I am a negative person

I heard someone say this in AA after I had been sober about three months. I didn't get what she meant. She sounded to me like a reasonably optimistic person.

Anyway, after I had moved, and then moved on into the world of secular sobriety, a couple of years later, I thought again about her comments and took them as just some version of AA-speak, or part of AA's hair shirt.

However, in the last week, I've revisited that comment in my mind. Several factors have led to that.

First, although I still have gainful employment and keep body knit together, etc., the employment world has not been kind over the last five years.

It was nearly five years ago that I first got the real impression that my then-newspaper employer could go under. When some pundits were saying what eventually would be called The Great Recession was worse than the Carter-Reagan recession, I said no it's not. Technically, I was right at the moment. In reality, it did indeed turn out worse in the longer run.

My newspaper company eventually did go belly-up in July 2009, after months of struggles, along with public denials on my part as well as our owner and publisher. (Turns out, in the particular Dallas suburb where we were officed, rumors of our demise, and specific financial problems, had been running around for a few months before that.)

I was worried ... mid-40s, economy not good, newspaper industry in the tank in general, and the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram having already canned a number of people. Maybe, in part due to having anxiety issues bad enough two years earlier that I went on anti-depressants, I was worried that something similar would arise again.

So, when I landed a job as a copy editor in Odessa, I knew I would take it. Then, they found out I had blogged about the demise of my suburban Dallas papers, and the attempt to do a start-up to replace it, and how I mentioned some financials as part of that blog post. Top two editors at Odessa grilled me about that, and I did an honest tap dance and kept the job.

Then, I feel depressed driving from Dallas, especially when I get past Sweetwater and descend into the Permian Basin. And it gets worse.

I get to Odessa the day the Odessa American's parent, Freedom Communications, declares Chapter 11. Yes, sobriety friends tell me that's not necessarily the end of the world. But, I can't be sure of that. Add in an assistant news editor who could ride roughshod over people at times, and did, and ... it was very bumpy my first six months there.

Then, the latest oil boom is making rental prices skyrocket, so I look to get out. And do, soon enough.

To Marble Falls, a Texas Hill Country town an hour west of Austin.

More fun ensues. My boss text messages me on the day I arrive, treating me like I'm 21 and texting me about proper dress code. Things went generally downhill from there.

And, I got out, with a bit of a pay cut, to a small weekly. Then, I advance to become publisher of the larger weekly in the same county the parent company owns, along with that one. I do well on the editorial side, while learning the ropes on the financial side. That includes having some slow times on the financial side, making a mistake or two on decisions, and having people now breathing down my neck.

And, still being unable to land a job outside the newspaper industry, or a better job within, and determined not to jump again from frying pan to fire.

Negative as in seeing darkness in my economic future? Absolutely. Negative in letting some of that, at least, spill into the rest of my life? Certainly.

I'll likely be negative for most of the next decade, until I'm within the last decade of the Social Security "finish line," assuming our political leaders don't shift the goalposts on that again, as far as retirement age.

And, this is why I can't stand New Ageism's brightsidedness, nor Christian success gospel talk either. And, some of us have temperamental leanings by genetics, reinforced by early, middle, or late life experiences, to see life non-optimistically at times.

I hope I can just be "reasonably negative," rather than fully so.

Don't Forgive

DON'T FORGIVE

Don't forgive
Be angry.
You were hurt
And toyed with
Maipulated and domineered.
Don't forgive that.
And don't forgive
Any person who did that
As long as they
Remain unforgiveable.
Don't forgive
And don't forget
Until you're ready to.
And then,
Dunk his head
Into oblivion.
Give him that
Over and over again
As often as you need,
As often as his memory needs.
Drown him,
As dead as you are
As long as he remains unforgiveable.
And drown his accomplices
And his abettors
And his deniers
Just as much.

No, you don't "Have to" forgive

Besides things like higher powers, as I got more sobriety time and moved back to my previous "non-metaphysical stances," this AA idea, also perpetuated by some people outside of AA, that you "have to" forgive people became ever more grating.

Insulting, even.

If you, like I, am a survivor of some sort of personal trauma, you know exactly where I'm coming from.

Well, you don't "have to" forgive and you don't have to feel that you should, or that there's something wrong with you if you  don't.

Here's a great piece about that. Your mileage may vary.

A dream with a roomful of life baggage

Wow, what a dream during a Sunday nap.

My current job, the president of our smallish company, some of the reasons I don't like being here and don't like the feeling of him watching over my shoulder (the dream included him having an office at my newspaper), people invading my office space, an old bed of mine being there, and a seemingly magically growing plethora of home utensils and such popping up in said office, and there's enough symbolism for a monthload of Sundays.

Now, how the hell in today's American hypercapitalist economy, do I get out of here and get a quasi-intellectual, or public service nonprofit, or other job, or real career, to suit me better?

I'm clearly an introvert

This piece from Huffington Post about introverts has a 23-point "symptom" checklist.

Of them, the only ones that I totally "miss" on are:

1. Trouble with small talk. No, I'm a ham at times, and as a smally-town newspaper guy, more seriously, have had to learn this.

5. Not "too intense." That said, I think this isn't a totally valid check point in general.

12. Expert in one thing? Nope. And like No. 5, I think that's not totally an introvert's deal in general.



Some are spot on, like sitting at one end of a bus or train, wanting down times, and definitely on "networking." Geeze, that is SUCH an extrovert-salesperson type thing.

On the other hand, the "wanting space" factor, at one end of a bus, etc.? How much, with me, is that introversion and how much is that hypervigilance over abuse survival? Indeed, the question might apply to other introverts, and even be related to different responses to child sexual abuse, resilience, and more.

Others are spot-on, too. In a kind of funny way, No. 14, about screening calls is.

No. 16, about the constantly  running inner monologue, is much more serious. And, taking it as a legit marker for introversion, rather than the chicken-egg of "wanting space," nonetheless, this too has to relate to abuse survival, and how introverts and extroverts differ.

Even though I'm totally a naturalist, also, I totally get the "old soul" deal, and felt that way before I became a teen, let alone in my 20s. It added to the discomfort of dad's physical and emotional abuse, plus his failure to deal with the parents of neighborhood bullies. I felt like more of an adult than him.

But, is that also somewhat chicken-and-egg?

No. 19, on internal cues? Yes. Maybe introverts are more intuitional?

No. 20, indeed, on "big picture." I'd add that that picture is often more nuanced.

And yes, I am a writer.

Who killed Steve Snyder?

That inner child? He
Was smothered with a pillow;
He died years ago.

Who killed him? They? Me?
An I would be too active
For such brutal work.

That's how an old soul
Gets started. A young soul gets
Strangled in childhood

While being adult
Enough to know nobody
Will listen to him.

In his fragile pain
A soul older than parents
Is lonely indeed.

I hate change ... when it's too much, too quickly

And, in the workaday part of my life, exactly that may be happening ... a meeting tomorrow with my boss and somebody from the corporate office, detailing what will happen next at our local group of two newspapers when my boss moves on, as she told me today that she's doing.

All this as I still try to get out of newspapers, and at the same time try to figure out ... from newspapers to where? And what geographic location?

And, all this just 3.5 months after moving here from a bad job, which I needed to escape. And feeling I've been sold a partial bill of goods now. And, per my previous post, still wondering what I need to do to change job/career paths, and where I go to learn some tips, tricks and techniques for how to do that, while doing another slow burn at feeling unskilled by nature, negative nurture, upbringing issues and more.

I don't expect too much sympathy, or empathy. First, there's people in today's America in worse circumstances. Second, from the majority of family, I don't expect sympathy or understanding about, or acknowledgement of, the background issues I just listed. Nor do I expect much of anything else. Add in my irreligiousness, and that cuts down more on the sympathy route.

It's also cuts down on the amount of confiding I can do.

I hate change, too much, too quickly, especially being sober for years and no way to hide from it, and being older, and somehow feeling more trapped by it.

Sometimes, I'm a survivor, in a good way. Other times, I'm a survivor who only wants to survive and not risk the risks of being a thriver more.

A man child

THE MAN-CHILD LIVES

I feel like a man-child

Wandering in a digital cybersea

Still a naïf about so much in life

And, because of that, and because of why that is,

Still wary, still cautious, still guarded.

While human nature is malleable,

Nonetheless, like crude stell on anvil forge,

It becomes brittle with too much beating.

And so, I am guarded, and wary of situations,

As well as people;

Opportunities though such challenges may be.

How many others, like me,

Were made old souls, more than born,

From premature aging

Or premature beating on unforgiving anvils?