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Johnny Depp Visits Revere Beach

Filming for the movie based on the book Black Mass is taking place around Massachusetts. Last week, they did some scenes on the beach I walked daily as a kid.

I was young when Whitey Bulger was enjoying his reign of terror on Boston and the surrounding communities, and I don’t remember much about it other than a couple news reports from the 1980s. I was busy walking Revere Beach every day. It was often the only way I found peace during a childhood of illness, death and family difficulties.

But in the last year or so, I’ve read a bunch of books on the Bulger case, including Black Mass, and I’ve admittedly become a bit obsessed.

When I read that the movie crew had descended on Revere Beach, turning it into 1970s-era Miami Beach, complete with palm trees and a Cuban cafe, I was delighted.

It brought back a little nostalgia, reminding me of my beach walks. And it increased my appetite for the movie, which is scheduled for a September 2015 release.

Particularly awesome are these videos someone shot of Johnny Depp done up as Whitey. The footage captures extras taking their places and Depp walking around the set. The second video shows all the vintage cars used for the shoot.

The best part for me, though, are the regular folks in the background, bantering like the Revere Beach natives I remember and love.

Enjoy.

Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger

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Impostor Syndrome, Part 2

I’ve been way off my game lately. My diet and exercise regimen is all over the place. I’m working my ass off at the job, but I feel like I’ve gotten little accomplished. I’m cranky a lot.

I’ve been here before. It’s a flare up of impostor syndrome.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yFAnn2j4iB0

I’ve always harbored the fear that someday people will discover I’m really not as smart and talented as they currently think I am.

I’ve had a lot of good luck in my career, surviving the rough patches, such as when I was floundering as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. Working nights wrung the editing skills out of this morning person.

I moved on to a job writing about cybersecurity and haven’t looked back. I’ve been on the board of directors for a security user group. I’ve been invited to give a lot of presentations. I’ve had a few promotions. People read my security blog and this blog and actually like what I do.

Along the way, I have moments of cold fear when I think about how far I’ve come, and I wonder when people are going to wake up and realize that I’m not even close to being as good as they say I am. True, I have my critics and they’re always happy to take me down a few pegs. I’m grateful for them, because they keep me honest. But those people who think my skills are so sharp that they invite me to speak and write and to share my work on the social networks? Surely they’ll wake up one morning to find that I’m just a fake.

I’m not alone. A lot of my friends in the security industry suffer from impostor syndrome.

I trace my current flare up to a few things:

  • My physical fitness regimen is off the rails, which effects the mental health. I could list a bunch of reasons for this, but the only thing that matters is that I have to get back on the horse and ride.
  • I’m well paid for what I do, and if I don’t get 10 projects delivered a week, I start feeling like I’m ripping off the people who put their faith in me.
  • Unlike the world of journalism, where quantity and page views are everything, my current job calls for a slower, more deliberate approach. I’m not used to that, even though it’s what I wanted. Now I have time to boost the quality but can’t seen to understand that it’s perfectly OK and even required now.
  • I just got back from vacation. Whenever I get back from a vacation, I always feel like I was gone just long enough to become irrelevant.

I’m not telling you this for pity. I’m simply taking inventory and seeing where I need to do better. It’s a skill I used to lack, and my descents were deeper and more bruising as a result.

I have a pretty good fix on what my problems are these day, and now I can address them.

Boy coming out from behind a mask

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Frances Bean Cobain Gets It Right

Update: Frances Bean Cobain threw more cold water on the romanticism of her dad’s life and death in this Rolling Stone interview.

Until now, we hadn’t heard much about Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. Now she’s getting headlines, and it appears the young lady has a good head on her shoulders despite a tumultuous childhood.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/5wev8W9PDAg

She’s getting the headlines for telling another young star that her talk of dying young is misguided. Cobain should know. She never got to know her father, who killed himself 20 years ago.

Specifically, Cobain responded to Lana Del Rey’s recent “I wish I was dead already” proclamation, which came after an interviewer mentioned Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011. If she’s to be believed, Del Ray harbors a serious death wish, telling The Guardian that she sees an early death as glamorous. “I don’t want to have to keep doing this. But I am.”

Cobain’s response, according to Rolling Stone and other publications:

The death of young musicians isn’t something to romanticize. I’ll never know my father because he died young, and it becomes a desirable feat because people like you think it’s “cool.” Well, it’s fucking not. Embrace life, because you only get one life. The people you mentioned wasted that life. Don’t be one of those people.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I know what it’s like to watch loved ones die young, by intent and from illness.

I do find myself wondering if Del Ray is serious or if she’s just saying it for attention. She wouldn’t be the first star to carry on that way. If she is serious, that interview could be her cry for help. If so, I hope she gets what she needs.

Some will say she’s being a snot, because here she has all the success and fame, and she’s saying she doesn’t want to live long. I remember hearing that kind of talk from bands like Mötley Crüe in the 1980s. There was the whole “live fast, die young” romanticism. Fortunately, the Mötley guys got beyond that, grew up and have lived full, meaningful lives — especially Nikki Sixx, who has four kids and too many successful business ventures to count on one hand.

Hopefully, Del Ray will grow up in similar fashion.

Maybe Cobain’s words of wisdom will help in that regard.

Frances Bean CobainImage by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images

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I Don’t Dislike Mondays

I used to fit the “I hate Monday” stereotype perfectly. In fact, that first day of the work week used to fill me with terror. I’d start to get depressed Saturday night because it meant the weekend was halfway done. I’d get so worked up on Sundays that I’d short circuit and sleep most of the afternoon away.

Now I love Mondays. When someone complains about it, I laugh or roll my eyes, conveniently forgetting that I used to get that way.

Mood music:

So why the turnaround? It wasn’t immediate.

Learning to manage my depression certainly helped.

I used to get overwhelmed by all the work I usually had to do on Mondays and Tuesdays, which were the busiest, longest days of the week when I was a reporter and editor for weekly newspapers. Those were the days when you had all the municipal meetings to cover and all the writing to do. I used to write all five-seven stories a week in one day.

That kind of disorganization made life messy on its own. But my unchecked OCD and depression made it worse, and I wasted many weekends on worry as a result.

Finding the right medication and developing an arsenal of coping tools went far in changing how my brain processes things. Finding my career groove helped, too.

When I saw work as a massive pile of shit to be shoveled every week, the depression was inevitable. In more recent years, particularly the last eight, I’ve been blessed with work I love.

I’m happy to put it down on the weekends. But now I see Mondays as that time when I can dive back into creative mode.

There are things I do so I can start the week right:

  • I make lists of things to do for work and home. Writing a list means I don’t have to keep rehashing the agenda in my head over and over again.
  • I get to bed fairly early on Sunday night.
  • I plan out my breakfast and lunch for the week. Otherwise, I’d starts the week eating from the drive-through and wouldn’t stop.
  • I play a lot of guitar on Sunday. I play guitar daily, mind you, but those Sunday sessions have become critical to my mental equilibrium.

It’s Sunday night as I write this, and I’m feeling just fine.

Calvin and Hobbes making faces; happy Monday

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It’s Not How Far You Have to Go, It’s How Far You’ve Come

No matter how much we’ve grown, no matter how far we’ve come, we insist on beating ourselves over the strides we have yet to achieve.

When it comes to self-loathing over one’s vulnerabilities, I’m about the best there is. But I’ve worked hard to break myself of that, because the truth is that I have come a long way since the days when I was owned by my OCD, anxiety, fears and dark impulses.

Do those things still get the better of me? Absolutely. But I’ve found that the more I dwell on it, the longer it takes me to grow into something better.

Mood music:

I used to let myself plunge into days of depression and self-hating every time I made a mistake at work. I binge-ate my way to 280 pounds, and I would let my brain spin for weeks over every possible worst-case scenario for the same reason.

As a kid, I bullied other kids even as I was getting bullied, because finding kids that were seemingly weaker made me feel better about myself.

Thankfully, I’m in better control of myself and my actions than I used to be, though the darker impulses still get the better of me occasionally. I still beat myself over mistakes, which makes the step forward slower. I still give in to laziness when life seems too hard. I still judge other people when I don’t really know them.

But I keep those impulses in check a lot more often than not. When I’m feeling down, I try to celebrate that fact.

Efforts at personal evolution are a life-long thing. The work doesn’t end until we’re dead.

Best to focus on living the best way we can.

baby elephant climbing a steep hill

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10 Ways I Turned My Shitty Day Around

The other day I wrote about having a bad morning, and how I was looking for a positive plot twist. The day did get better. How it did is a good case study in learning to roll with the punches.

Mood music:

Sequence of events:

  1. I wrote that post to vent my spleen. That simple action went a long way in helping me feel better. Once I committed my frustrations to paper, so to speak, I succeeded in removing the toxins from my brain.
  2. I queued up a bunch of my favorite rock, metal and punk songs and played them all day as I worked.
  3. I managed to finish editing a compliance security document I want to make public for customers.
  4. I took a walk from my office to the Charles River, enjoying the spring air and the Boston skyline.
  5. I enjoyed free Mexican food the company gave out for Cinco de Mayo.
  6. I delighted in some new flavor juices for my vaping pipe.
  7. I found a radio station on iHeart Radio that proved perfect for the drive to get the kids from school.
  8. I played guitar for a good two hours, focusing on all the AC/DC and Black Sabbath riffs I’ve been learning, along with some original stuff.
  9. I read an inspiring Time magazine article on the construction of 1 World Trade Center from the ashes of Ground Zero.
  10. I got a cool science lesson from my neighbor, who was kind enough to come discuss her work at my children’s Scout meeting. The virus samples she passed around were a hit.

All in all, a day that promised to be shitty turned out pretty good — because I didn’t let the bad attitude linger.

Thank God for that.

Sunset at the Beach