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The Agony of Awards

This will seem strange to some of you, maybe even ungrateful and insulting — but lately I’m looking at some of my old writing awards with disdain.

I should be proud of those awards. I earned them.

But every time I look at them, it’s another reminder of just how fucked up I used to be. We need reminders so we don’t repeat the same mistakes, but some memories are best left in the trash can.

One of those awards was for my coverage of the RSA security conference in 2005. When I think of just how brutal that experience was, the award becomes less of a prize.

At the last job, there was an annual award ceremony called the Bull’s-Eye Awards. They’d have a nice dinner and after the awards were handed out there would be karaoke, talent shows and the like.

I would practically lose my mind obsessing about the awards in the month leading up to the ceremony. It was a stupid thing to do, but that’s where my head was at five years ago.

I got my one or two awards each year, but the glow was always short lived. The pressure would be on to top it next year.

My perspective has changed.

I won’t lie: Getting awards today doesn’t suck. I have one in my office from my current job and I’m proud of it. I’m proud of it because I wasn’t trying to earn it. I was just doing my job and enjoying it. I wasn’t obsessed about pleasing my masters. I just did what felt right. That made winning it a lot sweeter.

But the bigger point is that I really don’t care about awards anymore. If I get them then great. But I’m never again working myself into a stupor over trying to win one.

It’s just not worth it for pieces of glass and plastic.

I recently thought of breaking the awards from the last job as a sort of exorcism. I decided that would be immature and foolish. In the end, whatever my emotions were back then, they gave me those awards because they liked my work. They didn’t have to do that.

And despite my frame of mind back then, the folks at TechTarget were always good to me. The job I’m in now is so much better, but part of it is my own change in attitude.

So the awards will stay where they are, on the side table of my work area at home.

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When The Grass is Greener on Your Side

I had an eventful trip to the therapist this morning. I had a migraine and was trying hard not to puke all over his nice blue carpet. There was couple’s counseling going on in the office next door, and the walls seemed awfully thin.

You could hear pretty much everything, including the wife going into a rage at her husband. Their therapist seemed to be making a valiant effort to hold it all together.

My therapist was uneasy about the whole thing. I think he was annoyed that it was distracting us and it was none of our business, though we couldn’t avoid hearing it.

But for some reason a warm feeling came over me, despite my head feeling like it had a knife lodged in it.

I felt bad for the people next door, and I’ve seen friends’ marriages fall apart lately, which hurts a lot.

But for all my challenges and quirks, I wasn’t having to do the kind of appointment that went on next door.

Marriage is work. Always will be. But I love my wife more and more every day. She’s built a business from nothing. She stays true to her Faith. She’s a super mom. She’s been tolerating my shit for many years. I’m proud of her. And we make a point to talk things out instead of letting things slide.

So in the therapist’s office, listening to the dysfunction next door, I was feeling like the grass is greener on my side of the street, despite some of my more recent struggles.

I’ve been going several weeks between appointments the last year. But this has been a rough winter.

I’ll be making weekly visits for a while.

And that’s fine with me, because I’ve done enough therapy to know it works if you keep at it.

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Crohn’s Disease and Metallica

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” album. Which reminds me: It’s nearly the 25th anniversary of my last major attack of Crohn’s Disease.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbPqINoSlc&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

It might seem bat-shit crazy of me to intertwine these two things, but the fact is that the “Master of Puppets” album is probably what helped me get through that attack. That, and the book “Helter Skelter.” I read that book twice as I lingered on the couch, rising only for the frequent bloody bathroom runs that are the hallmark of Crohn’s flare-ups.

But man, I listened to Master of Puppets nonstop. It tapped right into the anger I was feeling as a 16-year-old still reeling from his brother’s death and under the influence of Prednisone.

I had plans back then. I was going to lose 30 pounds, grow my hair long and find myself a girlfriend. I was going to live a life closer to normal. Not that I knew what normal was back then. As an adult, I’ve learned that normal is a bullshit concept, really. One man’s normal is another man’s insanity.

When the blood reappeared and the abdominal pain got worse, I wasn’t worried about whether I’d live or die or be hospitalized. I was just pissed because it was going to foul up my carefully designed plans.

When I listened to the title track to Master of Puppets, the master was the disease — and the wretched drug used to cool it down.

“The Thing That Should Not Be” was pretty much my entire life at that moment.

I related to “Welcome Home: Sanitarium” because I felt like I was living in one at the time. I was actually lucky about one thing: Unlike the other bad attacks, I wasn’t hospitalized this time.

Though Master of Puppets came out in March 1986, it was that summer when I really started to become obsessed with it. At the end of that summer, the Crohn’s attack struck. The album became the soundtrack for all the vitriol I was feeling.

That fall, as the flare-up was in full rage, Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a bus accident in Europe. It felt like just another body blow. I found this band in a time of need, and a major part of the music was ripped away.

I recently found a track of “Orion” where Cliff’s bass lines are isolated. It puts my neck hair on end every time I play it.

Though Crohn’s Disease is something that sticks with you for life, that was the last brutal attack I suffered. I’ve had much smaller flare ups since then, but only days-long affairs and nothing that kept me confined to bed.

It still manifests itself in other ways. If my eating goes off the rails, I’m much more susceptible to irritable bowel syndrome. Too much information? Perhaps. But for those who need to watch for the signs in themselves and loved ones, it’s important.

If I feel joint pain, which I do once in awhile, that’s partly the Crohn’s Disease manifesting itself. People think it’s exclusively a disease of the colon, but it’s more than that.

In later years, some of the mental illness and addictive behavior was easily traced back to the childhood illness. The experience left me with some deep insecurities about what I could and couldn’t do, and instilled in me a biting fear of the unknown.

Given the severe food restrictions that were part of the treatment, I was destined to become a binge-eating addict.

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that a lot of the same treatment I’ve had for OCD and binge eating has all but eliminated the Crohn’s symptoms.

Getting rid of flour and sugar and weighing out my portions has led to a lot less pain.

I know it’s not gone and never will be. Another bad flare up is not out of the question. I’m also a prime target for colon cancer later on. For that reason, I have to have colonoscopies every one to three years. My colon is a tube of scar tissue.

I have a theory that the Crohn’s has been mostly dormant all these years for the simple reason that it ran out of colon to attack. It attacked so thoroughly that the scar tissue formed a protective layer.

That’s probably not true, but it’s not an entirely unreasonable theory either.

I’ll just thank God some more that I’ve been spared the agony in recent years.

And I’ll listen to Master of puppets some more.

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To Those Who Lost Their Newspaper Jobs

Sad to hear that some old friends lost their jobs at the local daily newspapers they labored at for years. People I know at The Eagle-Tribune, Salem News, Newburyport Daily News and Gloucester Daily Times were hit.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B–3cId-YE&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

A few years ago, I would have seen this as an evil company sticking it to good people who gave their best years and efforts to the machine. I don’t see it that way anymore.

I’m lucky because, so far, I haven’t been cut by the layoff buzz saw. But I’ve seen it happen to others. It’s easy to be angry with the people who do the laying off, but I know enough managers at this point to know that this is brutally hard for them, too. I have friends at different companies who had to decide who to let go of, and the process cut them to the core. No one wants to kick good talent out the door, and there’s a lot of survivor’s guilt.

Of course, there are big corporations that are much more heartless about layoffs, but for the smaller guys it’s hell.

So I’m not angry. I have no right to be anyway, because I haven’t worked for these newspapers for years. I have no clue about  what went into the decision to let people go.

I’m just sad for those affected.

But I’m hopeful for them at the same time.

This sort of thing is hell, but it’s never the end. For some, it’s the start of something much, much better. I’ve been in jobs that depleted me body and soul. There were days at one company where getting laid off would have come as a relief — until it came time to figure out how to put food on the table. It’s complicated, though, because I was coming apart at the seams in those jobs and it was nobody’s fault but mine.

I only know that back then I couldn’t imagine ever finding a new job, especially a job I’d be happy in. So I stayed with it and carried on like an asshole.

Today, I have a job that I love, so things do change.

To my friends who lost their jobs, I pray it’ll be the same for you.

The good news is that one way or another, these things have a way of working themselves out. We just have to keep a cool head along the way. Of course, that’s a lot easier said than done, and it’s never been one of my better skills.

I’ve also learned that there’s life after newspapers for a journalist. Most of what I do is online, and most of the newer publications emphasize online content over print. My own news consumption is now exclusively online. Print may be a dying product, but editing and journalism is alive and well. It’s just different now. If you’re willing to embrace the change, good things can follow.

That’s my personal observation, anyway. 

Knowing some of the newly laid off people as I do, I know they’re going to land on their feet, because that’s who they are.

I also know that some of the people who did the laying off can become valuable allies as you search for the next thing. They want you to be OK. Most of them do, anyway.

I wish you all the very best. Good luck.

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Vince Neil Makes Me Sick

Updated Dec. 20, 2011: Vince Neil suggested in an interview that he might leave Motley Crue next year. Maybe they’ll let John Corabi back in. I always liked the album he did with them…

I’m a big Motley Crue fan. Their music helped me process all the anger of my teens and in adulthood Nikki Sixx’s story of sobriety inspired me to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

But as I watch a new interview with Vince Neil, I find myself wanting to shove my fist through the screen.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1LS36NmkndFTjsLwrTPVGB]

Neil just finished  a 10-day stint in jail for driving drunk in June 2010 after a party at the Las Vegas Hilton, and he sat down for an interview about the experience.

Two things rub me wrong right off the bat — The reporter interviewing him is his girlfriend, entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs. Straightaway you know he’s going to be handled with kid gloves instead of having his feet put to the fire as it should be. The other thing is the music they play in the background, which sounds creepily like the stuff you hear in those late-night bullshit Lucinda Bassett infomercials.

Blabbermouth.net, a metal news site I’m quite fond of, has the interview clips on its site.

The interview excerpts Blabbermouth highlighted shows Neil hasn’t learned a thing:

On people’s criticism that he got away with a slap on the wrist and that his punishment should have been harsher because of past experiences: (Neil “past” includes a felony DUI in a 1984 accident that killed HANOI ROCKS drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley and injured two others, leaving at least one of them with permanent brain damage. Neil was unharmed, did 30 days in prison, 200 hours of community service, and paid millions in restitution.)

Neil: “I paid my debt to the society 27 years ago; I did what was required of me then. I was sentenced to jail, I did my time, and I paid an enormous amount of money — two and a half million. But I would have gone to prison if I didn’t. So that’s what I did. And so a lot of people say, yeah, I bought my way out. Well, that’s not really true. Most people would have gotten two days time served and pay a $500 fine — so [they would] never do any jail time. I got 30 days. I think a lot of it was kind of based on what happened to me 25 years ago, with the accident. And I didn’t do a lot of time then.”

On what lesson he’s learned this time that he didn’t learn back in 1984:

Neil: “I was 23 years old. I just turned 50. So, really, it was almost half of my life ago. I was a kid and all of a sudden I had a lot of money, all of a sudden I had fame and I let it go to [my] head. This time I just made a mistake.”

Part of me feels like I should be sympathetic. My own addictive behavior certainly impaired my ability to drive safely back in the day. I never drove under the influence of alcohol, but if you read my “Anatomy of a Binge” post, you can see how shoving junk down your throat while driving makes you a bit dangerous to others on the highway. It’s hard to stay in the lanes when one hand is on the wheel and the other is rummaging through four bags of McDonald’s.

I did this sort of thing many times before I found the 12 Steps and a program of recovery. So, admittedly, what I’m about to say is hypocritical.

Vince Neil makes me sick. His lack of contrition over what happened in 1984 fills me with rage. He could have tried a lot harder to turn a brutally tragic situation into some good. Nikki Sixx has spent much of the past decade trying to help people understand and confront addiction. He never had to, but some higher power has pushed him in that direction.

Sixx was also probably luckier than he deserved. He did his share of drunk driving back then. In fact, some believe his heroin addiction started as an attempt to self-medicate shoulder pain he was in after smashing his Porsche to bits in a drunken haze. By luck he never killed anyone — unless you count the two times he overdosed himself into several minutes of clinical death.

Since Neil’s youthful mistake left one person dead and at least one of the people in the other car brain-damaged, one would hope he’d have spent the following years making amends and becoming a symbol of self-improvement.

Instead, he bragged in one interview that he was the OJ Simpson of the 1980s and now, he says last year’s transgression was a simple mistake. He also shows little remorse for the 1984 accident. He talks about doing what the justice system required of him. Had he not served his time back then, he would have been locked away for much longer in prison, he says.

I know I should probably hold back the judgmental feelings. I know as well as any recovering addict that the itch you get makes you repeatedly do things you know are wrong. I never killed anyone, but my depressions and binges hurt everyone around me in other ways.

I guess I can’t get past this and be more humble because I’ve learned something else: In that moment of clarity when you realize you have a big problem that’s going to ruin you and others without corrective measures — you see what you’ve done in the rear-view mirror and, in time, you develop an overwhelming desire to make amends.

In fact, the 12 Steps requires you to make amends.

Maybe Neil has done these things out of the public eye. I hope he has.

But the public face he has put on this whole affair just tells people they can keep making bad choices without consequence.

One more thing: Something like addiction is a disease, not a choice. But that doesn’t mean you get a sympathy pass for making putrid decisions under the weight of that disease. Even if we don’t have a choice on the sicknesses that afflict us, we still have plenty of choices in how we choose to conduct ourselves.

In my own quest to learn right from wrong and make better choices, I’ve been inspired by people like Nikki Sixx, even if he is a narcissist. Hell, I can be a narcissist when I’m not being careful.

But I can’t help but feel like that’s still a lot better than being a 50-year-old prick who keeps making bad choices, flaunting them and then pretending he’s earned a right to be stupid because he spent a few days in jail.

What a joke.

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Let He Who Is Without Sin Stone Charlie Sheen

As a society, we love to tear other people down. When someone else fails, it somehow makes us feel better about the mess our own lives have become. I know, because I do it all the time. But in the case of Charlie Sheen and his public meltdown, I just can’t do it.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqd2FJF8-h8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Sheen’s interview with ABC News’ Andrea Canning is painful to watch. His eyes are sunken into the back of his head. His speech is violent. He shifts around on the edge of his seat. Is he drunk or high right now? I have no idea. But he’s clearly in a backslide, and people are loving it.

My problem with this is that we all break from time to time. We do foolish things all the time, we lie about it and try hard to pretend we’re so much stronger. The difference is that Sheen is a famous actor. When he melts down, the world gets to watch. Most of us do our breaking in private.

Not that I’m completely sympathetic to Sheen. He is choosing to come apart on camera. I guess when you’re an actor, you can’t help it. I also understand that we love a tale of redemption. If he comes out the other end intact, the public will probably put this aside and watch his work again. I feel the same way about Mel Gibson. Most people hate him these days because he said some pretty hateful things in a drunken rage caught on tape. Did his rage capture his true heart? I’m not so sure.

When you’re messed up and angry, it doesn’t take much to send you into a tear about other ethnicities, religions, etc. Some people do it thinking they’re just being funny. We all think we’re hilarious when we’re drunk, don’t we?

A few things I know about myself: I don’t care if someone is gay, religious or atheist, black or yellow, thin or fat. I just want everyone to get along, which I realize is a pipe dream in itself.

All that said, I’ve said some pretty rotten things in my day. Back around 1992 I used the N-word a lot. I had a lot of anger in me and I was also listening to Ice-T’s Body Count album a lot. If he could use that word as a black man, surely it was acceptable to toss around like any other bad word. I’m from Revere, Mass., and I know full well how to drop a few hundred F-bombs.

I’ve made and laughed at gay jokes even though several of the people I love are gay.

But there was never a TV camera or audio recorder nearby to capture it.

Here’s something else I know about myself: When I’ve said some of the rotten things I’ve said, I was always under a sinister influence: anger, addiction, depression, despair, loneliness.

Even in recovery, I fail on this score.

Thing is, I think most of us do. We probably all do, but I try not to frame things in absolutes. Surely there are a few people out there who are pure as the freshly fallen snow.

If these people do exist, I hope a camera will be there to record it, if only to balance the scales against the Hollywood meltdowns and our own personal fuck-up festivals. 

We all sin and we all need to do better.

We all get a shot at forgiveness and redemption.

That’s what I believe.

I wish Charlie Sheen nothing but the best.

I hope he can get it together, because I really do like his work.