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The Saugus, Mass. Crowd

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the circle of friends I used to hang out with in Saugus, Mass., the town next to my home turf of Revere.

Mood music:

I’ve recently been back in touch with some of the friends from those days, and it reminds me of a few regrets I’ve carried over the years.

Saugus was as much a home to me as Revere for the simple reason that my father’s business was there and I spent as much time there as I did at home. Even today, when I take Sean and Duncan to visit their grandparents, it’s usually at the Saugus building.

I also had a lot of friends there because I went to a regional vocational high school and Revere and Saugus were two of the places that made up its student body. One of my best friends at the time was Aaron Lewis. There’s my first regret. Not that we were practically inseparable, but that I treated him like shit much of the time.

I met Aaron in 1985, my freshman year of high school. He was the kid with really bad acne. But nothing ever seemed to bother him. I’m sure a lot of things bothered him, but he was very good at hiding his feelings.

That made him the perfect target for a creep like me.

Don’t get me wrong. He was a true friend. One of my best friends. We shared a love of heavy metal. We both got picked on, though unlike me, he didn’t take it out on other, weaker classmates.

We hung out constantly. He practically lived in my Revere basement at times. I let him borrow my car regularly. And if I drank, that was OK, because he almost never drank. He could be the driver. Except for the time I encouraged him to drink a bottle of vodka. He had just eaten a bag of McDonald’s and I told him I was sick of him trying to get buzzed off of wine coolers. This night, I told him, he was going to do it right. He got smashed, and proceeded to puke all over my basement — on the bed, the carpets, the couch, the dresser. That was some strange vomit. It looked like brown confetti.

I sat on the floor, drunk myself, writing in my journal. I wrote about how drunk Aaron was and prayed to God that he wouldn’t die.

He was the perfect counterweight to Sean Marley. Marley was essentially my older brother and I spent a lot of time trying to earn his approval. I didn’t have to do that with Aaron. He didn’t criticize. He didn’t judge. He just took all my mood swings on the chin.

I would sling verbal bombs at him and he’d take it. I would slap him on the back of the neck and he’d take it. I was such a jerk. And he took it. That’s a true friend. Times have changed.

Aaron got married, moved to California and has a growing family. He’s doing some wonderful things with his life, as is his former girlfriend, Sharon. Those two were always together. The night before Sharon’s high school graduation I let them borrow my car. The next morning Sharon’s father called looking for her. “She’s not here,” I said. Silence, then his response: “They said they were staying with you for the night.” Busted. I don’t think he stayed angry for long, though. I remember her dad being a big guy with a big heart.

There was the Jones family, with whom we’d hang out for days on end. Jeff Jones (he goes by Geoff Wolfe today) was my fellow Doors freak, and I remember many pleasant afternoon’s and evenings in their back yard. I was there for July 4 1991, which I remember because someone slammed into my car and took off that night. The car, a 1981 Mercury Marquis, never ran right again. I got pretty smashed that night.

There was Bob Biondo, a kid who must have weighed in excess of 400 pounds. He had long, curly hair and always wore a cap and trench coat to hide his girth. He supplied me with a lot of weed and cigarettes and he was another mainstay in the Revere basement.

At some point in the early 90s I decided I was getting too grown up to hang around with these people. So I stopped coming around.

I moved to Lynnfield and made sure Biondo didn’t know where I lived. I simply stopped calling the Jones house.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was beginning a deep slide into depression and addiction. I cut myself off from a lot of people and started to isolate myself.

My weight swelled to 280 and I didn’t want to be seen by old friends. I was too ashamed. So I binged some more to numb my feelings.

I’ve recently been back in touch with the Jones family, thanks to Facebook. I plan to keep the line of communication going. 

Biondo died of a heart attack on Valentine’s Day 2009. I had just gotten married and was working with special-needs people. I always assumed he drifted into an adulthood of waste. I always figured he’d die young because of the weight, and I was right. But I was wrong about the man he had become.

Part of me wishes I’d kept in touch with him over the years. It wouldn’t have changed the course of his life, but as it turns out he didn’t need my help.

You can’t change the things you’ve done in the past. But you can make amends.

I’m glad there are enough people left in Saugus for me to make amends to.

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A Long-Silenced Voice Speaks

My dear friend Joy, who readers know by now as the widow of my late friend Sean Marley, sent me a note today — a message from the distant past.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2GMC1BnQle6WRstUGUs3mc]

She was looking through some of Sean’s diaries and wanted to share something he wrote about me 20 years ago:

“Bill is turning 20. He is such a fantastic human being. He feels so much and cares about the world and its goings on.”

It’s weird to see. One reason is that I tend to remember the more fucked-up part of me as a 20-year-old. The other is that seeing his words, so many years after he died, is kind of haunting. Sadly, I sometimes have trouble remembering what his voice sounded like.

Thanks for showing me that, Joy. It meant a lot.

I knew Sean kept diaries. I remember watching him write in them as The Cure, T-Rex or Riot (not Quiet Riot) played in the background. I never asked him what he was writing about, though sometimes he told me anyway.

A part of me badly wants to see those diaries. I want to see what was really going through his mind. Not to write about it. I’m sure there’s stuff in there he wouldn’t want to share with the outside world if he were here. Most people keep diaries for themselves. I’m an anomaly.

But another part of me is scared to death of what I might find. I’m not worried about what’s in there about me. To be honest, I don’t know what about it scares me. Maybe it’s just the idea of diving back into the past with someone you can’t interact with anymore.

It’s all a moot point, in any event.

Those notebooks don’t belong to me, and some stories probably aren’t meant to be told.

Consider this a case of me talking to myself, left to my obsessive thoughts.

If you have a best friend — I’m sure you all do — just be there for them. Listen to what’s on their mind, no matter how tired you are. Let your friend know he-she is loved.

If that friend has deep troubles, you may not be able to change the outcome.

But you’ll know you did your best and you’ll know what was on their mind.

And, perhaps, you won’t sit around years later  wondering what that friend was writing in his-her diaries as the clock started running to run out.

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Who Was Joe “Zippo” Kelley?

I’ve written about how Joe Kelley and I were friends in college and how I dropped out of site as he was tearing up the Boston punk scene. But I don’t think I’ve given you enough of a picture of who he was.

To help me do that, I reached out to some friends. I’m especially happy that I got two members of Pop Gun to share some memories, because their music was part of that wider array of hard rock I depended on to maintain my sanity back in the day.

First, some mood music in the form of vintage Neighborhoods, one of Boston’s great bands, who will play Saturday’s benefit show for Joe:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqLjLSbuPMk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

Now for some memories:

Greg Walsh, drummer for Pop Gun and Zippo Raid, who once worked with the author in a dingy little weekly newspaper office in Marblehead:

“When Zippo Raid first started out I was studying a lot of the drummers we played with because I really needed to get up to speed – so to speak – with punk rock drumming. I was seeing what worked and didn’t work – and what I noticed was a lot of bands did breakdowns where they’d be playing fast and then suddenly cut the tempo in half – it was like pushing moshers off a cliff and they gladly went along for the ride. 

“So I begged Joe to find some spots in our songs for breakdowns, but anything we tried sounded forced and honestly kind of trite, and we took pride in not doing punk rock “by the numbers.”

“Then one day Joe came to rehearsal and said he wrote a song with breakdowns in it – called “Work.” But we always referred to it as “The Breakdown Song.”

“I have a recording of that rehearsal where he says he wrote that song for me. Probably just to shut me up, but the sentiment was still there.”

Harry Zarkades, singer and bassist for Pop Gun:
“Joe Kelley, when I first met him, was a DJ at WMWM Salem State College Radio 91.7 FM when Pop Gun was in it’s hey day. Well, if we ever had one.
“Anyhow, we used to goof around and play a version of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” for kicks (a song which we all secretly like but didn’t actually fit our musical motif). Se we decide to play it live in the studio at WMWM when we’re in there one day, and Joe, with his terrific sense of humor, decides to get revenge on us for playing it on his show. So we play about 10 Pop Gun songs and then, for a less than Grand Finale, we break into Cat Scratch. Joe is miffed, amused, but quickly acts. At the end of our show he tees up the actual Ted Nugent live recording of Cat Scratch complete with stadium crowd noise which he blares into the studio as we finish our tune.
“We were totally confused, but eventually got the joke. Joe was sitting in the booth very pleased with himself. The guy had a great sense of humor, like I said.
“I miss that most about him.”
Stu Ginsburg, owner, Platorum Entertainment, one of the planners for this Saturday’s benefit show:

“His first appearance  on WMWM was when he came back to school and found the radio station during my show. He rang the buzzer and asked me if I was f—ing his girlfriend, then he thought it was cool anad came back wth me a few times and became a DJ and so on.

“Prior to WMWM, he and his girlfriend were going to many Grateful Dead shows and other hippy events. Joe never played gutair at that time, but WMWM changed him into Joe Zippo. He was a rightous dude. I miss him.”

If anyone else wants to share a story, I’ll keep adding to this post.

In the meantime, be sure to attend the show Saturday night. Details here:

Earlier in the day there will be a memorial service. Details here:

Friends and family are welcome to the religious interment of Joseph Kelley Jr. A time for quiet prayer and meditation. We hope you can attend.

Saturday, January 15 · 12:00pm – 3:00pm

Grave side service with Rev. Msgr. Stanislaw Parfienczyk
Saturday at noon
57 Orne Street
Salem, MA 01970
plot #1198

Thanks to all those who helped me put this post together.

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From Confusion to Wisdom

I’ve crashed many times while blasting down the road of life. The car is in one piece now and I’ve learned to throttle back some. And when I hear the following words of wisdom, I KNOW it’s the truth:

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agn4y-M1rjA&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

ACCEPTANCE

?”Holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill someone else.” – Matt Baldwin, Snow Rising (thanks, Cheryl Snapp Conner, for pointing this one out.

“People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.” – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers

“The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.” – Warren Bennis

FAITH

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” – Helen Keller

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.” – Marian Wright Edelman

“Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.” – Edith Hamilton

“Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

FEAR

“Hate is a disease. It is fear’s messenger and it makes us do terrible things in a shadow of our better selves, of what we could be.” – Colin Farrell

“The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief.” – William Shakespeare

“Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear.” – Cheri Huber

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.” – Swedish proverb

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

FORGIVENESS

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” – Robert Frost

“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.” – John F. Kennedy

“In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7. Well, I want you all to know that I’m keeping a chart.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake

ADDICTION

“A grateful heart doesn’t eat.” — Over-eaters Anonymous saying.

“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.” — George Carlin

“when you can’t climb your way out of such a hole, you tend to crouch down and call it home…”
— Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)

“What’s worse? Being strung out or being fat?” — Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star) 

“When You’ve lost it all….thats when you realize that Life is Beautiful.”
— Nikki Sixx

“If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.” -AA saying

“I spent a lifetime in hell and it only took me twelve steps to get to heaven.” -AA saying

MENTAL ILLNESS

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness” -Richard Carlson

“Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.”
– Bill Clinton“My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves” – Socrates

“The main symptom of a psychiatric case is that the person is perfectly unaware that he is a psychiatric case.” – Oleg P. Shchepin in the New York Times, Nov 1988.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.” – Carl Jung
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Thank You, Joy

This post is about something I should have told someone 14 years ago — a long overdue nod of appreciation.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:13SlzLb33cggKzAeeLONts]

When someone commits suicide, the guilt-stricken survivors obsess about why they didn’t catch on to their loved one’s depression sooner so they could have helped.

That was me after my friend Sean Marley died. I spent the next decade-plus thinking about it. Really, I was just thinking about myself. That’s what addicts do. No matter who we think about, it’s all about us in the end. I had a very long self-pity party.

When we do this, we easily forget that there was someone spending day and night with the depressed soul, trying everything to save him. When the battle is lost, we smother that person and swear to be there for them always. Then we move on and forget that promise. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because nobody benefits from being smothered.

Sean’s wife, Joy, put everything she had into helping him.

And I never thanked her for it.

She was there with him day and night, holding him through every agonizing moment. She did everything to keep his spirits up. It didn’t work in the end, but she did her best.

I first met Joy 19 years ago. Sean had just severed what I thought was a poisonous relationship, and when he told me he was seeing this girl Joy, my eyes rolled into the back of my head. Here we go, I thought: Another fucked-up pairing.

Me and Sean, summer of 1989

It was nothing of the sort.

From the moment I met her, Joy was true to her name. She always made you feel good about yourself and treated you like an old friend even if she didn’t really know you.

She married Sean in 1994, knowing he had a sickness brewing inside. It didn’t matter. Love won out. I was best man, though they could have done far better with someone else in that role.

I was so self-absorbed that day, obsessing about the toast the best man is supposed to give, that I forgot the glass of champagne. The room stared back at me, puzzled. It was more of a speech than a toast, and a bad one at that. 

I didn’t trick out their car with the “Just Married” stuff, either.

I was an ass.

Fast-forward to the present. Thankfully, Joy found someone else to love and remarried. She has three kids and you can tell how much love she pours into them.

Her parents knew what they were doing when they picked that name.

This post is my way of saying what I should have said in November of 1996.

Thank you, Joy.

I’ll never forget the sacrifices you made to get Sean through his pain.

If you, readers, know of anyone who lost a significant other to the illness of depression, take a few moments and thank them, too.

They were there when you couldn’t be.

Instead of feeling bad about that, just feel grateful.

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The Amityville Obsession

Part of my obsessive-compulsive behavior includes a study of the more morbid pieces of history. The Manson murders is one example. The Amityville murders is another. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the latter.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72rWAe0pUdQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

The match for the fire is a book I just read called “The Night The DeFeos Died” by Ric Osuna. The book goes a long way in crushing the bullshit hoax about the house being haunted. I watched “The Amityville Horror” as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. I’ve had an interest ever since. This book gets into the train wreck that was the DeFeo family. They were outwardly religious and close-knit. But the father was a rage-a-holic who apparently yelled a lot and beat his wife and kids, especially his oldest son Butch, who is now rotting in jail for the murders.

The book also reveals that the DeFeo family had mob connections. The toxic mix of dysfunction reached its climax Nov. 13, 1974. After a night of chaos in the house, Butch and his sister Dawn plotted to kill the abusive father and a mother they felt was an enabler.

Somewhere in the chaos, the story goes, Dawn killed their younger siblings. This apparently outraged Butch, who then blew her head off in anger. Investigators later found powder burns on Dawn’s nightgown, suggesting that she had indeed fired a rifle.

The only one who knows the real truth is Butch. But he has proven himself to be a serial liar, so the truth will remain in his head. My impression is that he got an unfair trial and that investigators covered up a lot of things in order to have a slam-dunk case. That’s certainly an argument Osuna makes in the book.

So why the obsession with this story? There are a few things worth noting:

–I don’t romanticize this stuff. The interest isn’t because of the brutal nature of the murders. I’ve seen the crime scene forensic photos for the DeFeo and Manson murders, and they made me sick to my stomach.

–It’s really part of my fascination with history.

Like it or not, this stuff is part of American history. The Manson story is a snapshot of everything that went wrong in the 1960s, where a counterculture born of good intentions — a craving for peace in Vietnam and at home — lost it’s way because there were no rules, no discipline and there was no sobriety. I agree with those who believe the promise of the 1960s died abruptly in the summer of 1969. I’m also fascinated because it shows how easily seemingly stable people can be brainwashed and controlled to the point where they would willingly heed orders to commit the worst of sins.

–The Amityville story is a case study of what happens when the head of a household abuses the rest of the family. Slap a kid around often enough and you just might turn him into the type of man who shoots heroin and plots the murder of some or all of his family.

It’s the whole cause-and-effect thing that keeps my obsession going.

My own experiences have given me an obsession with the key moments in a person’s life that determine if that person will turn to evil or come out of the adversity stronger and better.

I’m lucky because I’m a case study in the latter category. But I can’t help but feel bad for those who go the wrong way.

Some of the twists and turns are so random.

In the case of the Amityville murders, I don’t believe for a second that the house is haunted. Several families have lived there happily over the last 30 years. Sure, a couple of the future residents had bad things happen to them. But bad things happen to everyone.

You don’t need a haunted house to give your life ups and downs.

Sometimes, all it takes are the ghosts in your head.

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Sept. 11, 2001

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:

I’m getting on a plane and going to New York. CSO Magazine’s Security Standard event is Monday and Tuesday, and I’ll be there doing what I do best: Writing.

A few years ago I would have found a reason to stay home. Getting on a plane on the anniversary of 9-11? No way.

Today, nothing can keep me away.

In a twisted sort of way, I’m going to honor the dead by doing what they can’t do: Live.

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40: The New 20

A lot of people get depressed on their birthday. Not me. The fact that I turn 40 today is almost a freak of nature.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVXIK1xCRpY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my parents that the doctor’s were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. They tell me I was closing in on death more than once. I doubt it was ever that serious. But nevertheless, I’m still here.

When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.

When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And like I said, suicide was never an option.

I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back, and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.

I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. Michael. Sean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough and you’ll start assuming you’re next.

When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and implodes. I’ve been there.

I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.

So here I am at 40, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.

I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last five years.

I’ve learned to stop over-thinking and manage the OCD. When you learn to stop over-thinking, a lot of things that used to be daunting become a lot easier. You also find yourself in a lot of precious moments that were always there. But you didn’t notice them because you were sick with worry.

I notice them now, and I am Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve.

I have a career that I love.

I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day.

I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.

I have my 12-Step program and I’m not giving in to the worst of my addictions. There’s still the coffee and cigars, but the stuff that made my life unmanageable has been brought to heel.

Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.

So here I am at 40. I feel much younger than I did at 30.

I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.

And so I think WILL have a happy birthday.

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One of My Biggest Regrets

Yesterday I saw many old friends from my Eagle-Tribune days at the retirement send-off for legendary editor Cheryl Rock. It was a great afternoon. But one of the people I saw there brought back the powerful memory of one of the worst things I ever did.

I didn’t talk to Sally Gilman. I guess I felt too awkward and nervous. She didn’t say anything to me, either. She probably doesn’t remember me. But what I did to her was awful.

It was sometime in late 2000 or early 2001. I was the assistant editor of the paper’s New Hampshire edition and I reported to a manging editor who made my brand of control-freakism look like a minor, passing cold. I’ll keep his name out because I’m about to say some not-so-nice things about him.

I was warned about him when I was about to take the N.H. job. One editor said I would have to play good cop to this guy’s bad-cop style. That was very good advice that I didn’t take.

Instead, I gave in to my instinct to please my masters — this particular master, anyway. His attitude was that all the reporters were children who needed their ears slapped back on a regular basis, and he expected me to carry out his will. It was against my instincts, because I wanted to be known as a nice guy. But I pushed on. When he told me to take a reporter to the woodshed because that person wasn’t performing as he felt they should be, I did.

Sally was one of those reporters who was always in his sights. It was ridiculous, because she was older and wiser than we were. She had been covering New Hampshire for many years. She lived there. We should have just let her do her thing, because it was good enough.

But he wanted more. If an idea wasn’t something you could turn into a multi-story enterprise package with seven sources per story, then it was crap. Community journalism was a mark of laziness, apparently.

He was always on Sally to come into the North Andover, Mass. office to work more often. She resisted, because New Hampshire was where the action was. She lived there. She once noted that the New Hampshire plates on her car increased her credibility with sources, and she was right.

Still, it became my job to push her to come to the office. It seems absurd in this day and age, where you can easily work from anyplace that has a wi-fi connection. But even back then, e-mailing in a story was simple enough.

But we wanted the stories inputed directly into the newsroom’s Lotus Notes-based system. We felt we shouldn’t have to reformat copy on deadline. Perhaps we were the lazy ones.

One morning, Sally filed an incomplete story. I can’t remember exactly what the problem was. But the boss was pissed off about it, and he told me to give her a kick in the ass. Her husband was having some serious surgery that day and we both knew it. But he ordered and I got on the phone and gave her a talking to.

An hour or so later, Steve Lambert, the top editor, called me to his office. I went in there to find him, my direct boss, and editor Al White. Considering what I had done, they went pretty easy on me. There was no yelling. Steve just asked me what happened and I told him. The N.H. managing editor sat there with a very red face. It was always red, mind you. But it was particularly glaring in Steve’s windowless office.

It turns out that Sally had called to complain. She was really upset. How dare an editor call her early in the morning to give her a hard time about something trivial on a day when her husband’s life was hanging in the balance.

Steve agreed with her, as well he should have. But he was still calm about it. He told me I needed to ease up. He didn’t want reporters to see me as the newsroom ass-clown. I said I’d keep that in mind and left his office, feeling like I had just been simultaneously stabbed in the side of the head and slammed in the gut with a brick.

Ten-plus years later, the way I treated her is one of my biggest regrets.

Some could try to absolve me of fault because I was carrying out orders. But the truth is that I could have stood up to this managing editor and told him that was not the day to push this poor woman.

I could have been the good cop, smoothing out the rough feelings reporters were having over his management style. It would have been insubordination on my part, but it would have been the right thing to do. Instead, I was just another bad cop, no better than he was.

I badly wanted to tell Sally I was sorry yesterday. But I couldn’t get up the courage to approach her.

I’m going to find her phone number and let her know how sorry I am.

One more note about that managing editor: I eventually reached my breaking point with him and asked for a transfer. Al sent me back to the night editor’s chair. Al was always a hard guy to read, but I think he knew I was a pile of rubble at that point, so I thank him for giving me that second chance.

One night after I returned to that position, I was asked to help the New Hampshire desk process election results from the various towns we covered. Around 4 a.m., the managing editor started to go into a diabetic shock. Another reporter called his wife and I hit the streets in search of a store that was open so I could get him some orange juice.

He later recovered enough to drive home. I stuck around and finished his work. It wasn’t hard, because I’d been left to finish his work many times.

I’m not proud of this, but there were moments after that where I would think about that orange juice I got him and regretted doing so. Maybe, I thought in my delusional mind, I could have saved reporters a lot of future suffering. Fortunately, I’m not the kind of guy who would do such a thing. If someone’s life is in danger, you help them. Pure and simple. That I had those thoughts still fills me with shame.

He’s still in the business, but I have no interest in connecting with him. The feeling is mutual, I’m sure.

In hindsight, that incident with Sally was a classic case of OCD run wild. Back then the condition hadn’t yet been diagnosed, but it was there, eating away at my brain, making me do bad things.

I don’t think I can ever apologize enough for some of the things I did in that job.

I was really coming undone at that point, but I hadn’t yet hit the series of bottoms I had to reach before I realized I needed help.

Today, the lessons are clear to me:

–Treat everyone as you wish to be treated yourself because that’s what God wants and it’s right.

–People who report to you will always do more for you if you skip the hard-ass bit and be more caring and nurturing.

–Finally, being a people-pleaser is just plain stupid, whether it’s a family member, a friend or a boss. People-Pleasing never works. You can never make everyone happy.

When you try, you do really stupid things.

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The Perils of Service, Part 2

Volunteering can be a bitch, especially when you forget who you’re there to help.

Mood music for this post: “My Way” by Limp Bizkit:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ8Qi86i82s&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Once a month, I spend a couple hours on a Saturday volunteering in the food pantry run by our church. It can be a frustrating endeavor.

Part of the frustration is my own fault. I should be there more often, but I’m only there once a month because I’m spread so thin these days between family, work and sponsoring people in my 12-Step program.

A lot of new people are working the pantry these days. They’re not that new, mind you. They just seem new to me because I’m not there enough to be used to them. They’re good folks, but in my head — when the rush of people come in for their food — I pick apart how they do things. I’ll get annoyed if they try to process multiple orders at once because the bags of food get mixed up and chaos ensues. One guy is very serious and doesn’t laugh at my jokes.

The Saturday crew is always bitching about the Tuesday crew leaving a mess. The Tuesday crew is always bitching about the Saturday crew for the same reason.

And there I am, on my own perch, picking apart how everyone does things because I want everyone to do it my way. I am a control freak, after all. Not that I have a right to be.

These people are there every Tuesday and Saturday. I show up once a month.

If anything, they should be annoyed by me, and they probably are.

Clashing egos is pretty common among those who do service. On the recovering addict side, everyone in the room suffers from compulsive behavior. People like us usually have bloated egos. Mine is especially bloated. This makes me an asshole at times.

But I press on and do what I need to do, and things always work out.

The friction that’s always present among the volunteers at the start of a shift always eases off and we’re all getting along midway through. You can pick on how different people do things, but they’re all giving up their time to make something work.

And once I get out of my own way, things start to fall into place.

At some point in the shift, it hits me. The people in line are there because they can’t afford groceries. They’re down on their luck and doing the best they can.

And when you hand them the bags of donated food, they are GRATEFUL.

And they help me as much as I help them. When I see people who need to live on donated food standing tall, helping each other carry bags to their cars, picking up food for someone who may live at the other end of town from where they live, enjoying time with the children they have in tow, they bring me back to Earth and remind me what life’s all about.

The other volunteers — the ones who are there practically every week while I just breeze in once a month — help me too.

When I see how dedicated they are, it makes me work harder at being a better man.