Tag: blog

Me time

Greetings from West Palm Gardens, FL. As I write this I am poolside enjoying an 80 degree day. This is relevant because I should be on a plane right now. When Mom asked me to drive her to her new Condo in West Palm (she doesn’t fly the dog) my original plan was to drive two days and fly back the next. After all, there is work to be done. But then I thought about it and checked my calendar at work. I’ve been there for a year now so I must be due some time off. Oops, I was looking at the wrong column, I was looking at the “feels like” column. I’ve been there 3 months it just feels like a year. I don’t have paid time coming to me but I’m taking a few days off.

Work has been a lot. Life as a Recovery Case Manager is rewarding, challenging and exhausting. If you do it right, and by that I mean give a shit, then Empathy deprivation is possible and burnout is expected. My supervisors have continuously warned me against doing too much and I did what Bill does and ignored their warnings. At my own peril. I’m exhausted.

Today I am going to take a nap after I publish this. Then I plan to eat something bad for me, go to bed early and fall asleep while binging Netflix in the AC. Tomorrow I am going to connect with a lovely friend from High School and her Cougar friend. I plan to have dinner and drinks and a late evening. Then I plan to sleep late even if I have to do it alone. I have earned it. My Clients are well taken care of. All of their outside needs and distractions are handled and I attend to everything that I can to make sure they attend to the business at hand…recovering from their addiction and the often horrible consequences. I am a good Case Manager because I give everything I have to my Clients. Now I am doing something for me.

That’s why it’s called “me time.”

Newly emerged personality traits

For the almost 6 years that I spent sick and out of work, I missed a lot of things. One thing I missed most was working. For better or worse, my work was closely tied to my identity as well as my self-worth. I was always known as a hard worker, most of the time I was the best at what I did among my peers, and it wasn’t always about money. I actually got off on the feeling of accomplishment. My last great job before I got sick was a great opportunity for me. I got to be a part of the higher-level decisions, I made a good living and I was able to turn my role into one that actually helped people. I wish that the company never closed. I was busy as a one-armed paper hanger but I was comfortable and relaxed about my position and confident of my worth.
What I didn’t know was that in the series of unsuccessful jobs that followed, I would learn something about myself that I hadn’t realized before. I was a neurotic and paranoid knucklehead once taken out of my comfort zone.

I don’t know when it happened. I was always confident, cocky even. Then, suddenly I worried about what other people are doing, about perceived inequities, that I wasn’t getting treated fairly. I was never mean-spirited or petty, I just cared about things that previously had not occupied my mind. I suppose when my entire life was collapsing as I dealt with divorce, foreclosure, and kidney failure it naturally follows that I would be a little insecure, even paranoid. After all, when I go to a football game, I don’t think, I KNOW that they’re talking about me in the huddle.

Now that I’m healthy, relatively unconcerned about money, and too low on the totem pole at work to worry about being knocked off, I worry about the neurotic side that has emerged.
I am a Recovery Case Manager. I work with people trying to recover from addiction. There are no performance metrics other than documentation. The rest consists of managing your own caseload with empathy and efficiency. There is no competition, we all run our own affairs with adherence to general protocol and a lot of individual styles. Management is supportive and largely hands-off. And I am fucking good at it. My clients are well-served and have everything they need handled. So why do I care how many cases the woman who started after I did has? Why do I immediately assume the worst when my manager sends me a simple email telling me that they want to go over something with me? Why do I have to remind myself that by all accounts I am doing really well?
I can handle a lot, and my job gives me a lot of satisfaction. I sure don’t do it for the money. So why do I always wonder if I’m in trouble?

I hate this side of my personality. I love my job and I am really really good at it. I wish I knew where it came from so I can stick a stamp on it and send it the fuck back where it came from.

A lot

There’s a woman I’m interested in. She checks a lot of boxes. She’s kind, down to earth, pleasant, and also possesses a lot of the qualities desired by the superficial male. I’m fairly certain that should I ask her out I will get the right answer. She’s a pharmacist, so I already have the line I’ll use. I’ll pick up one of the million scripts that I’m on, call her over under the guise of having a question about the medication, and then say, “Will this medication interfere with the dinner I want to take you out for?” At which time she would of course be incredibly charmed, quit her job, her panties would immediately fall off and BOOM I’m in. That’s some Barney Stinson shit right there.

It’s too bad I’ll never actually say it.

I think I’m done with dating. I’m damaged goods. I have never had a successful relationship. Every relationship I’ve ever been involved in has ended in the friend zone or just plain ended. Never mind the age-old kiss-off “It’s not you, it’s me.” I really think it’s me.

As my ex pointed out to me as she was in the process of simultaneously fucking with my head, cutting off my balls, and tearing out my heart; apparently I’m “a lot“. At the time, I took it as a negative, as I’m sure it was meant. But months later I have a new attitude.

“If I’m a lot then go look for less.”

Fuckin’ right I’m a lot. I’m a lot as a friend, as a son, as a Father, as a worker and co-worker, and as as a Samaritan. I will do great and terrible things for the ones that I love. It’s a privilege to be part of my life because I’m as loyal as a puppy dog and as fierce as a pissed off Pitbull. I will not betray or speak behind your back, I will talk shit to your face and defend you when you aren’t around. I have one speed and that is straight out. I do this because I care, A LOT. I am weary of having to defend my actions as I continuously give a fuck about things.

Nowhere does this come into play more than in a relationship. In that situation, I AM a lot. I just haven’t met a woman who appreciates it.
I’m unapologetically chivalrous without a whiff of chauvinism.
I want to hear about her day.
She always (cough cough) comes first, in that room and others her needs come before my own. And like in other areas of my life, I don’t look around at what I don’t have, I look in front of me to enjoy what I do.
I’m grateful for everything, I appreciate the small things and I always find something to smile about.
I give all that I have, I’m a people pleaser. That’s probably a detriment. Here are a few more.
I don’t have my own place. I don’t have hair. I don’t make a lot of money. My health is good for now but who knows the future? All or some of these have resulted in rejection in the world of Online Dating.

I am not optimistic that I am going to find the person who is a fit for all that so I’m going to do myself a favor and do the tried and true thing; shut myself down before I can be rejected again.

If I’m too much, then go find less. There is plenty of “less” out there.

Fandango’s Daily Challenge

Fandango’s Daily Challenge

This was his favorite mountain. He had come here with his Dad since he was a small boy.
“I can’t believe I’m skiing alone”, he lamented aloud to his audience of none.
He inhaled deeply the cold, thin air and deliberately exhaled, studying the vapor trail of his breath. A childhood memory dashed through his frontal lobe of putting two fingers to his lips and exhaling “smoke”. It took so little to amuse us back then, he mused. The difference between those days and now, besides the lack of worries that have plagued him his entire adult life, was the absence of friends “smoking” and laughing with him.
But it is a nice day. And it’s not so bad being alone. He enjoyed his own company.
As if you have a choice?
His inner monologue, whom he nicknamed “Annie Xiety” was pissing him off today. He refocused and studied the magnificent landscape around him. He slowly looked up and around. He was notorious for asking anyone who would listen if they ever did that. If they ever just looked around. Looked up. Or just looked away from their fucking screens for a second. People thought he was poking fun, “cracking wise” as his beloved Grandfather used to say. It was unfortunate that people chose to react that way, to assume that he was being negative or critical. He was just trying to help people learn what he had learned after his first brush with “the bastard”,(The bastard” of course was death, who occupied significant space in his head) that life is fleeting and merely existing isn’t enough, that Life is to be taken in like the cold air that was burning his lungs at this moment. The Shawshank quote by Brooks dashed through his mind,
“The world got itself in a big damn hurry”. Yup, it sure did.
He wished that they knew he wasn’t being critical or snarky, he just wanted to share what he had learned. To help them. But nobody listened, they just rushed on with their lives. They passed him by like so many opportunities he had missed in life.

He focused his attention on the slope below him. The grass was starting to show through everywhere. It would be Spring soon. A time of renewal, of rebirth, a fresh start. It occurred to him that he would need to be a hell of a skier to dodge those grass patches.

He reached the summit. The air continued to burn his lungs. A helpful attendant helped him disembark from the chair. He nodded a thank you and made his way, struggling with the skis, beyond the launching spot where the other skiers were starting from. The attendant called to him, “Sir, there’s no trail over there!” He dismissed the attendant with a wave, not even looking back at him. He then took off his skis and walked to the edge of the trail and looked down at the face of the cliff below him. He unzipped his jacket, reached into his shirt pocket and took out a piece of paper labeled Lab Results. He briefly looked at it, crumpled it and threw it into the cold air, watching it drift and bounce in the frigid air until he could no longer see it.
He looked up at the sky, hands on his hips and stared at the treeline for a moment and said aloud, “I just don’t see why people don’t look up and around more often”?
He thought about the bare spots on the slope. They would be challenging. Perhaps for someone else. It was not his worry. His chairlift ride was one-way. He would be exiting the mountain another way. On this glorious afternoon, he would accomplish two things; he would face his crippling fear of heights, and he would end his time in this fast-moving and superficial existence. He would be in the way no longer. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and fell forward.



Wisdom

“If youth is wasted on the young, then wisdom is wasted on the old.”
–George Bernard Shaw

I agree that youth is wasted on the young. They don’t know what they don’t know. But I have to question the second part of this otherwise brilliant quote.
How is wisdom wasted on the old? Most older people can’t wait to share their experiences and for the most part, are ok enough with their past to effectively share what happened, why and the end result. My theory is that it can only be wasted on the old if
a)they care not to share it, or
b) nobody wants to hear it.
I know when my dad tried to share it, I mostly brushed it off. I didn’t want to hear it. Of course, now I find myself talking to his stone, telling him how right he was about everything. His wisdom was not wasted on me, it just had a tape delay.

I like to think I have some wisdom to share with anyone who wants to listen. My wisdom stems from a wide variety of fuck-ups in my life. My scars, of which I have plenty, all have a tale to tell. Even the ones that you can’t see. I am a walking cautionary tale. But it’s a tale I will gladly tell. But someone needs to solicit it because I am not one to offer up anything unless requested. Maybe that is how it is wasted, young people who tend to “know everything” are unlikely to ask therefore the available resource of wisdom is untapped and therefore wasted.

We have a world of information contained in a single cell phone, yet we live in the most uninformed and uneducated era in recorded history. Similarly, the older amongst us contain a veritable treasure chest of knowledge about how things happen, why, and how to prevent them. But unless asked for, it will die off.

If my experiences can help just one person avoid a life-altering mistake, then all of my scars will have been worthwhile. Not wasted.

Purpose

I blogged about legacy recently. I came up with what I consider to be the components of a life well lived. A life well lived is a good legacy after all. Here’s what I came up with.

Who are you?
What is your purpose?
What are you doing to achieve that purpose?
What do you stand for?
How did you make people feel?

I touched on the whole “who are you?” question. Now I want to explore purpose. For as long as I can remember I have asked big questions within. While I never outwardly projected as particularly educated, worldly, or intellectual, I always knew that I was capable of deep spirituality and able to ask profound and meaningful questions. Unfortunately, I did it within myself. So as I outwardly led a somewhat meaningless life I was at all times looking for my place in this world. I’ve always believed that everyone has a purpose, well maybe not everyone. Some people seem to occupy space without offering anything that resembles rent. But then it also occurs to me that maybe someone thought that about me! So touche’ I suppose. But I digress.

Finding one’s purpose is the ultimate goal of existence. If you are a believer in any higher power it logically follows that you are here for a reason. It is our obligation to realize the why, learn the how, and then put it to work. The first mistake you can make is to assume that one’s purpose is large in scope. A tiny rock thrown into a lake creates a ripple that grows and grows. One person standing up can start a movement that can topple a regime. One act of kindness could save a life and inspire a movement. And apparently, a shitload of cliches and platitudes can become a blog. Sorry, I had to.

God gives everyone a purpose, it is up to us to find out what it is. I found my purpose around the time I found my identity. When I dropped my hardass image, my Limbaugh-Conservative anger, and the “I’m in control and don’t-care-what-people-think” persona and recognized that it’s ok to be a nice guy with a good heart and open mind I found liberation. Nothing less. All of it occurred due to my story.

“He [God] doesn’t promise our stories will make sense, but He does promise they’ll find their greater purpose if we’re patient.”
Father Stu.

There it is. My story is who I am today. It didn’t make sense to me for a long time. But “why me?” eventually evolved into “why not me?” and the humbling journey into the pit of chronic illness taught me lessons that nothing else could ever have. I have lost almost everything in my life and I found positives in all of it. I will not lie and tell you that I was always upbeat but I always found a way to claw my way back to it. In the process, I became a person that some found inspirational. My story, and the consequent person that I became from it, became my purpose. Now, I use the new attitude of gratitude to help other people. I can only do so because I have finally found peace with who and what I am. To hell with big houses, big bank accounts, and big egos. Here’s to living within my means, seeking just enough, and small gestures to make the world a better place. I have found my purpose.

The calling

I’ve been interested in Social Work since college (many, many, many moons ago). I was a Psychology major in college. I studied the whole gamut but I was most interested in personality theory. Freud, Jung, Adler, Eriksen, and even the controversial but fascinating B.F. Skinner. I started Grad School but had to stop when our first little bundle of joy arrived. I was studying Counseling with the hopes of being an HS Guidance Counselor. That never materialized. While I never actually used my degree professionally, I found that my education in conjunction with my strong people skills (sounds cocky but it’s not an opinion it’s a fact) allowed me an advantage in every job I’ve held. I know people.

Imagine my happiness when I recently learned of an opportunity in Recovery Case Management. It occurred as do many things lately, it just fell in my lap. The Universe has been very good to me of late. I have opened myself to the possibilities and I have found them everywhere, in fact, they seem to find me. Funny story.
I have been detailing cars to make extra money for years. I had a customer in town. She paid me with a check and a twenty for a tip. As I was driving home I noticed that there 2 twenties stuck together. I turned around and asked her if she meant to give my 40 dollars. She had not. I gave it back to her. She was so moved by such a simple gesture of honesty (not a big deal I really can’t imagine doing it any other way) that she promised she would spread the word about me. Well, a referral, who I had never met and may not have, casually mentioned that I would be a good Case Manager at the Rehab she worked at. 2 weeks later, thank you Karma.

The timing and circumstances were perfect. I was just coming off of Disability after reclaiming my health and my financial needs are very different now. I could never have survived on the wages when I had the financial obligations of Homeownership and family. Now, my needs have changed. I want to do something that doesn’t feel like work. I have found such an opportunity and it has been the best move I have ever made. It is a natural fit for me. I get to talk to people, work with them, and do something that is bigger than a paycheck: help people. Call me corny, call me sappy, call me over the top but I swear on my new Kidney that I am all about that at this point of my life and I have found my happiness.

A year and a half ago I was sad, sick, and longing for something to be hopeful about. Today I spring out of bed and I go to a place where I work hard at something that doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a calling. I get humbled every day by how fortunate I am and have been; some of the people I work with have been to Hell and back. I get uplifted every day when I recognize their progress and am thankful for my small role in it. While I want to save the world, it’s just how I’m wired, I can take comfort in the small victories and not take the ones that don’t make it as a personal failure.

I may still be broke, but I’ve never felt more useful. In my many recent conversations about identity and self-worth I have delved into the connection, and the disconnect between our vocation and our actual selves. I am one of the lucky ones where my identity closely aligns with how I pay the bill

Legacy

Here’s an intense topic for Tuesday.
Legacy.
What will people say about me when I’m gone is something I think about often. Now, before I continue, it needs to be said that I don’t care how many people show up and how many “likes” the inevitable FB post about my passing may get. I just want to be a fly on the wall and see if five words are used in conversation:
“He was a good guy.”
That’s it, that’s all that I want. It seems that after all of those years of keeping up with the Jones’s, trying to climb the corporate ladder and make obscene amounts of money, and being a high-profile member of the many fraternities and groups that I belong to, it seems that my only goal now is to be a good person.
OK, so where is this going you ask? It is an extension of my earlier conversation on identity. I have come to realize that your identity is not a singular entity. It has many components:
Who are you?
What is your purpose?
What are you doing to achieve that purpose?
What do you stand for?
How did you make people feel?

If you can be consistent with all of these concepts, you will have achieved a legacy to be proud of. You will be remembered well.
Be someone that is remembered for the right reasons.
Be someone that is known for accomplishment, and serving a purpose.
Be remembered as a person that risked something to serve that purpose.
Stand for something so meaningful that you may have died for it.
Be someone who is not only remembered, but someone who will be missed.

As a fly on the wall of my own funeral, if I don’t hear the words, “he was a good guy”, then at least I hope I don’t hear, “he was a useless asshole”. There, I have opened up what may end up being a very big can of worms.
Brace yourselves.

Good enough

I have struggled with the notion of “good enough” for most of my life. I cannot tell you how many of my nearly 60 trips around the sun have been spent in a state of self-imposed feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Now, I acknowledge the hyperbole in the previous statement, it’s not as if it consumed me. But it was always there. I’ve never felt good enough.

Then, one day I asked myself a question that changed my entire outlook.
“Who told me that I wasn’t good enough?”

Nobody. That’s who. Except for me of course. And I have absolutely no damn idea why. Maybe by my peers? I will admit that, despite boldly and loudly stating the contrary, I care what people think of me.
Not my co-workers. I have always been very focused in my work, regardless of the vocation. I always worked hard and, while I have been not so good at some things and received mixed reviews I have also received accolades for things that I am really good at. The accolades were fine. I liked them as much as anyone I suppose. I was raised to not only be a good worker but to also be the top guy, the irreplaceable one. So anytime my boat would sail anywhere close to that point, I enjoyed the moment. But it was fleeting for me at best. In my heart, I am really about accomplishment. So to me, an accolade is worth a tablespoon of dog shit if said deed or situation doesn’t end up with a meaningful outcome. I am an old-fashioned guy, I like to see results. Therefore, at work, I was always, at the very goddamn least, good enough.
My father certainly didn’t tell me that I wasn’t good enough. Dad, with whom I had a complicated relationship, would never, in a million years have said something as toxic to me. The worst thing he ever said to me was,
“I’m disappointed in you.”
That stung like a bitch in and of itself. But that made me want to do better. Because I have always, even after his death, sought his approval.

Looking at that last sentence, reading it again and again, I realize that I may have just answered my own question. I do seek approval, maybe validation is a better word, and I hate it. I really didn’t make the (perhaps apparent to everyone else) connection between that and the omnipresent feelings of inadequacy I have been plagued with for so long until now. It may be as small as wanting to be liked, or as deep as a fear of dying in obscurity.
I don’t want to be famous. I don’t care about money. I want to leave every place I go and everything I touch a little better than I found it. That’s it.

Am I comparing myself to the person I want to be?

I hope that’s it. Definitely something to explore further.

The unlikeliest of sources

I have always rejected therapy (this from a Psych major lol) because I believe that there is no one more self-aware than I. To my credit, my Social Worker at the Transplant Clinic supports that notion as well. Why do I need therapy? I am blessed with a circle of friends that I can always talk to and I can count on them to tell me the truth. Yet, with all of the resources available to me, and despite my manifest blessings, I was continuously spinning down a Rabbithole of negative thought. It is my understanding that I have a fairly significant case of General Anxiety, this revelation can be neatly filed in the “No Shit Sherlock” column. One of the symptoms impacting me is called Rumination, in which I constantly dwell on negative associations. Even the happiness of memories, camping, for example, would immediately trigger the most negative experience I ever had while camping. Such a thought will send me down the drain of feelings of inadequacy and doubting my self-worth. This had become a constant behavior and I can’t believe that it took as long as it did to recognize how bad it was holding me back.

One event that I had been ruminating about is my recent breakup. Months after the end of an intense, yet brief relationship I had been unable to move on. I was hurt, I felt rejected, and I had so many questions because to this day, I really don’t know what happened as it went from great to nothing quickly and in a way that I can’t make sense of. It should be mentioned that I very characteristically assumed that it was my own fault. Because when you are insecure everything is your fault.
Talking to friends wasn’t working. I continued to dwell in despair despite so many good things happening in other areas of my life. So I tried something I had yet to venture into, Podcasts. I searched out Ted talks on grieving, moving on, sadness, rejection, you name it. What I stumbled upon was Mr. Big feet and hands himself…Tony Robbins. He did a series of podcasts dedicated to changing your thinking. I listened to hours of it. I know, to any reader I may have left out there this may be comical because a lot of people think that he is pop fluff. I did as well but the man makes sense.

The takeaways are many but the overall theme is so simple and I can’t believe that I couldn’t do this before. When you experience an emotion, find out where it is coming from and put it into a category in which you can work on it. Find a solution, a new approach, look at it in a different way. Consequently, I took the break-up and asked myself what was really bothering me.
Do I miss her? Not really.
Do I miss the feelings I had when I was with her? Definitely.
Would I take her back if she called tomorrow (unlikely)? Absolutely not, I’m better off without her.
So what is it? I want to know what happened! what did I do?
BOOM!

I realized that I hate not knowing and the harsh reality is that I probably never will. The category to shift that whole series of events to is the category of CONTROL. I am frustrated that I have no control over this. But in a new context, I am able to do just that. I accepted that I cannot control it and told myself to move on.
Because it doesn’t matter. It’s done and can’t be changed.

I then took this mindset and applied it to many other areas of my life in which I have been struggling and it’s always the same thing. By changing my thinking, by diagnosing from where it was coming, and by asking what can actually be done about it I had a further and significantly more powerful revelation; that I am spending way too much energy, at the risk of my own emotional health, on things that I can’t control. Isolating those things that are within my control became easier and I now have sufficient energy to do so.

This happened about 30 years too late but I am excited to see where this takes me.