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Sometimes, Un-Friending Is The Right Thing

A friend of mine is angry and hurt because another friend deleted him and me from his Facebook friends list. The hurt is understandable: We grew up in Revere with this guy, and we went through a lot together.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3XGbYvyi3sW9L5fzWluoAv]

I sent our friend an e-mail asking why he un-friended us. His answer to me specifically was that this blog is dredging up too many painful memories from the past:

Bill your OCD diaries became to much for me. I felt the pain of the losses of Sean and Michael creeping back into the fabric of my life and some of the held secrets that still have not been spoken. Hence, I am not locking you out of my life, just out of Facebook. If I could filter THE OCD DIARIES out of Facebook and keep you I would do that in a minute. Please remember this is about me and my healing and is not meant to be offensive.

I’ve covered the Facebook un-friending subject before — specifically how my OCD had latched onto my Facebook friend count. Ridiculous, you say? Of course. But having OCD is all about worrying about ridiculous things. When I wrote the first post on it back in August, my friend count was 1,169. At last check this morning it was 1,451. Go figure.

Every time someone has un-friended me, I’ve worried about what I did to offend them. I keep my language mostly clean and I don’t whine about everything on my wall. But I push out a lot of my writing on Facebook, and for those with smaller friend counts, all my stuff can overwhelm their feed. But I also know some people un-friend me because this blog is just too much for them. One former colleague sent me this note a few weeks ago:

“Bill, I’ve grown to find your OCD posts too painful and am going to unfriend you. You realize you are an obsessive poster, I hope? I wish you luck, but I think you need help and compassion, not exposure. I have a daughter who’s mentally ill, so I am particularly sensitive to watching people flay themselves alive. I wish you all the best, really.”

It’s funny how attached we’ve all become to our Facebook friend lists. To be un-friended is to be slapped in the face and told to go away. That hurts.

But my thinking is starting to shift on this issue.

I still don’t like it when someone un-friends me because it still feels like a rejection. But I’m starting to see that sometimes it’s the right thing for a person to do.

For example, this blog covers a lot of heavy stuff. A lot of people have become daily readers and tell me my openness has inspired them to deal with their own issues. But for others, especially those with a lot of pain in their lives, every post is going to feel like a baseball bat to the head. And so it was with my old friend.

Facebook is still fairly new for a lot of people. We’re still learning how to deal with each other in this world of social networking. I doubt we’ll ever figure it out.

I’ll just have to  keep being me and hope for the best.

I suggest you all do the same.

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Mister Rogers’ Mother Was Right

Say what you will about Mister Rogers. His speech and mannerisms may stop being cool after you hit puberty, but the lessons he taught are timeless and ageless.

My friend Olivia Gatti shared this quote from Mr. Rogers on Facebook awhile back:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world.

The man was so right.

I suspect Olivia had the earthquake and tsunamis in Japan on her mind when she decided to share, and it certainly fits. There’s been so much tragedy in the last decade, from 9-11 to the tsunamis of late 2004 to this latest event, and for many children — especially those with emotional disorders — it can be enough to terrorize to the core, no matter how far away they are from the given disaster.

I used to have an acute fear of current events that started early in childhood and lasted almost into my mid-30s.

As I’ve written before, fear and anxiety were byproducts of my particular brand of OCD, just like my addictions were a byproduct.

The fear meant a lot of things. Working myself into a stupor over the safety of my wife and children. An obsession with cleanliness, which was interesting since depression always meant my personal hygiene took a dive. It also meant a fear of world events. When that Nostradamus movie “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow” came out on HBO in the early 1980s, I was terrified by the “future” scenes.

Later, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, I thought the scene from above was playing out and it left me in a huge depression, one where I stayed in my basement with the lights off.

Similar emotions took hold on Sept. 11, 2001. Of course, those emotions took hold on everyone that day.

It fed a lot of my addictive behavior in adulthood and blackened parts of my childhood that might have otherwise been happy — even with the bad things that happened. Bad things happen to everyone. That’s life. But some people can maintain a certain level of happiness despite it.

Mr. Rogers learned a powerful lesson from his mother. I wish I had it in my head to focus on the helpers growing up. In hindsight, they were always there:

–The doctors and nurses who saved me from brutal bouts of Crohn’s Disease.

–The therapists who guided me through a diagnosis of OCD and showed me how to manage it.

–My family, especially my wife, and also my father and my mother, who tried to do their best for me. The help Erin has been to me is way too big to be measured here.

–My friends, who have always helped me make sense of things, made me laugh and done all the other things a person needs to get through the day.

–Many of the people in my faith community, who showed me how to accept God’s Grace, even if I still suck at returning the favor.

With the bigger events like what happened in Japan, it’s so easy to see only the calamity, death and sadness. It’s easy to get fixated on whether such a thing could happen where we live.

But when you look at it the way Mr. Roger’s mother suggested, it becomes a different picture altogether. The bad stuff is still there, but you also see that no matter what happens, there will always be enough kind souls to help the rest of us through to the other side.

When you can see the good in people even during the darkest of hours, it restores your faith in humanity.

I’m grateful for the reminder.

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Have I Found What I’m Looking For?

Yesterday’s trip to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston has me reflecting on where my head was at five years ago and where it is now.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVdZ0Rdm8zI&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

This latest journey to the cathedral was as a helper and not as someone in the middle of a conversion. That’s what I thought at first, anyway.

Five years ago I was there for the ceremony known as the Rite of Election, where people going through the R.C.I.A. program (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults) stand before Cardinal Sean O’Malley and declare their wish to enter into the Catholic Church. In many ways I’m not the same man I was back then. In some ways, I’d like to think I’m a better person. In other ways, I know I have a very long way to go.

I’ve found a lot of what I was looking for, but not everything.

I’ve found my Faith. But I haven’t found a way to truly live it yet. 

I’m a true believer and I’m immersed in my church community. I read at Mass, take the Sacraments seriously and Erin and I are doing everything to pass our faith on to the boys.

I also know full well how Blessed I am. God’s Grace is everywhere around me. I know it the second I see it, which is pretty much throughout the day, whether I’m winning or struggling.

Working the 12 Steps of Recovery to keep my binge-eating addiction in check has also put my faith into sharper focus. The coping tools I’ve developed to manage the OCD has done the same.

With all that said, I’ve found a lot.

But still not everything.

As I said a few paragraphs ago, I have my faith, but I don’t even come close to living it as fully as I should.

I still use all the curse words I learned growing up in Revere, and lately it’s getting harder to muzzle myself around the kids. Since becoming a dad in 2001 I’ve made it a point to keep my mouth clean around children. But lately, in moments of frustration, the occasional curse word slips out. Most of the time they don’t hear it because it’s under my breath. But once in awhile they do. Being smart as they are, they always call me on the carpet when they hear it.

I go to Confession regularly. But I seem to commit the same old sins all over again within minutes of being forgiven. Confession isn’t about dumping your dark side out on the priest’s lap so you have room in the tank to fill up on the same poison. You’re supposed to be truly sorry and change your ways. I’m always sorry but the next step eludes me.

I’m nothing special in that regard. We keep going to confess because none of us fully succeeds at burying the old habits. But when I take my own inventory I see trouble all over the place.

The most insidious parts of my addictive behavior are still under control thanks to my program, but like any good addict I still latch onto other comforts like cigars and the Internet.

I have much to work on.

For now, though, I’m at least grateful for the progress I have managed to make. I don’t live in fear and anxiety like I used to and that’s huge. I’ve made amends with several of the people I hurt over the years.

Some of you have suggested I’m too hard on myself in this blog, and a post like this is bound to reinforce that view. But as I keep saying, I don’t do it for want of pity. I do it because taking an full assessment of my good and bad parts is what I need to evolve. It’s also important if I’m to help others traveling the road I’ve been on. 

Yesterday was a great day. I missed being with my wife and children, but returning to the cathedral was an important thing to do. I’m there to assist the R.C.I.A. program, but in doing so I’m forced to keep looking in the mirror.

I don’t always like how I look in that mirror, and sometimes I’m afraid to step in front of it. But afterward, I’m always glad I did.

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The Catholic In The Room

The author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2011 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior don’t disappear the moment you’re Baptized.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2yWOMbhPN2XJAiVy46Bhvz]

I’ve been spending my Tuesday nights helping out with this year’s group of RCIA (The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) students in Haverhill. I’m doing it partly as extra service for Lent, but also because I’m very attached to these groups each year because of my own Conversion in 2006. [More on that in “The Better Angels of My Nature“]

I help the group leader by sharing my experiences when called upon and when he needs me to stand in and go over Mass readings with them. I’ll be spending a lot of time with them today as we all head to the Cathedral of The Holy Cross in Boston for a ceremony called the Rite of Election.

But I think the most important thing I can do for the newest converts is share some of what I’ve learned since becoming a Catholic. So here it is, my open letter to the RCIA Class of 2011:

You might be wondering what’s going to become of your lives after you’re welcomed into the Church at the Easter Vigil Mass. There’s no cookie-cutter approach to this, but here are just a few of the things I’ve learned:

1. Don’t Succumb to “Happily-Ever-After” Syndrome.

Even though I knew deep down that it wouldn’t be the case, I approached the days leading up to my conversion in a high of sorts; feeling like it would be happy forever more once I was Baptized. In some ways that is how it turned out. But for me, things got a whole lot worse before they got better.

The sins I had accumulated up to that point were forgiven that night, but the demons remained a few steps behind me, ready to trip me into another garbage can.

I continued to suffer from the paralysis of OCD. I continued to give in to my self-destructive impulses [More on that in “The Most Uncool Addiction“].

I continued to indulge my over-sized ego and stay absorbed in all things me.

Some of my most self-destructive, addictive behavior took place AFTER my Baptism.

2. Peace IS NOT The Absence of Chaos. It’s a State of Mind (or, if you really want to get technical, a state of being in God’s Grace).

My own world used to be pure chaos. Self-loathing dripped from my pores and I had a craving for peace. I wanted all the violence and worry to go away. It didn’t.

But that’s OK.

I’ve learned that peace is a state of mind, not the absence of chaos. It’s a feeling and mental clarity that comes over you as your Faith deepens. It didn’t just smack me in the back of the head one morning. It’s a state of mind that slowly grew over time.

3. What You Get is Only As Good As What You Put In

Here is what you might call an open secret:  spiritual well-being isn’t just handed to you like an entitlement or a birthday present. You have to work hard at it everyday. Working it takes many forms.

Service is a big one. Getting to Mass every week is important.

But you have to do more. You have to go on retreats like Cursillo, which will be as life-changing an event for you as the Baptism was. I’ve been on two retreats since my conversion: Cursillo and an ACTS retreat the year before that. The soul searching and sharing you do on these weekends is priceless.

Then there are programs like Lenten Longings, where you keep studying Scripture and discussing it in a group, in context with your daily life struggles.

I’ve gotten a lot from lectoring as well. By getting up in front of everyone and doing the readings, I’m better able to actually understand what the readings mean. And when you actively participate in the Mass, you’re less likely to fall asleep.

And go to Confession often. You won’t believe how good it feels to get rid of the mental trash until you do it.

4. Don’t Let Politics Get in the Way

An active Parish community is like any other community: There are a lot of folks with strong ideas who will butt heads, especially in a Parish like ours where there’s a school attached.

You also might not like everything the priest tells you every week.

People always use these things as excuses not to practice their Faith. Don’t let it happen to you.

All that matters is your own relationship with God. You have to move beyond the politics of human nature and remember the big picture.

I like to compare it to American government. We may not like the President or the Senator in office at any given time, but most of us stay devoted to our country and way of life. So maybe you have a problem with the priest. The priest is human like the rest of us, open to making mistakes. But most of the ones I’ve known do their best and get it right more than they get it wrong.

And there will always be bad seeds out there who twist religion to fit their own sinister goals, taking a lot of people down the hellhole along the way. The Manson Family is a perfect example.

Just remember: It comes down to you and your relationship with God.

If you invest too much of your Faith in the organizational/political/administrative structure, you’re looking in the wrong place and will almost certainly be dissapointed.

5. Plan to Fight the Good Fight to Your Dying Breath

I’ve come a long way in my spiritual growth. With God’s help I’ve overcome crippling addiction and depression and I know more peace today than I ever have.

But boy, I can still screw up with the best of ‘em.

My most destructive addictive behaviors are under control, but I’m always tap dancing from one habit to another. [More on that in “Addicted to Feeling Good: A Love-Hate Story“].

There are still days where I come to church with a crappy attitude. My mind will be on everything else but God. A perfect example is in the post “Rat in the Church Pew.”

I still let my ego get the best of me, especially in my career as a Journalist. I’m easily distracted by shiny objects.

They are all things I need to work on. I can do so much better than this. But I used to be a lot worse.

In summary, it’s a life-long journey. You’ll keep making mistakes.

But keep your heart and head in the right place and everything will be fine.

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You of All People …

Recent weeks have pounded home the point that I’m seriously lacking in patience. With Duncan’s issues. With Erin’s workload. And more.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjto02iDNZA&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Four words repeatedly ring in my head: “You of all people.”

I of all people should be patient with Duncan. I was a problem child on a much deeper, darker magnitude than him. He’s a good boy. I should be a lot calmer when he has his meltdowns and gets uncooperative. Because I’ve been in his shoes. And yet I’m not patient with him at all.

Erin put up with a lot of grief when I was slowly melting down and needed to find treatment. She has stuck by me through the long, brutal years of therapy, religious conversion, addictive behavior and now she’s having to deal with me at the other extreme — throwing myself into insane levels of activity simply because I can now.

Yet I get impatient over her workload. Starting a freelance business from nothing is hard and sometimes crushing. I’m proud of what she’s accomplished. But the business is like a newborn child, in constant need of attention. Sometimes — more than sometimes, actually — I get jealous of the newborn.

I forget that at one point everything I did revolved around the needs of my job. She stuck it out through all the 12-hour night shifts that left me more than useless during the day. And that was with a toddler and newborn in the house.

She was patient as wave after wave of depression washed away my libido and made me a dark, brooding presence you had to walk past very carefully.

For the most part, I’ve since gotten my shit together, and now it’s time to be patient for them.

But I’m failing to do so. A lot.

You of all people.

I lost my temper with Duncan more than once this past week. We don’t hit our kids, but when we yell, we really yell. When I do, I feel terrible afterward, like the ultimate failure of a father.

When Erin has to focus in on her work or she’s too tired at the end of a long day for anything other than TV, I start to think like an ass (she doesn’t want to be with me. She no longer finds me attractive, etc.). I forget that she stuck with me for years as I failed to meet her needs. And when that point is driven home to me, I feel like the ultimate failure of a husband.

I know I’m not a failure on either of these counts, but when you let anger and uncertainty take over, you start thinking in absolutes. That’s always a bad idea.

So patience is clearly something I need to work on.

Maybe it’s no accident that my therapist asked me when I’ll start doing yoga during my appointment yesterday. I keep telling him I have no patience for yoga.

I’m starting to see the absurdity of my response, even though — truth be told — as I write this I still have no interest in yoga.

However I get there, massive amounts of patience will be required.

I should know how to muster the patience. 

You of all people.

But for whatever reason, I’m not there yet.

But after recent events, finding it has become a big priority.

Wish me luck.

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Side-Effects of Prozac

A friend asked if I’ve ever experienced any side-effects from the Prozac I take to help manage OCD.

An excellent question. Fear of side-effects kept me from trying the medication for years. Unfortunately, I did a lot of suffering in those years that could have been avoided.

I had heard all kinds of horror stories about side-effects: Weight gain, violent mood swings, acne. That stuff does happen, but it didn’t happen to me.

I have experienced bad mood swings right after dosage adjustments, but it doesn’t last long.

I’ve also learned that if the capsules leak and the medicine gets into your throat in the raw, the result is brutal heartburn.

Other than that, no lasting trouble.

That’s just my experience, of course, and the key to making this work is a multi-pronged attack on the mental illness with therapy, developing coping skills, etc.

The medication works wonders, but it doesn’t keep the mood swings and sometimes depressed feelings from developing. But in my opinion, it’s not supposed to do that.

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Coffee With My Therapist, Part 2

I paid another visit to my therapist this morning, and the discussion was a lot more productive than last week’s get-together. Last week wasn’t his fault. I went in there with a migraine.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lz6qLQ4xSM&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

We’re continuing to work on my struggle to balance the urge to do everything with the need to slow it down. We’re working on my need for more patience as Erin and I help Duncan with his issues. We covered all the bases.

I must be feeling better than last week, because I walked in with a large cup of coffee. He wants me off the coffee and I know it. I drink it during our meetings partly to needle him and mostly because an hour sitting on a couch is a good time to sip some caffeine.

He asked me — for the thousandth time — when I’m going to start doing yoga.

“Never,” I said. “I have absolutely no patience for yoga.”

“Just like you didn’t have the patience to stop binge eating, right?” he shot back with a grin.

It’s all good.

I bring all this up as a reminder to those who fear therapy that there’s nothing to worry about.

I don’t think people should be embarrassed about seeing a therapist. And yet people are embarrassed, like they’re being treated for the clap after a reckless night in a whorehouse. It’s the kind of shame that does you no good. Take it from a guy who has been there.

It’s a funny thing when I talk to people suffering from depression, addictionand other troubles of the mind. Folks seem more comfortable about the idea of pills than in seeing a therapist. After all, they’re just crazy “shrinks” in white coats  obsessed with how your childhood nightmares compromised your adult sex life, right?

I’ve been to many therapists in my life. I was sent to one at Children’s Hospital in Boston as a kid to talk through the emotions of being sick with Chron’s Disease all the time. That same therapist also tried to help me and my siblings process the bitter aftermath of our parents’ divorce in 1980.

As a teenager, I went to another therapist to discuss my brother’s death and my difficulty in getting along with my stepmother (a wonderful, wonderful woman who I love dearly, by the way. But as a kid I didn’t get along with her).

That guy was a piece of work. He had a thick French accent and wanted to know if I found my stepmother attractive. From the moment he asked that question, I was done with him, and spent the rest of the appointment being belligerent.

That put me off going to a therapist for a long time. I started going to one again in 2004, when I found I could no longer function in society without untangling the barbed wire in my head. But I hesitated for a couple years before pressing on.

The therapist I started going to specialized in dealing with disturbed children and teenagers. That was perfect, because in a lot of ways I was still a troubled kid.

She never told me what to do, never told me how I’m supposed to interpret my disorder against my past. She asked a lot of questions and had me do the work of sorting it out. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a good therapist does. They ask questions to get your brain churning, dredging up experiences that sat at the back of the mind like mud on the ocean floor. That’s how you begin to deal with how you got to the point of dysfunction.

She moved to Florida a year in and I started going to a fellow who worked from his house. I would explain my binge eating habits to him, specifically how I would down $30 worth of McDonald’s between work and home.

“You should stock your car with healthy foods like fruit, so if you’re hungry you can eat those things instead,” he told me.

That was the end of that. He didn’t get it. When an addict craves the junk, the healthy food around you doesn’t stand a chance. The compulsion is specifically toward eating the junk. He should have understood. He didn’t. Game over, dumb ass.

The therapist I see now is a God-send. He was the first therapist to help me understand the science behind mental illness and the way an inbalance in brain chemistry can mess with your thought traffic. He also provided me with quite an education on how anti-depressants work. Yes, friends, there’s a science to it. Certain drugs are designed to shore up the brain chemicals that, when depleted, lead to bi-polar behavior. Other meds are specifically geared toward anxiety control. In my case, I needed the drug that best addressed obsessive-compulsive behavior. For me, that meant Prozac. 

But I don’t necessarily heed his every suggestion. Take the yoga and coffee, for example.

He makes recommendations but I decide what I’m going to do.

Fortunately for me, I’ve gotten smart enough to take most of his advice.

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For Cousin Martha

Cousin Martha — Erin’s cousin on the Robinson side, specifically — is way up on my list of favorite relatives. I love her humor, her wit and her ability to absorb all the needling I direct her way.

The kids love her spiky hair, and to prove it they spiked up their hair after a bath one night and ran around yelling, “Look! I’m Cousin Martha!”

I got a kick out of that before noticing the kids were doing this without clothes on.

Martha has been going through a rough patch of late. She recently had some major surgery and has felt less than stellar for some time.

So I wanted to dash off this post to let her know we’re all pulling for her.

She’s been through some serious shit in her day. She’s dealt with addiction and family tragedy as I have. And instead of being crushed by the weight of it all, she developed a spine of steel. Whenever she stares adversity in the face, she comes back stronger than before.

So it will be this time.

Good thing, too, because I miss her cooking.

We love you, Martha.

Keep fighting.

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Raising Sane Kids In An Insane World

Yesterday I was asked about tips for dealing with children who have OCD. Neither of mine have it (not officially, anyway), but our experiences with Duncan are leading us to some pretty all-purpose action items.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoGWe9l-OG8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

As I’ve said before, my kids will be in a much better position to deal with mental ticks than I was, because I have coping skills to teach them that my parents didn’t have.

First, a few facts: Some of my quirks were definitely passed down to me from my parents. The OCD comes straight from my mother, and the emotional wall I sometimes put up to deal with it comes from my father. That binge eating would become the root of my addictive behavior should surprise no one. It runs deep in the roots of the Brenner family tree.

I see signs of my defects in Sean and Duncan every day.

Sean has more than a few OCD characteristics. When the boy gets into something, be it a computer game or Legos — especially Legos — he goes in deep and lets the activity consume him. In other words, he approaches these things compulsively.

Duncan, like me, gets a bit crazy when the daylight recedes. His mood will swing all over the place and he has the most trouble in school during winter time. To help remedy this, Erin bought me and Duncan happy lamps— essentially sunshine in a box. Despite the skepticism Duncan and I shared over it, the things actually work — to a point.

Having Duncan evaluated has been a real eye opener, and that’s the first thing I’d suggest if you think your child might have OCD. Our pediatrician, who specializes in behavioral issues, had me, Erin and Duncan’s teacher fill out an extensive questionnaire, then had me and Erin come in to go over his conclusions.

We didn’t walk away with a diagnosis, because at 7 Duncan’s still a bit young for an accurate assessment. But the doctor did send us a detailed, 20-point action plan.

Yesterday, we met with Duncan’s teacher and the school principal to go over them. One thing we’ve set in motion is some occupational therapy to help Duncan with his fine motor skills, which are currently underdeveloped. This will be huge, because Duncan having a better grasp on the pencil will allow him to express himself a lot better, which will help him be sane.

We’ve decided against medication at this point, because while Duncan shows all the signs of ADHD, he could also have other things going on, like OCD or bipolar. The drugs for ADHD work well if that’s what you have. But if you have something else that simply looks like ADHD, medication can actually make things worse.

Meanwhile, the pediatrician suggested Duncan see a therapist, so we’ll be doing that.

So with all that said, here’s my advice for dealing with kids who might have OCD:

–Get ’em evaluated ASAP, and be prepared to fill out some extensive paperwork.

–Once the evaluation is complete, set up a meeting with the teacher and principal to carve out a game plan. 

–Be patient, which is something I admittedly need to work on.

–Just keep loving your kid, and have faith.

Mental disorders are not a prison sentence. Help is always available, and your children can still grow up to do great things.

That’s what I’m learning, anyway.

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Why The Hell Does He Do That?

My friends and family will tell you I have an arsenal of odd quirks. There’s the windmill hands. There’s the pacing, a trait my oldest son has inherited. Then there’s the fidgeting problem.

Mood music (R.I.P. Mike Starr):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jX1KAKp78&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Ah, yes. I fidget a lot.

That’s why I tend to work with my feet up on the desk. It keeps me still. When I sit like a normal person my legs start to bounce up and down as if I had a couple bass drum pedals strapped on.

The feet on the desk started with a crippling back problem several years ago. I found that was the only way I could get comfortable. The back pain is long gone, but I still can’t seem to sit normally. In work meetings it would obviously be rude of me to put my feet on the table, so I sit with the feet on the ground.

Twenty minutes into the average meeting, I’m in hell. I have to hold back the overwhelming urge to tap my feet or tap the table with my fingers. If a meeting lasts more than an hour, sitting there starts to get physically painful.

I can never sit at the kitchen table for long, either. I tend to eat fast and then get up and do other things. Duncan has a similar problem.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I live with it well enough, and nobody hassles me over it.

But next time you walk by my desk and wonder why I’m sitting the way I do, that’s why.