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We Need Routines

Being the restless, boredom-shunning soul that I am, I always look forward to the next trip. But today I’m back to a more mundane routine, and I couldn’t be happier. As great as it is to bust out of the norm from time to time, we need our routines. Especially me.

Mood music for this post: “Back in The Saddle” by Aerosmith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDKxUt9UkmU

For starters, a routine is vital for someone in recovery from addiction and mental illness. I’m on a strict food plan to keep the urge to binge eat at bay. I also need to be in bed at a certain point, typically around 9 p.m., because I’m up and at ’em at around 4 the next morning.

When I travel, I’m up just as early but I’m almost always in bed much later the night before. There are friends to meet up with in whatever town I’m visiting, or the parties sponsored by security vendors. It’s also hard to get the perfect ingredients for my food plan, so I wing it slightly. I stay abstinent and sober, but I eat more restaurant food than I’m comfortable with.

Being back on routine means I can weigh everything I eat on my little scale and have the normal bed time. I’m also glad to be back in the office, since I really feed off the creativity of my co-workers. This morning, my first time in the office this month, I arrived to see that my office mates had a little fun with the run-in I had with the U.S. Secret Service last week:

My next trip is in a month, and I know I’ll be looking forward to it.

I also know my routine will make me itchy after a few weeks.

That’s just the way I am.

But for today, I’m glad to be looking at a more mundane day.

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The Trouble With Wanting It All

Ever since I got over my fear and anxiety I’ve had a bottomless appetite to do it all. I want to travel everywhere. I want to see everything. And I want to participate in as many events as possible. Sometimes that gets me in trouble. Here’s an example.

Mood music: “Serve the Servants” by Nirvana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aztw2s3PZzY

Columbus Day Weekend there are two events I badly want to be a part of. One is something my security friends put together called HacKid. It’s going to be an epic experience for the kids, and I’ve been planning to be there.

The idea is to provide an interactive, hands-on experience for kids and their parents which includes things like:

–Online safety (kids and parents!)

–Make a podcast/vodcast

–How to deal with CyberBullies

–Physical Security

–Gaming competitions

–Interactive robot building

–How the Internet works

–Food Hacking

–Basic to advanced network/application security

–Website design/introduction to blogging

–Manipulating hardware and software for fun

–Meeting & interacting with law enforcement

–Building a netbook

–Low-impact martial arts/self-defense training

Up until this weekend, it was a given that I’d be dragging Sean and Duncan there.

Then, yesterday, the phone rang.

It was someone involved with the Cursillo retreat weekends at St. Basil’s in Methuen, Mass. It’s a Catholic retreat, and it’s very intense.

He asked me to be on team for the men’s retreat happening THE SAME WEEKEND as HacKid.

On the surface, it’s a no-brainer, right? HacKid is going to be a blast, and I’ve already written a CSOonline.com column throwing my support behind it.

But it’s not that easy.

As readers of this blog know by now, finding my Faith was central to my learning to manage a mental disorder and all the addictions that came with it. Without God, I am nowhere. That may not sound cool to some people, but I don’t care.

There’s also the fact that last weekend I was on here grousing about how I was giving God the short end of the stick lately.

I want to do both, but I can only do one. For a control freak like me, that truly sucks.

But I know there’s really no choice for me here. I have to choose Cursillo. My own Cursillo more than two years ago made a huge, lasting impact and I need to give back.

When God comes calling, you don’t say no. That’s a real pain in the ass, but it’s what I believe.

So I’ll be on team for the men’s weekend, and I’ll give it my all. The timing is also good because right after that I’ll start helping out with Haverhill’s RCIA program. My spiritual side will be finely tuned by then. Not perfect. Definitely not without sin. But I’ll be in the groove.

Meantime, I’ll just have to do other things to help HacKid succeed, not that they need my help. When my friend Chris Hoff gets motivated to do something, it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s going to get it done.

But I CAN write about it and make sure as many people know about it as possible, so that’s what I’ll do.

It’s still going to suck missing the event.

But my security friends will understand.

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Facebook ‘Un-friend’ Syndrome

My OCD has found something new to zero in on: The Facebook friend count. Ridiculous, you say? Of course. But having OCD is all about worrying about ridiculous things.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/LCidbyHPvyw

My current Facebook friend count is 1,169. (Author’s note: the current count is 2,016) That may seem like a freakishly high number, but it makes sense when you consider that those connections are a broad mix of family, friends, associates in the security industry and people who “friended” me simply because they read this blog.

Here’s the stupid part, though: It was 1,174 a few days ago. So now I’m worrying about who I might have offended. But I have so many connections that it’s pretty much impossible to go through the entire list to see who’s missing.

The reality is that this shouldn’t be about the number of friends you have. I see people on Facebook all the time who friend everyone in sight because they want to broaden that number. In my case, I just happen to know a lot of people.

If I remember someone from high school or from Revere, I friend them because I want to see how various lives have evolved in the last 25-30 years. On the security side, I’ve met a lot of people in six years and they’ve all taught me something valuable about the industry, so I want to stay connected.

I’ve imposed some rules on myself when it comes to using things like Facebook and Twitter:

–Don’t bitch about the little things. There’s a ton of drama on Facebook already, and there’s a lot of drama in this blog. I’m not going to complain about the little things on top of that.

–Never complain about work. I wouldn’t anyway because I love my job, but I see work grievances on Facebook all the time, and it’s just not smart when you consider that the boss is probably watching.

–Keep the sex life to yourself. The reasons for this are simple. I’m an ugly guy with a hairy back and a bald head. I’m not about to gross people out or scare them. Hell, I get scared and grossed out when thinking of myself in a romantic context. Yet there are folks out there who think people really want to know about their sex lives. I’m not talking about someone who shares their joy over a new romantic relationship or the sadness of a romance that dies. I’m talking about those who give the several-times-a-day, blow-by-blow account of the ups and downs. I’m happily married and my wife loves me despite the fact that I’m funny looking. That’s all anyone needs to know — or would ever want to know.

–Do you really care about what I ate for dinner? Well, given the nature of this blog and the fact that I focus a lot on my binge-eating addiction and the food plan I live by today, I guess you would care. But I’m also sure I’d piss you off if I mentioned what I was about to eat before each meal. I get annoyed when other people do it. My younger brother is a chef and he talks about it a lot. But that’s different, because cooking is his craft.

–Politics. I love to talk politics with people, especially those who really know what they’re talking about. But some folks will take their disdain for Democrats or Republicans too far. Being a moderate myself, I think both political parties are damaged beyond repair. But I try not to get mean, arrogant or hateful about my positions. I’ve un-friended people for being that way.

— Religion: I’m pretty sure people have un-friended me for sharing my Faith. I can’t get around it because my Faith is at the core of everything I do, especially when it comes to marriage, parenthood and my program of recovery. If someone has dropped me because they don’t believe in God and they think I’m an idiot, I don’t care. I’m not about to change on this one.

Here’s what I will continue to do on Facebook and Twitter:

–Share some of the things my kids say. Because my kids are pretty damn witty.

— Post my blog entries, three times a day. The blog is one of the things I have to offer people. It’s one of the things I’m on here to promote. I push out each entry three times a day, to ensure it’s seen by those who do most of their social networking in the morning, at lunchtime or in the evening.

–Post my security articles. This is my livelihood. Many of my connections are security people, so there’s no getting around this one. If someone un-friends me because they don’t want so much information about information security, I’m cool with that.

–Share family and travel pictures. Who doesn’t do this?

So with all this in mind, you would think I wouldn’t care to keep such careful track of my friend or follower count. But the truth is that I do. It’s definitely an OCD trigger.

I don’t care about the number itself, but what I do obsess over is why someone un-followed me.

Was I outright offensive?

Does someone think I’m stalking them?

I guess I just want to be sure that I was un-followed  — and that the connection was initiated in the first place — for the right reasons.

But what’s right to one person is wrong to another, so you can’t really measure this sort of thing.

I will also admit straightaway that some of these concerns are about ego. As I’ve mentioned before, OCD cases almost always have runaway egos. Especially me.

If you’ve un-friended me because I was being an asshole at some point, or you decided you didn’t know me as well as you thought, or you realized my writings aren’t for you, I understand.

If it’s because my religious beliefs are beneath you, I don’t care. I’m not about to change.

Social media can be a bitch for someone like me.

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Dirty and Fried

It’s been an eventful week and I am close to fried. But before I collapse, I have many hours of travel ahead. As daunting as that may seem, I’m feeling a strange sort of satisfaction this morning.

Rough as this has been, I accomplished a lot. I got four articles out of the conferences I attended — one extra than planned, thanks to the Secret Service.

I got to spend time with our cousins, who are always a blast, and Erin and I even got a date night on Solomon’s Island at the tip of Southern Maryland. Tuesday night, I drove into Virginia and had dinner at the home of Ann and Bob Ball. Ann is a dear friend of mine from the days of North Shore Community College in the early 1990s, and I’ve found a new political debate buddy in Bob. Too bad he’s not on Facebook. Their kids call me “Mr. Bill.”

But I’m ready to be home and back to the normal routine. I’ve pushed myself to the limit this week, and I’m finding it difficult to keep a lid on my addictive instincts. I’ve pulled it off so far, with plenty of help from others. Ann, for example, made me a perfectly abstinent salad the night I visited.

But there has also been a lot of meals in restaurants. I’ve made the best choices possible for my program, but restaurant food is still restaurant food, and I’m feeling the slight bloat of what I call dirty recovery. The motor is feeling gummed up, and it has clouded my head a bit.

It really hit me last night. While on our date, Erin and I visited a liquor store to buy a couple bottles of wine as gifts for people. As I walked around I found myself staring obsessively at the bottles of gin and whiskey. I started to want some.

I haven’t mentioned this much before, but this time last year I was really leaning on alcohol as a crutch to help me keep the food plan intact. It sounds stupid, because drinking inevitably leads to binge eating for me, but for some reason it helped calm me down enough to avoid the food at the heart of my most self-destructive addiction.

In fact, as late as December, I was swilling wine even as I wrote “The Most Uncool Addiction” post at the beginning of this blog.

I was starting to drink hard stuff, too. There were bottles of gin and brandy in the kitchen cabinet Erin used for cooking. One day, I decided to start drinking both. I was also drinking a lot of wine on a daily basis.

A couple weeks into that, I saw what was happening and decided that sobriety had to be part of my abstinence from binge eating. I was feeling dishonest about calling myself abstinent while drinking alcohol.

I’ve had my challenges since giving it up in late December. Free booze flows like a tsunami at the security conferences I go to, and I actually found myself feeling awkward without a glass of wine in my hand. But I pulled it off by keeping that hand busy with glasses of club soda and cans of Red Bull. Red Bull feeds another addiction, but as I’ve said before, people like me play addiction like a piano. When you put a lid on the addiction that’s most self-destructive in your life, a few smaller addictions bubble to the surface.

That’s the daily challenge for someone like me. But despite feeling like my food plan wasn’t as clean as it could have been, I have not binged. I haven’t touched alcohol, either.

That’s a victory.

But I still have some cleaning up to do.

Which is why it’ll be good to get home.

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Anatomy of a Near-Binge

A few weeks ago I described a day in the life of a compulsive binge eater. Here’s the sequel. Even in recovery, the demon is constantly breathing down your neck. But you don’t have to let him win.

Mood music: “Starve” by the Henry Rollins Band:

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

4 a.m.: Wake up in a hotel room, grab some coffee and start typing away on the computer. Congratulate yourself for nearly two years of abstinence from binge eating and eight months of sobriety.

6:15 a.m.: Stop working — which is hard to do because you have OCD and don’t like to stop working — and call the sponsor. Tell her your plan of eating for the day and make sure to ask how she’s doing. That can be tricky, because when you’re an addict it’s all about you.

6:30 a.m.: Eat your abstinent breakfast

7:30 a.m.: Talk with the guy you sponsor. Control your temper as the call goes five minutes beyond its alloted time, thus knocking the day’s schedule off course.

7:45-8:15 a.m.: Take a quick shower, shave the head and get dressed. Get your ass down to the conference you traveled 14 hours to get to.

8:15-9 a.m.: Walk past the breakfast food they put out at these conferences, because to you it’s all poison. Have more coffee.

9 a.m.-noon: Take notes during various talks, then start your writing. Write as many stories as you can even though you only have to write one. get it posted and remember to send it out on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The day has been pretty good so far. You’re doing what you love, and you are keeping the abstinence and sobriety together.

2 p.m.: You realize you didn’t eat lunch. This is fucking bad if you’re a recovering food-binging addict. The danger that you’ll say “screw it” and sacrifice lunch altogether in favor of a giant dinner is high. Doing it that way will almost certainly break your abstinence.

2:05 p.m.: Find a salad, thus keeping the abstinence intact.

2:30 p.m.: Write another story from the conference and get over the fact that you’re not networking as much as you’d like because your OCD is making you produce.

3:45ish: Fatigue sets in. So does the urge to drink some wine. After all, you’re not at home and nobody’s going to know. And hell, your main addiction is binge eating and drinking wine isn’t binge eating.

4:30 p.m.: After wrestling with this one in your head for 45 minutes, you remember that you gave up alcohol because getting drunk leads to binge eating. But if you binge just this once, you could always keep it to yourself. Addicts are excellent liars.

You head to the place where snacks are sold. You stare in and suddenly turn and walk the other way. Sure, you can lie, but the guilt will eat you alive. And besides, you worked too hard to get clean.

5 p.m.: You remember that while OCD drives a lot of your writing, you also do it because you love it. So you go do some blogging and you feel better.

6:30 p.m.: After an abstinent dinner — another salad — you call the wife and kids and get caught up on their day.

6:50 p.m.: Go outside and have a cigar. That too is an addiction and you indulge more on the road than when you’re on the normal routine. But avoiding the food and alcohol must be the priorities for now, so you allow yourself the tobacco. In your heart, though, you know the cigars will have to go — sooner or later.

7-10 p.m.: You meet up with associates from your industry over drinks and food. You’ve eaten already and you don’t drink, so you order coffee and, later, club soda.

11 p.m.: You collapse into your hotel bed, thanking God for another clean day.

The demon is always seconds away from ripping your day out from under you.

But not today.

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High Drama: The New Normal

I’ve had a couple of high-drama days, as readers have figured out by now. The 14-hour drive across six states. The grilling by Secret Service cops in Washington D.C. I’m hoping for a lot less drama. But that may not be easy. Drama clings to my type of personality like a sweaty shirt.

Mood music: “You’re Crazy” by Guns N Roses:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM2KI0Fs-fI&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Here’s the thing: When you have a mental condition — OCD, in my case — and addictions as a byproduct of the former, it’s almost impossible not to turn the most mundane of situations into drama.

The TV station TNT thinks it knows drama and the commercials for its programming says so. But that’s just Hollywood drama. I know real drama.

The incidents of the last two days probably qualify as real drama in the dictionary. It’s not every day you have two Secret Service cops in your face, after all. But the fact that I was almost happy for the encounter because it gave me fresh material to write about? That, my friends, is drama. Maybe not in the perfect sense of the definition, but hear me out…

When a person has been through mental illness and addiction, situations small as well as large seem big and dramatic.

When your head isn’t screwed on straight, losing your keys can become a big, dramatic situation. Gearing up for a performance review at work can become a big, hairy situation. If you have OCD, the need to constantly check your laptop bag to make sure the computer is really in there is an intense situation.

Most commonly, the difficult relations in just about any family or circle of friends becomes a big, scary, daily drama.

I’m in recovery and I still see situations in my life as a drama. The financial pickle we were in last month, for example, felt like a major crisis.

I try to look at other people who have it a lot tougher than I do. One of my sponsees has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and spent the better half of the 1980s getting the tar beaten out of her by abusive boyfriends. Naturally, drugs and alcohol — and later food — became her source of comfort. She’s in recovery now, but because of where she’s been, little things still become huge dramas. If she finds a bag of chips and wants to eat them, it’s a big deal for her.

I’ve learned something about all this. Everyone has drama in their lives, no matter how “normal” they are. If you’re buying a house, there is inevitably conflict along the way. If you have kids, there’s drama aplenty — yours and theirs.

Sean and Duncan have their drama every day. If a piece breaks off one of Sean’s elaborate Lego sets, it becomes an intense situation for him. When Duncan feels the person he’s talking to isn’t listening, same thing.

I guess the point of this post is that we all have drama, so maybe, instead of going on about how you can’t handle this person or that person’s drama, you should take a breath. After all, by telling us you can’t handle their drama, you in turn are shoving your drama on us.

Of course, everybody loves a good drama, even when they say they don’t. Me included. So maybe you should just have at it.

By the way, I used the word drama approximately 23 times in this post.

If that’s not high drama (make that 24 times), I don’t know what is.

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A New Jersey State of Rage

It’s been one of those days: Six states in 14 hours. The plan was to do it in nine. Then I took a wrong turn in New Jersey.  It was the second anger management test I had in a week. I guess I passed. But for a few hours I seriously considered diving off the wagon head first.

Mood music: 

http://youtu.be/2spuprrj4Pg

The drive was going well enough. We made it to New Jersey in record time, then hopped on the turnpike. The plan was to take the turnpike to I-95 South into Delaware and points further south. Somewhere we missed the turn. Before we knew it we were almost in Atlantic City, a good two-plus hours off course from where we were supposed to be.

It took us nearly four hours to find our way out of the mess we had gotten ourselves into. A couple of nice people in a CVS helped me plot the course back to Maryland. It worked, but we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic the whole way across. We finally rolled into Lusby, Maryland, some two hours south of Washington DC, around 7 p.m., having left Haverhill at 5 a.m. in an attempt to make good time.

So here I am typing this at 9:24 p.m. I have to leave here at 4 a.m. to get to DC and I should be crashed out. I don’t want to bitch about a long day of travel because I don’t really like it when other people bitch about such things. In that respect, I can be a jerk. But it’s better if I get these thoughts out of my head.

It’s worth noting a few things about today:

–I didn’t go into the full-on road rage as I would have a decade ago. I flipped off no one. I didn’t punch the steering wheel in anger.

–I do admit that I was in a pretty dark mood for the rest of the trip. I scowled. I didn’t say much. I felt angry.

–Most importantly, in the flash of angry emotion, I considered breaking my abstinence and my sobriety. I seriously considered it. I didn’t admit as much, but the thoughts were there. I was simply at the breaking point.

It would have been awful had I carried out the angry instinct, given all the work I’ve put into my 12-Step program. I thank God that I didn’t.

But it’s a scary reminder that I’m never far from a relapse. I have to work my program hard — definitely harder than I have of late. I’ve kept it together, but I’ve been getting sloppy. That can’t possibly be good.

And since I’m on the road all week, the danger level is high for me.

So I was tested big-time today, and I expect to be tested some more as I work two security conferences on a schedule that is more ragged than my normal schedule.

One thing occurred to me as we sat in traffic somewhere on the Atlantic City Expressway: With my Prozac dosage up by 20 milligrams since Aug. 1 in an attempt to head off the depressions I usually experience in December, I’ve been waiting for the wild mood swings that hit me as the chemicals balance themselves out. The emotional zigzag I experienced last time the dosage was upped was epic.

Today, lost in New Jersey, I think the mood swings I’ve been waiting for hit me hard. In fact, with my brain cells scrambled, I’m pretty sure I missed that turn because my head was in too many other strange places to comprehend the road before me.

If this is what happened, the rest of this trip will be much better, because I will have turned the corner.

We’ll see tomorrow.

I’m happy to say the day ended well. We arrived at the home of our cousins, the Deans, and they did everything they could to make the tired Brenner clan feel better. The Deans are quite a family, the kind of family everyone should try to be like.

When you have such beautiful friends and family around you, the effects of a bad day can never last.

Now I’m going to crash and hope for a better Monday.

Good night.

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God and Metal

Those who read this blog know two things by now: I’m a devout Catholic, and I have a passion for Metal music. Both have played a central role in my recovery from OCD and addiction. But the spiritual part has been getting the shaft lately.

I’ve been leaning hard on the metal lately. Earlier I spent two hours burning the most searing music in my iTunes library onto discs for tomorrow’s 12-hour trip south. I’m especially into The Runaways and The Stooges of late. They are not metal in the conventional sense, but those bands had a huge impact on many of my favorite bands today.

I’m especially hooked on this Runaways song:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI3RneGO_ks&hl=en_US&fs=1]

And this Stooges song:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Back to God. I’ve been giving him the shaft of late. I haven’t given up on him and he NEVER gives up on me. But my sinning streak continues, and my mind wanders during Mass more than it should these days.

There are reasons for my preoccupations. I’ve been ramping up several writing projects for the work I do in the security industry. Money has been tight and we’ve spent a lot of time putting the finances back in order. Thankfully, we’re getting there. And there’s the ongoing pressures of holding onto my abstinence from binge eating and sobriety from alcohol.

But those aren’t good excuses.

Sometimes I forget that my life would be nowhere without God. Only when I let Him in my life did the pieces start falling into place. It’s time I refocused on paying The Man more respect.

Some folks have noted that I’m serving God by sponsoring people in my 12-Step Program. True. But it’s not nearly enough.

This fall I’m going to pursue a 12-Step “Big Book” study because I’m ready for the next step of my recovery. That will force me to put more trust in my “Higher Power.”

I’m also going to help out with this fall’s R.C.I.A (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults) class at the church. That’s where I’ll be spending my Tuesday nights for nine months.

Good thing, too.

I need the refresher course.

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Saturday Morning Sanity Check

Didn’t get up until 6 a.m., which for me is sleeping in. Kids came in the room, dragged me out of bed and down the stairs to the living room.

Poured myself into the chair and used the kids as a blanket. It got cold overnight. They make good blankets.

Got out of the chair after an hour and grabbed a Red Bull. Now I’m listening to this while blogging:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irskrVvKR1E&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Gotta pack for the drive to DC tomorrow. Gotta go feed the in-laws’ cats.

All in all, life is just as it should be.

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How the Recluse Became a Road Rat

Since my OCD and anxiety used to make me deathly afraid of travel, it’s kind of weird that I do so much of it now without giving it much thought.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47HVhzF6No&hl=en_US&fs=1]

This time, me, the wife and kids are driving down to the D.C. area. Not a White House tour like we had a couple months ago, but good times all the same. The family will stay with relatives in southern Maryland for a couple days while I drive on to DC to work two security conferences: Metricon 5 and one of my faves, the USENIX Security Symposium. After I’m done writing all there is to write down there for CSO Magazine, I’ll retrieve the family in Maryland and head home.

I still take my precautions, of course. I’ve enlisted people to look after the house while we’re away so someone will be here. I write about security. I can’t help but think of these things.

But the fact that I’m making this drive twice in one year really flies in the face of how it used to be, when I felt complete terror if I took a wrong turn and got lost in a city other than my own. Even getting lost in Boston would freak me out.

This week I’ve been driving all over Boston, taking side roads in the city to avoid traffic hell on I-93 as I traveled to and from Haverhill for SANS Boston 2010. It hasn’t bothered me one bit.

I used to have a fear of flying, too. Not any more. I get on planes all the time now. In fact, I start to get a little crazy if I go too long without leaving Massachusetts for a few days. It’s always for work, but I ALWAYS make sure I build in some time to experience the city I’m in.

Frankly, it would be easier to fly to and from DC on my own. But I treasure these long drives with the family as well, so it’s all good. I’ll be fried by the end of next week, but it’ll be worth it. And as a bonus, I’ll have several security articles to show for it.

This makes me happy. And it makes me feel weird.

These are just more examples of how I now crave most of the things I used to fear most.

I don’t have to over-analyze it. I just thank God and make the most of the gifts he gave me.