Adventures in writing

Learn From My Mistakes

by Bill Brenner November 4, 2011 Addiction

In all my efforts to get sane a few years ago, I did a lot of stupid things. I’m sharing it with you here so you don’t make the same mistakes: Mood music: http://youtu.be/l4Xx_vjGnlo –Don’t try to control your compulsive binge eating problem by fasting. You won’t make it through the morning, and then you’ll binge like you’ve never binged before. –Don’t mix alcohol with pills that have the strength of four Advil tablets in…  [Read More]

Throwing Away The Blueprints Saved My Creativity

by Bill Brenner November 1, 2011 Adventures in writing

Like many text-book OCD cases, I’ve been known to put massive effort into planning things before doing them — particularly writing. Somewhere along the way, I got more disorganized and started having more fun. Mood music: I think my earlier affinity for over-planning goes back to childhood. I was a prolific drawer, always working massive amounts of detail onto a page. I think I started doing it because in a world full of chaos (vicious…  [Read More]

Judith Miller: The Liar’s Journalist

by Bill Brenner October 15, 2011 Adventures in writing

Judith Miller is one of many reasons I left mainstream journalism years ago. I forgot about her until Fox News decided to run this piece of filth about the BlackBerry outage and cyber terrorism. If you want to see a true specimen of fear-based journalism, read that article. In it, she takes the recent BlackBerry outage, which was the result of tech failure and not terrorism, and connects it to cyber terrorism anyway, despite the…  [Read More]

Finish What You Started

by Bill Brenner September 28, 2011 Adventures in writing

Funny thing about people who suffer from serious mental illness: They tend to make all these big plans but never really follow through with anything. I don’t fault them. For one thing, they have an illness. Also, I used to be just like them. Mood music: [spotify:track:37A5wFomo4EVz5tGInAynI] Watching the start-stop-start-thud behavior of a friend is reminding me of what I used to do. My friend, who I won’t name, always has some big plans afoot….  [Read More]

Beauty And Gratitude In Every Bad Thing

by Bill Brenner September 25, 2011 Adventures in writing

In the battle to manage OCD and all its byproducts, I’ve learned something that’s helped me a lot: To always see the blessings hidden within the bad stuff. Mood music: –When I lose people close to me because of death or resentment, I try to remember the good stuff we got to share and how lucky I was to have known those who eventually left me. –When I feel my addictions starting to creep up…  [Read More]

Why Is This Blog So Dark?

by Bill Brenner September 24, 2011 Addiction

People occasionally ask me why this blog covers so much dark ground. Let’s see if I can explain: My life has been much like any typical run. We all go through our sad and tragic episodes, with a lot of good times and beautiful experiences mixed in. There are happy moments and terrible moments. Some get swallowed up by the darkness and descend into a life of crime, addiction and death. Others find a way…  [Read More]

Be Yourself, And Let The Chips Fall Wherever

by Bill Brenner September 23, 2011 Addiction

If someone doesn’t like you, too bad for them. Mood music: From the good folks at “Choose Happiness” — something to keep in mind when people get all snotty and hypocritical about who you are and what you do:

Paranoia Was My Destroyer

by Bill Brenner September 21, 2011 Addiction

There’s a particularly insidious side of my OCD that I have to fight hard to contain, because it’s the thing most likely to destroy me. This is a story about paranoia. Mood music: Let’s start with a definition from Wikipedia: Paranoia is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Anxiety and fear once played a major…  [Read More]

Losing Friends

by Bill Brenner September 17, 2011 Adventures in writing

I find myself worried this morning that, by opening up in this blog, I’ve lost another dear friend. That’s the challenge with expressing one’s feelings publicly: Even when you think you’re taking care to protect one’s privacy, leaving out names and such, you find a way to hurt someone anyway. Writing this blog has been a lifesaver most days. A lot of people have told me it helps them. But sometimes I curse the day…  [Read More]

This Is No Place To Make Amends

by Bill Brenner August 29, 2011 Adventures in writing

After running the post “Bully’s Remorse” a few days ago, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, writing it was a mistake. Or maybe it simply didn’t go far enough. Mood music: [spotify:track:5rpRzNcJZqKQXk9PIjreB6] Like many topics in this blog, I wrote it to yank another skeleton out of the closet and acknowledge that as a teenager, while I was getting bullied and should have related to others who were bullied, I just turned around…  [Read More]

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