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I Was Lost But Now I’m Found

Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

There are plenty of reasons I haven’t written in this blog in a long time. The easy reasons are that my career has been busy and I’ve been managing a family building on the side. I also decided awhile back that I shouldn’t write unless I had something to say. To be honest, I just didn’t feel like opening up like I used to.

But lately my willingness has returned.

Mood music:

The last year has included some of the best and worst times of my life. My wife and kids continue to make me proud with all they do, and I absolutely adore my still-new job. Though I never wanted responsibility for the family real estate, I found ways to make the best of it, and I’ve certainly learned a lot. I’ve also always been a sucker for trying to fix things that are broken, and in that building I found no greater challenge.

But somewhere along the way, I lost myself.

I started trying to be my father and do things the way I thought he would have. For a while, I was paying more attention to that than my real job. Sometimes I had no choice, because the property has a huge environmental cleanup attached to it.

My mental and physical health deteriorated. The frequency of migraines shot up, I gained weight and started slipping into my habit of being a people pleaser.

I grew obsessed with saving my father’s dream of selling the building and leaving his kids a financial cushion. I desperately tried to make everyone proud, especially my sisters, who co-own the building with me.

As I worked to put the property back on its feet and rent out the spaces, I found myself trying to put my trust in the various contractors who came along, when I should have been eyeing everyone skeptically and asking tougher questions. When a property needs work, it’s stunning how the sharks smell blood and start circling.

By year’s end, I was bitter and resentful, angry with my father for dumping this mess on me. I resented being left on my own without the necessary business experience. Most importantly, I started to realize I wasn’t being myself.

In mid-2016, I left one job to go to another. The role turned out to be different from what was discussed early on. I found myself with little to do, so I took that as a reason to focus on the building even more.

That didn’t last long, because I’ve never been one to phone it in with work, and the fact that I was doing so was eating at me.

Then I found another job, and in the process found I myself again — remembering what I did for a living and why I was on this planet. The person I was began fighting the person I had become.

As I fell back in love with my real work, my resentment of the family responsibility grew. Some questioned how I was doing things, which made me angrier, since I felt everyone was happy to leave it all on me in the beginning. I started to get sicker.

At the bottom of that pit, things started getting clear again.

I remembered some important things:

  • My first responsibility is to God, and, by extension, my immediate family — specifically my wife and children.
  • My life’s work is in information security, not real estate.

A few months ago I took all my confusion into the confession booth. The priest suggested I practice prudence — using reason to govern myself. In my case, prudence meant putting the added responsibilities in their proper place, behind the things that are more important.

That’s what I’ve been doing.

I asked my sisters to start taking on some of the building responsibilities, which they have. I began limiting the days at the family building to once a week and spending most of the time each week at my company’s office. It’s made things better.

There’s still a lot of turmoil right now. I can’t fully escape the building. I still have to do better at doing right by my family. But my life has come into clearer focus, and I’m grateful for that.

The time for people pleasing is over. If my father is watching, I hope he understands that I can’t be him and that I never should have tried.

Some will be taken aback by the choices I make going forward, but they’ll have to deal with it. If something doesn’t fit into my top priorities, I won’t spend any more time on it than I have to.

If that makes them angry, so be it. It’s time I got back to being me.

Fire storm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

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New Doctors, New Pressures

Late last year, as I was looking for a new therapist to replace the one who retired, I decided to clean the slate and get a new primary care physician, too.

Choosing a new doctor can be a difficult process. We can get comfortable with the doctors we have, even if they’re not doing us any good. We might not like doctors at all, making us resistant to seeking one out.

But if we all need help maintaining our mental and physical health. When we have mental or physical issues that need frequent monitoring, doing nothing is a perilous proposition.

So I cleaned the slate and it’s been good. But it hasn’t been without pressure.

Mood music:

I found a therapist I believe is a perfect fit. We’ve been working specifically on reshaping my daily routine so that I remember to spend time on the mindfulness techniques I learned a year ago. The only problem is that it’s an hour-drive to reach her. That can be a pressure in itself. But the work of maintaining all the progress I’ve made in recent years compels me to suck it up. Better to drive far for a good therapist than drive down the street for a shitty one.

The new medical doctor has caused me more stress. Or, more accurately, it’s what he found.

Despite a diet devoid of flour and sugar, where most meals are carefully measured, I managed to gain close to 20 pounds last year. The problem was that I made adjustments to the diet but didn’t up my exercise to compensate. I also got a bit sloppy with my food during business travel, and I travel a lot.

My cholesterol went up with my weight, and so did my blood pressure, to the point where the doctor put me on medication.

I spent the better part of December angry with him. I didn’t like that he was trying to tell me how to eat or which piece of exercise equipment to buy. But my anger was misdirected. I was really pissed with myself for not being more careful.

My new therapist helped me to see that — proof that she’s worth the long drive.

So I’ve doubled down: I tightened my food plan and increased my exercise. I found an elliptical in our price range and turned a corner of the garage into a mini-gym where Erin and I plan to exercise together once the rest of her equipment arrives.

I’ve used the machine almost daily, and I’m down 9 pounds. The blood pressure is down, too.

I’m much happier since I decided to own up to things and accept the new course set by new doctors.

As it is when dealing with addiction, the first step is to admit you even have a problem. Once you take that step, the rest becomes more manageable.

Elliptical machine

My new machine.

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The Beauty of a Broken Body

At the breakfast table yesterday, Sean said, “Dad has many good qualities. None have anything to do with his body.”

I had good laugh over that and was amused enough to share it on Twitter and Facebook. Which brought this thoughtful response from a friend: “Little does he know what you’ve been through with your body. When he realizes, he’ll know that that’s your best quality!”

Mood music:

Sean knows, of course. He’s seen for himself what a crippled back did to me before I got that fixed, and he’s heard all about the Crohn’s Disease I had as a kid. He has seen the pictures of me bloated on Prednisone and the fourth-grade report card with 43 absences on it, 26 of them during the final semester that year. Whether he truly comprehends it all is another thing.

His witticism, though, was meant to get a reaction. Nothing more, nothing less. He knows I enjoy a good zinger, especially from him and his brother.

But there is a bigger lesson for the kids: bodies fall apart for different reasons and in the majority of cases, it need not prevent a person from living life to the full.

I have friends who test and break their limits with weight lifting, martial arts and the like. I admire them immensely but will never duplicate their achievements because I still have a spine that limits movement. I’ll also never be as thin or muscular as they are, for the same reason. The childhood intake of Prednisone, meanwhile, left me with permanently bad vision and more body hair than I’d like.

Despite my body’s imperfections, I still push myself in a variety of ways. I cut flour and sugar from my diet years ago. I’m a regular walker and always have been. I push myself hard on the career front and have been rewarded many times over. I’ve pushed myself to the outer limits in unraveling my mental disorders and getting them treated.

My body may not be what most consider attractive, but I’m proud of it. Because despite all the blows over the years, it keeps on working.

Does that excuse me from striving to be in better shape? Of course not. There’s still plenty I can do to control weight and muscle mass, and there are no good excuses for avoiding that work.

My bodybuilding friends overcame plenty of their own physical limitations to get to where they are. I admire them for that. They remind me of the older brother I lost in 1984. He didn’t get to live a long life, but despite the asthma that eventually killed him, he lifted weights religiously and was full of muscle. It was his way of not taking an ailment lying down.

I learned a lot from that, and I think Sean and Duncan are learning a lot from my broken-body adventures today.

Strong man with unhealthy body

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Depression Causes: Add Sleep to the List?

Yesterday’s post on my sleep apnea diagnosis got a lot of response. Two big lessons from all the feedback: Far more people have sleep apnea than I knew, and those who have since been treated recall the huge mental distress caused by inadequate sleep.

Mood music:

Said one friend: “BIll, I too have sleep apnea. It’s a vicious, horrible physical problem. You don’t even realize how badly the lack of REM and deep sleep is changing your behavior and your emotional stability. Also impacts you physiologically in many and varied ways, including poor metabolism and blood pressure.”

I’ve attributed a lot of things to my occasional bouts of depression: past battles with addictive behavior, the OCD when I let it run hot for too long, personal experiences with illness and death and lack of daylight in the winter. I never really considered the sleep angle, though I suppose I’ve known about that all along.

Getting to the bottom of my sleep patterns started as an effort to deal with snoring and was more for Erin’s sanity than mine. (She’s a light sleeper, which means my snoring really messes with her own sleep quality.) But the benefits of this experience may turn out to be much deeper.

I’ve also gotten a lot of feedback on the usefulness of CPAP machines. A couple of readers reported that it was of little help. Many more readers said the device changed their lives.

Said another friend: “The first night I slept with the CPAP machine was the best night of sleep I’d had in two decades — no exaggeration.”

I’ve been told the success or failure of this depends on how accurately the sleep doctors fit me for the mask. You can bet I’ll keep that in mind when I have it done.

I thank you all for the responses. I’ll keep you posted on how the machine works.

CPAP Masks

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Pushing It to 11 with a Better Night’s Sleep

According to the results of my sleep study, I have something called sleep apnea. I stop breathing for a few seconds or a little over a minute and then snore ferociously as the breathing kicks back in. I’m told mine is moderate to severe.

Scary, you say? Not really.

Mood music:

I know a few people with this condition, including my father. It afflicts people from all walks of life: the fat, the thin, the short, the tall, the young and the old. In my case, the root cause is a nose and sinus cavity full of bad plumbing. My snout is almost always clogged, and if I’m trying to breath through the nose everything stops until the mouth breathing takes over.

The doctor showed me a computer screen full of squiggly lines that measured brainwave activity, blood oxygen levels, REM vs. light sleep, etc. Throughout the night the study was done, the squiggly lines flattened out. Most of the time it was for 8–15 seconds. In a few cases, it lasted more than a minute. Wherever the breathing flatlined, another column of lines showed my blood oxygen levels dipping below the preferred level.

It explains a lot.

That it instigates my snoring is obvious. But I’ve always had a tendency to get sleepy in the middle of the day, and I admit to occasionally falling asleep while staring at my laptop. It also explains why I’m usually out cold within minutes of lying down and opening whatever book I’m reading. I’m never adequately rested, so my body sneaks in whatever rest it can throughout the day.

By extension, it’s almost definitely making any depression I get along the way worse than it would otherwise be. I know I had a shitty night’s sleep Saturday, and I spent much of yesterday cranky as a result.

I’ve had two surgeries in recent years to deal with the snoring. One was to correct a deviated septum (I’m convinced the procedure only made it worse). The other was to snip off the uvula. Both times they also installed pillar implants in the soft palate to prop things up. Being overweight is often cited as a root cause, and there’s surely some of that in my case. But I’ve also lost a ton of weight over time, especially since kicking flour and sugar.

The solution to all this?

I’m going to endeavor to drop another 10 or 15 pounds because that can’t hurt. But the bigger solution is that I’m getting a machine to help keep the airways open at night. The continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine uses mild air pressure to keep an airway open. The devices are smaller than they used to be. Mine will be about the size of a tissue box.

I’m excited to see what a full night of uninterrupted sleep is like. Despite the breathing trouble, I’ve managed to function at a vigorous level. With better sleep, I’m hoping to push it to 11.

Frustrated CPAP Patient