Upon telling a friend yesterday that I was headed to “the land of sin” for a security conference, he said, “Oh, so it’s in Lynn, then?” It’s actually Las Vegas I was referring to, and I’m on my way.
I’ll be doing a ton of writing for the security site I work for and I want to stay focused. So for the next few days, I’m taking a break from blogging here. I’ll still run older posts in the social networking realm as needed.
Be back soon. Meantime, I hope you’re all having an outstanding summer.
It’s odd for an OCD case, but I don’t practice before doing the public speaking that has increasingly become part of my job. Crazy, you say? Perhaps. But hear me out.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/8UDYVFgE5D0
My preparations for a speaking event — even if it was just moderating a panel, which is mostly what I’ve done of late — used to look a lot like the preparations I’d engage in for a writing assignment:
When I started working as a reporter and editor, I treated each story like an architectural design. I would lose myself in the same story for hours and hours, moving words, sentences and paragraphs around like pieces on a chess board.
It served a purpose, but I wasted so much time doing it this way, mainly because I feared imperfection so much that I was terrified to let a story go to the other editors until it was flawless. The stupidity there is that no story is ever flawless. You could rework a story for days whether it needed the work or not.
In more recent years I’ve been known to draw up elaborate blueprints for stories, especially series work. One former colleague at TechTarget once told me I was the most organized writer he had ever seen. If he could see me now, he’d be either amused or horrified.
Somewhere in the last four years, I stopped making blueprints for story series and I even stopped keeping a daily list of stories in progress. I’ve become more spontaneous in my writing. I pound the keyboard until everything is out of my head. Then, without giving it a second look, I send it straight to the editors.
I’ve adopted a similar approach with speaking.
Before giving a presentation, I would write a script and cut it up into bite-sized pieces, like flash cards. I’d obsess over every point I wanted to touch on and rewrite the notes. Then I’d get out there, fumble with my notes — knocking them out of order — and my frayed nerves would send me to oblivion.
Between 2006 and 2009 I did a lot of podcasts and I’d make the same mistakes because of over-preparing.
I think my earlier affinity for over-planning — definitely one of my OCD quirks — goes back to childhood. I was a prolific drawer, always working massive amounts of detail onto a page. I think I started doing it because in a world full of chaos (vicious childhood illnesses, parents divorcing, etc.) the page was a world I could control. And control it I did.
I would rework things over and over again, just like the stereotypical OCD case checking doorknobs multiple times to make sure the door is locked.
As a teenager still reeling from his brother’s death, my drawings took a decidedly more violent turn. I started sketching people dead on the ground with knives protruding from various body parts. A teacher at the Paul Revere School caught me one day and said, “If you are ever assaulted, you will never draw stuff like this again.” I think she was worried that I’d be the one to start assaulting people. I did, verbally.
In high school I went to a vocational school and studied drafting and design for three years. I excelled at it, and loved the order and attention to detail the work required. I also loved the drafting tables we used, which were high enough that you could draw while standing. Being the fidgety type, standing helped me focus much better.
Somewhere in my senior year of high school, I decided I wanted to write instead. My architectural skills served me well in this regard, giving me the attention to detail needed for good writing. My writing still sucked, mind you. I was still too young and inexperienced to know what I was doing.
All through college I pursued writing, specifically journalism, and I was in a band where I wrote all the lyrics. I’ve torn my father’s warehouse apart looking for the notebooks I wrote them in, to no avail.
Also lost in those old notebooks are notes I would draw up for use in a public speaking class and for the student government meetings (I was in the student government for a couple years while at North Shore Community College).
I had to do a lot of talking in front of people back then, and the worse my OCD got — and the more I over-prepared — the worse things would go.
Sometime in 2006, a miraculous accident showed me that I didn’t have to put myself through such torture before a talk.
I was giving a talk about what my then-employer was all about and I had a detailed PowerPoint presentation that failed to work come showtime. Actually, the laptop itself was frozen. I had no choice but to do it off the cuff.
That’s when I realized I was more at ease without a script. It was the first epiphany I had that I could keep my OCD in better check and perform better without all the compulsive note-taking and hours practicing.
As I got a firmer grip on the OCD between 2006 and 2009, I started to build the more spontaneous approach into other aspects of my life, including the writing.
It’s been much better this way. That said, I’m not suggesting that you go into whatever you do with zero preparation. You have to sit down and think to form the frame of your story or talk. The key is to keep from over-preparing.
I explained my current writing approach in a two-part series I co-wrote with my wife, Erin. Part one is here. Part two is here.
Here’s how I roll on the speaking side:
–An organization calls and asks me to moderate a panel or give a solo presentation. I say sure, hang up the phone and promptly forget until a reminder email arrives a couple weeks before the event.
–I go outside and pace around for about 10 minutes, carving the basics of the presentation in my head.
–I go back to my desk and dump those basics into a PowerPoint file.
–Since humor will always get me through an event, I look for funny cartoons and memes to put in slides. In doing so, I get relaxed and the subject matter gets clearer.
–Then I fall back on my writing. I go to articles and blog posts I’ve written on the subject matter and cut and paste sections into slides. Come showtime, these will remind me what I wrote about, and I can then go off the cuff, sharing conversations I’ve had with the professionals who work the issues I’m there to discuss.
–I limit the slides to about 15, to force myself to be more conversational and less of a lecturer.
–I submit the PowerPoint, make an Outlook calendar reminder of the day and time, and forget about it again.
–On the drive to the event, I don’t go over the talking points. Instead, I play loud music and let my mind go.
It’s not the perfect mix. But it works for me a lot better than the days when I would make a bunch of flashcards and run through the talk endlessly in my head.
The front office at my kids’ school is mad at me and another parent for complaining about something on the school’s Facebook page. I don’t think they saw yesterday’s post in this blog. That would make them angrier still.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/RVFgxkL_vuk
I’ll admit I was angry when my wife told me the principal and office administrator got after her about my behavior. It’s not like I jumped up and down on Facebook yelling obscenities and calling people names. I simply agreed with the other parent’s dismay over a specific matter of the school not following up with parents on a school closing next week. I think I was more ticked off that they gave Erin trouble, because she did nothing wrong.
I make no apologies, because, as I said yesterday, we practically break the bank every month paying the tuition to send our kids there. In essence, we parents are the customer. The customer is not always right, contrary to popular belief. But school administrators should respond to them as if they were, unless the parent is way out of line, which we weren’t.
On to the main point of this post.
There’s a lesson here for everyone, whether you’re dealing with difficult people at your kids’ school, in your workplace or on your street. Anger should never blind us to what’s truly important.
Some are probably asking why we would continue to go to a church and send our kids to a parochial school where there’s dysfunction. My answer is simple:
–For me, going to church is about getting closer to God. Everything else is second fiddle.
–Our children’s education is far more important than squabbles with parents and administrators, though it obviously becomes a problem if the latter has a negative effect on the former.
–This is our home, and I don’t believe in pulling up stakes and leaving because of dysfunction in the institution. I’d rather stick around and try to be part of the solution. That’s not always possible and sometimes it’s best to leave. But I don’t see this as an example of that.
–If you leave and go to another community, you’ll find dysfunction there, too. Where there are humans, there is dysfunction. That’s life. It may not be fair, but no one ever promised life would be fair.
Since this is an issue within our parish family, I can’t help but bring my faith into the remainder of the post. If religion isn’t your bag, leave now.
This is Holy Week, where we remember the sacrifice Jesus made to give us all a shot at redemption. It’s incredibly easy to forget the core message when we get busy arguing with each other over matters that are more political than spiritual.
I officially became a Catholic at Easter of 2006. I was in a pretty dark place at the time, struggling with a binge eating habit that had me shot-gunning $40 worth of fast food on the drive from the office to the house every day. I was crazy with fear and anxiety, the result of OCD out of control. I was a depressed, disgusting mess inside, and it was slowly working its way to my outward appearance.
Finding my faith was a major step in bringing those demons to heel.
But it remains a struggle sometimes, especially when you have disagreements with people in the community. So I wrote up the following manifesto to help bring me back to the center. I’ve used it several times in this blog, but it bears frequent repeating.
These are the bullet points. Click on any of them to see the full explanation.
1. Don’t Succumb to “Happily-Ever-After” Syndrome.
3. What You Get is Only As Good As What You Put In
4. Don’t Let Politics Get in the Way
5. Plan to Fight the Good Fight to Your Dying Breath
Keeping my head and heart on those personal items is much more important than besting church and school officials in an argument.
And so I move on.
Erin and I have been busy on the planning of a relaunched OCD DIARIES, and I thought I’d give a quick update…
–Andy Robinson, creator of the banner atop this page, is working on a new one we’ve designed; something that fits the broader theme of the blog.
–We’ve chosen the overall look and widgets and have started building. We’re going for something clean and simple.
–I’ve found some some cool music plug-ins that will free me of relying on Youtube for the mood music. My first choice is to latch my Spotify library into the blog, much like you see it integrated into Facebook now. The good news is that such a plug-in exists. Whether it works remains to be seen.
–We’re making it easier to find content by topic by creating some new sections. After migrating all the older posts from here to the new platform, this will be the toughest part, because we’ll have to re-tag everything.
–We have the new domain up and running.
When will it launch? When it’s ready. 😉
For those new to the party, go here for the full explainer.
I’d like to think those who dislike Obama simply have differences with him over economic and social policy. I’d like to think that in 2012, people don’t hate based on skin color.
Then I see something like this:
The children continue to let their guard down and say the most interesting things, apparently unaware — despite this being one of several installments in a series — that I’m lurking nearby, writing it all down.
Mood music:
“All this time I thought you wrote that song,” Sean, after hearing John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” on the radio. I frequently call both kids beautiful boy, much to their chagrin.
“John Lennon was shot to death by a fan? What kind of moron does that?” Duncan, after I told him about the former Beatle’s sad end.
“Are you called that because you pick corn in the winter?” Duncan, asking his pediatrician, Dr. Winterkorn, about her name.
“I’d rather dress up in red, like Darth Maul.” Sean, on why he doesn’t want to wear green to school for St. Patrick’s day.
Duncan: “Why do they call it a ballroom? I don’t see any balls in this room.”
What Sean said: “Duncan tried to break my breast bone!” What really happened: Duncan pointed toward Sean’s chest during an argument.
“Duncan bunny!” Sean’s latest pet name for Duncan. Duncan likes it as much as he liked being called cupcake, which is to say he didn’t like it at all.
“The food is better and they don’t tuck in their shirts.” Sean, explaining why he chose a different Boy Scout troop from the one all his friends went to.
Observation: If Duncan is going to lie and tell us he brushed his teeth, he probably shouldn’t leave a dry tooth brush behind as evidence that he lied.
“You need a new cell phone so you can get a husband.” Sean’s friend Nick, explaining to his single Mom why she should get an iPhone.
“They can be real idiots sometimes.” Duncan, telling a friend what he thinks of his parents’ decision to ban him and Sean from watching Mad TV. He didn’t realize that I was right behind him.
“Hahahaha! Stupid Uncle Bill.” Madison, the 3-year-old niece, after I called her stink-cake for the umpteenth time.
“Can I stab myself in the eyes now?” Sean, displeased that his cousin Madison is making him watch Strawberry Shortcake.
“All women are the enemy.” Sam Dalton, Duncan’s classmate, overheard at a birthday party. His indictment of females everywhere does not include Gabby, a classmate he and Duncan have had a crush on since kindergarten.
“They both like me, you know.” Gabby, telling me in a matter-of-fact tone that San and Duncan adore her.
Other posts in this series:
Things My Kids Say Part 1 http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/10/21/things-my-kids-say/
Stuff My Kids Say, Part 2 http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/10/26/stuff-my-kids-say-part-2/
Things Kids Say, Part 3 http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/12/13/things-kids-say-part-3/
Stuff My Kids (and Niece) Say, Part 4 http://www.theocddiaries.com/2011/02/03/stuff-my-kids-and-niece-say-part-4/
Stuff My Kids (and Their Friends) Say, Part 5 http://www.theocddiaries.com/2011/04/18/stuff-my-kids-and-their-friends-say-part-5/
More Kid Wisdom http://www.theocddiaries.com/2011/05/01/more-kid-wisdom/
The Wit And Wisdom Of Duncan Brenner http://www.theocddiaries.com/2011/09/15/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-duncan-brenner/
Things Kids Say, February Vacation Edition http://www.theocddiaries.com/2012/02/24/things-kids-say-february-vacation-edition/
This is one of many photos I took for a slideshow during the recent RSA Conference. For obvious reasons, I didn’t put it in the final slide deck. But this is a personal blog, so what the hell…
I actually liked this guy. He always had that smile on whenever I passed his booth. A smile like that is contagious.
The slideshow, for CSO, was of the more interesting scenes from the RSA exhibit floor. You can see the whole thing here.
As for running this shot, I doubt he would mind. He does, after all, where a diaper for a living.
The first day in San Francisco for RSA and BSidesSF is done, and I’m happy to report being a lot more comfortable in my sobriety than I’ve been at past conference gatherings.
Mood music:
Right after I got sober at the end of 2009, these networking events were difficult for me. A couple drinks used to loosen my nerves and bring me out of my shell, and it took a long time to learn how to do that without alcohol.
Tonight’s big gathering was at a place called The Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar, in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel. I got there early and left early, staying long enough to say hello to as many friends as I could find. I felt at ease and comfortable — significant progress for me.
I might have stayed longer, but a friend needed help getting back to his hotel, so I flagged down a cab and got him back to his room. I was glad I had the mental clarity to do that for him.
Folks in the security community are generally aware of my sobriety at this point, so I didn’t have to worry about friends offering me drinks like last year and the year before. When your skin doesn’t fit right, acts of kindness and friendship — offering a drink, for example — strike you as menacing. Newly sober people are the most uptight individuals on the planet.
I’m thankful to be getting past that stage. Now I can focus on improving other things about myself. But first thing’s first — there’s a conference to cover.
Good night.
In the early 1990s, Patti Tate, sister of Sharon Tate, was on a public tirade against Guns N Roses frontman Axl Rose for going onstage every night wearing a Charles Manson T-Shirt. Around the same time, I had my own Manson shirt, worn regularly to freak people out.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/RgfILrd8HjE
Here’s Axl in his shirt:
Here’s me in my shirt:
The picture was taken 20 years ago — 1992 — when I was in a band with the two guys to my right. At the time I was all about shocking people. Shocking people has always been a good way to change the subject — especially when the subject is why you’re suck a fuck up. Of course, wearing the shirt proved I was just that.
I’m not trying to beat myself over this. That’s who I was back then. Plain and simple. We’re all in constant evolution and we go through our good and bad phases.
But my stupidity of the time is hitting me clearer than ever because I just finished reading “Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice,” written by Tate family friend Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, niece of Sharon Tate.
Patti Tate picked up the crusade against the Manson killers and work as a victim’s advocate when her mom, Doris, passed away in 1992. In the book, she recalls seeing Axl in a video on MTV, sporting the infamous T-shirt. Here was a guy reaching millions of kids every day, essentially telling them that Manson was cool, a guy to look up to. I don’t think Axl really believed that. I think he was just going for the shock like me. I also think he covered the Manson song “Look At Your Game” because he simply liked the song and separated it from Manson’s crimes.
But like me, he was barking up the wrong tree.
In the final analysis, I don’t think it’s really possible to separate Manson the murder mastermind from Manson the musician. The music and the murders were geared toward the same cause — starting Helter Skelter, a race war Manson believed was imminent. Manson believed the black man would win the war and be unable to hold the reigns of power afterwards. Then, he and his family would come out of hiding in the desert and take control.
A ridiculous notion to be sure. But that’s what he believed, and at least nine people were brutally murdered over it, including Patti’s sister.
I regret wearing that T-shirt. I’m glad I lost it along the way.
Early last month I wrote about Jessica Cormier, a young woman who worked for my father and stepmother and was murdered Jan. 3 not long after leaving Brenner’s for the day.
Mood music:
Last night I got a message that a new Facebook page has been set up in her honor called “Justice for Jessica Cormier.”
Pages like this are good for keeping caught up on investigations and other developments. It’s also a good place for people to keep coming and talking about the person they cared about.
In this case, it could be a good place for friends and family of Jessica to grieve together and help each other reach some level of equilibrium. So if you knew her, go there and help build the community.
I didn’t really know Jessica Cormier. I met her a couple times in passing. But to my father and stepmom, she was important.
She helped out a couple times at my parents’ condo, where my father has been recovering from a stroke. My stepmom, Diane, always spoke glowingly of Jessica, and she’s taking this loss pretty hard.
I hope her parents find peace and solace in knowing that their daughter is now an angel in Heaven, impervious to anyone who would try to hurt her again.
This is one of those events where you stop and wonder why God lets these things happen. I used to ask myself about that a lot.
When my brother died, when my parents divorced, when my friend Sean Marley committed suicide. In the aftermath of those events, I wasn’t on speaking terms with God. At other points in my life, like my struggle to contain OCD and addictive behavior, I was talking to God, but nothing coming from my mouth was making much sense. I was rattling off prayers designed to make my life safer and more comfortable.
My relationship with God has gone through changes in recent years. I no longer pray for the safety of everyone I know. I just pray we’ll all have the wisdom to live our lives the way we’re supposed to for whatever length of time we’re going to be around. I’ve come to see life’s body blows not as a punishment but as situations we’re supposed to work through to come out stronger.
There’s something else I believe: The bad things we go through — and we all go through the bad — is a test. I don’t think certain things are deliberately planned out, like a natural disaster, the death of a loved one or the break-up of a relationship. But I do think we’re tasked with coming out of these things as better people who can come through when others need our help later on. That’s what Mister Rogers was talking about right after 9-11 when he suggested children always watch for the helpers in the face of disaster.
I think the helpers will come out of the woodwork to guide Jessica’s family through this. It won’t be easy. But they’ll be there.
Mentioning this stuff may not help. But just in case it does, I took to the keyboard.
My thoughts and prayers will remain with the Cormier family. If you could keep them in your thoughts and prayers as well, that’d be great.
