are legendary at this point, and Iommi just spent a year fighting cancer. I recently read a Guitar World interview with him on the subject. His diagnosis came after he found a lump in his groin. The timing was typical: He said he had been having one of the best years of his life, with Sabbath gearing up to make a new album. Treatment was hard, but he kept going. He put his pain into riffs for the new album, and let me tell you, those riffs are ferocious.

People don’t always think of this particular power of music: The musician goes through illness and other adversity and uses the songwriting process as therapy. The music then gets listened to by a guy thousands of miles away whose stuck in bed for the day.

It’s a poetic cause and effect.

As I write this I’m sitting up in a chair. Not yet fully over the bug, but the music has given me a nice shot of energy and allowed me to get something useful done.

In fact, I’m going to go play my guitar. I can’t riff like Iommi can, but it’ll feel good all the same.

My kids learned a new term this weekend: benevolent dictatorship. It’s Erin’s way of describing the way of the household. We’re the parents, we make the rules and the boys don’t get to move the goal posts around. For the sake of Erin’s sanity and my own OCD management, it’s become necessary that the children understand this.

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Kids will be kids. Our boys leave their dirty clothes all over the floor and Lego pieces are in just about every room waiting to be stepped on. They have the uncanny ability to sweep the kitchen floor without catching a single speck of dirt and the living room furniture is always at some weird angle. They don’t do this stuff to be mean. Any parent will tell you similar stories.

But my OCD is rubbed raw these days as I adjust to a new job and the resulting changes it brings to the family dynamic. I come home and pick up all the messes they make. I can’t help myself. Seeing chaos in the form of messy rooms makes my mind chaotic, which brings on a craving for order that makes me run myself ragged.

It’s not good for me and it’s not good for Erin, who then ends up having to take care of three kids instead of two, as I revert to an angst-filled teenager in my moments of OCD overdrive.

So we had a family meeting this weekend and laid down the law. We increased their chores lists and told them their allowance will get docked every time they protest having to pull their weight. But we softened the blow by giving them both a raise. All in all, they took it well. They even seemed eager to get on with it. But we know the blowback is inevitable. They are just kids, after all.

I’ve never been particularly good at enforcing the rules. I don’t like to yell at the children, and I often choose the path of least shouting as a result. But I do it at my peril.

Lately, I’m realizing that I can’t be the passive parent anymore, because it leads to me cleaning up every bit of destruction in the kids’ wake and they don’t learn the value of being on the hook for certain responsibilities. If I let them be irresponsible, I’m doing them more of a disservice then when I have to raise my voice. And I’m learning that the yelling isn’t necessarily a disservice.

That’s become part of my education in OCD management: learning how to be a hard-ass without being an asshole.

If I can master it, I’ll be in better mental health. Erin will be in better mental health. And the kids will grow up to be men who have the discipline and thick skin to make their dreams come true.

Or so I hope.

It’s a miracle I’ve survived a decade of writing about information security in my day job, considering how technologically inept I can be.

As I try to set up a new analytics tool for this blog, get accustomed to the daily use of Skype and install work email on my Android, I find that my OCD is off the charts. I keep hearing this in my head:

“Look out honey, ’cause I’m using technology!
Ain’t got time to make no apology.”
—The Stooges, “Search and Destroy”

The Skype and phone issues are actually no big deal, but the analytics tool is making me crazy. There are a million plug-ins so you can better access your site metrics, and all are advertised as easy to use. I’ve downloaded one after the next, carefully following the instructions, only to have them all fail.

Some say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. I have to admit that’s an accurate statement. I once spent an entire afternoon freaking out over a VPN that kept dropping. That was two jobs and several years ago. I’m much better at dealing with such things now, but I still have smaller explosions.

The answer to these ridiculous episodes is to walk away, to do something else and try again later. But for all my progress in recent years at managing the more disruptive OCD episodes, I have yet to master that one. There’s a chance I never will.

Yet I continue to succeed in the world of technology from a career standpoint. I actually love playing with new tools and programs and have gotten pretty good at doing it, especially on the smartphone. I like to access the guts of the machinery and learn what makes it all tick. And when I figure it out, I feel pretty fucking brilliant.

My big problem is how I can get when I can’t figure it out.

Fortunately, people around me continue to save me from myself. Erin is a natural at setting up and managing all the feeds and coding that drives me to distraction. A friend at work was generous with his time when I needed help configuring some of the programs I’ll now be using daily.

Eventually, I’ll figure out the analytics tools, too.

Until then, I’ll try not to go off the deep end.

Music is one of my main coping tools, and I’ve latched on to a new CD from some old friends that I know will get me through the stresses of a new job and the slow commute that goes with it.

I’ve already determined that Pop Gun’s American Soul is an excellent soundtrack for ensuring the painful wind from the Longfellow Bridge across Storrow Drive and onto I-93. I could swear at the drivers around me and bang my fist on the steering wheel. Instead, I’m listening to Pop Gun.

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(Disclosure: I know these guys well. I worked with drummer Greg Walsh at a small weekly newspaper nearly 20 years ago. In more recent years, I’ve gotten to know bassist-vocalist Harry Zarkades and guitarist-fellow Hillie James Melanson.)

I’ve had Pop Gun’s Trigger CD for a long time and have my favorites for sure, but American Soul has a depth and weight that comes with the 20 years of life experiences these guys have had since the songs for that first CD was written.

My favorite track is “Love and Wine,” written and vocalized by former guitarist Bruce Allen, who recently moved to Colorado. (Harry Sabean replaced Allen.) It’s a song full of light and fresh air, especially when Allen sings, “The sun will shine, and love is a vine that we’ll tend together.” When he sings that love is like wine, “sweet when it’s young and it only gets better,” it resonates with me after nearly 15 years of marriage.

“Bitter Heart” is another favorite. Melanson sings this one, and the mix of melody and crunchy riffs remind me of some of Boston’s classic bands, like The Cars and Aerosmith, with a bit of The Neighborhoods mixed in for good measure. His vocals are a smooth contrast to Zarkades’s more serrated tone. That’s one of the things that makes this album work for me: the vocal variety in the songs.

Erin and I attended Pop Gun’s record-release concert last week and the new tunes passed the critical test of scoring direct punches live.

If you’re a fan of Boston rock, this CD carries on the rich tradition that makes me proud to call this place home.

Buy American Soul. You won’t regret it. The best place to order one is the Pop Gun Facebook page. The guys will get back to you in short order.

For locals, you can pick up the disc at The Record Exchange in Salem, MA, and Dyno Records in Newburyport, MA.

I’ve just started the new job and am happy as hell to be here. I’m finding I’ll fit right in. But when a person is a couple days into a new job, there’s usually an unsettled feeling. In my case, the challenge is not to be an asshole about it.

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I’m not sure I’m having much success there, particularly at home, where I’m told I’ve been cranky and snippy and in OCD overdrive. I know the latter is true, because I know my trigger behavior when it surfaces. I get anxious to set up the new laptop, get work email on the phone and get access to all my various online portals. Most of that went fine &emdash; until I tried to access the dashboard for this blog. My username and password wouldn’t work. When I got home, I became obsessed with fixing the problem.

Erin and I tried all kinds of things to get me in and I dug in deeper every time we failed. It turns out I was simply using the wrong admin link. How stupid do I feel right now? Pretty stupid.

It’s been a long season of feeling unsettled as I went through the process of getting the new gig. I stayed a month at the old job before starting here so I could finish my various projects instead of dumping them on someone else’s lap. The result was that I pushed myself hard to the bitter end, leaving myself no time to detach and enjoy being a lame duck. Friends said I should have taken a vacation before starting the new job, and they’re probably right. But what’s done is done.

I have to right myself and pull it together, which means:

• Being more disciplined about meditation. I’ve been doing it, but I can’t seem to sustain the balanced feeling for more than a few minutes after doing the exercise.
• Getting a new therapist. Though my last therapist told me I didn’t need it anymore, I’m realizing that I still do. I don’t need weekly sessions or even bi-weekly. Once a month might do it (or not). But I need an objective voice to keep sounding the siren when I go barking up the wrong tree.
• Making the kids pull their weight. My kids have chores they’re supposed to do. But I have no patience right now, so if they don’t move fast enough I do it for them. Being children, they’re happy to let me do that, but in trying to do everything on the chore side I become a scattered mess. I need to pull back.
• Praying. Checking in with the man upstairs is always helpful to me — when I remember to do it.

I know I’ll get through this, and the truth is that there are nothing but good things happening in my life right now. I’ll keep you all posted.

Today is my last day as managing editor of CSO Magazine and CSOonline. Monday, my new job at Akamai begins. I’m excited about the new challenges that await me. But I’m going to miss the place where I spent the last five years of my professional life.

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On With The ShowMötley CrüeToo Fast For Love

It’s been an excellent ride. I worked with some of the best talent and sweetest human beings on Earth. I got to burrow deeper into the information security community and made many new friends along the way. And I’m a better man for it.

Just a few of the folks I’ve loved working with:

Derek Slater: A gentle soul with a mighty laugh, Derek gave me a ton of creative freedom. My only regret about this relationship is that I never succeeded in getting him to drop some F-bombs. Trust me, I tried. The dirtiest thing this man will say in a moment of crisis is pickles. One night at a dinner we hosted for CSOs attending one of our events, he introduced himself this way: “Hi, I’m Derek. I ‘manage’ Bill Brenner.” The room erupted in laughter, and Andy Ellis — my new boss come Monday — raised his glass and congratulated Derek for managing a guy like me without losing his grip on sanity. I’d like to think Derek’s rational ways have rubbed off on me.

Joan Goodchild: Joan is a powerhouse whose videos, slideshows and articles have been key to CSOonline‘s rise  in monthly traffic. I worked with her at TechTarget and was thrilled when she joined CSO a few months after me. She’s been a good friend through some turbulent times, and I’m forever grateful for that.

John Gallant: John runs IDG Enterprise with good humor and grace, and he’s gone to the mat for CSO on countless occasions. We bonded over an interest in WWII history, our common geographical roots, cigars and movies. I’ll miss his always-entertaining editorial offsites.

Steve Traynor: Steverino designs all CSO‘s pages and helped us make CSOonline more visually compelling. He put up with a lot from me, and we had a ridiculous amount of fun concocting illustrations and layouts.

Bob Bragdon: Bob is CSO‘s publisher, a Marblehead Yankee and an all-around great guy. He took a lot of ribbing from me and gave it back in kind. One time, after I returned from a Washington, DC, trip that included a grilling from the Secret Service, I discovered that Bob had plastered my workspace with signs welcoming me to Gitmo. I got him back a million times over and had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Per Melker: CSO’s top sales guy for most of my time there, Per was my traveling partner in crime. He did the driving as we journeyed to Hoover Dam for a security tour and, more recently, a side trip to Amityville, NY, so I could take pictures of the famous house for a slideshow.

There are many more people who made my time at CSO richer, and I thank them all. CSO and its parent company, IDG, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Now it’s time to start a new adventure and kick some ass at Akamai.