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Heavy Metal Saved Me

I am your main man, if you’re looking for trouble. I’ll take no lip, no one’s tougher than me. I kicked your face you’d soon be seeing double. Hey little girl, keep your hands off of me…I’m a rocker.

“The Rocker,” by Thin Lizzy

A lot of people are amused to learn about my musical tastes. My work space at home and the office is cluttered with political and history-based trinkets, which would leave one to believe I listened to country or folk or maybe even some 1970s rock.

Heavy Metal music? It just doesn’t fit my image.

And yet, some 30 years ago, that music saved my life. And to this day, I listen to it faithfully. In fact, it’s become one of the main tools of my recovery from a life of mental disorder.

Let’s start from the beginning.

1984

This is the year my older brother died. But even without that, life was pretty miserable. I wasn’t exactly popular in school. I was overweight and the subject of ridicule. Emotions were understandably raw at home.

But that was also the year I began listening to heavy metal music.

It allowed me to escape the pain around me. The aggressiveness of the music gave me an outlet to process all the rage I was feeling. Without it, drugs and violence toward others might have been next.

My closest friend at the time, who lived two doors down, got me into the music — introducing me to the likes of Motley Crue and Thin Lizzy. When that friend died 12 years later, the music would again help me process my rage and keep me steady.

I’d be angry, hurt or scared, and I needed something to absorb my aggression. Heavy metal was the punching bag.

One of my favorite songs in 1984 was “Knock ‘Em Dead Kid” from Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” album. The lyrics go something like this:

Heard a star-spangled fight/A steel-belted scream

Now I’m black/I’m black/I’m black

Another sidewalk’s bloody dream

I heard the sirens wine/My blood turned to freeze

You’ll see the red in my eyes/as you take my disease

For me, it was excellent therapy.

Around 2003, as I was going through a rough patch at work (my own shortcomings at the time more than anything else), that therapy took the form of Metallica’s “St. Anger” album. The album itself is far from their best, but the opening song, “Frantic,” tore a path straight into my soul.

The song came out a year before I started to come to grips with the OCD, and the guy in the video WAS me. The lyrics were me. I was frantic. I just didn’t realize it at that point.

Today, I listen to the music more for simple enjoyment than as an anger-management device. The anger went away some time ago.

The nostalgia is a big attraction for me, too. It takes me back to a time when I was in pieces; to a time when the music literally saved me. It has become something of a security blanket.

A lot of it makes me laugh as well — no small thing when you’re struggling not to take life too seriously.

How can you not find a live Motley Crue clip funny? Vince Neil sings every fifth word of most songs live. It’s amusing to watch.

The spikes-and-leather dress code make me laugh, too.

It reminds me not to take myself too seriously. And once I’m brought down to Earth like that, sanity prevails.

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5 Things I’ve Done That Scare Me

A while back I wrote a post celebrating Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to “do something every day that scares you.” Rereading that post recently, I realized I forgot something important.

Mood music:

I forgot to mention how I’m living that advice and not simply parroting it to be cool. If this blog is to mean anything, I have to lead by example, though not in the ways you may be thinking of.

I’m not about to skydive from an airplane, though some day I just might. I’m not going to ride a wild horse, though that might be a neat exercise in facing fear. But not today.

Instead, I’ve been doing the more mundane things that scare me all the same. To some people they may seem like trivial accomplishments. But to me they’re significant, because I faced down fear.

  1. During DEF CON last month, I waited in big lines and walked with big crowds despite both being major OCD triggers. I managed just fine.
  2. Despite swearing I’d never take Prednisone again, I took a leap of faith and accepted the prescription to cool a battered back.
  3. Despite that back pain, I managed to drive a hitched trailer home from an already painful camping trip. I’m always nervous driving the truck when the camper is attached. Doing it in pain was a rougher deal. But I couldn’t think of a reason not to. I was going to be in pain anyway.
  4. Despite huge fears of not measuring up at work, I postponed an important video shoot so I could put my health back in order. That was scary as hell, because I had thrown a lot of time and energy into meeting a deadline.
  5. I agreed to be a trustee for my father’s realty trust, opening me up to financial tasks and decision making that are way outside my comfort zone.

Again, seemingly small actions. But these are the things that scare me, and I didn’t run away.

Tarantula walking in man's hands

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What I Learned About Myself at DEF CON

I’m just back from Las Vegas, where I attended BSidesLV, Black Hat and DEF CON. I’m jet-lagged as hell and feel like toxic waste, but I’m also feeling pretty good about myself.

Mood music:

Here’s the thing about DEF CON: Attendance is huge, the lines are long and it’s easy to find yourself wedged between crowds of humanity moving in different directions. Like all of Vegas’ casinos, a thick cloud of cigarette smoke hangs in the air, and unhealthy food is easier to obtain than healthy food.

For someone given to fear and anxiety, the place is a nightmare — the trigger for every mental demon to come out.

As readers know by now, I have a history of fear and anxiety. I’ve written about how I’ve brought it under control in recent years, but the DEF CON experience really demonstrated how far I’ve come.

No matter what you tried to do at DEF CON, there were huge lines. Lines for coffee. Lines to get into talks. Lines for food. The kind of lines that snake around corners and continue into infinity.

A decade ago, I would have hidden in my hotel room the entire time. Actually, I would have just stayed home.

But I walked with the big crowds and stood in the lines. I kept calm and usually found a friend to talk to and pass the time.

Part of my success is having the ability to realize that the crowds aren’t there to torment me. Everyone’s trying to get somewhere. It’s not about me, ever. Knowing that makes me feel more secure in the crowd.

I’ve also learned to take breaks. Hiding in the room the whole time is bad; going there for one- or two-hour breathers is good. I did the latter a couple times a day, and it worked well.

I also made a point of getting to bed before midnight each day. I used to stay up all night, going from one party to the next. A couple years ago, I made peace with the fact that I’m getting too old for that. Prioritizing sleep allowed me to maximize the quality of my awake hours.

DEF CON did show me that I still have work to do on myself. Social awkwardness remains an issue. I have a lot of industry relationships on Facebook and Twitter, but I still get weirded out when I meet some of those people in person. People never look exactly the same as their Facebook pictures, including me.

I probably walked past people I know online a bunch of times. If you saw me and I didn’t come up and say hello, I apologize. In my awkwardness, I sometimes have trouble recognizing you.

So there you have it: Better with crowds and lines, still socially awkward. In the grand scheme of things, the journey in the right direction continues.

def con 22 logo

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Happy in My Discomfort

I’ve written about information security for more than a decade, but I’ve never pulled the levers, so to speak, until this past week. It’s both terrifying and awesome.

Mood music:

People in my industry assume I know how to conduct a penetration test, process software vulnerabilities and manage compliance operations. Truth is, I know how to write about this stuff, but I’ve never actually done these things. I never claimed that I had, but since my writing has veered unashamedly toward the side of security advocacy, I can see where people might make the assumption.

One reason I took my current job is because I felt the need to be part of a security operation rather than simply writing about it.

In recent weeks, I’ve started the training. I attended a session on how to be an threat incident response manager and processed my first three vulnerabilities. I still can’t say I know what I’m doing, and I expect to screw up plenty when my time comes to jump into the fire. But the mechanics aren’t so alien to me now, and that’s a quantum leap.

But there’s a much bigger point for me to make: Getting this type of training is a watershed moment.

A few years ago, the terror of the unknown and fear of failure would have kept me from doing any of this stuff. Training can seem like routine to some follks, but when you live with things like fear, anxiety, depression and OCD, the wall to climb looks much higher than it really is.

That’s not to say I’m going about all these things in a carefree manner. I still have my episodes of self-doubt. I still experience stress when thinking about how best to manage the new skills in tandem with the editorial and writing skills that encompass 90 percent of my job.

But unlike the old me, I know I can do it. I’m at peace with the mistakes I know I’ll make. I’m prepared to be the guy people talk about in meetings when the subject turns to who fucked what up during an incident. These days, I can show up.

All this training a gift. So is the fact that I can accept the gift. And even though mistakes are inevitable, I can accept that as part of the learning process.

Bill the Cat leaning on lever behind sign that says Don't Lean on Lever

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You Call It Selfish, I Call It Survival

A friend once lamented that she tries to make everyone around her happy. She’s a self-described people pleaser, and it’s led to a world of hurt. She wanted to know how I got past it and was able to out myself. Here’s my attempt to answer the question.

Mood music:

I used to be a people pleaser. I probably still am to some extent. But nothing like how I used to be.

I wanted desperately to make every boss happy, and I did succeed for a while. But in doing so I damaged myself to the core and came within inches of an emotional breakdown.

It caused me to work 80 hours a week, waking up each morning scared to death that I would fall short or fail altogether.

No employee gets back 100 percent of what they put in to the corporate machine. Sure, you can make your direct bosses happy, but the folks many layers above them in the food chain still won’t know who you are or care that you work 80 hours a week.

I wanted to make every family member happy. It didn’t work, because you can never keep everyone happy when strong personalities clash. To this day, my relationship with some family members is on ice. Part of the problem is that I failed to keep them happy and take care of others I needed to be paying attention to. I reached a breaking point that has caused pain on all sides. I’m not happy about it, but it is what it is.

When did I reach the moment of truth? I don’t think there was one defining event. It was just a gradual realization that if I kept trying to please everyone, I wouldn’t be alive much longer. I would have had a complete breakdown and plunged into my addictions until they killed me with a heart attack or a blood clot to the brain.

It was a simple matter of survival.

If I’m trying to please every boss, friend or family member, I can’t be present for my wife and children. And I certainly can’t be present for God.

Of course, that realization doesn’t make it any easier to stop trying to please everyone. Even today, I’d much rather keep my bosses happy than piss them off. As for family, I’d still prefer we all get along.

Several things have made it easier not to try to please everyone:

  • Years of therapy have helped, because you’re forced to peel back every layer of every relationship by a trained professional who has no stake or relationship with the people in your life.
  • Prozac must have helped, because sometime in early 2007, when I first started taking the medicine, I stopped worrying about what my bosses would think of every move I made.
  • My former office mom, Anne Saita certainly taught me that it’s better to stand up to people then to live life on your knees.

I’ve found that the longer you go without being a people pleaser, the easier it gets. And then something else happens: Most of the people around you start liking you better when your nose isn’t cemented to their asses.

man's hands bound in chains

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So You Wanna Blog About Your Demons

Quite a few people are starting to share stories about their mental health challenges and other demons. Some ponder if they should start blogging about it. Having written such a blog for almost five years now, here’s my take.

Mood music:

If you feel you have reached the right point in your journey to start sharing, then do it. If nothing else, it will help you keep things in perspective. I always feel better after I’ve torn a few skeletons from my closet and tossed them to the light.

Once you expose them, they seem a lot smaller. Chances are you will also touch a few people who need to know they’re not alone; that they’re dealing with the stuff that makes us all human. They need to see proof that they are not freaks.

If you are still at the beginning of figuring out your issues and you’re in that confused state where you don’t know up from down, it might be better to start writing just for yourself. Fill notebooks but don’t share yet. Wait until you reach a point in recovery where you’re ready to come out. Then you can take what you wrote when emotions were still raw and put them out there along with fresh perspective of where you’ve been since then.

When I started this blog, I wanted to break stigmas and make people more comfortable outing their own demons. Not many people were doing it back then. Today, many are taking the leap. Whether I’ve influenced any of it is for others to determine. All I know is that I’m happy to see it.

Whatever you decide to do, know that I admire you and gain extra strength from the experiences you already share.

Godspeed and good luck.

skeleton closet dance

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The Paul Revere Owl of Rage

A friend of mine from Revere found a drawing I did in junior high school. I had totally forgotten about it, but once I had a look yesterday, I remembered what it was about.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/JCGvONbVCa0

I was asked to draw something that could be used for the Paul Revere School eighth-grade graduation program. I was a misfit back then, a fat, slovenly kid who sucked at sports and verbally fought with just about everyone. But I could draw, and my peers appreciated the skill. My drawings were one of the few things I’d get praise for. So, naturally, I drew a lot of pictures.

This one was modeled after the scholarly owl in the 1970s kids program New Zoo Review. I decided to inject my attitude into the creature’s face, however, and you can see it best in his angry eyes. The picture is a bit blurry, but the eyes come through clearly enough:

Bill drawing from 1984
To be fair, I was just getting into heavy metal music at the time, and that had some influence on this “owl of rage.” But 1984 was also the worst year of my life up to that point. My brother had just died, and it was the first of my two years at Paul Revere School, where I didn’t fit in the way I had at the Roosevelt School in the Point of Pines.

One thing I remember clearly: My drawings always reflected how I was feeling. And at that time, I was feeling rage.

More on this time period in “Seeds Of Rage At The Paul Revere School

The rage lasted all through high school and beyond, though it moderated and mixed with the chaotic emotions found in all teenagers.

I eventually found God, a stable family life and a career, and today I can’t relate to the look in that owl’s eyes as well as I used to.

This makes me happy.

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People Without Filters

My closest friends know that a true sign of affection from me is when I pick on them. For one friend’s birthday recently, I called him a “broken-down barge” on Facebook. He loved it, because he knows that when I talk that way, I cherish the friendship.

I’m all too aware, though, that this trait is a double-edged sword that can cut deep when turned the wrong way.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4xTjyX1PVTZJftjY2dUzBi]

I guess you could say I’m one of those people lacking a filter.

I get a lot of this from my father. He’s always been the type to share his observations with you, no matter how insensitive. He’ll look a friend or family member in the eye and tell them they’re getting fat. If someone doesn’t stop for him at a crosswalk, he’ll give them the middle finger and call them an asshole loud enough for people to hear at the other end of the street.

I’ve always worked hard to keep my observations about a person’s weight to myself. Having fought the battle of the bulge my whole life, I know people get zero benefit from being told in public that they’re fat. I would never flip someone off in the street today, though the 20-something version of me would have. Just ask my parents-in-law, who were sitting in the back of my beat-up 1985 Chevy Monte Carlo when I flipped someone off for cutting me off in traffic. Or maybe I was the one doing the cutting.

The present me is a lot more docile in that regard. I might tell someone to go fuck themselves in the heat of heavy traffic, but I do it from the privacy of my car with the windows up and the kids absent, though my boys will probably be able to recall moments when I slipped. They love it when I have to drop change in the curse jar.

I let the sarcasm fly, though. I like to tease — mostly because I like trying to get people to laugh. Yet I know I take it too far sometimes.

I may be too old to change my personality, but you’re never too old to refine your communication skills. So if you run into me on the street or in the grocery store and my words are too cutting, remove your own filter long enough to tell me so.

I’ll keep working to do better.
motormouth

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‘This Post Is Escapism and Blame’

A dear friend hated the post I wrote yesterday on how we’re all lousy parents. He found something in every paragraph to disagree with and found the opening particularly offensive.

He told me: “Not all of us were raised by lousy parents. Not all of us ARE lousy parents. No matter how one was raised at a certain point your life becomes your own responsibility. Not your parents. Not your genes. Not your phobias. This post, to me, is escapism and blame. I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.”

Those sentiments were not what I was going for, so let’s clarify a few things.

Let’s start with the opening:

I’ve had conversations with other parents recently that highlight a fear we all share: Despite our best efforts, we’ll scar our children anyway.

I’m thinking my friend took this as me saying all parents suck, period. Not true. I was saying that among those parents I’ve had the conversation with, all of us share the fear of damaging our kids. That doesn’t mean we will. It’s simply something we worry about. He took the title in the fullest literal sense, which is unfortunate because I was being partly facetious. Since those of us who had the conversation are convinced we are imperfect parents, I was lightheartedly saying, “OK, but let’s try not to suck too much.”

The escapism and blame he frowned upon comes from this passage, I assume:

My father could be a brutal teaser and taskmaster when it came to things like yard work and working in the family warehouse. It always seemed like my best was never good enough. Even as a grownup, I would tell him about promotions and raises at work, and when I told him what I was earning, he’d deliver these stinging words: “That’s it?” Dad also doesn’t have a verbal filter. If you put on weight, he’ll look at you, smile, and tell you you’re getting fat. Yet here I am, teasing my kids all the time.

If I had stopped there, it would have been about blame. But I continued:

Like most moms and dads, I always swore I’d do better than my parents did. But the older I get, the more I realize I haven’t been entirely fair to my mom and dad. They made their share of mistakes, but they did a lot right, too. With the help of excellent doctors, they kept me from dying of childhood illnesses. They got me through school and made my college education possible. My father has helped me out of more than a few financial jams. Yeah, bad things happened when I was a kid, but they were often things beyond my parents’ control. They tried to keep my older brother healthy, but he died anyway. They tried to keep their marriage together, but it wasn’t meant to be.

The point is that I blamed them for a lot of things earlier on, but being an imperfect parent has made me realize they didn’t deserve my scorn. My own challenges have given me a better understanding of what they did right despite all bad cards they were dealt along the way. Bitterness and blame were long ago replaced by forgiveness and gratitude. True, my relationship with Mom and Dad could be better today, but I attribute that more to the differences we struggle with together as adults.

My friend ended his comment with this: “I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.”

So do I.

As imperfect as I am, my boys are growing up with love and encouragement. I’m a constant presence in their lives, and when I see myself screwing up, I work to correct it. I’m also as honest as I can be with my children. If I’m in the wrong, I acknowledge it. And every day I tell them I’m proud of them, no matter how badly they’ve tested my patience. That’s progress.

I point out the lousy parts of my parenting because in acknowledging it, I can improve. And in sharing, my hope is that other parents can do the same.
Bad Parent Alarm

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We’re All Lousy Parents. The Trick Is To Not Suck Too Much

I’ve had conversations with other parents recently that highlight a fear we all share: Despite our best efforts, we’ll scar our children anyway.

Most of us can point to examples of things our parents did to scar us for life, and we’re horrified to find ourselves doing the same things.

My father could be a brutal teaser and taskmaster when it came to things like yard work and working in the family warehouse. It always seemed like my best was never good enough. Even as a grownup, I would tell him about promotions and raises at work, and when I told him what I was earning, he’d deliver these stinging words: “That’s it?”

Dad also doesn’t have a verbal filter. If you put on weight, he’ll look at you, smile, and tell you you’re getting fat.

Yet here I am, teasing my kids all the time. And though I’ve historically been the parent most likely to let them get away with stuff, I’ve hardened my stance of late. I feel like I have to, because Sean is a tween with all the infuriating attributes. So I get on him about taking out the trash, picking his clothes off the floor and being a leader in his Boy Scout troop. Meanwhile, Duncan needs a lot of guidance and patience as a kid with ADHD. I often fall short because my OCD robs me of all patience.

See our resources section for sites parents and children will find helpful.

These things used to distress me. Like most moms and dads, I always swore I’d do better than my parents did. But the older I get, the more I realize I haven’t been entirely fair to my mom and dad.

They made their share of mistakes, but they did a lot right, too. With the help of excellent doctors, they kept me from dying of childhood illnesses. They got me through school and made my college education possible. My father has helped me out of more than a few financial jams. Yeah, bad things happened when I was a kid, but they were often things beyond my parents’ control. They tried to keep my older brother healthy, but he died anyway. They tried to keep their marriage together, but it wasn’t meant to be. The fighting around that divorce was vicious, but that’s what happens when a relationship decays. Some manage a divorce better than others, but there’s no instruction manual to help things along.

Some parents vow to quit drinking and smoking when a child comes along and often fail. But addiction is a powerful slave keeper. We vow not to cuss, but if I’m a fair example of the majority, the profanity creeps back before you know what hit you.

There are plenty of cases of parents carrying on like saints or demons, but most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We adore our children and drive ourselves to the brink of exhaustion providing for them. We show them a lot of love. But we have bad days, saying and doing things that end up in their mental time capsules, which are dug up in adulthood and analyzed for signs of trauma. Most of us have emotionally scarring back stories from childhood. The trick is to keep our shitty parenting to a minimum and get it right more often than not. Sadly, we have to wait until they grow up to see how it all worked out.

How to Traumatize Your Child book