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Waiting Is the Hardest Part

One of my biggest struggles has always been impatience. I hate waiting, whether it’s being stuck in a long line at Starbucks or getting adjusted to life’s changes. Since I recently started a new job, the challenge has grown particularly steep in recent weeks.

Mood music:

It’s all good, really; I’m enjoying the new job. But I’m always obsessed about where I want to be in the process, and that has made for a world of hurt in past jobs. That hurt is usually all in my head, thoughts that run wild and make me sick or irritable.

The normal thing to do is take it a day at a time, learn the ropes and realize that it takes several weeks to start hitting the right groove. But that’s not me. I come in with a long list of what I want to accomplish and get bummed out if I haven’t burned through half the list after the first two weeks. If I write 5 blog posts, I feel like I should have done 10 or 15 by that point. If an idea for a new web page isn’t live a month after I’ve laid down the first design, I start to feel adrift.

If I were a carpenter instead of a writer and editor, I’d be bummed out about not getting an entire house built in the first month.

The reality is that a person usually has plenty of time to get acclimated. Some jobs ramp up faster than others. When I worked in a record store in my early 20s, I only had a few days to learn the ropes. By the end of the first week, I was expected to be restocking shelves and working the cash register.

But that’s retail. In the world of writing and editing, the ramp up is a longer process, especially when you’re doing the job in a setting that is not based on an editorial operation.

What I need to do now is going to take time. Relationships must be made and solidified. Ideas have to go through multiple channels for review. That’s as it should be. Push things through too fast and you’ll create a legacy of half-baked works. Push too hard on people you’re just getting to know, and they’re not going to want to work with you much.

So I’m working on taking the new job a day at a time. Doing so should be easy. My new workmates have made me feel welcome and comfortable.

My only enemy is in my head. He’s an old adversary, and I suppose he’ll always be there. It’s an enemy born of false and impatiently conceptualized expectations. He pushes me to move fast and recklessly. But I can’t let him win.

I’ll be working the coping tools hard in the coming weeks as I find my footing. Waiting is hard. But more often than not, it’s necessary and you have to accept it.

And so I’ll continue trying.

Cracked Glass
Photo Credit: W J (Bill) Harrison via Compfight cc
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Superman Was There When I Needed Him Most

Tonight I’m doing something I never do. I’m going to a midnight movie premier, for Man of Steel. I’m no night owl, so this ought to be an adventure. But Superman has always been important to me.

It seems ridiculous, having such devotion to a fictional superhero. But to be honest, the Man of Steel came into my life at a time when I really needed a superhero, even if he was from a world of make-believe.

It started in 1978, the first time I was hospitalized with a mystery disease that robbed me of a lot of blood and strength. Back then, Crohn’s Disease was still a rare thing, and the doctors were feeling their way around in the dark when it came to treatment. I spent six weeks in a hospital bed, and the TV was my only solace. That’s when I discovered the Superman series from the 1950s. I got lost in the images of the man in red, white and yellow, outrunning trains and speeding bullets.

When I got out of the hospital that December, Superman: The Movie had just come out, and we went to see it. I was hooked. I identified with the hero’s feelings of being a misfit, trying to fit in somewhere. I’ve since watched that movie thousands of times.

Right after my third six-week hospital stay, Superman II came out. I saw it opening day. I saw all the Superman films that followed. Some were pretty terrible, but I didn’t care. By then, I was hooked.

We’re often taught that it’s silly to spend too much time buried in fantasy. But if the fantasy gets you through difficult times, I say so be it.

This new movie is supposed to be a radical departure from the Superman stories we’ve grown familiar with. It’s supposed to be darker, edgier. Sounds like a fun couple of hours to me.

The Man of Steel has always been there in my time of need. Seeing his latest movie at midnight is the least I could do to return the favor.

Man of Steel Movie Poster

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Black Sabbath and the Sick Bed

Wherein the author stays still and rocks out.

Only a week into the new job, I got blasted with the stomach bug from Hell. It started coming on Monday night and kept me up all night and in bed all day Tuesday. Those who know me will tell you I get up before 5 a.m. and am usually working by 6. To spend a whole day in bed is unthinkable.

Yet that’s what I did. The bed and then the couch. And I had the company of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, three of the four original members of Black Sabbath.

Mood music:

They just released their first album together since 1978. The whole thing is available for free on Spotify, so I figured why not? I wasn’t going to be able to do anything else.

Wow. They really nailed it. Made being sick a little less frustrating. That’s what music does for me, helps me cope with life’s unpleasantries.

When I listen to a new album from an old band, I always start thinking about the musicians’ back stories. Ozzy’s battles with drugs and booze are legendary at this point, and Iommi just spent a year fighting cancer. I recently read a Guitar World interview with him on the subject. His diagnosis came after he found a lump in his groin. The timing was typical: He said he had been having one of the best years of his life, with Sabbath gearing up to make a new album. Treatment was hard, but he kept going. He put his pain into riffs for the new album, and let me tell you, those riffs are ferocious.

People don’t always think of this particular power of music: The musician goes through illness and other adversity and uses the songwriting process as therapy. The music then gets listened to by a guy thousands of miles away whose stuck in bed for the day.

It’s a poetic cause and effect.

As I write this I’m sitting up in a chair. Not yet fully over the bug, but the music has given me a nice shot of energy and allowed me to get something useful done.

In fact, I’m going to go play my guitar. I can’t riff like Iommi can, but it’ll feel good all the same.

Black Sabbath 13

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Look Out Honey, ‘Cause I’m Using Technology

It’s a miracle I’ve survived a decade of writing about information security in my day job, considering how technologically inept I can be.

As I try to set up a new analytics tool for this blog, get accustomed to the daily use of Skype and install work email on my Android, I find that my OCD is off the charts. I keep hearing this in my head:

“Look out honey, ’cause I’m using technology!
Ain’t got time to make no apology.”
—The Stooges, “Search and Destroy”

The Skype and phone issues are actually no big deal, but the analytics tool is making me crazy. There are a million plug-ins so you can better access your site metrics, and all are advertised as easy to use. I’ve downloaded one after the next, carefully following the instructions, only to have them all fail.

Some say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. I have to admit that’s an accurate statement. I once spent an entire afternoon freaking out over a VPN that kept dropping. That was two jobs and several years ago. I’m much better at dealing with such things now, but I still have smaller explosions.

The answer to these ridiculous episodes is to walk away, to do something else and try again later. But for all my progress in recent years at managing the more disruptive OCD episodes, I have yet to master that one. There’s a chance I never will.

Yet I continue to succeed in the world of technology from a career standpoint. I actually love playing with new tools and programs and have gotten pretty good at doing it, especially on the smartphone. I like to access the guts of the machinery and learn what makes it all tick. And when I figure it out, I feel pretty fucking brilliant.

My big problem is how I can get when I can’t figure it out.

Fortunately, people around me continue to save me from myself. Erin is a natural at setting up and managing all the feeds and coding that drives me to distraction. A friend at work was generous with his time when I needed help configuring some of the programs I’ll now be using daily.

Eventually, I’ll figure out the analytics tools, too.

Until then, I’ll try not to go off the deep end.

Scotty and the Mouse

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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.

Pop Gun
Photo by Melanie Carr
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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:

[spotify:track:2uKcU4FPX5eOjmd6RWb9OF]

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.Waiting to board the boat
  • 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.Traffic on the Zakim Bridge
  • 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.Cleaning stove
  • 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-winded people
  • 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.business meeting

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.

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My Therapist Fired Me

For the first time in many years, I have no therapist. No shrink to call my own. The guy who worked me through five years of challenges officially fired me Friday.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:28clONjZmul6FjfO6tZQDE]

Maybe it was all the times I walked into his office with a huge cup of Starbucks bold. He was always on me about quitting coffee because it’s “just another drug.” Bringing coffee to my appointments was my way of telling him to fuck off.

Maybe it was that I constantly forgot appointments. He’d call five minutes after an appointment was scheduled to start and I’d always be like “Uh, that was today?” He never charged for missed appointments, so clearly I was starting to cost him real money in lost co-pays.

The truth is far less dramatic than all that: He’s retiring and moving to a sunny place in the South. I expected him to talk about therapists in the practice I could see next, but instead he told me sternly, “You have no business being here.”

He didn’t mean forever. When autumn hits and the seasonal depression starts tapping me on the shoulder, I’ll probably need to resume therapy.

But for now, and for the next several months, I’m done.

That doesn’t make me cured of OCD or the unpleasant byproducts. I still have my off days. But I now have the coping tools I need to manage it all, and his verdict is that I’m using the tools well for the most part.

I want to thank my therapist for the last five years. He taught me a ton about how the brain works, what OCD and other disorders look like with pictures of brain scans and illustrations showing little nodes that don’t fire commands to other nodes properly. He made it concrete. I was no longer a freak for having OCD. I had a medical condition that affected my thought processes. A treatable condition at that.

He showed me how different medications work for specific disorders and helped me adjust my own meds.

I’m in a much better place today, thanks to him. And now he has told me to stop therapy — if only for a few months.

I would have celebrated with a drink, but I no longer drink.

Instead, Erin and I went to the Newburyport Literary Festival Saturday afternoon and attended talks by authors Matthew Quick, Evan Roskos and David Yoo.

Those authors write about their own struggles to manage depression, to overcome all the fears and insecurities of youth and to find acceptance. They do it differently than I do. They use fictional characters who mirror themselves and people in their lives. I take the direct, nonfictional approach. Both types have their place, and listening to them talk made me feel like I was listening in on their own therapy sessions.

We had our afternoon date planned before Friday, but it turned out to be an appropriate way to celebrate.

There are still enough people out there who have been where I’ve been and are willing to share what they’ve learned. Therapy or not, my support system continues to thrive.

Dr Bird's Advice for Sad Poets

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Human Tourniquets And Freaks Who Love Them

I originally wrote this three years ago. Looking at it again, it’s an important post describing a time when not even best friends were safe from my insanity. I’ve updated it for the present. 

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2YGwSRjcY4Hjz6fktW9619]

You know the type. They hang  out with people who act more like abusive spouses than friends. They are human tourniquets. They absorb the pain of their tormentor daily and without complaint.

This is the story of the man who used to be my tourniquet.

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

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

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

We hung out constantly. He practically lived in my Revere basement at times. I let him borrow my car regularly. And if I drank, that was OK, because he almost never drank. He could be the driver.

Except for the time I encouraged him to drink a bottle of vodka. He had just eaten a bag of McDonald’s and I told him I was sick of him trying to get buzzed off of wine coolers. This night, I told him, he was going to do it right. He got smashed, and proceeded to puke all over my basement — on the bed, the carpets, the couch, the dresser. That was some strange vomit. It looked like brown confetti.

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

We saw a lot of movies together. We watched a lot of MTV.

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

I would sling verbal bombs at him and he’d take it.

I would slap him on the back of the neck and he’d take it.

I was evil. And he took it.

That’s a true friend.

Aaron got married, moved to California and has a growing family. He’s doing some wonderful things with his life. I cleaned up from my compulsive binge eating, found my Faith and untangled the coarse, jagged wiring in my brain that eventually became an OCD diagnosis.

If he’s reading this, I apologize for all the times I was an asshole. I hope somewhere in there, I was a good friend, too.

Buddies
Left: Aaron Lewis. Right: His asshole friend
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I Forgot to Trust God, Now I’m Paying for It

I got out of bed this morning after another rotten sleep and it hit me: I’ve been having trouble sleeping through the night and controlling daytime anxiety because I’m in one of my classic control freak-outs, in which I get depressed because I am anxious about everything and want to control it all.

In other words, I’ve been stewing over things beyond my control and forgetting to put my trust in God.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:7v0mtl6oInUtHOmTk2b0gC]

Big, positive changes are potentially afoot in my life. That’s usually the way it is for me: When something big is in the wings, especially something good, I lose all patience and my mind gets stuck in the future instead of the present, where it belongs. The result is anxiety, which screws with my mood, my energy level and my ability to get a proper night’s sleep. The nose and head congestion certainly never helps, but I find my eyes snapping open at 2:30 a.m. lately, thoughts of what may or may not be shredding my brain like a cheese grater.

Then I get angry with myself, because I have the coping tools to keep myself in the present. I also believe every minute of every day that when I trust God to let things unfold, everything works out fine.

But in the crush of a control freak-out, everything I know is suppressed.

It’s good that I’m spilling my guts on this now, because it means I might be coming to my senses. I can’t promise I’ll proceed in a care-free, sunny fashion, but at least I might get a good night’s sleep.

I’ll let you know how it goes from here.
Now Panic and Freak Out

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‘Help’ Might Be the Best Four-Letter Word Out There

A topic I’ve visited often here is the shame people feel in asking for help. When we do so, we think we’re being weak, selfish and all-around pathetic. But, as I’ve said, that’s bullshit. Another blogger made the point so eloquently this week that it must be shared.

Mood music:

Jennifer Pastiloff is a writer, retreat leader and yogi with a popular blog called The Manifest-Station. Monday, at the very end of “Bitch Slap It,” she captured the power of getting help with a simplicity and directness that hit me where I live:

Asking for help is just about the best thing any of us can do. Most people don’t know this secret (so please pass it on if you would). What we think we know is usually miniscule compared to what we really don’t know at all and what we don’t know is how the world will open up and show us that we are held.

So when you say I am on a journey to be a spiritual being and I AM STUCK! I need your help I’d like to point out that the help has been granted. It’s right here. And here. And there.

Also see: “To a Friend: Your Pride Is Killing You” and “The Liar’s Disease”

I recently heard a talk from Cardinal Sean O’Malley in which he called love his favorite four-letter word. It’s a favorite of mine, too. But I hold help in equal esteem.

It’s probably one of the more misunderstood words out there. We’re bombarded almost from the moment we’re born with platitudes about how as American citizens, we can achieve anything we set our minds to. There’s truth in that, but it often gives us the false notion that greatness, even simple happiness, for that matter, is something we can rightfully lay claim to only if we achieve it all on our own. To ask for help along the way is the mark of a sissy, a coward, a lazy soul, a clingy, needy child.

What a crock of shit.

Asking for help is the mark of courage and reason. When you realize you can’t get somewhere on your own and you invite people to join you on your journey, you’re doing something selfless and giving, something generous. Not just because you’re letting people into your life, but because once you reach a certain point in the journey, you inevitably start giving back.

The person who helped you will eventually need help, too. And you will be there for them.

Thanks for the reminder, Jennifer.

helping hand