I’ve wanted to write about my control issues for a long time, but I was never sure how to articulate it effectively.
I’m still wholly unsure.
In fact, I have no idea how this thing is going to turn out, and I’m massively insecure about it. Oh well. I can always go back to stories about falling through glass tables.
I turned thirty-seven yesterday.
Here’s a few thoughts I had on the bike ride home from work, reflecting on my life…
I found a great expression to get you out of most any trouble. This is especially useful at work. Next time you screw something up and you’re called to the carpet, simply respond with, “It was my understanding that…” You can then follow those words with any string of nonsense you choose. Nobody will call you out on your understanding. I notice politicians do this every week on Meet the Press. “Boss, it was my understanding that banging the interns was encouraged. Did I have that wrong?” See? You can’t punish a guy when he talks with that verbal jujitsu. Now, thank me, and let’s move on.
Originally Posted at JulieDeNeen
You know how it starts…
You’re doing something like the dishes or the laundry. Everything is calm and normal. Nothing really floating in your head until…
A thought.
One thought.
It zooms right past the back of your eyes and it goes something like this, “What if…..?â€
Originally posted at Oculus Mundi
I spent about 6 or 7 weeks of my life, just recently, mired so deep in melancholia it was difficult to even get out of bed in the morning. Such a cliché, but in this case it was the literal truth. I shied away from consciousness and all it brought with it. In the deepest parts of the trough, it was not possible to even think of troubling myself to write about it, the necessary cohesion, energy, clarity, coherency was just not available. I was barely able to manage text messages to assuage the concerns of friends.
By Toby Neal, LCSW, Therapist by day, crimewriter by night
Life has terrible moments—the day you get fired. Submitting to the drill for a root canal. The kitten backed over in the driveway, the bad news in the doctor’s office.
We live in anticipation of those moments, planning and trying to avert them, imagining how to handle them . All the while, we are inadvertently stressing our bodies and minds. We self medicate our feelings of overwhelm with substances and food as we keep struggling to live The American Dream—an overscheduled, competitive routine of dashing from here to there, pushing our children along with us, always hoping to earn enough to reap the rewards of our labor and get a rest from it all.
Sometimes, we at the Band know that part of owning who you are is admitting it to the world. It’s one reason why we at The Band work tirelessly to break down stigmas and find the ties that connect us all, the ties that remind us that we are none of us alone. Please join us in standing tall and proud as we tell the world who we are.
I thought that when I took my writing vacation a ton of great ideas would hit me. My batteries would be recharged, so to speak.
Didn’t happen.
Looks like I’ll just continue to trudge along writing about my daily life. You seem to like that best anyway. The good news is that the book is essentially done. The first draft is complete and I need to figure out what Amazon needs to greenlight it. Probably some editing. I decided not to do the whole book in Comic Sans font, by the way. If you’re not familiar this is the most reviled of all the fonts. I still think it would have been funny. But, Times New Roman, you old classic bastard, won over my heart. Actually I think Word just defaults to that and I shrugged – good enough.
Self-soothing.
This is something I am just learning. The past three years has been a journey into the feelings I avoided over my life. Since I had associated tough feelings (anger, fear, sadness) with shame, I ran fast and away each time any of them surfaced. I thought if I felt any of those it must have been my fault and I didn’t do something “right.” And sometimes, of course, that’s true. But 90% of the time it’s just natural pain we all experienced as children. Therefore, shame resulted.
My girlfriend bought me a blue therapy light for Christmas.
I did a bunch of research on blue lights to see if they do, in fact, help to alleviate depression. Now, I don’t actually have depression. Well, not in the clinical sense. Sure I cry each morning when I awake, but that’s because the weight of the world is squarely resting on my shoulders! You know, normal thoughts. The blue light was appealing as it could help me to feel better and isn’t a destructive high.
I'll never give this child another cigarette, pinky swears!
