The OCD Diaries

June 6, 2013

Review: Pop Gun’s “American Soul”

Music is one of my main coping tools, and I’ve latched on to a new CD from some old friends that I know will get me through the stresses of a new job and the slow commute that goes with it.

I’ve already determined that Pop Gun’s American Soul is an excellent soundtrack for ensuring the painful wind from the Longfellow Bridge across Storrow Drive and onto I-93. I could swear at the drivers around me and bang my fist on the steering wheel. Instead, I’m listening to Pop Gun.

Mood music:

(Disclosure: I know these guys well. I worked with drummer Greg Walsh at a small weekly newspaper nearly 20 years ago. In more recent years, I’ve gotten to know bassist-vocalist Harry Zarkades and guitarist-fellow Hillie James Melanson.)

I’ve had Pop Gun’s Trigger CD for a long time and have my favorites for sure, but American Soul has a depth and weight that comes with the 20 years of life experiences these guys have had since the songs for that first CD was written.

My favorite track is “Love and Wine,” written and vocalized by former guitarist Bruce Allen, who recently moved to Colorado. (Harry Sabean replaced Allen.) It’s a song full of light and fresh air, especially when Allen sings, “The sun will shine, and love is a vine that we’ll tend together.” When he sings that love is like wine, “sweet when it’s young and it only gets better,” it resonates with me after nearly 15 years of marriage.

“Bitter Heart” is another favorite. Melanson sings this one, and the mix of melody and crunchy riffs remind me of some of Boston’s classic bands, like The Cars and Aerosmith, with a bit of The Neighborhoods mixed in for good measure. His vocals are a smooth contrast to Zarkades’s more serrated tone. That’s one of the things that makes this album work for me: the vocal variety in the songs.

Erin and I attended Pop Gun’s record-release concert last week and the new tunes passed the critical test of scoring direct punches live.

If you’re a fan of Boston rock, this CD carries on the rich tradition that makes me proud to call this place home.

Buy American Soul. You won’t regret it. The best place to order one is the Pop Gun Facebook page. The guys will get back to you in short order.

For locals, you can pick up the disc at The Record Exchange in Salem, MA, and Dyno Records in Newburyport, MA.

June 5, 2013

Teething Trouble

I’ve just started the new job and am happy as hell to be here. I’m finding I’ll fit right in. But when a person is a couple days into a new job, there’s usually an unsettled feeling. In my case, the challenge is not to be an asshole about it.

Mood music:

I’m not sure I’m having much success there, particularly at home, where I’m told I’ve been cranky and snippy and in OCD overdrive. I know the latter is true, because I know my trigger behavior when it surfaces. I get anxious to set up the new laptop, get work email on the phone and get access to all my various online portals. Most of that went fine &emdash; until I tried to access the dashboard for this blog. My username and password wouldn’t work. When I got home, I became obsessed with fixing the problem.

Erin and I tried all kinds of things to get me in and I dug in deeper every time we failed. It turns out I was simply using the wrong admin link. How stupid do I feel right now? Pretty stupid.

It’s been a long season of feeling unsettled as I went through the process of getting the new gig. I stayed a month at the old job before starting here so I could finish my various projects instead of dumping them on someone else’s lap. The result was that I pushed myself hard to the bitter end, leaving myself no time to detach and enjoy being a lame duck. Friends said I should have taken a vacation before starting the new job, and they’re probably right. But what’s done is done.

I have to right myself and pull it together, which means:

Being more disciplined about meditation. I’ve been doing it, but I can’t seem to sustain the balanced feeling for more than a few minutes after doing the exercise.
Getting a new therapist. Though my last therapist told me I didn’t need it anymore, I’m realizing that I still do. I don’t need weekly sessions or even bi-weekly. Once a month might do it (or not). But I need an objective voice to keep sounding the siren when I go barking up the wrong tree.
Making the kids pull their weight. My kids have chores they’re supposed to do. But I have no patience right now, so if they don’t move fast enough I do it for them. Being children, they’re happy to let me do that, but in trying to do everything on the chore side I become a scattered mess. I need to pull back.
Praying. Checking in with the man upstairs is always helpful to me — when I remember to do it.

I know I’ll get through this, and the truth is that there are nothing but good things happening in my life right now. I’ll keep you all posted.

Cracked Glass — Photo Credit: W J (Bill) Harrison via Compfight cc

May 31, 2013

Farewell, CSO and IDG. Hello, Akamai!

Today is my last day as managing editor of CSO Magazine and CSOonline. Monday, my new job at Akamai begins. I’m excited about the new challenges that await me. But I’m going to miss the place where I spent the last five years of my professional life.

Mood music:

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It’s been an excellent ride. I worked with some of the best talent and sweetest human beings on Earth. I got to burrow deeper into the information security community and made many new friends along the way. And I’m a better man for it.

Just a few of the folks I’ve loved working with:

Derek Slater: A gentle soul with a mighty laugh, Derek gave me a ton of creative freedom. My only regret about this relationship is that I never succeeded in getting him to drop some F-bombs. Trust me, I tried. The dirtiest thing this man will say in a moment of crisis is pickles. One night at a dinner we hosted for CSOs attending one of our events, he introduced himself this way: “Hi, I’m Derek. I ‘manage’ Bill Brenner.” The room erupted in laughter, and Andy Ellis — my new boss come Monday — raised his glass and congratulated Derek for managing a guy like me without losing his grip on sanity. I’d like to think Derek’s rational ways have rubbed off on me.

Joan Goodchild: Joan is a powerhouse whose videos, slideshows and articles have been key to CSOonline‘s rise in monthly traffic. I worked with her at TechTarget and was thrilled when she joined CSO a few months after me. She’s been a good friend through some turbulent times, and I’m forever grateful for that.

John Gallant: John runs IDG Enterprise with good humor and grace, and he’s gone to the mat for CSO on countless occasions. We bonded over an interest in WWII history, our common geographical roots, cigars and movies. I’ll miss his always-entertaining editorial offsites.

Steve Traynor: Steverino designs all CSO‘s pages and helped us make CSOonline more visually compelling. He put up with a lot from me, and we had a ridiculous amount of fun concocting illustrations and layouts.

Bob Bragdon: Bob is CSO‘s publisher, a Marblehead Yankee and an all-around great guy. He took a lot of ribbing from me and gave it back in kind. One time, after I returned from a Washington, DC, trip that included a grilling from the Secret Service, I discovered that Bob had plastered my workspace with signs welcoming me to Gitmo. I got him back a million times over and had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Per Melker: CSO’s top sales guy for most of my time there, Per was my traveling partner in crime. He did the driving as we journeyed to Hoover Dam for a security tour and, more recently, a side trip to Amityville, NY, so I could take pictures of the famous house for a slideshow.

There are many more people who made my time at CSO richer, and I thank them all. CSO and its parent company, IDG, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Now it’s time to start a new adventure and kick some ass at Akamai.

CSO Cube

May 29, 2013

The Little Boy, the LEGO Gun and a World Gone Mad

I understand the anxiety educators feel over guns, especially after the horrific events in Newtown, Conn. What I don’t get is how absolutely stupid and unreasonable grownups have become over every little thing.

Case in point: a 6-year-old boy getting in trouble for carrying a LEGO gun barely the size of a quarter.

Mood music:

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I already sensed we had gone off the deep end when a high-school girl got the book thrown at her for a science experiment gone wrong. But this is so much worse. From WCVB Channel 5:

A Massachusetts kindergartener has been given detention and could be suspended from the bus after bringing a Lego-sized gun to school last week.

The incident happened on an Old Mill Pond Elementary School bus in Palmer last week.

A 6-year-old had the toy gun, which is slightly larger than a quarter, on the bus and it was seen by another student, who alerted the bus driver.

The boy’s mother, Mieke Crane, said her son had to write a letter of apology to the driver, was given detention and could be temporarily suspended from the bus.

One must wonder if the driver had smoked a big fat one with school administrators before that bus ride. A bad reaction to weed is the only reason I can think of for why they’d treat a tiny LEGO gun sighting as if it were Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum.

My kids are LEGO freaks and there are tons of these tiny guns all over the house. It hurts like hell when you step on one with your bare foot. But that’s about all the damage these things are capable of.

“[The driver] said he caused quite a disturbance on the bus and that the children were traumatized,” Crane told the local news.

Really? Traumatized because they thought the boy would shoot them, or because they all wanted one just like it? Kids can be pretty unreasonable when it comes to toy envy.

Or maybe they were traumatized because all the grownups around them have gone bat-shit crazy, overreacting in the name of school safety and political correctness.

In their overreaction, they are teaching children that violence lurks around every corner and that they should fear everything and everyone, even classmates with toys that are cooler than theirs.

They’re helping to create a paralyzed, paranoid police state.

In this world gone mad, not even the children are safe.

LEGO gun

May 28, 2013

Narcissism on Facebook? No Kidding!

Last year, The Guardian wrote about a report which concluded that Facebook is rampant with socially aggressive narcissism.

No offense to the author or publication, but studies like this are laughable for the obviousness of their conclusions.

Mood music:

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From the report:

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a “socially disruptive” narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics.

People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly.

The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships.

The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site’s public walls and changed their profile pictures more often.

Duh.

A couple years ago, this article would have offended me. At last count, I had 2,470 friends on Facebook. Meanwhile, this blog’s Facebook page had 578 likes and 37 people were subscribed to my updates. I change my profile and cover pics often, and between my personal blog posts and work-related writings, I’m a pretty prolific poster. You could say the description in that article fits me like a glove.

The report misses some finer detail, though. For example, a lot of my friend count is because my network is made up of friends and business associates. I’m also connected to a lot of Facebook pages for guitar makers and sellers because I have a passion for guitars. I’m also connected to a lot of writers who are not personal friends, but I admire their work and connecting to them is how I keep tabs on their creative output.

I won’t lie, though: I’d rather have a big network than a small one. I’m a social animal who likes to know what people are up to. And it warms the heart knowing there are more than a few people interested in keeping tabs on what I’m doing as well.

That’s a mark of narcissism right there. But I’m not making a fresh revelation here. I’ve written at least three posts in which I own this part of me.

Read about my struggles with narcissim:

“Narcissism Is A Fatal Illness“

“Narcissism Inc.“

“I’m a Narcissist (and So Are You)”

One of my friends posts all day long about his security work, his weight-lifting progress and what he’s listening to. You could call that narcissistic. But I wouldn’t miss his posts for the world. Another friend loves taking her self-portrait from the seat of her car and posts them multiple times a week. That’s the mark of a narcissist. But she never, ever speaks ill of anyone on Facebook, nor does she complain about how hard life is. That is not the mark of a narcissist.

We all have a self-absorbed side to our personalities. Anyone who denies it is full of shit. We all worry about our art, professions, friendships and how others perceive us. Facebook gives us at least some ability to present the self image we aspire to. That’s more than a lot of us used to have. Why not use it?

If you’re the type of person who drops everything to help someone in need, who tirelessly works to advance causes that make humanity better, who loves unconditionally, understand this:

You’re gold in my book. Even if you post a shitload of pictures of yourself and accept every friend request that comes your way.

Facebook is one reflection of the human condition in the 21st century, but it’s not the whole story. Not even close.

May 23, 2013

Five Things That Overwhelm Me

Though I got rid of the fear-based anxiety that kept me indoors and afraid of everything, I still have moments when I get overwhelmed.

Mood music:

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Call it sensory overload or severe impatience, if you will. Or perhaps the latter two are mere byproducts of the first. Here are some examples:

Long lines. Whether it’s waiting for a seat in a restaurant, for entry into a movie theater or for boarding a boat, long lines make me crazy inside.
Traffic. When the highway becomes a parking lot, I feel claustrophobic. It’s worse when I’m surrounding by a lot of trucks, because they make it difficult to see what’s happening farther up the road.
Housework. When there’s a lot of cleaning and fixing to do around the house, my brainwaves get scrambled and it becomes difficult to put the tasks in an order that makes sense. So I dart all over the place doing things haphazardly.
Listening to long-winded people. This one seems mean, and I don’t mean for it to be. But when a person corners me for what turns into a long, long story, I start to scream inside. It makes me feel trapped and I feel like the rest of the world is passing me by.
Long meetings. I’ll be honest and tell you that business meetings have never been a favorite of mine. True, they are necessary, but it always feels like I could be getting 10 other things done during that time. What really rattles me is when a meeting goes longer than scheduled. I start to fidget in my seat and lose the ability to hear anything anyone is saying.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, “What does he do about all this?” The answer is not much. These are all things that are part of life. Avoiding them would mean I wouldn’t be living mine. I’d be a recluse, never achieving anything and missing out on a lot of good stuff.

So I put on my game face and trudge on.

May 22, 2013

Is It Better That They Died?

A conversation with friends last night about Ray Manzarek’s death led to talk about Jim Morrison and other musicians who died young. The question we asked aloud was what would Morrison, Kurt Cobain and others have done with their music had they been afforded longer lives?

Mood music:

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Would John Bonham still be producing those menacing drum sounds? Would Randy Rhoads be blessing us with rock infused with classical as he had desired at the time of his death?

It’s possible. But it’s also possible they all would have gone on to write and record music their hardcore fans would consider lame.

I picture Morrison, old and balding, jumping up and down in an MTV video and singing “Su-Su-Sussudio!” Or Cobain singing country songs. Or Rhoads doing a bunch of watered-down, keyboard-infused music with horn sections and such.

Maybe that was God’s plan, to pluck these guys from Earth while they were still in their musical prime, before they could make music that would alienate their most dedicated fans.

It’s an interesting thing to ponder, though in all seriousness I wouldn’t have been upset had they all lived and made radical departures from the music that made them famous. Even if you don’t like someone’s newer art as much as their older art, it would still be comforting to see them alive and well, experimenting and trying to to expand their musical horizons.

Not that any of that matters. They died young, and that’s the way it is.

Thank God they got to leave behind some music before they were called home. That music has gotten me through a lot of adversity. It’s gotten a lot of people through the rough patches.

You could say that they didn’t have to stick around because they had already done what they came to do.

Dead rock stars

May 21, 2013

Thanks And Godspeed, Ray Manzarek

I was shocked yesterday to hear that Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away at 74 following a long bout with cancer. The importance of his music on me can’t be overstated.

Mood music:

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Jim Morrison always gets much of the credit as a member of this band, and he was indeed a powerful influence on me. But he wouldn’t have made it without Manzarek’s influence. He’s the one who encouraged Jim to sing, to put his poetry to music.

As a keyboardist he was a force of shock and awe. His solos were as important as the guitar solos of Robby Krieger. He also played all the bass lines on the keyboard, as The Doors had no bass player. The hypnotic low notes that were a staple of the band’s music came from him.

As a student at North Shore Community College in the early 1990s, I was obsessed with The Doors. My ambition was to be Jim Morrison, though I might have been a better student at the time if I were trying to be more like Manzarek.

Back then, I fancied myself a poet. I joined the Poet’s Society. I grew my hair long and started wearing a pair of leather pants I had borrowed from Sean Marley (back then, I could actually fit into them). I wore a suit jacket and leather boots to complete the look.

I didn’t like who I was, so it made perfect sense to try being someone else. It was a habit I would indulge in many times over.

It was also a side-effect of the fear I used to carry around. The first Gulf War was about to begin and there were a lot of kids worried about getting drafted, including me. So we tried to relive the lives of Baby Boomers from the 1960s as a bizarre comfort ritual.

I started drinking harder alcohol and fasting because that’s what Morrison did. When I would shift from fasting to binge eating I would grow a beard and just carry on like I was the Morrison of later years, when he got bloated from drinking and grew facial hair.

That was the darker side of The Doors’ influence. The more long-term influence — the more positive piece — has been the fuller Doors package. The guitar, keyboards and drums. In more recent years that has calmed my soul and gotten me through many rough patches in life.

It’s not the Heavy Metal most people identify me with, but it’s been hugely important.

For that, I thank you, Ray. May you rest in peace.

May 20, 2013

Punch-Drunk Love

In one of those bizarre flashbacks triggered by someone’s bad singing, I remembered something amusing about my maternal grandparents yesterday.

During a Cub Scout overnight on the U.S.S. Salem, someone in our group started singing the jingle for The Clapper. You might remember the commercial with old people clapping their hands to turn lights on and off with the song, “Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!”

Mood video:

I remember Nana and Papa having a Clapper. Whenever Papa got Nana wound up and she started yelling at him, it would set off The Clapper and the lights would flick on and off repeatedly.

Those two always seemed to be fighting, and it was amusing to watch. Papa would say something he knew would wind her up, and she’d let him have it, f-bombs flying. “Fuck you, Louie!” was a popular refrain.

When that response came, he’d usually look at me, twinkle in his eye, and chuckle.

They were madly in love with each other, though I didn’t always see it that way. As a kid I didn’t understand that their arguments were actually a playful banter. He enjoyed setting her off and I think she enjoyed being set off. I enjoyed the spectacles all the same. All of us kids did.

It’s not how Erin and I carry on. It’s not how most couples I know carry on, for that matter. But for them, it worked.

They had been through a lot in their marriage. Papa was on active duty in the military a lot. Children died. Children married and divorced. Children got sick. Later, a grandchild died and others were always sick, myself included.

And my granparents had a lot of health problems. In their final years, they were in and out of the hospital all the time.

You could say they were punch-drunk from all that adversity, and the shouting matches were a way to blow off the steam.

It worked. They loved each other until the very end, and when Papa died in 1996, Nana was devastated. She lived on until 2003, but I don’t think she ever got over it.

There’s something to admire and learn from in that kind of bond.

Nana and Papa

May 16, 2013

I’m Not a Hero

In the three-plus years I’ve been writing this blog, I frequently get messages from people telling me I’m a hero for opening up about my mental health experiences. It always makes me wince.

Mood music:

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A new wave of hero labeling hit after a Forbes article came out about my turning OCD into a career strength. One tweet read:

New hero: @BillBrenner70, #OCD survivor, stigma killer, & tech journo who says mental illness can help execs succeed: onforb.es/14olwPK

I appreciate that people find value in what I’m doing, and I love getting feedback from readers. But when someone calls me a hero, I get uncomfortable because I have a different idea of what a hero is. I tend to see heroes the old-fashioned way: someone who risks their life to help others. The image of first responders and bystanders rushing into the smoke to care for the wounded after the Boston Marathon bombings comes to mind.

I’m just someone who talks about the challenges we all have. It falls under the category of “Everybody does it. I just talk about it.”

Useful, yes. Heroic? I don’t think so. I’m just a man who makes mistakes and tries hard to get life right.

Erin suggested I don’t like being called a hero because I feel pressure to live up to the title and that I fear the possibility of failing to measure up. I think there’s truth to that.

Whatever the case may be, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just want people to have realistic expectations of me.

But then that wish isn’t very realistic, is it? We’re going to see people through our own biases, distastes, hopes and dreams. That’s the human way.

I’ll keep trying to remember that.

Cavill, Man of Steel