I just wrote and posted the column from the RV. Because I could.
Everyone is settled in with their Blackberries, iPhones, laptops and hand-held games. Thanks to the blizzard and the inability of the Greater DC area to clear snow the way it’s done further north, we have a long journey between here and home.
It’s Sunday and I’m wrapping up my visit to the #ShmooCon security conference in Washington D.C. My compulsive tendencies are humming along at full throttle, which isn’t as bad as it seems.
True, the goal is to minimize the OCD overdrive as much as possible. Especially when it comes to giving in to one’s addictions. But sometimes it’s good to have that extra drive.
–Consumed flower or sugar, the matter and anti-matter that fuel my addictive behavior
–Worried about the weather and getting our RV shoveled out in time for the departure we have planned. A few years ago that kind of worry would have unhinged me. Now I just don’t see the point of thinking about it. We’ll do our best and we will get home. Besides, it doesn’t look that bad:
–Worried about measuring up to the demands of covering the conference. I used to come home from these in pieces. The worry would always be on getting the next story covered, keeping up with the competition and keeping the bosses happy. This time, I cranked out the content for the sheer enjoyment of it.
And I did take time to smell the roses. Or, more accurately, to play in the snow.
Staying indoors through the entire blizzard would have meant missing cool moments like seeing folks cross-country skiing past the White House.
All in all, a good trip, and a POSITIVE use of OCD hyperactivity. I wanted to see it all, and I did.
Now, I’m eager to get back to the wife and children I adore so much.
It wasn’t easy at breakfast this morning. The oatmeal was vile. But I ate it anyway. Got a plan to stick to.
There a blizzard in DC right now, and much of the town is shut down. Fine by me, since I’m not leaving this hotel today. And it’s made for some decent entertainment thus far: The sight of conference attendees, probably drunk, sledding down the hotel’s steep driveway on a sign that was being used for a HIPAA conference in another part of the building. Snowball fights have been happening a lot, too.
Here’s what it looks like outside as of 7 a.m.:
It’s a lot of snow compared to what the locals are used to. Back home, this would be just another storm.
Given that I used to have fear and anxiety over traveling and impending bad weather, it’s amazing that I’m writing this from aboard a cramped RV, zipping through the New York area en route to the ShmooCon security conference in Washington D.C.
A blizzard with up to 20 inches of snow is scheduled to dump on DC while I’m there.
Yet I’m calm — even enjoying myself.
How I overcame that fear has been told over many previous blog posts. The posts that tell it best are here and here.
I’m grateful.
The point being that those who suffer from fear, anxiety and mental illness can overcome it all.
The work to get there is hard and painful. But it can be done.
My writing in this blog is going to be scarce for the next few days as I head to Washington D.C. for a security conference. A great time to catch up on recent posts!
Have a great weekend and be well. Talk to ya in a few days.
The author admits that his OCD behavior includes an obsession with the Manson Case. Here’s why.
Ever since I was a kid and I first saw the 1976 TV movie on the Manson Murders, I’ve been fascinated. I’ve read “Helter Skelter,” the book by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, dozens of times.
I own the 1976 and 2004 versions of the film on DVD, along with a documentary called “The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter,” where host Scott Michaels, keeper of the popular Findadeath.com site, takes the viewer on a tour of places connected to the case, including Cielo Drive, scene of the Tate murders:
Why the fascination with such an awful tragedy?
Not because of the brutal nature of the murders. I’ve seen the crime scene forensic photos, and they made me sick to my stomach.
It’s really part of my fascination with history. Like it or not, this is a piece of American history. It’s a snapshot of everything that went wrong in the 1960s, where a counterculture born of good intentions — a craving for peace in Vietnam and at home — lost it’s way because there were no rules, no discipline and there was no sobriety. I agree with those who believe the promise of the 1960s died abruptly in the summer of 1969.
I’m also fascinated because it shows how easily seemingly stable people can be brainwashed and controlled to the point where they would willingly heed orders to commit the worst of sins.
I’ve learned from my own struggles with mental disorder that when a person is at their lowest and they’re looking for purpose, even the sweetest among us can fall prey to a monster like Charles Manson.
It shows the dark path someone can take without help from the right people.
That’s not to say I see myself in these people. I don’t. I could never embrace what they embraced, even when I was at my lowest.
But the bottom line is that these people were controlled, that a defect of the mind allowed this kind of programming to happen.
It has nothing to do with my own struggles with OCD. But since that struggle has forced me to do a lot of homework on the brain and what makes it tick, I can’t help but be drawn to these cases.
This one is a lesson in history and mental disorder all wrapped into one.
How could I resist?
I just hope others who are fascinated by this case are sucked in for similar reasons and not because they glorify what happened.
Unfortunately, the latter certainly exists in society.
The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.
Mood music
A strange thing happened to me on the way to recovery: I started finding peace and relaxation in the very things that used to fill me with fear and spark anxiety attacks. [See Fear Factor]
It used to be that relaxing meant holing myself up in the bedroom watching endless episodes of Star Trek. I watched a lot of the news, too, which instead of relaxing me would send my brain into an endless spin of worry about things happening at the far corners of the world.
Lying on the couch all weekend — sleeping for a lot of it — was relaxation.
Then Sunday night would arrive and I’d go into a deep depression about the tasks that awaited me the next day at work.
Writing — the very thing I earned a living from (and still do) — filled me with dread. Oh, I loved being a journalist even back then, but I was always in fear of not getting a story perfect. I would sit on a story for hours; writing, re-writing, polishing and reading it aloud multiple times to make sure it “sounded” perfect.
If I had to make a business trip, the heart would pound. I’d obsess about the travel itself and whether I would actually make it there alive. Conferences filled me with dread. What if I didn’t manage to cover every piece of news coming from the event?
Oh, and when writing, it had to be absolutely silent around me. Noise would interrupt the gears in my mind — except for the sound of my voice when reading my articles aloud.
I would go crazy about getting the kids to bed by 7:30 so I could lie comatose in front of the TV. If my wife wanted to talk instead, rage would build inside, though I would try not to show it. I sucked at hiding it, though, and in my own passive-aggressive way, she knew she wasn’t getting through. And yet she stuck around anyway. (See: The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story]
I’m not sure when things changed. But here’s what relaxation and peace mean to me now:
–Family time. Of course, I’ve always craved being with my wife and children more than anything else. But it used to be that I wanted us all sitting around the house doing nothing. Now I love experiencing things together. Trips with Erin to Campobello Island off New Brunswick, Canada, the mountains of New Hampshire or Newport, R.I. for the Newport Folk Festival. Trips with kids in tow to Battleship Cove, Old Sturbridge Village, The N.E. Aquarium, The Museum of Science. I always cherished my time with them. Now I cherish it more. A lot more.
— Writing. For the life of me, I can’t figure out the reason for this, but writing is relaxing now. Other than when I’m with my wife and kids, writing is when I’m happiest. And I no longer re-read my stuff over and over again. I decided that’s what editors are for. Sure, I’m an editor. But every editor needs an editor. And no, I don’t read ’em back to myself anymore.
–Writing WITH music. In another bizarre twist, I went from needing quiet while writing to needing music. The louder the better. Henry Rollins. Motley Crue. Metallica. Thin Lizzy. Cheap Trick. All perfect writing music.
–Travel. Instead of fearing travel, I now relish it, though I don’t like being away from my family for too long. I start to miss them the second I hit the road. They’re on my mind the whole time I’m away. But I love to go places, see things, experience cities outside my own comfortable Bostonian walls. Last year alone, I visited Chicago twice, Washington DC twice, and went to San Francisco, Nevada, Arizona and New York.
One of the DC trips was in an RV with a group of IT security guys. That was the trip back from the Shmoocon security conference. It’s a 12-hour ride and it’s cramped. But I get to hang out with some of the smartest people in my industry.
Thursday, I leave on the RV for the trip down to DC for Shmoocon 2010. I’ll do a lot of writing for work this weekend. But I’m going to have a blast doing it. I’ll get impatient to be home by Sunday afternoon. I’ll miss my family. But I’ll be a better journalist for making the trip.
I’m determined to take the family to DC this year. There are logistics and financial realities to work out, but it’s going to happen.
I don’t spend much time wondering how I came to enjoy what I once feared. I know the answers.
Erin and the boys teach me something every day about living, whether it’s Erin showing me courage by quitting a steady job to try and make her own business work or Duncan, the youngest son, convincing his older, more skittish brother to go with him on a camping trip with the grandparents because “It’ll be fun, Seaney!” That was a couple years ago. Since then, Sean, who has overcome a lot of fears himself and made his Dad proud, relishes those trips as much as Duncan does.
But above all — and the family examples are a huge part of this — I think the transformation came with my conversion to the Catholic Faith. My bringing God into my life, everything has changed for the better. That includes my concept of rest.
To me, rest is not about lying down and shutting off. It’s about living to the best of your ability. When that living gets scary, I put my trust in God. And that makes everything come together.
Make no mistake: I still have a lot of work to do on these things. But I’m glad to be making the journey.
As Henry Rollins once sang:
No such thing as free time. No such thing as downtime. There’s only lifetime. It’s time to shine.
A photo from the old days in Revere spark some vivid flashbacks.
The guy on the left is me. Dan Waters is in the middle. The guy dressed as a vampire on the right is Sean Marley. [Read about him in Lost Brothers and Marley and Me]
It’s November 1991 and we’re in the basement of the old house I grew up in at 22 Lynnway, Revere, Mass.
We partied a lot in that basement. It was the scene of many impressive and entertaining mood swings.
I could be mistaken, but I believe we were having a belated Halloween party, which is why Sean is dressed as a vampire.
On Halloween 1991, the no-name hurricane-nor’easter immortalized in “The Perfect Storm” had blown through, badly flooding out the neighborhood.
My basement, Sean’s basement and that of the house in between ours were among the handful of homes that escaped the damage.
I was gearing up for one last semester at North Shore Community College, before transferring to Salem State College.
The author has found that service is an excellent tool for OCD management. Simply put, it forces him to stop being a selfish bastard.
In OA, those of us in recovery from our compulsive eating disorders rely on a set of tools that go hand in hand with the 12 Steps. There’s the plan of eating, writing, sponsorship, the telephone and literature. There’s anonymity. And there’s service to others.
The plan of eating is what’s most necessary for me, but I think my favorite tool is service.
I’ve been doing a lot of service of late. Last month and then this morning, I qualified at an OA meeting, which means I led the meeting and, as part of that, stood in front of people and shared the story of what I used to be like, what happened to make me seek help for my addiction, and what I’m like now.
Tonight, I’ll take the kids to a dinner in the basement of our church to celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week, where I’ll help with the cleanup afterward.
I thrive on these things for one simple reason: It forces me to step out of that selfish little world where addicts live.
Here’s a fact about addicts: We are among the most selfish people on the planet. Or, as Nikki Sixx says in the final track on Sixx A.M.’s soundtrack for The Heroin Diaries: “You know addicts. It’s all about us, right?” That selfishness usually leads us to do stupid things that make us feel shame. In the midst of that shame, we lie.
That sort of behavior can overwhelm us, no matter how much we want to be better people. That’s why the tools of recovery are so important. They force us out of the hole. In the process, the people around us play an active role.
When I do service, the people I may be trying to help are helping me as well. If it’s through OA, everyone is supporting each other. It’s the same at church, be it through school activities or actively participating in Mass. That’s why I do lectoring. Actively participating in Mass helps me to pay attention to what’s going on instead of sitting there locked inside my head.
The battle with selfishness is an ongoing, brutal thing. But through service, I’m getting a little better each day — bit by bit.
The author on why self-deprecation is a handy tool for controlling demons.
Mood music:
[spotify:track:0g1HLSNG4KxjDXdeYMnLym]
A few readers have told me I put myself down too much in these blog posts. Since I’m really not trying to put myself down — I do have a monster ego, after all — it’s time to say a bit about the power of self-deprecating humor.
It’s true that I like to poke fun at myself. I do it to everyone around me, so I may as well do it to myself. [For more on this, see The Power Of Sarcasm]
I make fun of my bald head, big ears and nose.
I like to joke that I used to have hair halfway down my back, but now I’m bald and all the hair is on my back.
Contradictions like that, in my view, are worth poking a little fun at.
I see self-deprecation as an important tool for OCD management because it keeps me grounded and reminds me — in moments of high ego intoxication and moments of deep self-pity — not to take myself too seriously.
It’s also a good ice breaker that usually puts others at ease.
So next time you hear me say something to belittle myself, don’t fret. I’m not engaging in self-loathing.
Truth is, I like who I am.
And since I like to tease those closest to me as a form of affection, you could interpret me making fun of myself as proof that I’m pretty much OK with who I’ve become.
