The World According to Chuck

Paul/Jill,

I just wanted to let you know that I will not be able to come into work tomorrow. Something came up at home and I had to go to New York this morning for the next couple of days. I apologize for the delayed notice.

Kind regards,
Kevin

This was the email that Kevin Colvin sent to his bosses at the bank he works at (although the present tense may be optimistic on my part) recently. It was a fib, as it turns out; he actually went to a Halloween party, as you can see:

Lying makes baby Jesus cry, as we all know, and Paul Davis, Kevin’s boss at the bank, apparently got suspicious and did some searching, finding the above photo on Facebook.

“Mr. Davis’ response was swift and, well, perfect. Attaching Kevin’s incriminating photo to an e-mail and BCCing the entire company, he responded:

Kevin,

Thanks for letting us know—hope everything is ok in New York. (cool wand)“

(Link to article)

And if you want even more laughs, here’s a hilarious British video of the consequences of Facebook and other social networking. Trust me; it’s very funny.

It’s dangerous out there, or it can be, depending on your definition of scary stuff. On the other hand, if you venture online with personal information, as a lot of us do, I have sympathy if you get burned but, you know, not that much.

There’s the recent New York Times Magazine piece by Emily Gould, a 26-year-old former Gawker.com writer who suffered some discomfort because she had a big mouth (or whatever) when it came to her private life, and now has some (lots, actually) thoughts on the whole thing:

Of course, some people have always been more naturally inclined toward oversharing than others. Technology just enables us to overshare on a different scale. Long before I had a blog, I found ways to broadcast my thoughts — to gossip about myself, tell my own secrets, tell myself and others the ongoing story of my life. As soon as I could write notes, I passed them incorrigibly. In high school, I encouraged my friends to circulate a notebook in which we shared our candid thoughts about teachers, and when we got caught, I was the one who wanted to argue about the First Amendment rather than gracefully accept punishment. I walked down the hall of my high school passing out copies of a comic-book zine I drew, featuring a mock superhero called SuperEmily, who battled thinly veiled versions of my grade’s reigning mean girls. In college, I sent out an all-student e-mail message revealing that an ex-boyfriend shaved his chest hair. The big difference between these youthful indiscretions and my more recent ones is that you can Google my more recent ones.

There’s been a fair amount of bitching and moaning about this in the blogosphere, most of it opining (as I do) that tough, this is the price you pay and by the way, hello? Karma sucks.

(Meg Fowler has a well-thought-out take on this situation, and also from a SWF POV; read her and not me on the subject.)

My point in all this, though, is that I’ve been writing about my personal life (or oversharing, depending on your take) in print and online for seven years now, including five years in this wacky blogosphere, and I want to stop now.

Or cut back, or move on, something. It’s not because of privacy; it always seemed easier to my lazy self to just lay it all out there rather than edit, even though I’ve tried to be discreet at times and avoid hurting feelings or violating someone else’s privacy (and failed at all, from time to time). But in the past year or so, the thrill is gone. Or the angst is gone, or I’ve run out my string. Or I’m just bored with my own life, which is not such a bad thing.

And from time to time, as I wander the Web, I’ve had a funny thought, which is: You should really blog.

Seriously, I mean. Blog the way bloggers I love and read blog; not journal, but comment, link, point, assess and make fun of stuff. It’s even occurred to me that I could start another blog, or maybe several, but then the laziness factor kicked in. Besides, this is my place, with my name on it and everything.

This is a political season so of course there’ll be politics, and mine shouldn’t be a secret (fan of Obama, not happy with Hillary, disappointed in McCain, but overall mostly just enjoying the show; no bitterness or clinging for this boy). But there are other subjects, and I’ll still blog about my lawn and my dog and the people I love (like — Beth just got a new apartment! In Cambridge! Near Harvard! With room for three guests at a time! You should go visit!) from time to time. And if I drum up some angst, I guess I’ll angstisize from time to time.

So we’ll see how it goes. I may lose you all; I may gain others, I may get no readers at all. I have no investment, actually, in numbers or comments or stats, although those can be interesting and nice. Mostly I still want to share, but this time less about me and more about what I’m seeing, if that makes any sense.

Thanks for reading so far, anyway. And if this doesn’t suit me, I’ll fold my tent and go into fulltime janitor work or something else, but in the meantime you’ll be seeing some activity here, and it will be, more or less, more like me.

And unlike Meg, I have no problems posting about religion. Sex, either.

No wand jokes, though.

I have no idea what the current definition of blogging is, mostly because I’m too lazy to look it up, but there are more candidates now than there were. It doesn’t seem to be defined by frequency of posts, subject matter, purpose, point or perspective, although they’re all there. I read ellipse blogs (my term, thank you very much, meaning dot-dot-dot/Walter Winchell/brief notes, many of them), political blogs, summary blogs, journaling blogs and just overall personal blogs, and enjoy them all (or I stop reading).

Even “personal” is hard to cage up, since there are several bloggers on my own list who write about their lives in their own ways with their own charming and idiosyncratic and unique styles, doing essentially what I get paid to do except me maybe not so much with the charm, depends.

And there are a lot of recovering addicts, some of whom I read, some of whom I’ve stopped reading. I understand their motivation to write about this particular and overwhelming aspect of their lives; I’ve certainly done my share (I’m doing it right now, just wait), and I understand the therapeutic value in getting this serious shit out there, out of our brains and psyches and stomachs and out there, exposed to the light of day and maybe somebody else.

But it can get old, and not very interesting, and thus we’re back to the paradigm question: Why do you write, for whom and for what reason? It’s important to you; as a reader, maybe not to me.

I’ve always appreciated (and stolen, from time to time) a thought from Garrison Keillor, who wrote a wonderful article for The Atlantic years ago on judging a poetry contest. “It’s not fair to bore someone when they can’t bore you right back” was the gist, although the quotation marks are just penance for me since, again, I’ve stolen the sentiment more than once. I don’t want to bore you. Still, along with my own therapeutic needs, I get overwhelmed by a desire to explain; as I’ve said before, I have a pretty strong apologist streak.

So prepare to skim, or stop. No hard feelings. Although I’ll aim for brevity.

The best thing I did was read “Staying Sober” by Terrence Gorski in the months following my last drink. It was recommended to me as I left treatment, an odd choice but possibly a lifesaver, if you’re willing to extrapolate a little. Gorski early on in his career in addiction medicine became interested in relapse prevention, a subspecialty of chemical dependency treatment, and “Staying Sober” is essentially a textbook.

(I’m going to use “addiction” and “chemical dependency” interchangeably here because I’m lazy, although I’m talking mostly about the latter; the former has come to mean a lot of different things and represent a lot of different behaviors, a subject for purists and narcissists if you ask me, which you didn’t, of course.)

Biological, psychological, social: These are the basic three areas affected by addiction, and why preventing relapse (which seems obvious, and then sometimes is ruled off the table in some recovery circles) is tricky. The brain physically changes by prolonged use of chemicals; whether it changes back is a question. I assume it doesn’t, just to keep it simple. So neurochemistry speaking, there are some serious messages out there for an addict, leading him/her to all the wrong places.

Social is pretty obvious, which is why changing lifestyles completely is important. Sometimes friends have to be let go, etc.

Psychologically, we’re just all too human. Six months into sobriety, when lots are lost, we get cocky, maybe, or delusional, or maybe just desperate. So having a plan, a program, support and information are all crucial.

I read this book, then, a couple of times. Gorski’s initial surprise in his practice was realizing that the process of relapse is usually undetectable in the beginning, unless you know what to look for. In other words, an addict who’s abstaining from his/her drug of choice might start to do things that are so subtle no one notices, but in retrospect are red flags. Some of these are thought processes or emotional states, but a lot are behaviors.

For example, after a few months of sobriety I began to watch a lot of TV. A LOT. I went from virtually no television watching to six hours or more daily, all of it seemingly innocent and reasonable, and all of it essentially compulsive. Thanks to the book, I saw this. I mentioned it. I stopped it.

And it’s happened over and over since. Some of it may be a case of being too aware, and maybe reading too much into something; other times, it practically leaps out of my body and waves its arms like the robot on “Lost In Space,” an image that right this minute is cracking me up. Warning, Will Robinson, yadda yadda. I call this “addict mode,” and I recognize it now and I’m grateful for that.

I am currently in full-blown addict mode. The point, therefore, of this post. Overdue, too.

It’s a fascinating thing to watch, in a macabre way. I wonder if bipolar people have similar feelings when they start slipping into manic phases, for one, poorly informed example. It started with my sort of spontaneous decision a few weeks ago to quit smoking cigarettes, not very well thought out or planned, and for many, many people a fairly simple if difficult process. In my case, it opened up cans and cans filled with worm-like creatures, awareness and insight and fear and loathing and depression and mania and denial and I’m really boring you about now, right? Or was it a while ago? Just curious.

None of this is particularly life-threatening or even all that obvious, except that I live with two people who surely are aware. And it’s fairly benign, if you look at it casually. Someone is sure watching a lot of videos lately. Someone is sure eating a lot of ice cream lately. Someone is sure cleaning house excessively lately. Someone even cleaned behind the oven. Alert the media.

As I said (and I’m almost finished, but so much for brevity), it’s fascinating to me, watching myself flutter with control. And it’s a good thing that I’m aware, that I’m educated on the subject, that I can see through the haze of obsessive and compulsive behaviors some truth. And, I should add, this is not Emo Chuck, although I can get blue. I’m just saying. And even as severe as this is at the moment, I also have some experiences that might offer me a solution. For one thing, despite the walks and the constant trips to the store, etc., I really, really need to get out of the house more. Call it a delayed winter cabin fever thing.

In other words, I really need to take a trip.

Wow. As luck would have it…

Boston in a week. Just in time.

It occurred to me one day, toward the end, that I’d begun to drink in three-quarter time. One big gulp, followed by a sip, then another sip. Gulp. Sip, sip. Gulp, sip, sip. I’d started to waltz, dancing in circles, going nowhere.

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One of my favorite jokes is the one about the guy who sits down in a restaurant and studies the menu. When the waiter arrives, the customer looks up and says, “Can you tell me how you prepare your chickens?”

The waiter thinks for a moment, and then says, “Well, to be honest, usually we just come right out and tell them they’re all going to die.”

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I can’t tell you anything about myself — about my passions, my interests, my likes and dislikes, my goals and dreams — without, in pursuit of rigorous honesty, at least mention that for a long time I was convinced I was going to die, and I didn’t.

I didn’t. It was the most profound thing that has ever happened to me, and I get lost in it all the time. I end up jogging in cul-de-sacs, waiting for a sign or at least a hint about what I’m supposed to do next. This is not all bad; I’ve bided my time, more often than not, with interesting things, or at least interesting people.

But nitty-gritty? I am Guy Interrupted. I was on a path to somewhere not very nice, and I got distracted, and as pleasant as that is I can’t help feeling that the natural order of things has been thwarted. I was supposed to die an ugly, miserable death, even if it took another 20 years or so, because that was the road I ended up on and as we all know, I stay on the road. If I’m going to Damascus, then Damascus I shall go. I don’t veer a lot, or I didn’t and haven’t. I tend to walk straight ahead, surrender to inertia, stay the course, and thus I made a really excellent addict.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

— Dr. Seuss, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”

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It was a trick question. “If you were counseling a client, and you could only ask one question, and it couldn’t involve any of the DSM IV criteria for abuse or dependency, what would it be?”

Well, whadda ya wanna know?

It was a trick question, at least in my mind, because the answer was too obvious. Existentialism 101 obvious.

“Why are you here?”

But it occurred to me that night, several weeks ago, that maybe I wasn’t all that interested in asking that question. Maybe I was interested in other questions. And while I was mulling this over, thinking that maybe I was taking the wrong classes, another question got posed.

“If you could only say one thing to a client, what would it be?”

Hmmm.

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I’m going to take a blogging break. I had this idea that the discipline of posting something every day, counting down to 50 and making it count, would be good for me, but yesterday, in the midst of whining out loud about lack of readers, I realized that it felt familiar. It felt like…waiting. And then I realized that the answer to dwindling readers was not that tricky, either. It is, in fact, the answer I want to give people who email me from time to time, wanting to know the secret to getting published. Well. First of all

write something good

So I’m going to work on writing something good. Time to get out of the cul-de-sac. Hey, I got a title and everything.

I’ll be around. A link here, a video there, a comment from time to time, maybe. If my lovely wife takes pictures with her new camera in Boston this week, some of those. And we’ll see where we are in a month or so. I just want to break the rules a little.

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I would say this, if I could only say one thing to someone lost, someone suffering, someone walking the path I know so well. By the way.

“I have enough hope for both of us.”

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I do, too. Hope was my exception to the rule, it saved this wretch, it changed everything, it keeps me alive, and today I brought enough for everybody.

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See ya.

On October 4, 1983, my wife, our friend David, and I entered Seattle city limits around 8pm, after nearly a week on the road, pulling a trailer with a car stuffed with bodies, bedding, and approximately 500 pounds of stress.

After getting dazed and confused in West Seattle, we finally found I-5 again and a hotel room in Tukwila, of all places, a little south of the city and north of the airport, where we went to sleep wondering what possibly we could have been thinking. We had very little money, no place to live, and no jobs.

So I like to mark this day, to remind myself that tomorrow is always an illusion. It could turn out to be anything.

After 2-1/2 years in Seattle, working a couple of jobs at once for most of that time, now with a 1-year-old daughter, I applied for a management position in a small company, and one day in April 1986 I walked into the office for an job interview.

So that’s the answer to my wildly mysterious post of yesterday. After all these years of self-employment, yesterday was my first job interview in 21 years.

And it was awful. Laughable, even. I was just being goofy, testing the waters, applying for a job I was in no way qualified for yet, having just started classes, and we all knew it.

But it was fun, and enlightening, and about time, if a little bizarre; this would have been a job that paid me approximately what I made back in 1983, or what a decent McDonald’s employee with a few years of experience might earn. The glorious field of social work: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

As for the “survey,” once again I thank all of you. There seemed to be a little confusion; as I said in the original post, I write this for my own pleasure, and I had no intention of shutting it down. I was just trying to separate the chaff (i.e., Google searches) from the wheat, and also find out if the ubey bios and videos were bringing you in or interesting you at all, since it occurred to me that I spend a fair amount of time (relatively speaking) on them.

So I have something of an answer, but I also want to explain. I started down the ubey road on a whim, trying out an idea. People who are born within a few years of each other are what sociologists call a cohort, a term I love. And we’re now a global cohort, as opposed to a hundred years ago, so it was fun to show what some of us have been up to. I’m into cohortness.

And it was a discipline, a concept I’m gotten more fond of in the past year. I started doing it on March 30, and for the past 187 days I’ve ubeyed up. Somehow I think it’s been good for me. Plus, I’m now sort of a walking encyclopedia on birthdays.

So. I’ll continue it for me, but in abbreviated form. Maybe videos when I get a notion. And when we get 365 names, I’ll find something else. Maybe needlepoint.

As for the weight loss project, which many of you asked about, I’ll eventually write something about that. It’s been interesting. I drink a lot of water and eat a lot of roasted chicken, but more later.

Thank you again. I was looking for information, not affirmation, but I’ll take that, and be grateful for it. And for today, and for the goodness of God, the reliability of roasted chicken and green salads, the miracle of this series of tubes that allows me to stretch my world, and my cohorts on this particular journey, all of you.

Now if I could just get you to contact your local newspaper and tell them about this syndicated columnist they really need to check out…