Erin bought two of these, one for me and one for Duncan, who also gets a bit crazy when the daylight recedes. To be honest, me and Duncan are highly skeptical.
But Erin spent the money, and her intentions are golden, so we’re taking this thing for a spin.
Here’s one benefit: Duncan thinks the two of us are supposed to sit right next to it for a half hour in the morning, so I get my snuggle time in. The boy may be 7, but he still has just enough squish to him that he makes an excellent blanket or pillow. So at the very least, the Happy Lamp gives us a bit more quality time.
My therapist thinks the lamp is a wonderful idea. He insists IT WILL work wonders.
I remain skeptical. But I do like the warmth it gives off.
I’ll let you know how this experiment turns out later.
That post about Zane resonated with a lot of people. It’s comforting to know he hasn’t been forgotten. Being forgotten. It’s everyone’s fear. I often worry that people who end their own lives will end up that way.
My brand of depression is also different from the suicidal stripe. Mine just makes me withdrawn and tired.
But I have no reason to be high-minded about it. When I was giving in to my addictions, I was slowly killing myself. I’m not sure that’s much better than killing yourself quickly. People around you still suffer.
Whatever the case may be, I feel the need to write about old friends who committed suicide because I don’t want them to be forgotten. Suicide cases are often swept under the rug. They end up being remembered more for how they died than how they lived.
A few months ago a friend of some friends died of suicide. I wrote something at the time that’s worth repeating now. It’s sort of like an instruction manual for someone who has just lost someone to suicide:
You’re probably feeling kicked in the guts by this. You may have known your friend was depressed, even suicidal, but it never really clicked in your brain that this friend would actually DO IT.
Now you’re beating yourself over it because you’re certain that you saw the signs in hindsight and should have done something to help this person. You feel you weren’t the friend you should have been. Or brother. Or sister. Or parent.
Your brain is spinning like an old record, skipping as you replay the last few months in your head, over and over again. “How could you have missed the signs?” you ask yourself.
As everyone in your circle second guesses themselves, tensions and hard feelings bubble to the surface.
It can be too much to absorb. And the hurt will be there for a long time.
But things will get better. They always do.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned in the nearly 14 years since my friend’s death:
–Blaming yourself is pointless. No matter how many times you replay events in your mind, the fact is that it’s not your fault. For one thing, it’s impossible to get into the head of someone who is contemplating suicide. Sure, there are signs, but since we all get the blues sometimes, it’s very easy to dismiss the signs as something close to normal. When someone is loud in contemplating suicide, it’s usually a cry for help. When the depressed says nothing and even appears OK, it’s usually because they’ve made their decision and are in the quiet, planning stages.
–Blaming each other is even more pointless. Take it from me: Nerves in your circle of family and friends are so raw right now that it won’t take much for relationships to snap into pieces. A week after my friend’s death I wrote a column about it, revealing what in hindsight was too much detail. His family was furious and most of them haven’t talked to me since. They feel I was exploiting his death to advance my writing career and get attention. I was pretty screwed up back then, so they’re probably right. In any event, I don’t blame them for hating me. What I’ve learned, and this is tough to admit, is that you’re going to have to let it go when the finger pointing starts. It’s better not to engage the other side. Nobody is in their right mind at this point, so go easy on each other. Give people space to make their errors in judgment and learn from it.
–Don’t demonize the dead. When a friend takes their life, one of the things that gnaws at the survivors is the notion that — if there is a Heaven and Hell — those who kill themselves are doomed to the latter. I’m a devout Catholic, so you can bet your ass this one has gone through my mind. What I’ve learned though, through my own experiences in the years since, is that depression is a clinical disease. When you are mentally ill, your brain isn’t firing on all thrusters. You engage in self-destructive behavior even though you understand the consequences. A person thinking about suicide is not operating on a sane, normally-functioning mind. So to demonize someone for taking their own life is pointless. To demonize the person, you have to assume they were in their right mind at the time of the act. And you know they weren’t. My practice today is to simply pray for those people, that their souls will still be redeemed and they will know peace. It’s really the best you can do.
– Break the stigma. One of the friends left behind in this latest tragedy has already done something that honors her friend’s life: She went on Facebook and directed people toward the American Association of Suicidology website, specifically the page on knowing the warning signs. That’s a great example of doing something to honor your friend’s memory instead of sitting around second guessing yourself. The best thing to do now is educate people on the disease so that sufferers can help themselves and friends and family can really be of service.
–On with your own life. Nobody will blame you for not being yourself for awhile. You have, after all, just experienced one of the worst tragedies there is. But try not to let it paralyze you. Life must go on. You have to get on with your work and be there for those around you.
Don’t take what I’ve just said as Gospel. It’s based on my own experience and no two experiences are the same. But if there was something in there that’s helpful, then I’m grateful.
I keep thinking of a kid from the Point of Pines who isn’t with us anymore. I’m not sure why this ghost is in my head, because we weren’t exactly friends.
Mood music:
[spotify:track:1GnCH2KszUkpUjXuDP2G3N]
The kid’s name was Zane. I believe the last name was Mead, though I’m not sure if there’s an E at the end. He was what you would picture as a classic stoner kid. I think he was on something every time I ran into him. He hung out with some of the tougher kids in the neighborhood. But he was never mean. Not to me, anyway.
In fact, I always detected a heart of gold inside him. Unfortunately, that heart of gold had a huge hole at its center and he tried to fill it with all kinds of substances. That’s what I remember, anyway.
He lived in a very small house on Delano Ave., near my friend John Edwards. The neighborhood crazy lady lived at the other end of that street. Her name was Zelda. I always felt sorry for her, because she took a lot of ridicule and the fact of the matter was that the poor lady suffered from severe mental illness. Yesterday I wrote about how I was putting that term to rest and using “struggle” instead, but mental illness is the appropriate language in Zelda’s case.
Rumor has it she died of suicide, though I was never able to confirm that.
I used to see Zane walking the streets alone, looking lost. I guess he was. I remember how he’d stumble onto the school bus in the morning, cigarette hanging from his lips, and collapse into one of the very back seats.
I seem to remember him getting worse around 1988. That year, he went to the top of an apartment building off Shirley Avenue and dived off.
I keep thinking about what a waste that was, and it makes me sad.
I remember a lot of kids being torn up over his death. Understandable, especially given how his life ended. To this day, I’m convinced his death wasn’t one of simply giving up. I think he was just so sick at that point that he was no longer in control of his actions. I’m pretty certain that as he jumped from that roof, his real mind and soul wasn’t in there.
My friend Dan took the death hard. He and Zane used to be neighbors, and they were close.
What really sucks is that less than a decade later, Dan would have to experience another close friend taking his life. I never appreciated until recently what a nightmare that must have been for him. That latter suicide hit me like a knife, and I’ve written about it often in this blog. But Dan had to feel what I felt TWICE in his life. That he bounced back from that is a real testament to his inner strength.
Dan and I have been lucky. We’ve led different lives since Sean Marley’s death and fell out of touch until recently, thanks to Facebook. But we’ve led productive, rich lives full of music and children.
I like to think those experiences of loss helped us grow in ways that made us better people today.
I wish I had made the effort to know Zane back then. I doubt I would have been able to help him, especially with that shallow, 18-year-old brain I had at the time. But he seems like someone who would have been a good friend.
The heart was there.
His life ended early, but his days on this Earth were not a waste. I remember that his tight circle of friends really cared for him.
He did something to make them feel that way.
I hope that by writing about him here, I’m honoring his memory.
Often, when depression slaps me upside the head, it’s on the heels of a prolonged period of good feelings and positive energy. Especially this time of year, when the daylight recedes early and returns late. These setbacks can be discouraging, but you can survive them with the right perspective.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/NqTuN-35580
It’s easy for people who fight mental illness and addictive behavior to go on an endless, futile search for the happily ever after, where you somehow find the magic bullet to murder your demons, thus beginning years of bliss and carefree existence.
I’m sorry to tell you this, folks: That line of thinking is bullshit.
There’s no such thing as happily ever after. If you want it that badly, go watch a Disney film.
The slide back into depression this past weekend was an example.
I like to think of these setbacks as growing pains. We’re supposed to have bad days to test the better angels of our nature. We’re supposed to learn how to move forward despite the obstacles that used to make us hide and get junked up. When you can stay sober and keep your mental disorders in check despite a bad day, that’s REAL recovery.
This is where I consider myself lucky for having had Crohn’s Disease. That’s a chronic condition. It comes and goes. But you can reach a point where the flare ups are minimal.
It’s the same with mental illness and addiction. You can’t rid yourself of it completely. But you can reach a point — through a lot of hard work and leaps of Faith — where the episodes are minimal.
The depression flared up this weekend, just like the Crohn’s Disease used to. But I’m better now. And I didn’t have to take a drug like Prednisone to get there. I just needed a little extra sleep.
Prozac, therapy and the 12 Steps have helped me immensely. But they don’t take the deeper pain at your core away. These things just help you deal with the rough days without getting sucked back into the abyss.
The depression I experienced this weekend felt more like a flare up of arthritis than that desperate, mournful feeling I used to get. It was a nag, but it didn’t break me. It used to break me all the time.
That’s progress.
Maybe I’m not happy forever after, but that’s OK. My ability to separate the blessings from the bullshit has improved considerably in the last five years.
My boss and good friend John Gallant once told me I’m one of the most positive people he knows. I was keeping a sunny disposition despite the Internet being down or something like that. I’m definitely a sunnier person than I used to be. To be truthful, though, sometimes it’s just an act.
What brings me to that line of thinking is the crime wave of depression that hit me this weekend. It was pretty bad this time; possibly the worst I’ve felt all year.
I can’t quite put my finger on what caused it. I wasn’t angry with anyone or about anything in particular. It didn’t help that the days were mixed with teases of sunshine that were snatched away by some thick clouds. When the weather does that, it’s like someone reneged on a promise to bring me light. My eating was fine, typically in keeping with my 12-Step program. So what gives?
Far as I can tell, the problem was a serious sleep deficit. Last week was a busy one, with travel, a lot of writing and editing, and appointments. The writing usually energizes me. The appointments, not so much. I was averaging five hours of sleep per night, which has usually served me well. But as I get older, I’m having more trouble getting rest right.
Fortunately, my brand of depression isn’t the suicidal kind. I don’t crawl into a dark corner and lament the day I was born. I do get withdrawn. I get very serious, and I do tire more easily. There’s this weird thing that happens with my vision.
I can see everything, but there’s a haze. It’s like I’m staring at someone but staring into space at the same time. The eyes themselves itch and buzz a bit. It makes me think of the Star Wars art where someone under the influence of the dark side of the force develops a strange light around the eyes. It sounds melodramatic, but it’s the best way I can describe it.
This was not a good weekend to be this way. Yesterday was Duncan’s birthday party, and the day before there was a lot of cleaning to do. Erin wasn’t happy with me for getting home late from my OA meeting because she had stuff to do. I think that might have set off my mood, though it’s hard to tell for sure. I don’t blame her for being pissed at me. Sometimes the commitment to my program of abstinence and sobriety can cast a big shadow. In my mind, I’m putting my family first and balancing all these other things around that. In reality, I have work to do.
I think the big trigger this weekend was the realization that I might be doing too many things. There’s the book project, a wonderful BUT demanding job and all that service: Being an OA sponsor, being on team for a Catholic retreat next month, which involves lots of meetings and homework, and the occasional Saturday morning working the church food pantry. Saturday afternoon was spent writing a talk I’ll be giving at that retreat.
It’s an odd sort of conflict to have. On the one hand, I’m able to do all these things — I crave it, actually — because I cleaned up from my addiction and learned to manage my mental disorder most of the time. A lot of space in my brain that was taken up with crazy thinking, fear and paranoia was suddenly freed up, and I found I could do all these other things.
And I can.
But I’m not Superman, and I’m starting to see where my limitations are. I know I have to make adjustments as a result. That pisses me off. I lost a lot during those years of mental illness and addiction. It robbed me blind. I don’t want to give up anything that I’ve gained.
What’s all this have to do with acting positive?
I’ve made it a point, no matter how crummy I feel, to put on the positive man’s mask. It’s important for a variety of reasons.
On Facebook, for example, so many people bitch and moan about the little inconveniences in their lives that you simply need positive people on there to balance things out. I prefer to be one of the latter people. Maybe I can’t always make myself feel good. But if I can make others feel better by saying something positive, it’s better than nothing.
One of my political heroes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a master at this. He was known for his “ebullience” and he was rarely photographed without that huge, toothy smile. In private, however, he had a lot of pain. Polio had taken away his freedom of movement. He put on a good act in public, using a cane, leg braces and the arm of one of his sons to make it look like he was standing and walking without effort. The truth is that those were moments of blinding physical pain. But he kept the sunny disposition and it was just what people needed at the height of the Great Depression.
As WW II slogged on, his photos were a lot less ebullient and you could clearly see the strain. He had met his match, and it cracked his positive mask.
My issues are nothing compared to what he went through. But in my own little world, I’ve run up against that wall that cracked my own mask.
It’s time to go find the glue and put it back on.
This morning I do feel a little better. At Erin’s insistence I went to bed at 7:30 last night and I’ll do it again tonight.
We’ll see how that works. I’m just grateful to have a wife who knows what signs to look for and how to help me through it. The kids help, too, keeping me laughing with their verbal zingers.
God certainly helps. Writing that talk Saturday allowed me to work through some of what I was feeling.
I have all the tools I need to get through these rough spots.
I just have to remember that one of those tools needs to be the ability to slow down.
This hangover has nothing to do with binging or drinking. I did neither, though I did think seriously about it. I lingered in the wine section of the grocery store for a few minutes, wondering if I should buy a couple of those little bottles that are easy to hide. Maybe, I thought, I’ll have some tonight. No one will ever know.
Of course, there’s always a deeper emotion triggering the impulses. I think I’m feeling sorry for myself this afternoon because it’s a day off and I’ve been running around all day when all I really want to do is pull a blanket over my head and go to sleep. I got the kids up and off to school. I dropped off my niece, who spent the night with us. I checked on a guy I sponsor in OA to see if he was OK because he’s had some diabetic trouble. Then it was time to pay some bills and run to the grocery store. Now I have to run back out to get a coolant light in the car checked before the kids get home, at which point we’ll have to run to my chiropractor appointment. I can’t break it because I’ve been having twinges of pain in my back this week. Tonight I have to start writing a talk I’m going to give at an upcoming Catholic retreat.
If I sound like a whiny punk, that’s because I am a whiny punk. At the moment I am, anyway. This is especially unsettling because I have little patience for other people who do the same thing. Go figure.
So what am I going to do about all this?
I’m going to get the stupid coolant light checked and keep my chiropractor appointment. Once the kids are settled after dinner, I’ll write that talk. That’s actually something I’m looking forward to.
Life can be exhausting, but you know what? I sought the relentless activity in my life. It’s a blessing to do these things every day. And if the payment is that I have to keep moving when I want to collapse, so be it.
The answer for me is the same answer I give my kids when they grouse about having responsibilities:
One of the big things I’ve struggled with over the years is when it’s OK to be alone and when it’s not. I spent a lot of years in isolation. I’m slowly realizing isolation and alone aren’t necessarily the same thing. Isolation never amounts to anything positive for me. Alone does — when I let it.
I seem to always be around people these days. There are the folks in my 12-Step program, including my sponsor and the three people I sponsor. There are the one-to-three meetings a week, and the daily phone calls. For someone who hates the telephone, I spend a lot of time on it these days.
I spend a lot of time around parents of the boys’ classmates. I spend a lot of time around business associates. When there’s downtime, I increasingly seek out friends. Fortunately, they seek me out, too.
But while it’s never good for me to be isolated, I’m finding that I DO need to be alone sometimes.
Not alone in a brooding, depressed state. That better fits the isolation category for me. It’s more like being alone in a state of prayer or creativity.
I’ve come to treasure the alone time I get first thing in the morning, when I can listen to music, write or just flop my head back. My relationship with the car has changed. Instead of using it as a place to isolate and feed my addiction, it’s now a place for reflection, music and sightseeing.
It used to be on business trips that I would isolate in my hotel room whenever I didn’t have to be out in public. There’s a lot of trouble you can get into with yourself when you’re holed up in a hotel room.
Now, I make some alone time for myself so I can walk around the city I’m in and take it all in. Yesterday I roamed the streets of NYC and spent a lot of time at Ground Zero in contemplation and prayer. I continued praying as I walked back across the Brooklyn Bridge to my hotel.
It was excellent.
Later in the evening, it was time to mix with people again and I did — having a long overdue reunion with my cousin Andrew and meeting his beautiful bride-to-be, Violet. We inadvertently wound up in a gay bar, but it’s not like there’s anything wrong with that. And the other patrons were friendly and polite. It’s been years since I saw Andrew. Shit, I remember when he was small enough to fit in a beer mug.
Afterwards, it was time to be alone again. I went back to the hotel and read myself asleep, which didn’t take much.
If the whole concept of isolation vs. being alone is confusing to you, it should be.
It’s certainly something I’m still trying to figure out.
I’m getting there. Slowly but surely.
Of course, it’s time to go mix it up with people again, so off I go to listen and then write about day 1 of the CSO Security standard.
As a kid living on Revere Beach, long walks were my lifeline to sanity. At least once a day, I walked the entire length of the crescent-shaped coastline, from the edge of Revere Beach Boulevard to the city’s border with Winthrop. In more recent years, I haven’t walked much. But recent events are rekindling my love for it.
I spent a lot of time walking around New York City this morning. I’m staying in Brooklyn for the CSO Security Standard event, but my hotel room wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I looked outside at the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to walk across it, just for the hell of it.
I walked into Chinatown for coffee with a couple friends, then I walked to Ground Zero. Being the day after the 9-11 anniversary, it seemed like the right thing to do.
Last time I was at Ground Zero I left in a pretty depressed mood, but this time, strangely enough, I felt inspired. A lot is happening on that site, including construction of two memorial pools in the footprints of the twin towers, surrounded by trees, with a new Freedom Tower rising up at the edge.
Also inspiring is that nine years later, the people of NYC are keeping the memories of the victims alive. One example is this shrine to the firefighters who lost their lives:
By the time I walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge to check into my room, five hours had passed and I was exhausted. But I felt like I did exactly what I was supposed to do before settling in to work.
Long walks like this have always restored my sanity.
During all those walks on Revere Beach, I’d be trying to think through all the childhood chaos and find a way forward. I always did.
When the kids were still small enough for the double stroller, I’d take them on a 3.5-mile walk in our Haverhill neighborhood.
I stopped walking in recent years because life just got to busy. Or at least that’s how I’ve rationalized it. The truth is, I think I’ve been making excuses.
Yesterday morning Sean wanted to do that 3.5-mile walk with me because it brought back special memories for him. So that’s what we did.
Between that walk and todays stroll around NYC, I’m starting to realize walking was an important tool for me.
It’s time I dusted that tool off and started using it again.
Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001. Here’s my own account.
Mood music:
I was assistant New Hampshire editor at The Eagle-Tribune and I arrived in the newsroom at 4:30 a.m. as usual. I was already in a depressed mood. It wasn’t a sense of dread over something bad about to happen. It was simply my state of mind at the time. I wasn’t liking myself and was playing a role that wasn’t me.
I was already headed toward one of my emotional breakdowns and the job was a catalyst at that point. By day’s end, I would be seriously reconsidering what I was doing with my life. But then everyone was doing that by day’s end.
I was absorbed in all my usual bullshit when the NH managing editor came in and, with a half-smile on his face, told me a plane hit the World Trade Center. At that point, like everyone else, I figured it was a small plane and that it was an accident. Then the second plane hit and we watched it as it happened on the newsroom TV.
I remember being scared to death. Not so much at the scene unfolding on the newsroom TV, but at the scene in the newsroom itself. Chaos was not unusual at The Eagle-Tribune, but this was a whole new level of madness. I can’t remember if my fear was that terrorists might fly a plane into the building we were in as their next act or if it was a fear of not being able to function amidst the chaos. It was probably some of each.
This was a huge story everywhere, but The Eagle-Tribune had a bigger stake in the coverage than most local dailies around the country because many of the victims on the planes that hit the towers were from the Merrimack Valley. There was someone from Methuen, Plaistow, N.H., Haverhill, Amesbury, Andover — all over our coverage area.
When the first World Trade Center tower collapsed on the TV screen mounted above Editor Steve Lambert’s office, he came out, stood on a desk and told everyone to collect themselves a minute, because this would be the most important story we ever covered.
Up to that point, it was. But I was so full of fear and anxiety that my ability to function was gone. I spent most of the next few days in the newsroom, but did nothing of importance. I was a shell. I stayed that way until I left the paper in early 2004. In fact, I stayed that way for some time after that. I should note that the rest of the newsroom staff at the time did a hell of a job under very tough pressure that day. My friend Gretchen Putnam was still editor of features back then, but she and her staff helped gather the news with the same grit she would display later as metro editor.
I remember being touched by a column she wrote the next day. She described picking her son Jack up from school and telling him something bad happened in the world that day. His young response was something like this: “Something bad happens in the world every day.”
Sometimes, kids have a better perspective of the big picture than grown-ups do.
I got home very late that day and hugged Erin and Sean, who was about five months old at that point. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of world he would grow up in.
In the days that followed, I walked around in a state of fear like everyone else. That fear made me do things I was ashamed of.
A week after the attacks, Erin and I were scheduled to fly to Arizona to attend a cousin’s wedding. The night before were were supposed to leave, I gave in to my terror at the prospect of getting on a plane and we didn’t go. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.
There are two types of head cases headed for a breakdown: There’s the type that tries hard to get him or herself killed through reckless behavior, and then there are those who cower in their room, terrified of what’s on the other side of that door. I fell into the latter category. I guess I tried to get myself killed along the way, but I did so in a much slower fashion. I started drinking copious amounts of wine to feel OK in my skin, and I went on a food binge that lasted about three months and resulted in a 30-pound weight gain.
A few months ago I found myself in lower Manhattan for a security event and I went to Ground Zero.
Gone were the rows of lit candles and personal notes that used to line the sidewalks around this place. To the naked eye it’s just another construction site people pass by in a hurry on their way to wherever.
I was pissed off at first. It wasn’t the thought of what happened here. My emotion there is one of sadness. No, this was anger. I was pissed that people seemed to be walking by without any thought of all the people who met their death here at the hands of terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. It was almost as if the pictures of twisted metal, smoke and crushed bodies never existed.
As I started to process that fact, my mood shifted again.
I realized these people were doing something special. No matter where they were going or what they were thinking, they were moving — living — horrific memories be damned.
They were doing what we all should be doing, living each day to the full instead of cowering in fear in the corner.
Doing so honors the dead and says F-U to those who destroyed those towers and wish we would stay scared.
It reminded me of who I am and what I’ve been through. I didn’t run from the falling towers or get shot at in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Baghdad. But the struggles with OCD and addiction burned scars into my insides all the same.
I was terrified when I was living my lowest lows. But somewhere along the way, I got better, healed and walked away. I exchanged my self hatred and fear for love of life I never thought possible.
It’s similar to what the survivors of Sept. 11 have gone through.
They reminded me of something important, and while some sadness lingers, I am grateful.
So here’s what I’ll be doing this weekend, the ninth anniversary of the attacks:
For reasons not immediately clear to me, I’m in the midst of a mood swing. The day started off well enough, so as a little exercise I’m going to bang on this keyboard and see if I can figure out what’s what.
I woke up at 4 a.m. tired but happy. I was out late last night at one of the planning meetings for a weekend Catholic retreat I’m on team for next month and I was assigned a cool talk to give during that weekend. The coffee was good and strong and I got to work ahead of the traffic and thunderstorms.
I talked to my OA sponsor and talked to one of the guys I sponsor (another sponsee was late calling and I never got a chance to call him back). I wrote a blog entry and plunged into work. Good day so far. I was especially glad to be writing something, since I’ve been doing a lot more editing and planning than writing these last two weeks. I’m always happier when writing articles.
I think the spark for the mood swing happened during the writing of that article. It’s for a three-part series and while I have a crystal-clear idea of where I’m going with parts 2 and 3, I hit a wall writing the first one. I didn’t have as clear a sense of where I was going and it slowed me down. So instead of writing all three articles, I only got through one.
Ridiculous, you say? True, three write-ups in one day is a lot to expect and most people are happy to finish one. But writing multiple items in a day is something I do all the time. I wouldn’t care as much if not for a burning desire to get the series off my plate before heading to New York for a conference Sunday.
The second spark, I think, is that my editor hadn’t gotten to reading my story by the time I left and I had high hopes of posting it this afternoon. This is also me being ridiculous, because it is not time-sensitive stuff. But I am a control freak and when my work is in someone else’s queue I have no control. That stuff I wrote this morning about learning to surrender? Sometimes I suck at following my own wisdom.
So I guess I know what my problem is now. I don’t feel like I was productive in my work today, and I thrive on being productive.
That’s a sucky feeling.
But it’s too bad. I know I just have to get over it and move on.
Tomorrow is the chance to do better. Tonight I’ll just move on.
I also could have gone on a binge like I used to when feeling unfulfilled at the end of a day. But I didn’t.
In private, however, he had a lot of pain. Polio had taken away his freedom of movement. He put on a good act in public, using a cane, leg braces and the arm of one of his sons to make it look like he was standing and walking without effort. The truth is that those were moments of blinding physical pain. But he kept the sunny disposition and it was just what people needed at the height of the Great Depression. 
