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We Were Cool Kids

I’m not sure how it started. I guess I was just looking for some old background music while I worked. Next thing you know, I’m listening to this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMwY66HdLk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

That’s right. Kix.

Those of you who are familiar with this band will think of songs like “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and “Blow My Fuse.” Those came off the one platinum album they were able to muster in the late 1980s. Once they went platinum, I started to lose interest.

Here’s the thing: When you’re a metal-head outcast like I was (or aspired to be, anyway), you cling to the bands few people know about. It makes you feel like you’re part of a secret society where the rest of the more popular kids don’t belong. I makes you feel COOL.

I have Sean Marley and Dan Waters to blame for this mindset. They always pushed the more obscure bands on me, and when I’d express my excitement over the latest album from Motley Crue or Def Leppard, both would look at me like parents who just caught their kid setting fire to the dining room furniture. Sean turned me on to Motley Crue, too, but once the “Theater of Pain” album came out he was all done with them.

I remember when Motley’s “Dr. Feelgood” album came out. I wanted Sean to like it so badly. I kept telling him it was a return to the band’s roots. I brought the cassette to his house and we sat there listening carefully to each track. He seemed to like what he was hearing.

Then, somewhere in the middle of the song “Sticky Sweet” he got a pained look in his eyes, like he was about to pass gas. He looked at me and lamented: “Man, I hate Vince’s singing now. It’s awful.”

I was crushed. I had failed to lure him back from the dark side.

Since I was always trying to be more like him, I dove head first into the pile of cassettes he was collecting: Ministry’s “Land of Rape and Honey,” Nine Inch Nails, which was still an underground act at that point, and Skinny Puppy. Sean and Dan were pathetically in love with Skinny Puppy. It was all they’d talk about. I didn’t quite understand that one. I still get bored if Skinny Puppy is playing.

But Kix. There was a band I could sink my teeth into. Before the “Blow My Fuse” album made them somewhat famous, they were releasing killer albums like “Midnight Dynamite,” “Cool Kids” and their 1981 self-titled album.

Sure, some of their music veered dangerously close to bubble-gum pop, but they were obscure. They were therefore mine. Sean was nuts about Kix, and it rubbed off on me in a big way.

After the “Blow My Fuse” album, I pretty much forgot about them. This week was the first time I listened to them in more than 20 years.

And I haven’t been able to stop.

Am I being pathetically nostalgic? Perhaps. But I had forgotten how good their double-barreled, layered guitar sound was.

Sean turned me on to other bands that people knew of, but not nearly as well as bands like Kiss or Led Zeppelin.

One band was Riot. Not Quiet Riot. They are (or were) two separate bands.

The other was Thin Lizzy. I never lost my love affair with that band, and I still listen to them all the time. 

My kids have even gotten hooked on Thin Lizzy. When we’re in the car, Sean (we named him for Sean Marley) always asks me to put “Jailbreak” on. Not bad for an almost 10-year-old. Duncan always sways his head back and forth in approval.

The man my oldest son got his name from would be proud of me for pulling that one off.

Let’s see if he takes a liking to Kix.

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The OCD Fidget, Caught on Video

I went back and forth with myself on whether I should do this. Sure, I’ve made this blog about exposing my quirks so the masses can get a better understanding of disorders like OCD. But did I really want to show a video of me showing the signs in a work setting?

Well, yeah. Not because I want you to see me as a freak or feel sorry for me, but because there’s something for you to learn in all this.

http://youtu.be/VwMUvMJnNcQ

I recently wrote about some of these quirks, most notably my need to put the feet up on the desk when I work. It keeps me still. When I sit like a normal person my legs start to bounce up and down as if I had a couple bass drum pedals strapped on. The feet on the desk started with a crippling back problem several years ago. I found that was the only way I could get comfortable. The back pain is long gone, but I still can’t seem to sit normally. In work meetings it would obviously be rude of me to put my feet on the table, so I sit with the feet on the ground.

I’ve also written about the windmill hands. Those who know me well have seen it at one time or another, usually when I’m sitting at a desk engaged in a project. My face gets slightly contorted and I start shaking my hands around like they’re on fire.

I call it my Windmill Hand Syndrome.

When I’m doing it, I don’t realize it, though I just noticed myself doing it just now. It tends to happen when I’m sketching or writing. Sometimes it happens when I’m editing.

So in the following video, recorded when I participated in a panel discussion at last month’s RSA security conference in San Francisco, the stuff I’ve written about is on full display. I tug at my shirt a lot. My head bounces back and forth. I have to shift positions after a few minutes.

If you were there, you probably didn’t notice it, and when it was my turn to speak, the words came out in a coherent fashion, so it’s all good, really.

Usually when I do a speaking gig I stand up and pace around a bit so the fidgeting doesn’t happen. I simply feel more in control when I’m in motion.

At the Fortinet event I was sitting in a chair that didn’t allow for putting the feet up. Doing so in front of an audience would be rude, anyway. I also spent a lot of time being quiet as other panelists made their points. When that happens, the itch starts, then the fidgeting. It’s the same when I’m in a long business meeting. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not because I think someone is saying something stupid or blathering on for too long. It’s simply my inability to sit perfectly still for more than a couple minutes.

I have no complaints. If looking like a restless knucklehead is the worst that happens after some of the deeper, more painful OCD incidents I’ve lived through, it’s all gravy.

View this more as a scientific case study. Next time you see someone do weird things with their head, mouth, nose or limbs in public, you’ll be less inclined to stop and look in puzzlement.

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What’s This Freakin’ Blog Really About, Anyway?

I’ve gained several new readers in the past month. They have a lot of questions for me, which I like and appreciate. The most common question goes something like this: “What exactly is the focus of this blog?”

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4eVul99m50&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

It’s a fair question. Here’s the explanation. In this case the embedded links are important to seeing the whole picture. But don’t try to read them all at once. That would be insanity.

I call it THE OCD DIARIES because it’s primarily about my struggle to manage the disorder. If I have an OCD moment, I write about it. Where I’ve had success in gaining the upper hand, I share what I’ve learned so other sufferers can try it for themselves. Where appropriate, I laugh at what it makes me do. Sometimes, the result of an OCD incident is humor. But this isn’t a blog that tosses the acronym around to loosely describe every hyper moment of my existence. A lot of people say they have OCD to describe their Type-A personalities. This blog is about the real thing and why it’s so insidious.

It’s also about my upbringing in Revere, Mass., my childhood battle with Crohn’s Disease and how those things helped shape the manifestation of OCD within me. Every person’s struggle is shaped by where they’ve been in life. Historical perspective is important.

It’s also about the byproducts of my OCD, specifically addictive behavior and, even more specifically, my struggle with a binge-eating addiction. Part of that means telling you about how I brought it under control, which is why you see a lot about the 12 Steps of Recovery and Overeater’s Anonymous. I also tell you about all the stupid behaviors that goes with being an addict, including the secondary addictions that surface after you’ve put a lid on the main, most disruptive addiction.

It’s also about relationships, specifically with my wife and children, extended family members, colleagues, friends and the legions of nameless souls who have come and gone, helping me along the way. It’s about relationships that were destroyed along the way, and about broken relationships I’ve been able to repair in my recovery.

It’s about my Faith, which is all over the 12 Steps and is central to my ability to get honest with myself and get the help I needed. You’ll see a lot about my church community, the beauty as well as the warts, which we all have. 

It’s about daily learning experiences. Sometimes the mood of the writing is depressed and sometimes it’s joyful. It’s merely a reflection of all of us.

Finally, it’s a blog about metal music and why it’s so important in helping me with all of the above struggles. Most posts include musical selections that capture my emotions at the given moment.

Some posts will reassure you. Many will make you uncomfortable.

In the end, it’s just a collection of my experiences.

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How Does He Work In Those Conditions?

A friend and reader wants to know how I’m able to focus at work, given the OCD person’s tendency to be consumed by worry. Here’s my answer.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QR8c0Ns2Y&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Her specific question:

I know that at times, I have a hard time not letting one thought consume me. I pray, read etc. but sometimes that thought will be all consuming and (obsessive). Just curious how you plow through that moment.

I know where she’s coming from. Obsessive thinking used to paralyze me. Sometimes it still does. But oddly enough, it never got in the way of work. It got in the way of everything else.

Part of the reason is that my obsessive concerns were often about work. I used to be such a people-pleaser that I’d burn myself out over whatever job I had at the time. When I was away from the office, worries about work would consume me. I couldn’t just clear my head of it for the weekend and enjoy time off. My family suffered deeply because of that.

I’m much better now. When I’m not working, I’m not working. But sometimes, the OCD gets the better of me at work.

Last year, for example, I came into work itching to post two articles I wrote and did so even though my editor hadn’t had a chance to read them yet. In my head, it was safe to post them because I hadn’t heard back about any changes being necessary. Which meant I had the green light to push them live. So I did. Now, the editor was very cool-headed about it. He’s one of the nicest guys on the planet and doesn’t yell. But I could tell he wasn’t happy. Not realizing what I had done, he had started doing his own edits. I went back to my desk, feeling like a first-class asshole. I immediately sent him an e-mail apologizing profusely. He told me not to worry about it. But I worried about it anyway. I knew I had just allowed the OCD to run wild.

But the real question should be how I plow through the obsessive moment when I’m at home.

I’m not sure I have an answer. It’s complicated, because today I have years of therapy, coping skills and medication to draw from. But I still put up a wall from time to time.

One thing that’s pretty important is that somewhere along the way, I gained the ability to not let obsessive thinking paralyze me. Today I can still focus on other parts of my life even when something is on my mind. I can focus on my family and enjoy the moment. If I’m busy with an activity on the weekend, I don’t have work worries banging away at the back of my head like it used to be. Most of the time. Sometimes it does still happen. 

I honestly think the medication is responsible for easing that kind of obsessive thinking. It corrected the traffic flow in my brain.

That probably doesn’t answer my friend’s question. But I hope I came close.

The lesson being that years of working on the problem has made me better. But the things I obsessed over were different from what she probably obsesses over, and that makes a difference, just as different people need different kinds of therapy and medication for their unique issues.

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You of All People …

Recent weeks have pounded home the point that I’m seriously lacking in patience. With Duncan’s issues. With Erin’s workload. And more.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjto02iDNZA&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Four words repeatedly ring in my head: “You of all people.”

I of all people should be patient with Duncan. I was a problem child on a much deeper, darker magnitude than him. He’s a good boy. I should be a lot calmer when he has his meltdowns and gets uncooperative. Because I’ve been in his shoes. And yet I’m not patient with him at all.

Erin put up with a lot of grief when I was slowly melting down and needed to find treatment. She has stuck by me through the long, brutal years of therapy, religious conversion, addictive behavior and now she’s having to deal with me at the other extreme — throwing myself into insane levels of activity simply because I can now.

Yet I get impatient over her workload. Starting a freelance business from nothing is hard and sometimes crushing. I’m proud of what she’s accomplished. But the business is like a newborn child, in constant need of attention. Sometimes — more than sometimes, actually — I get jealous of the newborn.

I forget that at one point everything I did revolved around the needs of my job. She stuck it out through all the 12-hour night shifts that left me more than useless during the day. And that was with a toddler and newborn in the house.

She was patient as wave after wave of depression washed away my libido and made me a dark, brooding presence you had to walk past very carefully.

For the most part, I’ve since gotten my shit together, and now it’s time to be patient for them.

But I’m failing to do so. A lot.

You of all people.

I lost my temper with Duncan more than once this past week. We don’t hit our kids, but when we yell, we really yell. When I do, I feel terrible afterward, like the ultimate failure of a father.

When Erin has to focus in on her work or she’s too tired at the end of a long day for anything other than TV, I start to think like an ass (she doesn’t want to be with me. She no longer finds me attractive, etc.). I forget that she stuck with me for years as I failed to meet her needs. And when that point is driven home to me, I feel like the ultimate failure of a husband.

I know I’m not a failure on either of these counts, but when you let anger and uncertainty take over, you start thinking in absolutes. That’s always a bad idea.

So patience is clearly something I need to work on.

Maybe it’s no accident that my therapist asked me when I’ll start doing yoga during my appointment yesterday. I keep telling him I have no patience for yoga.

I’m starting to see the absurdity of my response, even though — truth be told — as I write this I still have no interest in yoga.

However I get there, massive amounts of patience will be required.

I should know how to muster the patience. 

You of all people.

But for whatever reason, I’m not there yet.

But after recent events, finding it has become a big priority.

Wish me luck.

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Side-Effects of Prozac

A friend asked if I’ve ever experienced any side-effects from the Prozac I take to help manage OCD.

An excellent question. Fear of side-effects kept me from trying the medication for years. Unfortunately, I did a lot of suffering in those years that could have been avoided.

I had heard all kinds of horror stories about side-effects: Weight gain, violent mood swings, acne. That stuff does happen, but it didn’t happen to me.

I have experienced bad mood swings right after dosage adjustments, but it doesn’t last long.

I’ve also learned that if the capsules leak and the medicine gets into your throat in the raw, the result is brutal heartburn.

Other than that, no lasting trouble.

That’s just my experience, of course, and the key to making this work is a multi-pronged attack on the mental illness with therapy, developing coping skills, etc.

The medication works wonders, but it doesn’t keep the mood swings and sometimes depressed feelings from developing. But in my opinion, it’s not supposed to do that.

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Coffee With My Therapist, Part 2

I paid another visit to my therapist this morning, and the discussion was a lot more productive than last week’s get-together. Last week wasn’t his fault. I went in there with a migraine.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lz6qLQ4xSM&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

We’re continuing to work on my struggle to balance the urge to do everything with the need to slow it down. We’re working on my need for more patience as Erin and I help Duncan with his issues. We covered all the bases.

I must be feeling better than last week, because I walked in with a large cup of coffee. He wants me off the coffee and I know it. I drink it during our meetings partly to needle him and mostly because an hour sitting on a couch is a good time to sip some caffeine.

He asked me — for the thousandth time — when I’m going to start doing yoga.

“Never,” I said. “I have absolutely no patience for yoga.”

“Just like you didn’t have the patience to stop binge eating, right?” he shot back with a grin.

It’s all good.

I bring all this up as a reminder to those who fear therapy that there’s nothing to worry about.

I don’t think people should be embarrassed about seeing a therapist. And yet people are embarrassed, like they’re being treated for the clap after a reckless night in a whorehouse. It’s the kind of shame that does you no good. Take it from a guy who has been there.

It’s a funny thing when I talk to people suffering from depression, addictionand other troubles of the mind. Folks seem more comfortable about the idea of pills than in seeing a therapist. After all, they’re just crazy “shrinks” in white coats  obsessed with how your childhood nightmares compromised your adult sex life, right?

I’ve been to many therapists in my life. I was sent to one at Children’s Hospital in Boston as a kid to talk through the emotions of being sick with Chron’s Disease all the time. That same therapist also tried to help me and my siblings process the bitter aftermath of our parents’ divorce in 1980.

As a teenager, I went to another therapist to discuss my brother’s death and my difficulty in getting along with my stepmother (a wonderful, wonderful woman who I love dearly, by the way. But as a kid I didn’t get along with her).

That guy was a piece of work. He had a thick French accent and wanted to know if I found my stepmother attractive. From the moment he asked that question, I was done with him, and spent the rest of the appointment being belligerent.

That put me off going to a therapist for a long time. I started going to one again in 2004, when I found I could no longer function in society without untangling the barbed wire in my head. But I hesitated for a couple years before pressing on.

The therapist I started going to specialized in dealing with disturbed children and teenagers. That was perfect, because in a lot of ways I was still a troubled kid.

She never told me what to do, never told me how I’m supposed to interpret my disorder against my past. She asked a lot of questions and had me do the work of sorting it out. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a good therapist does. They ask questions to get your brain churning, dredging up experiences that sat at the back of the mind like mud on the ocean floor. That’s how you begin to deal with how you got to the point of dysfunction.

She moved to Florida a year in and I started going to a fellow who worked from his house. I would explain my binge eating habits to him, specifically how I would down $30 worth of McDonald’s between work and home.

“You should stock your car with healthy foods like fruit, so if you’re hungry you can eat those things instead,” he told me.

That was the end of that. He didn’t get it. When an addict craves the junk, the healthy food around you doesn’t stand a chance. The compulsion is specifically toward eating the junk. He should have understood. He didn’t. Game over, dumb ass.

The therapist I see now is a God-send. He was the first therapist to help me understand the science behind mental illness and the way an inbalance in brain chemistry can mess with your thought traffic. He also provided me with quite an education on how anti-depressants work. Yes, friends, there’s a science to it. Certain drugs are designed to shore up the brain chemicals that, when depleted, lead to bi-polar behavior. Other meds are specifically geared toward anxiety control. In my case, I needed the drug that best addressed obsessive-compulsive behavior. For me, that meant Prozac. 

But I don’t necessarily heed his every suggestion. Take the yoga and coffee, for example.

He makes recommendations but I decide what I’m going to do.

Fortunately for me, I’ve gotten smart enough to take most of his advice.

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Why The Hell Does He Do That?

My friends and family will tell you I have an arsenal of odd quirks. There’s the windmill hands. There’s the pacing, a trait my oldest son has inherited. Then there’s the fidgeting problem.

Mood music (R.I.P. Mike Starr):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jX1KAKp78&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Ah, yes. I fidget a lot.

That’s why I tend to work with my feet up on the desk. It keeps me still. When I sit like a normal person my legs start to bounce up and down as if I had a couple bass drum pedals strapped on.

The feet on the desk started with a crippling back problem several years ago. I found that was the only way I could get comfortable. The back pain is long gone, but I still can’t seem to sit normally. In work meetings it would obviously be rude of me to put my feet on the table, so I sit with the feet on the ground.

Twenty minutes into the average meeting, I’m in hell. I have to hold back the overwhelming urge to tap my feet or tap the table with my fingers. If a meeting lasts more than an hour, sitting there starts to get physically painful.

I can never sit at the kitchen table for long, either. I tend to eat fast and then get up and do other things. Duncan has a similar problem.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I live with it well enough, and nobody hassles me over it.

But next time you walk by my desk and wonder why I’m sitting the way I do, that’s why.

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Tension Mounts, On With The Body Count

My editing background noise this afternoon is the first album from Body Count, the metal band with Ice-T on vocals. Some of it is uncomfortable to listen to. But, truth be told, I absolutely adored this album back in 1992.

Mood music:

Listening to it now, I shake my head at the liberal use of the N-word. I hate that word. But because an African American was singing it, the 22-year-old me thought it was ok; that the hateful nature of the word was somehow neutralized because it came from Ice-T’s mouth.

Back then I thought it was a big joke. In my drunken moments I would play the most violent songs on the album (“Cop Killer” and “There Goes the Neighborhood”) and cackle myself blue. My friends joined in. They weren’t bigots, either. They were just caught up in the nonsense, too.

But looking back, it was more than a childish joke. On a couple different levels.

First, there were real racial tensions in 1991 and 1992. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since a bystander recorded the police beating of Rodney King. In the spring of 1992, a jury let the officers off the hook and L.A. erupted into vicious rioting. That was scary stuff. Some people suggested a race war was at hand. The 1960s were probably much more dangerous in that regard, but for my generation that was the worst we had seen in our adult lives.

Second, my attraction to that album  illustrates what an angry person I was back then. I was just getting started with the band Skeptic Slang and all the lyrics I was writing were tirades against my lot in life.

I had yet to understand that life was never meant to be fair, and that there’s no such thing as happily ever after. I learned these things, eventually, thankfully,

My thinking back then was immature and depressed. If this album helped me through it and kept me sane so I could make it out the other end, so be it.

It’s a snapshot in time.

Nothing more, nothing less.

imgres

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The Agony of Awards

This will seem strange to some of you, maybe even ungrateful and insulting — but lately I’m looking at some of my old writing awards with disdain.

I should be proud of those awards. I earned them.

But every time I look at them, it’s another reminder of just how fucked up I used to be. We need reminders so we don’t repeat the same mistakes, but some memories are best left in the trash can.

One of those awards was for my coverage of the RSA security conference in 2005. When I think of just how brutal that experience was, the award becomes less of a prize.

At the last job, there was an annual award ceremony called the Bull’s-Eye Awards. They’d have a nice dinner and after the awards were handed out there would be karaoke, talent shows and the like.

I would practically lose my mind obsessing about the awards in the month leading up to the ceremony. It was a stupid thing to do, but that’s where my head was at five years ago.

I got my one or two awards each year, but the glow was always short lived. The pressure would be on to top it next year.

My perspective has changed.

I won’t lie: Getting awards today doesn’t suck. I have one in my office from my current job and I’m proud of it. I’m proud of it because I wasn’t trying to earn it. I was just doing my job and enjoying it. I wasn’t obsessed about pleasing my masters. I just did what felt right. That made winning it a lot sweeter.

But the bigger point is that I really don’t care about awards anymore. If I get them then great. But I’m never again working myself into a stupor over trying to win one.

It’s just not worth it for pieces of glass and plastic.

I recently thought of breaking the awards from the last job as a sort of exorcism. I decided that would be immature and foolish. In the end, whatever my emotions were back then, they gave me those awards because they liked my work. They didn’t have to do that.

And despite my frame of mind back then, the folks at TechTarget were always good to me. The job I’m in now is so much better, but part of it is my own change in attitude.

So the awards will stay where they are, on the side table of my work area at home.