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The OCD Diaries, Four Years Later

This weekend marks four years since I woke up in a funk and started this blog on a whim, figuring I’d at least feel better if I spilled my guts. It did the trick. But in the years since that day, it has become something far bigger than I could have imagined at the time.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/zQzNBTukO0w

I didn’t expect so many people to connect with the writing. I figured it would be no big deal to people, because we all have our stories — filled with happiness, sadness, love, heartbreak and other forms of adversity. I would just be one in a chorus of online voices sharing my emotions and experiences.

But people did connect, especially work colleagues and others in my profession. I thought my soul venting might raise eyebrows at work, but I got nothing but support. The reaction from the information security crowd was particularly stunning to me. People who intimidated me with their outward toughness started sharing back. They became more than just people I did business with. The friendships I’ve gained through the sharing is a huge gift this blog has given me.

The reaction from family and friends was shock, because I had succeeded in carrying on with a stoic, easy-going exterior. I couldn’t believe people saw me as easygoing. Apparently I could have found success as an actor.

The sharing has allowed me to repair some relationships that were broken. In other cases, it made matters worse. But there was no turning back.

My wife was often bewildered by what I wrote, because I was sharing past experiences I hadn’t shared with her up to that point. That led to us doing a lot of work on our relationship, and that’s the absolute greatest gift this blog has given me. As part of that, the blog has become one of the things we do together as a couple: I do the writing, Erin does the editing and bullshit detecting. When something I write doesn’t ring true, she pushes me in the proper direction.

Admittedly, I’ve expanded the subject matter a lot in the last year and a half. I didn’t originally plan to opine about current events here, but I realized a couple things after a while:

  • If I were to write about nothing but my own flaws, I’d risk being defined by them and nothing else.
  • This blog should be about more than just my own personal growth. Part of one’s growth comes from their dealings with the people and events taking place around them. By that measurement, current events became fair game.

In finding the path through adversity, there are many lessons to be had by exploring how we all talk to each other.

I’ve also focused more on the lighter side of life, because few things get us through the fog like humor. That has made this experiment a lot more fun for me. I hope it has worked for all of you, too.

Here’s to many more years of staring adversity in the face and making it blink — becoming better on our own and together.

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Together We Fill Gaps

I did some more thinking after writing yesterday’s “Burden of Being Upright” post, and I think I have a better perspective. I was frustrated all day knowing that I need frequent wake-up calls. I want to be so good all the time that I’ll never need them.

Truth is, I’m always going to need it. But what’s important is what a person does when the alarm sounds.

Several years ago, before I was released from the fear that always went with my anxiety, I would have almost weekly discussions with Erin about all the things I was doing wrong. I’d cobble together an action list of all the things I’d do to be better and then I’d do nothing to act on it.

These days, life works differently. I make my action lists and act on them. Sometimes a month passes, sometimes several months. I’m so sure I have my list memorized that I stop looking at it. Eventually, I still slide off track and have no idea I’m doing it. It usually takes the form of little things that add up, like plunging into a bunch of household activities without touching base with Erin first. That means I’ll almost always snarl up a course of action we had agreed to but that I forgot about in my angst to keep the house standing.

When the realization that I’ve slipped slaps me upside the head, I get defensive. There are times when Erin and the kids can be just as difficult to put up with. I sometimes feel like the punching bag for all the angst someone else in the house is feeling, so when my faults are pointed out, I think things like, “I put up with a lot, too. I do more than my fair share of walking on egg shells. Why can’t everyone roll over when I’m the jerk?”

None of this is unique. Every family has this challenge. Most of the time, I think we do as well as we do because we keep talking and we keep loving each other. We close ranks and cheer each other on when it counts most.

As a family, we run fast, sometimes too fast and then we trip and fall. But we always get back up. That’s the part I was forgetting yesterday.

I’ve said before that Erin’s goodness makes me want to be a better man. She’s definitely gotten me a long way on the path. I think I’ve done the same for her, and we’ve both done the same for our kids. Imperfect, but always better than before.

We fill in each other’s gaps. Or at least we try to. It always reminds me of a scene in Rocky. I leave you to watch that scene and ponder what it means in your own family.

talia