Last night was one of service. I drove down to Salem State College to talk to graduating seniors about their portfolios and resumes. It was the least I could do, after all that college did for my career.
It was energizing to talk to the students, who are full of hope and ambition, not yet jaded by the throat-cutting ways of corporate America. And it was good to see Judi Puritz Cook, Ellen Golub and Robert Brown. Ellen was adviser to the Salem State Log while I was there. We were among her most trouble-making, rebellious charges. I’m proud of this.
On the way home I spent some phone time with someone I’m sponsoring in OA.
By 5 a.m. I was back online, following up with students I didn’t get a chance to sit with last night.
I treasure service to others. It’s an important part of my Faith and my recovery. It’s odd that I feel this way, since I used to prefer isolating myself in a dark room, watching TV and shoving pint after pint of ice cream, canned pasta and other junk down my throat and occasionally taking breaks to smoke cigarettes.
Service, in fact, is one of the main tools of recovery in OA. It’s not just about helping other people. It’s about building and improving relationships, putting the stresses of your life in perspective and realizing your troubles are never as bad as you think. You’re not just helping someone who is down on their luck. They are helping you back, though they don’t realize it most of the time.
Sponsorship is a good example.
By sponsoring others, it forces you to work harder at your own recovery. My sponsor helps me every day, but I also take time to hear how she’s doing and offer advice.
It’s all about realizing we’re all in this together.
But there’s some caution to deliver here.
Service is a tricky tool that can explode in your face if not used responsibly.
The risk for me is that I take on too much. I can’t say no when there’s volunteering to do at church or someone in OA needs my time. Being a control freak doesn’t help.
I also have a job that keeps me busy, and doing good work on the job — writing articles that help security professionals do their jobs better and helping out colleagues when they need it — is also essential to my well-being.
The point, though, is that if I do a great job of volunteering all the time, the work can suffer and then someone who deserves my best gets screwed. Fortunately, I’m a lot better at this balancing act than I used to be.
The danger with sponsorship and helping friends in need is that you as a human being can only do so much. My instinct is to drop in and make their lives better in an instant. But it doesn’t work that way. I have a busy family life with two small boys. They must always come first, which means I have to take care not to get consumed by someone else’s troubles.
I have to remember that I can offer up what I know, but at the end of the day only the folks I’m trying to help can truly pull themselves out of the hole.
With sponsorship and giving students career advice there’s another danger: By trying to help too many people, I end up not helping any of them very much.
All perils aside, it’s great to be in the mental place I’m at right now. You all deserve thanks for that, because your service has helped me. Even though you probably don’t realize you were doing anything.
Issues with teachers. Issues with other parents. Miscommunication. Problems with other students.
Every school.
There’s no getting around it. We’re all human. We all have failings. And a school is, after all, made up of us imperfect humans.
But at what point does a school have so many issues it becomes dysfunctional?
Is it when the faculty talks out of turn to your child about their parents’ divorce?
Or perhaps it’s when other parents refuse to accept that their child is the school bully & consistently puts the blame for their child’s behavior on the very kids he’s bullying.
Is it when there are arbitrary punishments meted out at whim? One day a behavior is punishable by making the child sit out of recess. The next day, the same behavior is overlooked. One day, uniform infractions are barely mentioned. The next day, a student loses privileges for wearing the wrong uniform piece.
Perhaps….
But I believe it’s when a school & its principal are so afraid of criticism that they close off lines of communication to keep others from hearing it.
I believe it’s when a principal is more concerned with who saw a comment on the school Facebook page than she is with addressing the issues brought to her attention.
I believe it is when a student receives retaliation for the actions of their parent.
And I believe it is when anti-bullying rallies are held for the students but parents & staff are seemingly the biggest offenders.
The Kids attend a private, Catholic school. They have been there since they were each 3 years old, starting in the youngest Pre-K group. They have known their classmates for most of their lives & we have made good friends with some of the families of these kids. When The Ex & I decided to divorce, we quietly told The Kids’ teachers so they were aware of the situation at home & on the lookout for any kind of behavioral issues that might occur because of it. This school had an opportunity to show The Kids an example of what it means to be a Christian & support my children during a particularly tough time.
They failed.
Within weeks, it seemed as if everyone knew what was happening in our family. The rumor mill was in full force until people I hardly knew & rarely spoke to had an opinion on my divorce & The Kids’ reaction to it. I had been blind to the dysfunction in the past, believing my kids were in the best possible place for the best possible education. There were two things I hoped to keep consistent throughout the divorce as the kids lives were being uprooted. Their school & their house. I was determined to keep them in that school & in the house they had been in for the past 4 years even if it meant having to ask my dad for money. But little by little, my eyes were opened & I saw that there were issues with this school far beyond anything I ever realized. There certainly have been people on the faculty as well as other parents who have been more than supportive & I can’t thank those people enough for the kindness & support they’ve shown, especially to The Kids. But they have unfortunately been too few & too far between. It is school dysfunction at its best. Or worst.
I’ve stopped my insistence that The Kids stay in that school. It’s part of my letting go. And it’s okay. I am aware that any school will have issues, dysfunction, intolerant people & parents who violate the school drop off & pick up rules. At this point, I’m willing to take my chances.
His main gripe was against the idea that there are people who will vote for pro-choice politicians even though they are pro-life. He called it “Political Schizophrenia.”[For more context, here is where I stand politically]
He then went on to say that politicians are all about keeping their own power, and how the removal of God from public life has gone too far.
I agree with him on some of that, particularly when it comes to schools not putting up Christmas decorations in December because it might offend someone. Separation of Church and State is often interpreted as the removal of God from government affairs. What it’s really about is government not forcing a particular religion on citizens and giving us the freedom to worship or not worship as we see fit. Schools should be teaching kids about all religions and how they reflect various aspects of global culture.
But I’m getting off track here. What really irked me yesterday is that Father Mike was painting all politicians with one brush. But reading between the lines, he was painting all DEMOCRATS with one brush. He noted that politicians are trying to remove the people from government and simply enact laws telling us all how we should live.
But the Church is made up of people who do the same thing.
Are there a lot of dirt bags out there who are Democrats? Absolutely. But there are a lot of dirt-bag Republicans in the world, too.
Just like there have been pedophile priests and priests who fought hard to expose the former.
My point is that we ALL struggle. We’re all broken in some way. It can be an addiction or an illness. It can be the way you conduct your business. Father Nason, our pastor, did a brave thing years ago and went public about his battle against alcoholism. As a recovering addict, I love him for that.
To lump one group into the “no hope” corner is wrong.
We are all people, and people screw up every day. God knows I do.
I’m reminded of the story where the people wanted to stone a woman to death for cheating on her husband. Jesus’ response was that “He who is without sin should cast the first stone.”
We’re all sinners. We could all do better. And yet we judge others anyway.
I do it, too.
I guess when we judge someone else, it makes us feel better about ourselves and makes us forget about the ghosts in our own souls.
But it’s a hollow, unsatisfying thing.
Judging others and thinking of oneself as better or above someone else is a disease that runs deep in the Catholic community. I’m sure it exists in the Baptist community, Jewish community and so on. But I’m part of the Catholic community, so I’ll stick with what I know.
I’ve seen educators in my parish put down other people behind their backs because they made a mistake or wasn’t skilled enough at a sport. I’ve seen fellow parishioners lump whole groups of people in the trash can of society because those people are not as pious as they are.
It’s human nature. We ALL do these things. Including me.
But it is wrong, and we could all do better.
Judging others despite one’s own flaws is also a disease that must be identified, managed and driven into remission.
Some of you are probably asking why I stick with a Faith that can be so flawed. My answer is simple: Every church, no matter the denomination, is made up of people who are broken, just like the government is.
But I show up because I believe Jesus died for my sins and is the only one who can save me from myself. What He did for everyone is what matters.
The misguided people who attach themselves to the church, the politics and the judgmental nature of faith communities is beside the point. These things are distractions.
To put it another way, my faith is all about my personal relationship with God.
Everything else is crap.
Some people might think less of me for being a devout Catholic. Some in the Catholic community might read this post and be angry with me.
I’ve met many priests, some good and some not-so-good. People criticize priests because they’re athiests or they’re angry about the sex abuse scandal. Father Dennis Nason made a believer out of me by coming clean about his own sins.
When a priest is able to lay his own flaws bare for all to see, I think it takes an extra level of courage, since there has to be a lot of pressure around the lofty standards they are held to.
Father Nason rose to the occasion.
I met Father Nason about 11 years ago. He took over our parish, All Saints, when several other churches were closed down and consolidated into the All Saints Community.
He had a lot of angry people on his hands. One’s church becomes home, and when you close it and force them to go someplace else, trouble is inevitable.
Then the priest sex abuse scandal burst open like an infected sore, shaking the Faith of a lot of people like never before.
At one point over the summer, Father Nason vanished. Few knew why.
Then at one Mass, the deacon read an open letter from him.
In the letter, Father Nason revealed that he was in rehab for alcoholism. It would be several months before he emerged from rehab, and while he was there the sex abuse scandal really began to explode. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also happened around that time, and people’s souls were tested like never before.
Once he did emerge from rehab to rejoin his parish, there was a new sparkle in his eyes. It was like a weight had been lifted. Then another weight dropped on him. It turns out one of the priests in our parish was one of those sexual predators we had read about in the papers.
Something like that would test the sobriety of anyone forced to come in and deal with the mess. Father Nason met it head on.
He was angry with his archdiocese over the fact that pedophile priests had been enabled for all those years; cases swept under the rug like dust. You could hear the anger in his voice and see it in his eyes. He would rage about it in more than one Homily.
His reaction is a big reason I stuck with the church instead of bolting.
Around that time we also had trouble hanging onto the other priests. One left after less than two months, apparently freaked out by the amount of work this parish demanded of him.
Through it all, Father Nason kept it together and brought his parish through the storm.
I don’t always see eye to eye with him. Sometimes I think his administration is disorganized and that his Homilies are all over the place; though when he nails it, he really nails it.
But those are trivial things. When he came clean about his addiction, it hit me deep in the core. At the time, my own addictions were bubbling in my skull and preparing to wipe out what was left of my soul. I just didn’t know it at the time.
No real message about overcoming OCD, depression and addiction. I’ll get back to that tomorrow. Today, just a quick Happy Easter to you all.
All is well here. We experienced a brilliant Easter Vigil Mass last night.
Not even my starting in on the wrong reading could have spoiled it. I helped out with this year’s RCIA group, so seeing them Baptized was particularly special for me.
The kids got up at 5:30 a.m. all excited for their Easter baskets. We sent them back to bed for another hour.
Above: drawings Sean made for us for Easter.
Later we take the kids to Mass, then hang out before going to the in-laws for dinner. Somewhere in there, I’ll have a cigar (my Lenten sacrifice).
Tomorrow I head to California for another security event.
Funny that I picked that song as this entry’s soundtrack. The lyrics actually cut against the grain of what Good Friday is all about. It’s about a broken relationship where forgiveness is not on the agenda.
Actually, that’s exactly why I picked it. Because on this day I’m remembering what Jesus did to give us a second shot at life and redemption.
Truth is, I’m so flawed that I would be screwed without the suffering He went through. I’m grateful for it more than ever, but I also know I’m not done screwing up.
So I carry around guilt, because I feel like I keep slapping Him in the face despite all the agony He went through.
There’s the addictive behavior. True, I put down the most self-destructive addictions. But I still approach other things with the zeal of an addict. Coffee. Technology. Cigars.
There’s still the trouble with honesty. I’m more open to my wife and family than I’ve ever been, but I know there are days when I lie to myself. It’s not a malicious act. It’s just an act of weakness. I don’t even realize I’m doing it when I’m doing it.
There’s still the ego. A lot of OCD types have big egos. Achieving big things is one of the ways we try to fill in that hole that’s always dogging us. In my profession, getting access to the major power players of information security is a rush. I feel like I am somebody as a result. When I don’t make it to a big security conference, the wheels in my head start spinning. I start to worry that by not being there, I become irrelevant. Yeah, I gotta work on that.
The trouble with forgiving others. There’s a family member — I won’t name them — I’m not talking to right now. Ours is a relationship with a long history of dysfunction and abuse. Let me be clear: The fault is on both sides. There’s a lot in this relationship I could have done better at. Whatever the case may be, right now our relationship is on ice because we simply can’t see eye to eye. In my mind I forgave this person a long time ago. But I sometimes feel like I’m not doing the full job of forgiveness unless I fully repair the relationship. I’ve been told by more than one priest that it’s not so simple. For now, it is what it is, but I have to keep working at my own issues here. I bring it up every time I go to Confession.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
I’m not special here. We all continuously screw up. I’m just one of the few who will talk about it.
And so I’m grateful today, because there’s a lot of light in my life right now. And there’s nothing like the observance of Good Friday to remind me that no matter how much I get it wrong, I’m never beyond hope.
We often look at bad turns our lives take and complain that we don’t deserve it.
But a lot of us also have a lot of good around us that we don’t deserve, either.
But I’ll take it. And I’ll keep trying to earn it.
The author gets a description of sin he’ll never forget.
Before some of you get all over me about the headline, I should point out that I got it from a priest. He didn’t use the word piss, mind you, but he gave a talk on sin and redemption that involved copious amounts of urine.
I’ll leave the priest’s name out, though I’ll tell you it wasn’t one of the priests from my home church, or any priest from Massachusetts.
The priest told the story of visiting one of his friends, a farmer. They were in the field helping out a cow who was giving birth. The calf born, the priest asked his farmer friend what was next.
“We gotta get the calf into the barn,” said the farmer, who then insisted the priest pick up the calf and drape it over his shoulders, then carry it to the barn.
On the way, the calf demonstrated its displeasure by urinating all over the priest, who was in a white T-shirt now stained bright yellow.
Later, the priest was in the bath, finding it very difficult to get the calf pee off of him. Then, the priest said he heard God talking to him, revealing a lesson in the mess.
Thanking God for letting the calf pee all over him, the priest protested the sorry state of affairs. According to the priest, God shot back, “That’s what you do to me every day.”
In other words, every time any of us sins against God, it’s like we’re pissing all over him.
Strong imagery. Crude, but it hits home. It resonates with the language I acquired growing up in Revere. The kids were in the car and thought it was all pretty funny. They’re at the age where pee on someone’s shirt is funny.
It also drives home how many times I’ve made a mess of God’s robes through all the sin I’ve committed in my life, especially the stuff I did while under the influence of depression, OCD and addiction.
I became a nightmare for co-workers, especially during The Eagle-Tribune days, hovering over page editors and treating reporters more like a disease than the wonderful, talented and hard-working souls they were.
I’ve asked for and gotten a lot of forgiveness along the way, but for those of you out there who suffered in my wake over the years, I’ll say here that I’m sorry and ask you too for forgiveness.
Above all, though, I say a heartfelt sorry to The Man Upstairs.
I need to try a lot harder to get the sin out of my life. But I know I’ve probably got a lot of pissing left to do.
Not because I want to.
But because I can’t help myself.
Sober and abstinent or not, we addicts have a natural-born tendency to let things get between us and our Higher Power.
Snowpocalypse and the Fear of Loss. The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.
The Ego OCD Built. The author admits to having an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels and that OCD is fuel for the fire. Go ahead. Laugh at him.
Fear Factor. The author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.
Prozac Winter. The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.
Have Fun with Your Therapist. Mental-illness sufferers often avoid therapists because the stigma around these “shrinks” is as thick as that of the disease. The author is here to explain why you shouldn’t fear them.
The Engine. To really understand how mental illness happens, let’s compare the brain to a machine.
Rest Redefined.The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.
Outing Myself. The author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.
Why Being a People Pleaser is Dumb. The author used to try very hard to please everybody and was hurt badly in the process. Here’s how he broke free and kept his soul intact.
The Addiction and the Damage Done
The Most Uncool Addiction. In this installment, the author opens up about the binge-eating disorder he tried to hide for years — and how he managed to bring it under control.
Edge of a Relapse. The author comes dangerously close to a relapse, but lives to fight another day.
The 12 Steps of Christmas. The author reviews the 12 Steps of Recovery and takes a personal inventory.
How to Play Your Addictions Like a Piano. The author admits that when an obsessive-compulsive person puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void. But what happens when the money runs out?
Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in Futility. As an obsessive-compulsive binge eater, the author feels it’s only proper that he weigh in on the notion that regulating junk food might help. Here’s why the answer is probably not.
The Liar’s Disease. The author reveals an uncomfortable truth about addicts like himself: We tend to have trouble telling the truth.
Portable Recovery. Though addiction will follow the junkie anywhere in the world, the author has discovered that recovery is just as portable.
Revere (Experiences with Addiction, Depression and Loss During The Younger Years)
Bridge Rats and Schoolyard Bullies.The author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends and he realizes he was pretty damn stupid back then.
Lost Brothers. How the death of an older brother shaped the Hell that arrived later.
Marley and Me.The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.
The Third Brother. Remembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.
The Tire and the Footlocker. The author opens up an old footlocker under the stairs and finds himself back in that old Revere basement.
Child of Metal
How Metal Saved Me. Why Heavy Metal music became a critical OCD coping tool.
Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or Less. The author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.
Rockit Records Revisited. The author has mentioned Metal music as one of his most important coping tools for OCD and related disorders. Here’s a look at the year he got one of the best therapy sessions ever, simply by working in a cramped little record store.
The Rat in the Church Pew. The author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.
Running from Sin, Running With Scissors. The author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2010 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior won’t disappear the second water is dropped over their heads.
Forgiveness is a Bitch. Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.
Pain in the Lent. The author gives a progress report on the Lenten sacrifices. It aint pretty.
Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential to my faith and ability to fight my addictive impulses. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.
Mood music:
For you to understand what I’m about to get into, a review of the 12 Steps of Recovery are in order:
1. We admitted we were powerless over [insert addiction. Here’s mine]—that our lives had become unmanageable.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
There’s a recurring theme that bleeds all over these steps: Forgiveness.
To truly heal and grow, you have to be able to ask others for forgiveness. People like me have to do that, because you hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways when your addictions and mental disorders get the better of you.
I became a nightmare for co-workers, especially during The Eagle-Tribune days, hovering over page editors and treating reporters more like a disease than the wonderful, talented and hard-working souls they were.
I’ve asked for and gotten a lot of forgiveness along the way, but for those of you out there who suffered in my wake over the years, I’ll say here that I’m sorry and ask you too for forgiveness.
Along the way, I’ve done my share of forgiving. I long ago forgave family members I clashed with because of abusive relationships. Unfortunately, giving forgiveness isn’t always enough to end estrangements. I have mine still, and I know I have to work on them. But as a priest once told me, forgiving doesn’t mean you permit someone to flog you anew. You have to do what’s necessary to protect yourself and your immediate family, even if it causes other people additional pain along the way. Obviously, I’ll have to seek more forgiveness from people as time moves along.
Much has been made of the evils that were allowed to take place in the Catholic Church for all those years, horrendous wrongs that blew up in the Church’s face by 2002 with the priest sex abuse scandal.
I’ve been asked more than once how I could be a devout Catholic given what’s happened. My answer is that my Faith is in God directly. There will always be bad seeds latching onto religious and governmental orders. We all sin. The resulting hurt and anger causes people to abandon their faith.
My direct faith in God doesn’t hinge on the politics that swirl around religion.
I also believe that those who have done wrong deserve a shot at redemption like the rest of us. They need to seek forgiveness, and we need to be willing to give it.
That doesn’t mean freeing molesters from prison. Priests who preyed on children must be punished. Forgiveness and justice are not the same thing.
Susan Atkins and Charles “Tex” Watson, two of Charles Manson’s most ardent followers in 1969, participated in the murder of Sharon Tate and four others. Tex, in fact, got the most blood on his hands. Both of them eventually renounced Manson and their own deeds and turned to God in prison, as did the other key murderers. Watson has run a ministry from prison. Atkins died last year, and in her final weeks sought a release from prison so she could die at home. Her request was denied. That was appropriate. She could be forgiven for what she did, but in the end she helped commit a savage crime. Justice means she had to die in prison, regardless of forgiveness.
Now, going back to the Church, I read something this week that really hit me in the gut. It was an open letter from Pittsburgh Bishop David A. Zubik, read as part of a “Service of Apology.” It was the most powerful request for forgiveness I’ve seen in a very long time.
I end this post by sharing it with you:
I stand before you tonight as Shepherd of the Church of Pittsburgh and embrace the presence of each of you, women and men, who come here tonight showing by your presence that somewhere, sometime in your life you have been hurt by someone who was entrusted to represent Jesus and His Church, but failed to do so. Some of you have already expressed your hurt; for many others of you, you do so this night by your being here. You call me, as leader of the Church of Pittsburgh, to not only not forget the sins of those who have hurt you, but you charge me with the need to continue to work to secure that the sins not happen again.
As I stand before you, I see also the face of Christ, the Jesus who met Peter on the seashore, confronting Peter’s betrayal. Your very presence here tonight both painful and trusting, confronts the need for the Church to ask forgiveness from you and the opportunity to renew your trust in the Church as Jesus renewed His trust in Peter.
To those of you who looked for the compassion of Christ in the sacrament of Penance but found only scolding and harsh judgment in return—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who found sacred moments in your life and the life of your family (baptisms, weddings, funerals) met with callous, heartless, unfeeling, un-Christian-like attention to your need—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who are here tonight who have in any way been the victims of any abuse, sexual or otherwise, whether as a child or as an adult, or as a parent, or sibling, or friend who shared in the pain of that someone you love—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who came to the Church, rightly expecting her to help you understand the rich tradition of our teachings and traditions, but met with a less than half-hearted response—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who have been hurt by the poor judgment of others entrusted with leadership—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who believed in the Church to be a voice against prejudice but found, rather, a deafening silence—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who looked to the leaders of the Church—lay, religious or ordained—to give good example but met, rather, with a philosophy that said: “Do as I say, not as I do,”—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who needed the Church to be with you in sickness, in grief, in trauma, in turmoil, but found her representatives to be too busy—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
To those of you who have offered your talents for the mission of the Church, but experienced an injustice in the Church’s workplace—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
For whatever ways any representative of the Church has hurt, offended, dismissed, ignored, any one of you—I ask you, the Church asks you, for forgiveness.
For any ways that I personally, as your Bishop, whether in speech or deed, by omission and commission, have disappointed, not heard, or dismissed you, I ask you for your forgiveness.
The power went out around 11 p.m. Thursday and is still out as I write this Saturday morning.
It gives me a new appreciation for what people went through after the ice storm in December 2008. No power for weeks for these people. Yeesh.
We spent the night at the home of dear friends, and that was what I’d call making the best of things.
But I won’t lie, folks: A power outage in my house is the stuff OCD overdrive is made of. Can’t fire up the laptop and get work done. Can’t make coffee. The second problem was hardest.
It’s a loss of control for someone who craves the ability to control things. So by mid afternoon, as I sat in my sister-in-law’s house, I was feeling edgy. It literally made me itchy. The laptop was having trouble getting onto the Internet, which made me just a little tougher to be around. I was obsessed with getting a security article written, even though I really don’t have to write it until Monday. Still, I sat there and wrote anyway.
Erin sat there knitting and told me I was “spiraling out.” That made me stop and realize I was being an idiot.
I think it was around 10 p.m. when, from the kitchen of our friends, I finished the article. It was after midnight when we finally went to bed.
Now I’m in their kitchen at 6:15 a.m., writing in the blog.
Despite my momentary relapse into insanity, I handled the day a hell of a lot better than the old me would have. I’d have been punching walls, weaving a tapestry of filthy language and binging on whatever food wasn’t spoiled in the refrigerator. I’d have gone in mad pursuit of some wine.
I did none of those things. That’s real progress.
Tomorrow I fly out to San Francisco for the RSA security conference. I hope the power is back on today, because I’ll hate leaving the family in that situation. It’ll be ok, though. I’ll figure out a plan for where to put everyone if the power isn’t back by then. I’ll deal with it and move on.
Now, time to go out and find coffee. No offense to my dear friends, but their coffee is far too weak for my blood.
