While I finish recovering from Typhoid fever (that’s what it felt like, anyway), I give you this video by Steven A. MacLeod.
Two observations:
1.) The portrayal of an OCD sufferer is accurate.
2.) The kid in this video is mean.
http://youtu.be/HeXTMzP7ijk
In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve been starting everything over this past week. Not in big, drastic ways, but in little ways that will hopefully add up to something good.
Mood music:
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There’s the afternoon tea I’ve been drinking instead of Red Bull and more coffee. There’s the meditation and yoga. And there’s the significant tightening of my food plan.
What’s the reason for all this?
I attribute some of it to the mindfulness-based stress reduction course I’m taking. I’m not sure it’s gotten me to the point of a sharper attention span and ability to live every minute in the moment, but the tools I’m learning are designed to get me there eventually.
The food clean-up is more about getting back on the horse after months adrift in the Overeater’s Anonymous wilderness. I never slipped back into the pattern of binge eating, but I was certainly getting sloppy. I was using way too much cheese for protein. On the last shopping trip I stocked up on salmon to use instead. Erin asked if this was my latest obsession. It’s really just me getting back to basics. I still haven’t returned to the OA meetings or gotten a sponsor, but one thing at a time.
My return to guitar playing has definitely been a factor. When I play I’m right in the moment, where I should be. I realized I play better when drinking tea than when drinking coffee. The chords are steadier and cleaner when I’m not on coffee overload. Another example of one good habit leading to another.
It’s fitting that all this is happening in the autumn. It’s usually the time of year when my mood and grip on life start to slip. Making changes this time of the year is turning out to be a powerful thing.
It’s also fitting because autumn four years ago was when I first decided my worst addictions had to stop owning me. That’s when I kicked flour and sugar and started weighing out my food. A year later I was done with alcohol.
Temptations still come and go. But the key is to take it a day at a time and get back on the horse when you fall off.
That’s what I’m learning, anyway. Hopefully, all of this will continue.
A longtime friend is letting a bout of depression hold him back. He needs a helping hand but won’t ask for it because he’s too proud. This post is for him and anyone else living under the delusion that not getting help is a sign of strength.
Mood music:
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I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there many times myself. I’ve had bouts of depression that made me lose interest in everything except my addictions. In fact, in those moments the fix of a food binge, the bottle or the prescription pain pills I used to get for a bad back was all I was really interested in.
The biggest things in life — my family, friends and work — remained important to be sure, but giving my full devotion to them was just too much work. I wanted to dull the pain and then hide under a rock. I usually settled for the couch in front of the TV. I lost interest in my own hygiene, forgetting to shower for days at a time, especially in my early 20s. You were around back then and remember how my part of the house stunk to high heaven. Gross Bastard, you called me. And the label fit.
I let it kill relationships. I thought I could cure it by putting all my self worth into work, but that made me sicker and my workmanship eventually suffered.
The difference between you and me is that I didn’t quite grasp that I had depression, OCD and anxiety. I felt it all, but I didn’t see them as legitimate medical conditions. You’ve known about your condition for years but won’t do anything about it.
Why?
Because of pride.
You have this notion that getting help is a weakness and you’re too good for that. Not just help from friends. Help from doctors.
I get it. In your state of depression, motivation and interest go in the toilet. It hurts to think about getting out of your chair and retrieving them.
I just wish you could understand what I’ve learned: that you can regain control of your life and that it’s OK to accept help. You’re not taking from someone when they want to give you a hand up, you’re actually giving. When someone is able to help another person, they feel higher and happier themselves. And down the road, when they are in need, you have the chance to pay it back.
Everyone smacks into times of need. Everyone.
Of course, none of that will happen unless you get your ass off the chair and turn off your video games.
There is nothing brave, romantic or glamorous about being trapped in your miserable head. Cut the pride bullshit and do something.
I’m always here to help.
Your friend,
Bill
It’s no surprise to see my friends’ reactions on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Obama supporters are elated; Romney supporters are bitter.
One person lamented that “things will never be OK again!”
Mood music:
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I feel for those who wanted a different outcome. This election season was particularly heated among friends and family. I saw a lot of relationships tested and damaged. Some were accused of hate speech, bigotry and conspiracy-spinning. That certainly happened in spots. It always does in an election cycle.
But most people simply have beliefs that permeate their souls. They want the best for those around them and personal experience has molded their beliefs on how to get there. They may be right or wrong, but their hearts are in the right place.
There is nothing cynical about that.
Some suggestions for those hurting from the Election 2012 hangover:
When I was a young, idealistic punk, I didn’t get a lot of these things. Indeed, I still have plenty of room for improvement. But I’m hopefully a bit wiser.
Blessings to you all.
This is going to shock a lot of you, given the steady flow of coffee you’ve watched me drink day after day, but try to stay calm.
I’m drinking tea, and lots of it.
Mood music:
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This change wasn’t planned. No doctor told me to do it or risk a heart attack. And I haven’t given up my beloved java.
In recent days, I’ve started splitting the day between coffee and tea: coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon and evening.
For whatever reason, I really started to crave tea Saturday afternoon. It could be because my mindfulness teacher keeps telling the class to “have tea with your problems” or “tea with your dragon.” When you have an addictive personality like mine, the more someone repeats something like that, the more you start to want it. It’s why I can’t hang out with people who want to talk about nothing but boozing. Before long, I start jonesing for a bottle.
I got home that afternoon and had some green tea. Later, I had some chamomile. It felt good. I felt more at ease. A new afternoon-evening habit was born.
Those who know me well know how much I love caffeine. Coffee is the main delivery system, along with Red Bull, though I haven’t had the latter for a couple weeks now. I simply haven’t felt like having it.
There’s a stupid part of me that sometimes resists change because I’ve spent so much time building up an image. Admittedly, I like the sober, bitter-coffee-swilling hardcore image I’ve built for myself. But the smarter part of me knows that it’s always best to try new things and expand one’s horizons. That’s why I started playing guitar again after nearly 20 years. Playing is quickly becoming my main addiction and I’m fine with that, because it means I’m not burying my face behind the laptop screen as much as I used to. I discovered Saturday that tea goes really good with guitar playing.
So here I am, drinking tea and coffee. Turns out, there’s plenty of room in the day for both.
Just as long as the writer doesn’t drink all the editor’s tea. —The Editor
As regular readers know by now, I’ve been taking a class on how to keep my attention on the present. Saturday was an all-morning session that included a silent, hour-long walk through Oak Hill Cemetery in Newburyport, Mass. A lot of us tend to see cemeteries as a place of death. But I found a lot of life there, instead.
Mood music:
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This wasn’t a new experience for me. There are three cemeteries within walking distance of my house, and I’ve walked through all of them. I tend to look at the date of death and consider the myriad ways the person passed. If it’s 1918, for example, I find myself wondering if he or she died in the Spanish Flu pandemic. If a veteran died in the vicinity of early June 1944, I ponder the likelihood that this person died in the carnage of D-Day during WW II.
In Oak Hill Cemetery, I was stopped in my tracks by a gravestone with the death date of Sept. 11, 2001. I looked up the name, Thomas Pecorelli, and learned that he was on American Airlines Flight 11, which terrorists flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. He was 30 when he died and was carrying the ultrasound image of his unborn child, headed home to his wife.
He lived a hell of a life. He was a cameraman with Fox Sports and E! Entertainment Television, the obituaries said.
Thieves stole his original gravestone, but a new one is in its place, complete with two benches and a garden with bird feeders.
There’s a lot of life to be found in these graveyards. But you might miss it if you jog through. You have to walk through slowly and silently.
If you have a mind that sometimes gets stuck on one obsessive thought or often drifts when someone is talking to you, the occasional cemetery stroll is worth working into your life.
Few things will get you out of your own head like a study of other people’s lives.
Now that I’ve learned something about giving my present attention to the dead, I’m eager for the next step: learning to give present awareness to the living.
I’m watching a lot of people go apeshit this morning over a restaurant receipt someone posted online. Apparently a single mom was too poor to tip her server on a meal that cost $138.35. Have a look:
Mood music:
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It looks real enough, but I’ve grown skeptical of most online pics these days. It’s easy to fake images these days. But real or not, somebody posted it to get a reaction, so I’ll take the bait.
My first reaction is that this single mom didn’t think things through, and some hard-working waitress got shafted. Surely, if she’s struggling financially, she shouldn’t have gone to a restaurant. She certainly should have aimed cheaper. McDonald’s, for instance. It’s horrible to skip the tip, especially when service is top notch.
That’s what people are saying, anyway.
On that I agree. I always try to leave a tip above the baseline percentage simply because waiting on tables looks like hard work and my kids always leave a mess. The bigger reason, though, is that something inside me wants to do something nice for someone, even if they don’t deserve it. I’ve had plenty of shitty service in my day, but I still left a tip. Have I ever stiffed someone on the tip? I can’t remember, but I’m sure I have.
There’s a bigger point, though. When we see these things online, we instantly assume we’re looking at an accurate, honest picture, and we can’t contain our outrage. I’m certainly guilty of it.
So for the sake of being nicer people, let’s consider some things.
Whenever we see or hear something, we’re only getting a piece of the story. If someone cuts us off in traffic, for example, we’re pretty sure we’ve just suffered at the hands of some asshole with reckless driving habits. What we may not know is that the driver is rushing to the hospital after getting word that a loved one is dying.
If this mom took her kids to a restaurant despite the lack of financial resources, maybe she felt she didn’t have a choice. Maybe she lost power days ago from Superstorm Sandy and all the food in her fridge spoiled.
Maybe she skipped the cheaper restaurants because they had no power either or because one of her kids has allergies that make fast food a dicier proposition.
Maybe she walked in there thinking she had enough money to cover everyone, only to receive a bill that was a lot higher than she expected. I’ve run into that scenario before.
There are other questions for which we lack answers. For example, how many mouths was she trying to feed?
If you’re getting pissed at me for spoiling your moment of self-righteous indignation, I don’t really blame you. Nobody loves wallowing in self-righteous indignation more than me. But ever since I started taking a class on mindfulness-based stress reduction, I’ve been thinking about something the teacher said: “We spend most of our days making judgments, but we never know the entire story.”
Whenever I see all the outrage on Facebook and elsewhere and feel tempted to join in, that statement keeps coming back to me.
It makes it harder for me to get angry.
But then I’ve never been a server in a restaurant, so if I’m not feeling an adequate level of outrage, it’s probably because I don’t have the full story there, either.
There’s a lot of anxiety in the air. Many people are biting their nails over next week’s presidential election. Just as many are freaked out because George Lucas sold his Star Wars franchise to Disney.
Disney taking over Star Wars? Among true sci-fi fans, it’s cause for major depression. As for the election, half the population will be proclaiming the end of the world this time next week.
Mood music:
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Yet the American and Galactic Republics will go on, no matter what we believe.
All jesting aside, I don’t know many people who seriously care if future Star Wars movies suck or not. My kids are both crazy SW fans and never miss an episode of “The Clone Wars.” On hearing that George Lucas sold the franchise to Disney and that Disney plans more Star Wars movies, Sean’s reaction was fairly balanced: “Fine. As long as they don’t make it all princess-y.”
The presidential election is a far more serious matter. I can’t believe how so many of my perfectly sane friends have gone insane over Obama vs. Romney. Facebook is ready to collapse under the weight of all the conspiracy theories people on the left and right are posting.
Friends are angrily calling each other names when one posts something in support of the candidate they oppose. The right keeps crying about a socialist-Islamic takeover of America if Obama is re-elected. The left keeps wailing over the loss of the safety net, the poor and disadvantaged allowed to fall into the fires of Hell. These feelings are captured in Facebook memes people accept as instant truth without investigating the accuracy of what’s said.
The more centrist among us know neither vision of the future is accurate. The truth is, life will pretty much go on no matter who wins.
The sun will still come up in the morning. People will still have the same blessings and woes they had the day before. The world will continue to spin on its axis.
I’m not trying to belittle anyone. I’m just drawing from personal experience. For me, the fate of the world once seemed to hang on the next election. In 1994, when I was a lot more liberal than I am today, I felt devastated and depressed when the GOP swept both chambers of Congress. Two years before that, when Bill Clinton was elected president, I thought all would be right with the world. A lot of people had the same emotional jolt four years ago when Obama was elected.
But in more recent years, I’ve found that my personal happiness has nothing to do with which way the political winds blow. My happiness or sadness is based completely on my own actions. If I live each day as the man I want to be, I’m happy. If I succumb to my weaknesses, I’m sad.
I’ll end this with a lyric from the Avett Brothers that to me says it all:
When nothing is owed, deserved or expected
And you’re life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If your loved by someone you’re never rejected.
Decide what to be and go be it.
Peace, folks.
Some of my friends go bonkers for Halloween. They run an endless torrent of zombie apocalypse memes on Facebook. They revere the holiday above Christmas and Easter. Good for them. It’s more of a ho-hum holiday for me.
Mood music:
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It would be easy to tell you I’m down on Halloween this year because so many people are suffering this day from the damage Hurricane Sandy left them with. But the truth is that this has never been one of my favorites. For a compulsive binge eater, this holiday and the days that follow tend to be a real nightmare.
I stopped eating Halloween candy four years and one month ago, but when the kids come home with trick-or-treat bags bulging, the temptation remains powerful. If you were a cocaine addict and your kitchen was surrounded by massive mounts of blow, you might feel the way I’m feeling about now.
I do have much to be thankful for. I used to binge on my kids’ candy for days and weeks after Halloween. By the end of November I’d be a pile of waste, bloated and depressed. That hasn’t happened for the last few years, even though my program isn’t quite where it should be.
I guess past memories are hard to shake, though.
Oh, well.
I’m still happy to see my kids and friends taking joy in Halloween. More power to them.
As for me, I just might go back to bed.
Last year, I found a disgusting Facebook page making fun of someone with a serious mental illness. The site was taken down, but now there’s a new page dedicated to the man locals call Crazy Mike.
I want the creator and those who like the page to know something. By embracing such a page, you are making a much broader statement: either that you don’t understand the suffering a person experiences from mental illness or that you do understand but think it’s perfectly fine to tear down a human being who is seemingly weaker than you are.
Mood music:
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A couple weeks ago, I got an email from someone calling me a scumbag for defending Mike. He scares women and children and should be off the street, the writer told me. What really disgusted him, though, was the idea that Mike is a Vietnam veteran who is sick because of what he experienced there.
More recently, I heard from someone claiming to me Mike’s brother. I have no reason to disbelieve him, but since I haven’t been able to verify it yet, I’ll keep him anonymous. He actually alerted me to the new Facebook page and verified that Mike is a vet.
“Mike is indeed a Vietnam War Vet, serving as a field medic during his tour,” the man wrote. “He was born in May 1950, putting him squarely in that unfortunate group that was drafted or enlisted during the height of the war.”
Now that I’ve captured two different sides, I’ll say this:
We can do better than this.
True, to those who don’t know him, it can be disconcerting to walk into a store with Mike hanging around outside the door yelling at people. Sometimes, fear is justified. Part of my motivation for this post is to make more of you aware that he’s harmless.
To those who want to haggle over whether Mike was in Vietnam, I’d suggest you stop getting sidetracked and remember that no matter what makes a person sick, they deserve compassion and help, not this bullshit.
The jackass who created the new Facebook page should shut it down. And the hundreds of people who liked it should feel some shame.
This post is an update of an early post, “A Final Word on Crazy Mike.”
