Live and Learn – Page 10

Tuesday October 28, 2014Live and LearnView all 2 comments

I am what you would call a competitive person. I like to be first, or the best, whether we’re talking about who has the lowest grocery bill or who finishes a task first. I compete everywhere and with everything, even if the competition is only against myself. In fact, I’ve learned over the years that most people don’t like to compete at everything, so I keep most of the competitions to myself. The last time that I went to the grocery store with someone, I totally won the lowest bill competition. He doesn’t know that I won, because he didn’t know that we were playing. But I know, and that’s all that counts. So it is with great humility that I concede openly, that I DO NOT, repeat DO NOT want to win if my current situation is a competition. I personally haven’t been viewing it as a competition, but my body seems to have been playing the one-up game with illness all year. So I am stating loud and clear, right now – do you hear me body? – that I concede the one-up game and I no longer want to play.

So far this year I have had: 2 ear infections, 3 sinus infections, extensive dental work, a cancer scare, a hormonal imbalance, an H. Pylori infection, panic attacks, costochondritis and now mono. Not to mention the cold that is going around my office right now as the cherry on top. On the one hand – well done me. That is quite the impressive line-up. But on the other, logical, non-crazy hand – good lord, give me a break and let me be healthy for two consecutive days! I really don’t think that that is too much to ask!

So in that vein, I am putting my competitive side on the back burner and declaring that I do not want to win this competition. ‘A’ for effort, good show, but I’m throwing in the towel. But I guess that means that I’m hoping that someone else’s health is worse than mine, so that they can win the competition. That’s not very nice. I really wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Okay, new plan . . .

I win!

Mono plus a cold takes the cake, the gold medal and the chicken dinner. You win body. You have accumulated the weirdest collection of ailments and put everybody else to shame. You happy now? Good! Now can we stop please? I’m sick and tired . . . literally. To celebrate my win, I’m going to take a nap.

Thursday October 16, 2014Humor, Live and LearnView all 3 comments

A friend of mine commented, as I was completely absorbed in meticulously drawing a chart and doing sums, that it was so interesting watching a Type A personality work. Unlike most “Type A” comments that I get, she wasn’t making fun of me. Or at least she better not have been making fun of me since I was helping her figure out her budget! At any rate, not fifteen minutes later she shook her head and laughed at me for my starkly non-type-A action of wiping the dust off a can by rubbing it on my pants. However, this didn’t strike me as odd at all, after all I’m type A not a clean freak. But of course this got me to thinking, and whenever I start thinking about something in particular it always leads to the internet and doing research. Like you do.
What did I find? That all of the people that have been making fun of me for years for being quintessentially type A, were pretty much completely right. Out of all of the articles that I read I think the Huffington Post summed it up the best with their 16 Signs That You’re a Little (or a Lot) Type A. Here’s how I scored:

Waiting in long lines kills you a little bit inside.
- So not true! I do something else while in line like responding to emails, updating my to-do list or working on my next blog. Multi-tasking baby! That response makes me more Type A doesn’t it?
You’ve been described as a perfectionist, overachiever, workaholic or all of the above.
- Um . . . check, check and check.
You bite your nails or grind your teeth.
- Ha! I have a no.
You have a serious phobia of wasting time.
- At. All. Times. One of the reasons I really don’t like movie theaters is that I can’t do anything else while watching the movie.
You’re highly conscientious.
- I’m great at big events/parties where I’m in charge and have to be constantly doing things to make sure that people are taken care of and everything is as it should be. I hate hosting small parties though because I stress out the whole time that people aren’t having fun, or I don’t have enough food or I have the wrong kind of food, etc.
You’ve always been a bit of a catastrophist.
- Nah, everybody has an earthquake survival kit in their bedroom, their car and at work . . . right?
You frequently talk over and interrupt people.
- I don’t do it on purpose! I get excited.
You have a hard time falling asleep at night.
- Every. Damn. Night.
People can’t keep up with you in conversation, or on the sidewalk.
- I can’t help it if I have long legs and talk like the Micro Machine Man when I’m excited!
You put more energy into your career than your relationships.
- This might explain why I’m single . . .
Relaxing can be hard work for you.
- But making spreadsheets IS relaxing!
You have a low tolerance for incompetence.
- How about no tolerance for incompetence? Yeah, let’s go with none.
You’d be lost without your to-do list.
- I will never understand how people get by day-to-day without a to-do list. How do you remember all of things that you need to get done? I once tried to go without a list. It was the worst three hours of my life.
At work everything is urgent.
- If you don’t need it done right now, than why did you give it to me right now? C’mon!
You’re sensitive to stress, which can lead to high-blood pressure and heart disease.
- Ha! Another no. I have shockingly low blood pressure. I do however have anxiety and heart burn . . . so maybe this is a yes.
You make it happen.
- If you didn’t want it done and done well, why did you ask me to do it in the first place?

Huh, 15 out of 16. Yeah, I guess you can say that I’m a little (a lot) Type A.

Tuesday October 14, 2014Live and Learn, WritingOne comment so far

As a writer, I provide quite a bit of content on the web for free, mostly on my blog. It is content meant to entertain or spark a conversation or thought. I’ve never tried to sell it, nor do I make any money on it. It is meant to be read, enjoyed and shared with friends. However, I’ve started to notice a trend that I don’t think I can quite jump on board with. There are now programs out there that make it really easy to put together a virtual newsletter or newspaper, and people are making them left and right. However, some of them, instead of creating the content themselves, troll Twitter and the internet and pull other people’s work to fill the inches of their newsletter. I’ve noticed that my work is popping up in these more and more. When I saw the first one, I got a little bit of a thrill. I won’t lie, it was a nice ego stroke. But as it happened again, and again, and again the glamour of it wore off.

When someone shares a link on Facebook or retweets one of my pieces on Twitter, awesome! Thank you for sharing. When someone mentions one of my pieces in their blog piece, or even better provides a link to one of my pieces, awesome! Thank you for sharing. But at what point does it stop being sharing and become a re-appropriation of work? When somebody puts together and shares a newsletter that is composed entirely of other people’s work, is it still considered sharing? They call it their newsletter, but it’s my work, and the work of others, filling the space. I was never consulted nor asked if that was okay, I’m sure the other “contributors” weren’t either.

Even worse, I actually had a newspaper take one of my theater reviews and run it in their paper. I was given the byline so it wasn’t plagiarism, but you can bet your sweet ass that my editor was up in arms about it when I told him. The other newspaper was told that under no uncertain terms were they to ever run another one of my reviews unless they had specifically asked me to review for their paper. It never happened again. So what’s the difference? I write my blogs for my website. I write my articles for a specific magazine. I have never had any contract or agreement to write for a newsletter and yet I keep finding my work in them. So I’m left with the conundrum or whether I should be upset about this, or just appreciate the extra exposure.

Let’s face it, I’m not making millions of dollars off of my writing. Hell I’m not even making a living off of my writing. I provide my blog, free of charge for whoever wants to read it. So why does it stick in my craw every time I see my work in one of these newsletters? I think it’s because, unlike a retweet or share on Facebook, these people are trying to benefit off of my work. Whether they want to get thousands of twitter followers because of their newsletter, or the link goes back to a website where they sell ad space, they are getting personal gain by re-appropriating my work and they’re doing so without ever contacting me to ask permission. There’s the rub. But I don’t know if I’m being overly sensitive or pragmatic, or if this is something that bothers other people too. When does it go too far? When does sharing turn into an inappropriate re-appropriation of work? And the better question, what do we do about it?

What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill, or do I have a legitimate beef?

Thursday October 09, 2014Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

As I have been sharing more and more of my work I have, of course, encountered more critical comments than before. Thankfully, the majority of these have come from a genuine “trying to help” place and not just someone being nasty because they can. I have however, seen something that I’d never noticed before. Every so often I will get a nay-sayer who will argue against an idea or piece so vehemently that it becomes obvious that their issue actually has very little to do with the idea/piece, but is actually to do with something in them that was triggered by the idea/piece.

That’s when I realized that I’ve seen this reaction before, outside of comments about my writing. For example, I was in college when I declared to my father that I wanted to spend all of my savings to do a summer-at-sea where I would learn about different cultures and places and visit a laundry list of countries. He was not a fan of this plan. He was a nay-sayer and came up with all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t do it – like turmoil in certain countries. I was so confused, because this sounded like a great idea to me and an amazing opportunity. It was only after much debate that the truth of the matter came out. It wasn’t really the program, or the different locales that he objected to. He was afraid of the consequences of me emptying out my savings to do the trip. Had I not kept arguing with him, I never would have figured that out.

I think the truth of that holds for other situations as well, and now whenever I have someone who vociferously opposes or doesn’t like something, I stand back and I ask myself: Why are they a nay-sayer? Is this truly a bad idea, or is their opposition coming from somewhere else? Does their opposition have my best interests at heart, or is it coming from a place of fear, or jealousy, or somewhere else? Think about it. I actually think that the reason that some parents or families are a person’s biggest nay-sayers is because there is such a fear of what will happen if the person doesn’t succeed. They care so much that they say no and they dissuade in an attempt to keep us safe. Which is kind of backwards if you ask me, but I’ve always believed that to get what you truly want, you have to be willing to take risks. Some people don’t think that way. So who are your nay-sayers, and why are they saying nay?

Tuesday October 07, 2014Live and Learn, LoveLeave a comment

I tend to stay away from politics on my blog and social media. I’ve never found those to be good platforms for that type of discourse, not to mention I have no interest in interacting with the immense number of trolls out there in the internet depths just waiting to lash out at people. So I tend to keep it to myself. However, with the recent Supreme Court ruling that has essentially opened the gates for Marriage Equality to spread across the country, I felt the need to say something.

I grew up in a small mountain town in Colorado. Technically speaking, it wasn’t even big enough to be a town, it was a village. I grew up in the suburb of a village – and you thought that there was nothing to do where you grew up! Needless to say, there wasn’t a whole lot of diversity around. I was eighteen years-old when I had my first conversation with an African American person. Let that boggle your mind for a while. There was however, a lesbian couple. One of the women worked in the middle school as a gym teacher, and despite the fact that she was always extremely professional there would occasionally be titters around the locker room like:

“I think she saw me changing clothes, how gross!”

“If you’re nice to her, she’ll turn you into a lesbian too.”

“Have you seen? They have matching lesbian haircuts.”

It always bothered me when I would hear things like this. Gym was never my favorite class as I generally had one injury or another and couldn’t participate, which of course meant that gym teachers never really liked me much. Despite this, it still bothered me to hear people talking behind her back simply because she was a lesbian. Judging her based upon who she loved. But no matter how much it bothered me, I never said anything, and I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was afraid that that ridicule would be redirected at me and I didn’t need another reason to hate life. Maybe it was because I didn’t understand why it bothered me. Deep down I felt that what was going on was wrong, but since it seemed to be the norm maybe I was wrong and they weren’t. Who knows?

What I do know, is that I wish I would have said something. I wish I would have had the guts to call them out and ask them to stop. Not because I wanted the approval of our gym teacher, but because somehow, despite the small mountain town upbringing I’d received, I knew that it was wrong, and sitting there pretending that I didn’t hear it made me just as culpable.

I didn’t say anything then, and for that I am sorry. I can, however, say something now. I am a huge proponent of marriage equality, and for every state that starts issuing same-sex marriage certificates a part of me lightens and feels better about the state of this world that we live in. There are such better things to be spending money on than trying to block the right of two people to get married. Love is love. Whether love be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, it is the same love. Each and every one of those people deserves the right to stand up in front of their friends and family and declare that love publicly.

I have been to both gay and straight weddings and in each one there are the same shy hesitations from being up in front of a crowd. There are the same awkward fumbles over lines or missing props. There are the same rolling eyes from kids in the wedding party who have already had their picture taken 500 times and don’t want to pose for any more. And there are the same tears of joy that well up and spill over when a bride or a groom finally realizes that they are standing in front of their soul-mate and that they are finally bound together by more than just words.

The love is the same, the rights should be the same. I stand for marriage equality and I’m no longer willing to keep quiet simply because I might become a target.

Friday October 03, 2014Live and Learn, Top TenView all 4 comments

TrueTwit Validation – Seriously. Do you really get so many spam accounts trying to follow you that you need people to validate that they’re human? Not to mention, who cares if they follow you? Don’t follow back or lock your account, problem solved.
Listing Your Twitter Stats – “4 New Followers, 8 Mentions, 13K Mention Reach, 8 Replies.” FYI – nobody cares.

Offers to Buy Followers – Number 1, maybe it’s just me, but the thought of buying Twitter followers just strikes me as kinda pathetic. Number 2, your pitch would be more convincing if you had more than 183 followers yourself.
Asking me to retweet – If you want me to retweet your stuff, get to know me first or provide eye-catching content. Although if you were doing the latter you wouldn’t need to ask for the retweets in the first place.
Asking me to retweet without following me first – Now you’ve gone from tacky to downright rude. If you want me to do you a favor, at least follow and interact with my content first. It’s very sad that your brother is dying of cancer and needs money to pay the bills. However, I don’t know you from the man in the moon, therefore, I’m not going to retweet what could very well be a scam to all of the people who have followed me.
Get Openly Pissed-Off When People Don’t Favorite or Retweet Your Posts – In my mind this is the equivalent of running to mommy because the kids on the playground are ignoring you. Some tweets will be popular, some won’t. That’s the nature of the game. If you want better interaction, invest your time in developing a following that is tailored to your interests.
Pitching – If I walked up to you at a party and said hi, would you immediately try to sell me on your book/blog/podcast/business? No, we would get to know each other first. Twitter should be the same way. If I get a DM seconds after following you that pitches something you do, chances are the only action that that DM will inspire me to do, is unfollow you.

Book Marketing ad nauseam – there is nothing that makes me hit the unfollow button faster than looking at my feed and seeing that it is flooded by someone obnoxiously marketing their book, or retweeting dozens of other people’s book marketing posts. If I wanted ads, I would watch TV. The rule of thumb that I’ve heard, and agree with, is that only 1 out of every 7 posts should be marketing. So if you want to tweet 10 marketing posts every day, than you’d better come up with 70 other tweets (articles of interest, funny quips, pictures, retweets of a non-promotional nature, anything that isn’t selling a product!) to mix in and break it up.
Picking Fights – It’s a big world, there is no way that we’re all going to get along and agree on all topics. However, doing searches on topics you feel strongly about, and then picking fights with people you’ve never interacted with before is shady and uncalled for. I don’t seek you out to rain on your parade, so don’t come rain on mine. It’s just gonna get you blocked!
#FF – Friday Follows are great, but when you put the hashtag followed by 12 people with no explanation of why they should be followed it’s just obnoxious. Especially when the other 11 people mentioned all favorite and retweet the post which clogs up my notifications feed all day.

So there you have it, my biggest Twitter pet peeves. If I’ve unfollowed you, it’s probably because you did one of the above . . . or I hit the wrong button . . .

Thursday October 02, 2014Live and Learn, WritingView all 2 comments

I have always considered myself a master procrastinator. Especially when it comes to do doing things like working on my writing projects. Then I realized something. It’s not that I procrastinate working on them, it’s that I don’t have a deadline. I tend to go through life at Mach 5 with my hair on fire – at least that’s how my dad describes me. I am constantly doing something, if not 2-3 some things. Writing projects, home projects, organizational projects, art projects, I think some of my projects even have projects. I will never understand how people can be bored. I have so many things on my to-do list right now that I’m set to stay busy for months (not counting the additional tasks that I’ll come up with).

Therefore, when I come to a line on my to-do list that doesn’t have a deadline, it will often get bumped to the next day in lieu of something more immediate. Sadly, this is the category that my novel has fallen into for a very long time. Which also explains why it isn’t finished. So being the problem solver that I am, I have fixed the problem by giving myself deadlines in the form of a book club. Okay, I’ve been calling it book club, one of the participants more accurately described it as a literary salon. Basically I looked through my local friends and picked out a group of people that fit two criteria.

I respect their opinions.
They fall into my prime demographic.

Then I invited them over, gave them cheese and wine (it is a literary salon after all!) and we read a couple of chapters and then discussed. Three weeks later, we did it again with the next two chapters. To be honest, if this idea had done nothing but start a fire under my butt to finish my novel, I would have called it a success. What I have gotten is so much more! Yes, it’s given me deadlines and that has definitely increased my productivity and kept my novel from perpetually dropping down the never-ending to-do list, but what I wasn’t expecting, and what has been absolutely invaluable, is listening to the conversations. With the exception of asking questions, I try to stay out of the discussion completely and simply listen and take notes. It’s fantastic. Someone will throw out a comment, and sometimes people will chime in agreeing, but even better is when people disagree. Listening to the different interpretations on the same text is fascinating. Especially when somebody is right along the same lines of my own thinking for the character or scene and defending their viewpoint using the same argument that I would have made. It’s amazing! And it’s also scary, hearing the direction that some people’s thoughts are going, and then wondering if I should change something to steer them in the right direction, or if I should trust in the story that is already down on the page to steer them to where they need to be.

I love it and it’s driving me nuts all at the same time, because I want to blurt out and answer their questions and explain where the story is going. But if I did that I wouldn’t get to see the realizations and discoveries, so I’m keeping my mouth shut. Despite the fact that we’ve only met twice, I can honestly say that I don’t think I will ever produce a product like this again, without taking the time and effort to read it aloud with a group. The dynamic and the feedback are so much better than if I had asked each person to read the book individually and provide comments when they were done.

The funny thing is that I don’t think I would have been able to do something like this when I was younger. I don’t think I had the self-confidence to sit in a room and watch people as they hear my words for the first time and then discuss them. Especially since they are all well aware that my goal is to improve the text, so they’re looking at it with a critical eye. That being said, I really wish that I could go back and tell the younger me, to get over myself, suck it up and to start sharing my work as soon as possible. Writing is definitely a solitary pursuit, but for it to be good it has to be shared and critiqued. I’m really coming to realize that that is the only way to truly improve. I am also coming to realize, that when you get to pick the people you share it with, it’s not nearly as scary as you think it will be.

Tuesday September 16, 2014Live and Learn, WomenView all 5 comments

Growing up I always vociferously declared that I was not a feminist. To me, being a feminist was a bad thing because feminists were all about burning bras, down with men, men suck and women are goddesses. Quite frankly, that’s just not how I roll. In my mind, men and women are equal despite society/history’s insistence that we’re not. Therefore, to accomplish that equality, men do not need to be torn down, women need to rise. Pretty simple concept in thought, not so simple in practice. With that belief and the work that I have been drawn to, it has become abundantly clear that I am indeed a feminist and that’s a good thing. I am simply a feminist with a small “f” (second definition) as opposed to a feminist with a capital “F” (first definition). It is through that distinction that I have been able to finally, comfortably declare myself a feminist.

However, I’ve discovered that the more research that I do into under-represented women in our past and the more that I read things about under-representation in our present the more that it seeps into my everyday thoughts and the more miserable I get. For example, some friends and I went to see the new Planes movie “Fire and Rescue.” An animated kid’s movie for a cute 90 minute diversion. However, instead of enjoying the show, I left frustrated, hating the movie because I had spent the entire time examining it under a feminist magnifying glass. (For anybody that hasn’t seen it, and doesn’t want spoilers, I would suggest that you stop reading.)

In the movie, there are three memorable female characters. The first we meet is a mechanic – nice, female representation in what is primarily a male dominated profession. The second is a plane in the Fire and Rescue division – again nice female representation. The third is a sweet little old camper lady on vacation with her sweet little old camper husband – gonna reserve judgment on this one. Now as the movie progresses we discover that the female mechanic, who is touted for being an amazing mechanic, is unable to fix our lead character’s engine. Not only can’t she fix it, but she sadly informs him that it can’t be fixed, no way, no how and they can’t find a replacement. Flash forward to the end and the main Fire and Rescue mechanic, who is a man, builds our lead character a brand new engine like it’s no big deal, completely invalidating the expertise of the female mechanic.

Let’s take a look at the second female character – the Fire and Rescue plane. Yes, she works in this great job and she’s good at what she does. However, the primary focus of this character isn’t when she’s working, but during the down time in between. What we see there is a dingy, sex-crazed, socially-awkward woman who unabashedly pursues the main character, despite the fact that he never gives her any indication that he’s interested. This tells us that for a woman to want to hold that kind of job then clearly it’s because there is something lacking in her personality so she is unable to get a husband and settle down. Awesome.

Now let’s move on to the sweet little old camper couple. They venture off to visit the bridge where they met, and of course that’s when the wildfire kicks in and really starts raging. So they’re trapped and have to be saved by our hero the main character. However, when we finally see them on the burning bridge they aren’t both huddled together awaiting a rescue. Oh, no! The woman is practically dangling off the bridge, being held up by her husband. In a situation where both a man and a woman needed rescuing, they had to make it so that the woman needed rescuing more. The silly broad couldn’t stay away from the edge and now she’s made herself a helpless victim twice over.

I was so bitter and frustrated. From an animated movie for kids. Let me repeat that, an animated movie, for kids, left me bitter and frustrated. After I had time to cool down and shake it off, I realized how ridiculous I was being. Instead of just enjoying the stupid animated movie and relaxing for 90 minutes I had fixated on everything that I deemed to be wrong. Instead of focusing on the intended message that you have to face your fears and sometimes you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself in order to help others, I focused on the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with the female characters. It was at this moment that I stopped and asked myself, to be a feminist, do I really have to be a feminist all the time? Do I really have to be on the look-out for every little indiscretion, or slight that is perpetrated toward women at all times, everywhere? Or am I allowed to leave the battlefield behind from time to time and simply live? Live without a bigger purpose, without a betterment in mind. Simply live for the pleasure of the moment, which may mean that I will occasionally enjoy things that don’t fall in line with the feminist agenda.

My conclusion, absolutely. I am not the type of person that can crusade for a cause 24/7 without losing my mind and just being miserable. I know that about myself, I have to split my focus. There is a reason that I find Lucy Stone so much more intriguing and influential than Susan B. Anthony, and that is because Lucy refused to have tunnel vision. Susan B. Anthony and her contingent fought tooth and nail for women’s rights and tried to quash any legislature that did not positively address women – feminist with a capital “F.” On the other hand, Lucy Stone fought tooth and nail for women’s suffrage, but she also fought tooth and nail for abolition and rights for African Americans – feminist with a small “f.” She believed that rights and empowerment for any marginalized group was a step in the right direction for gaining rights and empowerment for all marginalized groups. Her fight for women’s suffrage never lessoned, she simply understood that there were other things in life worthy of her attention as well. Now I’m not saying that I am anywhere near the caliber of a Lucy Stone, I am way too selfish to be placed amongst the likes of her. However, I think we can all benefit from widening our perspective and recognizing that there may be things outside of our main goals that are worthy of our attention too.

Tuesday September 09, 2014Fathers, Life, Live and LearnLeave a comment

Growing up it was a rare occurrence to see my father truly upset or mad. It’s true that my sister and I were better behaved than most kids – that tends to happen when you have to start helping care for your mother by the time you’re eight – but we were not angels, and there were plenty of opportunities for dad to get upset with us. Despite this, he would rarely get mad. One day, after doing something that I was sure would result in at least a few fireworks, and getting none, I actually asked him why he didn’t get upset more often. After all, my friends talked about their parents blowing gaskets on a regular basis. Then my dad said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said, “Kid, there are better things to get upset about in this life than (insert whatever dumb but inane thing I had done).”

There are better things to get upset about.

How simple, yet profound is that statement. Think about all of the things that you got upset about in the past week, the past month. How many of them, in retrospect, weren’t really that big of a deal? I’m gonna guess most of them. That’s at least what I discovered when I really started looking at the things that I got upset about. So I stopped. Now don’t get me wrong, I have my moments and I’ve definitely gotten upset with people, but years later, I find that like my father, it takes a lot to get me truly upset or mad. I’ve learned that I have better things to expend my energy on. I choose my battles. However, what I’ve recently come to discover is that it really goes beyond choosing your own battles because when you get upset you’re actually choosing a battle for someone else as well.

I work with a couple of people who get upset about everything, and I mean everything! We’re talking if somebody moves their lunch from one side of the fridge to the other on the wrong day then somebody is getting yelled at, and not necessarily the person who moved the lunch. I’ve seen it time and time again and what I’ve noticed is that it becomes this horrible chain reaction. Person 1 gets pissed off so they yell at Person 2. Person 2 is now upset because they were yelled at, so they take it out on Person 3. Person 3 is now in a bad mood so they take it out on Person 4, etc. It keeps going until somebody finally takes the abuse, but instead of passing it on, they let it roll off their shoulders and they greet the next person they see with a smile instead of a frown. It keeps going until somebody finally realizes that they didn’t do anything wrong, that the other person is having some sort of an issue. It keeps going until someone decides that there are better things to get upset about. But who knows how many people have been negatively affected by the time you get to that last person who chooses to let that battle pass them by.

Think about it, how many times have you been around someone who gets upset at everything and then watched as that ire is passed on to someone else. It’s like a virus and I’ve realized that I’ve come to a point in my life that I don’t have time for people like that. I realize that there are better things to get upset about than the ordinary idiocy of everyday life, and with that I realize that there are better people to spend my time with than those who get worked up over the smallest infraction. I guess I feel like life is too short to be mad all day.

Thursday August 14, 2014Depression, Life, Live and LearnOne comment so far

With Monday’s announcement of the death of Robin Williams I’m sure that like me, you have been inundated with shocked reactions, tributes and more articles than you could possibly read about depression and suicide. Well, as loath as I usually am to jump on any social media trending bandwagon, this one I’m getting on board, because this is a topic that has been on my mind as of late. About a month ago I finished reading a book where the main character kills herself and I wrote a blog about the emotions that journey churned up inside of me. You can read that post here. A couple of weeks later one of my followers on Twitter asked how I would describe suicide in one word. She told me that it was for a survey. I told her short-sighted.

In my opinion, the biggest symptom of depression is short-sightedness. When you are depressed, truly, clinically depressed not just bummed out over something, you become short-sighted. You can’t see beyond the pain. You can’t see beyond the haze, the loneliness, the dejection and the failure. The burden that your heaviness places on all those that you encounter. It’s as if there is an all-encompassing fog. You can be surrounded by people, hear them, feel their presence, see them swirling the fog around you, but be completely unable to reach them. Unable to absorb their words, unable to feel their comfort, unable to process their presence. You are absolutely alone. No one can understand what you’re feeling, no one has ever felt like this before, and no one cares. So you sleep. You sleep more than anyone needs to sleep, because in sleep you escape. The pain eases and the fog lifts. You are free to just be.

The second you open your eyes, however, it all rushes back in with a whoosh and the weight of it takes your breath away. Do you get up and fight through one more day, or do you sleep some more? Eventually the lure of sleep becomes stronger and the need to fight wanes. The struggle seems insurmountable. There’s a looming giant blocking your path that takes a step closer every time you reawaken until you are finally forced with the decision; do you stand alone on the field of battle with no weapons and your reserves of energy spent to fight the goliath, or do you peacefully slip into sleep forever? In that moment, that pivotal all-encompassing moment the decision is easy. Your short-sighted depression has already told you that you won’t win against the giant. So why delay the inevitable? Why cause yourself more pain?

I have definitely seen people react to a suicide by calling the person selfish. I disagree. Suicide is not selfish. Suicide is the only logical answer in a disconnected world where sophistry rules. In a mind where all thoughts, interactions and beliefs belittle, shame and discourage the self. For those people, in the grips of that disease, suicide is the only logical answer. It not only ends the mind-numbing pain, it removes the burden placed on all those around you. Your family, friends, and co-workers will no longer have to deal with you. To a depressed mind, suicide is the cessation of a great burden and the removal of pain for everyone involved. The theme song of “M.A.S.H.” – “Suicide is Painless“ was clearly written by someone who knows the grips of true depression.

Of course, to a healthy mind, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And everybody has felt depressed from time to time, so they assume that they can relate. However, I think the best comparison I have ever heard is that somebody who has only been momentarily depressed (in my opinion any episode that lasts less than a year is a moment) telling someone who is clinically depressed that they know what they’re going through is like somebody telling an amputee that they can relate because they once had to get stitches. It’s just not the same. Clinical depression is a disease that affects everything you do, every day of your life.

I have been clinically depressed for 21 years. This way of life is all I know. So when I heard that Robin Williams had committed suicide, unlike all of the people around me, I was not shocked. I was saddened, but I was not shocked. In my mind it made perfect sense that this man, with a history of depression and addiction who made a living making people laugh uproariously for years, would commit suicide. You heard me right. I lumped his comedy in with his darkness. There is a reason that the majority of painted clown faces are crying. I would hazard to guess that most comedians are, or have been at some point in their lives, severely depressed. David Wong an editor at Cracked.com wrote this article about that very topic, and he hit the nail on the head. Even going as far back as the class clown in school, there is usually something lurking beneath the comedy.

The Sad Clown by jlmorris

I was not the class clown growing up. I didn’t discover the magic of laughter until later in life. Now I use it all the time. I love to make my friends laugh and I revel in that moment of power that that laughter brings me. I made them laugh. I must be worthwhile after all. But if you really look closely, you’ll notice that my particular brand of humor is self-deprecating. I tell funny stories of me doing embarrassing things. I make funny faces and noises. Sometimes I do so unintentionally and when a friend says, “say that again, “obviously making fun of me, instead of blushing at my out of place remark or reaction and fumbling forward, I repeat whatever I did or said with pride, usually exaggerated a little bit for better effect. I do so because I know that I’ll get the laugh, and there are times that that laugh is the only thing that connects me to the people around me. That laugh is the only thing that I have that says that I belong and that those people want me around. So I make them laugh again and again, and each peal is a gentle pat on the head saying “There, there. Someone wants you.”

Sounds pathetic doesn’t it? Well it feels pathetic too. And I can tell you right now, that reaction does not come from low self-confidence, or low self-esteem. It comes from my depression.

It’s a part of my disease that I recognize and acknowledge. I always have. That’s why when I was an actress and the cast was encouraged to greet the audience after the show I would drag my feet. I would take extra-long to get out of costume and make-up so that by the time I made it to the lobby there were only a few patrons left. I yearned for their praise and applause, but I knew, that like the laughter I could provoke, that praise wouldn’t penetrate to create a connection and so would leave me feeling hollow after time had passed. It would leave me seeking more and more, and it would leave me broken if I didn’t get a steady stream. So I didn’t allow myself to drink from that well. It didn’t matter if people liked my work, as long as I didn’t like myself. Somewhere in my brain or my heart or my very being I understood this. I also understood that as long as I let my depression have free reign in my head, I would never like myself. So I waged war on my depression. I took the battle to the goliath before he had a chance to get too close and overwhelm me. I didn’t go alone either. I armed myself with knowledge, therapists, pharmaceuticals, exercise, sunshine, diet, vitamin supplements, emotional-release therapies, herbal remedies and a good deal of thick-headed stubbornness.

Did I win the battle? Nope. I’m still depressed and probably will be until the day that I die. The difference is that now I know how to manage my disease, and I understand that that management is going to have to change as my disease shifts and fluxes with my life. Depression is a wily little fucker, and just when you think you have everything figured out it’ll throw you a curve ball. It keeps things interesting.

The one weapon in my arsenal that is new, is talking about my disease with more than just a therapist or a really close friend. A huge weight lifted from my shoulders the moment that I decided to throw caution to the wind, stare all of the stigmas in the face and admit to my condition. There are those in my acquaintance who do not approve of this choice. I don’t care. Having a mental illness does not mean that I am weak, and it does not mean that I have been “strong for too long.” I think we’ve all seen that meme floating around. It means that for whatever reason, physiological or environmental, my body does not produce the correct chemicals in the correct amounts. End. Of. Story. There is nothing shameful in that. Therefore, I am not ashamed to openly admit that I suffer from clinical depression and anxiety, and if that admission makes some people uncomfortable, that’s their problem not mine. I will not hide a huge part of who I am for the comfort of others, and nobody else should have to either. It is in the hiding and denial that the giant is allowed to creep ever closer.

Robin Williams has undoubtedly left a rich legacy behind him. I thank him the most for unwittingly opening up the door for a frank discussion about depression and suicide. Thank you for that. May you stand in the sunshine and finally be at peace.