Though I got rid of the fear-based anxiety that kept me indoors and afraid of everything, I still have moments when I get overwhelmed.

Mood music:

 

PatienceGuns N' RosesG N' R Lies

Call it sensory overload or severe impatience, if you will. Or perhaps the latter two are mere byproducts of the first. Here are some examples:

• Long lines. Whether it’s waiting for a seat in a restaurant, for entry into a movie theater or for boarding a boat, long lines make me crazy inside.
• Traffic. When the highway becomes a parking lot, I feel claustrophobic. It’s worse when I’m surrounding by a lot of trucks, because they make it difficult to see what’s happening farther up the road.
• Housework. When there’s a lot of cleaning and fixing to do around the house, my brainwaves get scrambled and it becomes difficult to put the tasks in an order that makes sense. So I dart all over the place doing things haphazardly.
• Listening to long-winded people. This one seems mean, and I don’t mean for it to be. But when a person corners me for what turns into a long, long story, I start to scream inside. It makes me feel trapped and I feel like the rest of the world is passing me by.
• Long meetings. I’ll be honest and tell you that business meetings have never been a favorite of mine. True, they are necessary, but it always feels like I could be getting 10 other things done during that time. What really rattles me is when a meeting goes longer than scheduled. I start to fidget in my seat and lose the ability to hear anything anyone is saying.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, “What does he do about all this?” The answer is not much. These are all things that are part of life. Avoiding them would mean I wouldn’t be living mine. I’d be a recluse, never achieving anything and missing out on a lot of good stuff.

So I put on my game face and trudge on.

A conversation with friends last night about Ray Manzarek’s death led to talk about Jim Morrison and other musicians who died young. The question we asked aloud was what would Morrison, Kurt Cobain and others have done with their music had they been afforded longer lives?

Mood music:

 

Five To OneThe DoorsWaiting For The Sun

Would John Bonham still be producing those menacing drum sounds? Would Randy Rhoads be blessing us with rock infused with classical as he had desired at the time of his death?

It’s possible. But it’s also possible they all would have gone on to write and record music their hardcore fans would consider lame.

I picture Morrison, old and balding, jumping up and down in an MTV video and singing ”Su-Su-Sussudio!” Or Cobain singing country songs. Or Rhoads doing a bunch of watered-down, keyboard-infused music with horn sections and such.

Maybe that was God’s plan, to pluck these guys from Earth while they were still in their musical prime, before they could make music that would alienate their most dedicated fans.

It’s an interesting thing to ponder, though in all seriousness I wouldn’t have been upset had they all lived and made radical departures from the music that made them famous. Even if you don’t like someone’s newer art as much as their older art, it would still be comforting to see them alive and well, experimenting and trying to to expand their musical horizons.

Not that any of that matters. They died young, and that’s the way it is.

Thank God they got to leave behind some music before they were called home. That music has gotten me through a lot of adversity. It’s gotten a lot of people through the rough patches.

You could say that they didn’t have to stick around because they had already done what they came to do.

I was shocked yesterday to hear that Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away at 74 following a long bout with cancer. The importance of his music on me can’t be overstated.

Mood music:

 

The EndThe DoorsThe Doors

Jim Morrison always gets much of the credit as a member of this band, and he was indeed a powerful influence on me. But he wouldn’t have made it without Manzarek’s influence. He’s the one who encouraged Jim to sing, to put his poetry to music.

As a keyboardist he was a force of shock and awe. His solos were as important as the guitar solos of Robby Krieger. He also played all the bass lines on the keyboard, as The Doors had no bass player. The hypnotic low notes that were a staple of the band’s music came from him.

As a student at North Shore Community College in the early 1990s, I was obsessed with The Doors. My ambition was to be Jim Morrison, though I might have been a better student at the time if I were trying to be more like Manzarek.

Back then, I fancied myself a poet. I joined the Poet’s Society. I grew my hair long and started wearing a pair of leather pants I had borrowed from Sean Marley (back then, I could actually fit into them). I wore a suit jacket and leather boots to complete the look.

I didn’t like who I was, so it made perfect sense to try being someone else. It was a habit I would indulge in many times over.

It was also a side-effect of the fear I used to carry around. The first Gulf War was about to begin and there were a lot of kids worried about getting drafted, including me. So we tried to relive the lives of Baby Boomers from the 1960s as a bizarre comfort ritual.

I started drinking harder alcohol and fasting because that’s what Morrison did. When I would shift from fasting to binge eating I would grow a beard and just carry on like I was the Morrison of later years, when he got bloated from drinking and grew facial hair.

That was the darker side of The Doors’ influence. The more long-term influence — the more positive piece — has been the fuller Doors package. The guitar, keyboards and drums. In more recent years that has calmed my soul and gotten me through many rough patches in life.

It’s not the Heavy Metal most people identify me with, but it’s been hugely important.

For that, I thank you, Ray. May you rest in peace.

In one of those bizarre flashbacks triggered by someone’s bad singing, I remembered something amusing about my maternal grandparents yesterday.

During a Cub Scout overnight on the U.S.S. Salem, someone in our group started singing the jingle for The Clapper. You might remember the commercial with old people clapping their hands to turn lights on and off with the song, “Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!”

Mood video:

I remember Nana and Papa having a Clapper. Whenever Papa got Nana wound up and she started yelling at him, it would set off The Clapper and the lights would flick on and off repeatedly.

Those two always seemed to be fighting, and it was amusing to watch. Papa would say something he knew would wind her up, and she’d let him have it, f-bombs flying. “Fuck you, Louie!” was a popular refrain.

When that response came, he’d usually look at me, twinkle in his eye, and chuckle.

They were madly in love with each other, though I didn’t always see it that way. As a kid I didn’t understand that their arguments were actually a playful banter. He enjoyed setting her off and I think she enjoyed being set off. I enjoyed the spectacles all the same. All of us kids did.

It’s not how Erin and I carry on. It’s not how most couples I know carry on, for that matter. But for them, it worked.

They had been through a lot in their marriage. Papa was on active duty in the military a lot. Children died. Children married and divorced. Children got sick. Later, a grandchild died and others were always sick, myself included.

And my granparents had a lot of health problems. In their final years, they were in and out of the hospital all the time.

You could say they were punch-drunk from all that adversity, and the shouting matches were a way to blow off the steam.

It worked. They loved each other until the very end, and when Papa died in 1996, Nana was devastated. She lived on until 2003, but I don’t think she ever got over it.

There’s something to admire and learn from in that kind of bond.

In the three-plus years I’ve been writing this blog, I frequently get messages from people telling me I’m a hero for opening up about my mental health experiences. It always makes me wince.

Mood music:

 

No More HeroesSlashApocalyptic Love - feat. Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators

A new wave of hero labeling hit after a Forbes article came out about my turning OCD into a career strength. One tweet read:

New hero: @BillBrenner70, #OCD survivor, stigma killer, & tech journo who says mental illness can help execs succeed: onforb.es/14olwPK

I appreciate that people find value in what I’m doing, and I love getting feedback from readers. But when someone calls me a hero, I get uncomfortable because I have a different idea of what a hero is. I tend to see heroes the old-fashioned way: someone who risks their life to help others. The image of first responders and bystanders rushing into the smoke to care for the wounded after the Boston Marathon bombings comes to mind.

I’m just someone who talks about the challenges we all have. It falls under the category of “Everybody does it. I just talk about it.”

Useful, yes. Heroic? I don’t think so. I’m just a man who makes mistakes and tries hard to get life right.

Erin suggested I don’t like being called a hero because I feel pressure to live up to the title and that I fear the possibility of failing to measure up. I think there’s truth to that.

Whatever the case may be, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just want people to have realistic expectations of me.

But then that wish isn’t very realistic, is it? We’re going to see people through our own biases, distastes, hopes and dreams. That’s the human way.

I’ll keep trying to remember that.

Erin’s paternal grandmother passed away yesterday. Although she’s gone, she leaves behind memories to treasure and influences to carry on.

Mood music:

 

LunaThe Smashing PumpkinsSiamese Dream - 2011 - Remaster

Memories

Grammie had a gift for focusing on one person at a time and engaging them in deep conversation. She did most of the talking, of course. She could, as my sister-in-law Amanda put it, talk the ears off of a brick wall.

She had beautiful, penetrating eyes that focused on you and grabbed you like a tractor beam. She had a way of bringing a huge family together at reunions and holiday affairs.

Grammie wore a lot of hats, so many that some of the grandchildren called her Grammie with the Hat. She made me feel like part of the family from the first day I met her 20 years ago. There are a lot of other memories I wasn’t there for. Fortunately, there’s another writer in the family who was. To really understand Grammie’s essence, read this stunning tribute by my cousin Faith.

Influences

You can learn a lot about a person through their children, and Grammie had seven of them, along with way too many grandchildren and great-grandchildren for me to count. The closest example is Erin. She doesn’t let me waste anything, and she’s a stickler for detail. That’s a Grammie influence.

The Corthells are a stubborn lot during conversation. If they feel strongly about something, they won’t back down. That’s a Grammie influence.

Corthells are natural storytellers. Family memories large and small are told in a range of colors that make them impossible to forget. That’s a Grammie influence.

Corthells are fiercely loyal. They argue like every family does, but if you hurt one of their own, God help you. That’s a Grammie influence.

Corthells are rugged, hard workers. My father-in-law ran a driving school — a full-time job in itself — while working brutally long hours for trucking companies. My mother-in-law ran the school with him, teaching half of Haverhill how to drive while raising four girls. Grammie worked for the school, too. I remember her coming to the house after a night teaching driver’s ed or giving lessons, recounting the evening’s events in vivid detail.

The Corthells have been through a lot. Family members have died young. Jobs have come and gone, sometimes unexpectedly. But they have endured, soldiering through the darkness and living to fight another day with heads held high. That’s a Grammie influence.

Being part of the family has been essential to my own personal evolution. It’s been a lesson in being strong, standing up and being tough.

It all goes back to Grammie, a product of the Great Depression and WWII. She built a family that grows in number and spirit to this day, a family built to last no matter what life throws at it.

Thanks for making me part of it.

This time, I was interviewed for a story about how mental illness can actually make people stronger in their jobs.

Check it out on Forbes.com.

I did some more thinking after writing yesterday’s “Burden of Being Upright” post, and I think I have a better perspective. I was frustrated all day knowing that I need frequent wake-up calls. I want to be so good all the time that I’ll never need them.

Truth is, I’m always going to need it. But what’s important is what a person does when the alarm sounds.

Mood music:

 

I Hold On - featuring Kid RockSlashSlash

Several years ago, before I was released from the fear that always went with my anxiety, I would have almost weekly discussions with Erin about all the things I was doing wrong. I’d cobble together an action list of all the things I’d do to be better and then I’d do nothing to act on it.

These days, life works differently. I make my action lists and act on them. Sometimes a month passes, sometimes several months. I’m so sure I have my list memorized that I stop looking at it. Eventually, I still slide off track and have no idea I’m doing it. It usually takes the form of little things that add up, like plunging into a bunch of household activities without touching base with Erin first. That means I’ll almost always snarl up a course of action we had agreed to but that I forgot about in my angst to keep the house standing.

When the realization that I’ve slipped slaps me upside the head, I get defensive. There are times when Erin and the kids can be just as difficult to put up with. I sometimes feel like the punching bag for all the angst someone else in the house is feeling, so when my faults are pointed out, I think things like, “I put up with a lot, too. I do more than my fair share of walking on egg shells. Why can’t everyone roll over when I’m the jerk?”

None of this is unique. Every family has this challenge. Most of the time, I think we do as well as we do because we keep talking and we keep loving each other. We close ranks and cheer each other on when it counts most.

As a family, we run fast, sometimes too fast and then we trip and fall. But we always get back up. That’s the part I was forgetting yesterday.

I’ve said before that Erin’s goodness makes me want to be a better man. She’s definitely gotten me a long way on the path. I think I’ve done the same for her, and we’ve both done the same for our kids. Imperfect, but always better than before.

We fill in each other’s gaps. Or at least we try to. It always reminds me of a scene in Rocky. I leave you to watch that scene and ponder what it means in your own family.

A couple facts about the last few months: I made it through the winter more mentally intact than I have in a long time. I also went through a lot of uncertainty over the future of my career, which exhausted me enough to behave in spring as I normally do in winter: scattered, aloof and depressed.

Mood music:

 

DriftawayMötley CrüeMötley Crüe

Things have actually turned out well. I got the job I coveted the most after fielding a couple other opportunities. It feels good knowing the opportunities found me when I wasn’t actively looking for a change. And I’d like to think that of late I’ve carried on with good humor.

But this weekend it became apparent to me that I’m having trouble connecting all the dots. It almost exclusively manifests itself at home, where I push around trying to do so many things at once that I create bigger messes than what I started with. I get overwhelmed, which makes me irritable and unable to listen to people as closely as I should.

It leads to me making stupid mistakes with the family finances and screwing up carefully made schedules because I forget certain details.

It pisses me off, because the realization usually smacks me in the face out of nowhere, usually after a period of time where I think I’ve been doing pretty good managing life.

You think you’re fixed. But you never really are. The good and bad come in cycles. I’m fine with that. I just wish I had an early-warning system in my brain that could go off before things go too far.

This isn’t a post about self-loathing. In the big picture, I like who I am. It’s not a post about feeling sorry for myself, either. When I see myself sliding off track, saying so here forces me to right the ship.

Sometime, I admit, I get tired of revisiting that challenge. Trouble is, it’s a challenge that’s always going to be there.

You don’t become a good person and stay that way. It takes constant work.

So off I go, fixing things again.

I’ve long been a fan of the blog Hyperbole and a Half, in which the author expresses herself through a combination of words and art. After a long hiatus, she returned this week with a post called “Depression Part 2.”

Having experienced more than my fair share of depression along the way, I can tell you that she nails what it’s like. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen it explained so clearly.

Enough from me. Go to her post and be educated.