Five years to the early finish line

Well, because one has to wait a month for one's first Social Security check, it's actually five years and a month. 

I'm hoping I don't need to retire early, but ... with being in a dying industry and ageism still a deal in America, getting full-time work, or even decent PT work, should something happen to me? It's a concern. I started to type worry, but took it back.

I'd prefer to limp forward further if I can. Especially vis-a-vis a country without national health care, to get to age 65 and the Medicare finish line.

After that, even if I had to start drawing Social Security before 67, let alone 70? I'd be good.

Also, making it five more years means being eligible for senior citizens assistance in rental costs. That means lower overhead. And, any money that I did have from jobs? Getting to 65 would mean an additional tax deduction.

So, five years to the early finish line. Eight years to the middle-level one. Ten to the upper-middle one of "full retirement age." I would hope to have part-time paid work after that, and after that, it wouldn't affect my Sociable Security earnings. I know I can make five. Onward!

Childhood sleep, sickness and wellness and abuse

I am re-reading through parts of Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Knows the Score" and at one point, he mentioned that child abuse survivors reported much higher rates of sickness than the general childhood public.

I did have some allergy problems in childhood, but nothing serious. I occasionally had some small asthma problems, but that was likely due to dad's smoking as much as anything.

Otherwise, I had no real sickness problems.

But, sleep patterns?

As a pre-teen kid, I regularly stayed up until midnight, and irregularly read under the covers in bed until after that. Once, after previous warnings, my dad caught me and gave me a "spanking" that was more a beating. This was part of his bad parenting, and in her own way, mom's bad parenting, too. Neither one asked WHY I was staying up that late. Neither one talked more to my teachers or principal about gifted classes or anything else that a semi-poor school district in New Mexico might do, either for me individually or me and a few others. (I never even knew others of my level of "geekness" or beyond in elementary school, to be honest. Only in junior high, for a town of more than 15,000, did I start seeing others.)

I also got up at 6 a.m. every weekday to watch the "Today Show" when it was still broadcast live. Again, neither parental unit asked why, let alone talked to me in more detail about this.

Per van der Kolk's talk about feeling unsafe at home, I felt moderately unsafe, or mildly-moderately unsafe, no worse than that, with dad's emotions and anger. Maybe about the same with my two sexually abusive brothers. With mom? Other than worries that she would be so solipsistic — bingo, the word popped into mind at the right time, and it's better than narcissistic — to forget about me (and no, not joking), I felt safe otherwise.

But, safe only in the sense of not being actively threatened. If feelings of abandonment are part of lack of safety, I had that in spades. And I've just realized that.

Beyond a lust for learning, I think both the late sleep start and early sleep end were in part environmental control issues, as my brothers, for the most part, were sexually abusive of me in bed during night time sleep time. Staying up later meant — or was intended to mean — staving that off. Getting up early was meant to keep them from coming in too late. (At the same time, the younger of the two abusers taught me to sneak out of house, including out my bedroom window, to go down to a former Denny's 24-hour restaurant at 2 a.m. On our bikes. Why the restaurant staff wasn't calling police the few times this was done, I don't know. And people think the good old days were better? Not even always for white people.)

At the same time, I surely had sleep anxiety issues. Why this didn't translate into a general somatoform anxiety, with symptoms like, say, a semi-regular spastic colon, I have no idea.

I'm glad, and that may be part of my resilience that led me to survive as well as I did without surrogate parents. (I would have been a mess, and either dead, a druggie, or a male butt-boy prostitute, had I succeeded in running away from home.)

Finally, the degree of abandonment I surely recognized, but also surely didn't actually consciously recognize or feel, is in turn surely related to my ability, as well as my desire, to live alone as an adult.

Yes, I don't have a high degree of "connectedness." And it may prove troublesome down the road. But, it works well enough now, and has for some time.

The real world versus aching desires

Well, it's back to Sulphur Springs after the Marlin newspaper job turned out to be a shit sandwich carefully wrapped to appeal to my emotional heartstrings.

I have no idea if Jim Moser asked other people besides me before offering me this job. I do believe, based on stuff that i couldn't have known about before I got to Marlin, that the offer was borderline unethical at a minimum. And, the "borderline" part is being polite.

So, despite my yearnings to move, despite me liking people in Marlin, despite me liking being near Waco, and despite me trying to use the I Ching and an old baseball cap to convince myself any lingering misgivings pre-move weren't real, it's back to Sulphur Springs. Fortunately, my old job was available and there's no company rules against rehires, even in those particular cases.

That's the real world. I'm back to a place I wanted to get out of rather than keeping myself in a dry heaves situation over a job whose future worried me. More in weeks and months ahead.

The good side is that I'm not eating much money, and that I now have a new cushion from Geico.

That then said, when I do hit 62 or beyond, even if I don't need to have financial worries, will I still actually have them?

Frustrations and being "trapped"

Just had to have my car towed back to Hooterville from the nearby mini-metro area. I roughly know the cause, and if the tow truck driver is right on the exact cause, it shouldn't be too pricey. That said, it will cost money, and here in Hooterville, might not be done quickly.

That leads to issue No. 2.

A publishers' meeting in my newspaper company, which starts Friday. I'll have to rent a car, maybe. And, I hate the idea of a corporate meeting with Sunday sessions. And, this all reminds me that I'm the editor and publisher of two struggling papers in small towns that probably should be combined into one single paper.

I'm in my 50s, I can be grumpy too.

Having the worst case of sciatica I've had in at least 5 years, I think, after throwing my back out 2 weeks ago doesn't help. But, I'm not dead, and have less in the way of physical problems than Laura, Ang and others.

It's really that it reiterates the frustrations of still being stuck in Hooterville and that, for the last five-plus years, while I've stayed employed, my job moves have generally been escaping problems at the previous job, whether company closure in Dallas, skyrocketing housing prices in the Permian Basin, bad management at last position before this one, or a struggling economy in a struggling city and county here.

And, having been the victim (I believe) of age discrimination on one employment interview doesn't help.

Basically, things like this bring up the fear of being "trapped" that goes all the way back to my childhood issues, PTSD over the abuse.

Obviously things like this, or a drinking history that developed out of them, aren't things to be discussed with one's boss, even though she knows I've been looking for other work. Especially not when she is a "positivity" type who might think such things are easily transcended. 

Anxious about anxiety, thinking about thinking

A slow, languorous night, as I try to relax

From a long day before,

And enjoy life

A little bit more of a day, or a moment

At a time.

While knowing that the ability to

Not think too much, too often

Sometimes might be a blessing.

However, I know it could only be such

For me,

If I had never learned to think “too much”

In the first place.

The problem is not “thinking too much.”

Rather, it’s not having support for thinking a lot

Or for having feedback on thinking a lot.

Or for having parents who valued thinking

And offered support for facing anything

That it might raise up.

No, the problem is

Being anxious about thinking, then

Being anxious about anxiety.

If I can just remember this,

Just remember on a daily basis

For about 20 more years,

I might be OK then.

Or a better semblance of OK than now.

Reparenting myself

Through thinking, growing and anxiety,

Starts again.

Moving on on sobriety support

I'm planning on not running for re-election to the board of directors of the secular sobriety support organization where I've served the last few years.

And, I'm glad, for several reasons.

First, to the degree that the alpha-beta (and gamma!) theory of human social structure is true (hint: it's not all that true among wolf packs, let alone among humans), I'm a gamma. I'm not a real leader, but I'm not a real follower, either. Give me a basic sense of security and structure, or the possibility thereof, and I'm marching to my own drum.

Second, a recent board change wound up changing larger board dynamics. That said, the one changed board member has decided not to run for a full term. But, that person triggered other dynamics, other dominoes within the board, that don't totally float my boat either.

I've now returned fire in what could be a developing email argument. I won't disclose confidences, and I don't know if I would stand up as well to this person in person, but I don't like bullies, male or female. (And, yes, there are female bullies too, including some who bully men; that's why there's women who commit domestic violence.)

Beyond that, I feel on an island. To get to an annual convention, I'd have to drive 2.5 hours to an airport in a major city, and even then, nonstop flights are becoming more limited, or else drive 30 miles to the nearest airport and take a puddle-jumper to the big city. And even the big city flights have ... well, they've skyrocketed since I last flew anywhere three years ago.

Finally, with job-related stresses (the largest single advertiser at the two small newspapers where I am publisher, a local grocery story, sold out to a chain last year, hitting our bottom line a sharp ding), I don't need the stress of the changing board dynamics. 

That said, I've learned some things about group dynamics. That includes noting that the person I perceive as a bully decided not to run again after I made my announcement.

I've also learned that, per the old phrase that "to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs," that doesn't mean that you have to break them with undue force, or spatter them.

Being single: The plus side

Yes, it can get lonely in a household of one.

And, yes, not all marriages are bad. But very few are so "sanctified" that there's almost no argumentation, at least of high levels, almost no disagreements on parenting issues, and, especially in today's world, how to juggle different career demands of two spouses, especially on issues like moves and relocations. And, beyond marriages, and children, the career and "sanctification" issues apply to non-marital longer-term relationships of other sorts.

I'm sure that part of why I don't handle criticism so well is I got so much of it, in different ways, from dear old dad, even though I was a second shot at an oldest son in some ways.

And, I know the reason I don't handle argumentation well, whether in an intimate relationship, other relationship, or even more casual connection, is how much of it I heard between mom and dad late at night.

It's probably kind of late to learn too much improvement in the intimate relationship side. And, as I've said before, it's "safer" being single.

Besides no worries about argumentation or yelling, there's no worried about being controlled or guilt tripped. Nor any eggshell feelings that I might be doing those things accidentally myself. And, sexuality issues aren't a worry, either. Yes, I still have hormones, but, should those hormones get satisfied again, I'd be more comfortable with them being satisfied in a less confining? tense? challenging? situation.

Add in a family disposition to anxiety (albeit not nearly as bad as Atlantic editor Scott Stossel's gut-wrenching affliction), and being single is safer.

I'd just like to get to a job/career situation, and location, where I'm ready to settle down, and get a dog. Sorry, not a cat. Beyond mild allergies to cats? They're too independent-minded, and don't have deep brown doggy eyes.

Feeling empty, feeling scared, feeling a fraud

The "fraud" part? About a month ago, a woman came in our office. A customer. Used the n-word before she left. I said nothing. Yes, it was in part shock. But, I had recovered before she walked out the door. And I said nothing.

The scared? Ad sales at the two small newspapers are struggling this month. National trade mags predict total newspaper ad sales will drop 8 percent this year. That, presumably includes allowances for election ads. And, for the few newspapers holding their own or growing because of oil boom growth or other things, a few others will thus have drops of more than 8 percent.

When the Saturday Waco paper is normally just 20 percent ads, you know it's not just me, and it's not just Loren. It's this area. But, that will be called an excuse.

Feeling empty? No, I don't feel I can talk to my district boss about this. Nor any family, for various reasons. Certainly not the other two people in the office.

This isn't meant to be playing the martyr, hand to back of head. It just is what it is.

The 50s are starting out to be a wonderful decade of aging.

I recently journaled that I sometimes feel like someone whose shit does indeed stink, and stinks very much, in relations to other people. That they know that, that I should know why, but that I'm somehow missing a clue while they're laughing at me.

Failure is an option, and not necessarily an orphan

Some poetic thoughts after reading this very interesting column.

Failure IS an option

I am not a failure,

And I am not the sum of my failures

But I am a person who has failed, and will fail,

Many, many times.

I am also anxious, fretful, and pessimistic –

A toxic brew.

Accepting that failures are not moral faults

Is not always easy to do;

Even harder to accept

Is that because of luck and the actions of others

Failure says little about my skills in many cases.

But self-flagellation

Is a means of trying to assert control

Rather than feeling powerless from its lack.

But that’s not reality.

The truth?

Many of my actions

Have countless outside tangential influences.

But even that is not all of reality.

Even my most important actions, most consciously decided

Have many subconscious influences

From chaotically driven, chaotically competing subselves.

Kennedy and others were all wrong here.

Failure has just as many fathers as victory,

Even if they scurry for dark corners

After the lights of the mind are turned on.

Sometimes the 'trouble' does never happen

Mark Twain has a famous quote, which has been botched a bit here and there, but which I believe is authoritatively rendered as, "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened."

Well, I can personally relate to that.


I had a notice from the Postal Service in my box Tuesday night, to sign for a certified letter at the post office. My mind was racing.


Did my old apartment complex suddenly decide it wanted additional money from me somehow? (Even as I have two noncertified letters, one from the complex, one from the parent company, both of which came in the last week, on my table. But, I know what I signed, and signed for, when I moved.)


Did that traffic ticket I got lawyered out of two of three counts, but paid the remaining one, have the money order incorrect? 


Something worse?


Well, it was from the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, which made me more nervous at first, since they're the folks who pulled me over in 2009.


What was it actually for?


I had a applied for a PR job, public information officer, with the office. I was being notified I didn't make the final cut - notified by certified letter.


I've played Twain's quote in my head many a time, but never before have I had this concrete of confirmation.

The shells of PTSD

I don’t trust me well.

Let alone you. Or others.

I’ve learned that well.

That’s one of the biggest takeaways about this move, and about some of my personality in general. I don’t believe in my own skill set, let alone the rest of the haiku. Due to a variety of things, trust, including ideas of confidence, just isn't much of a part of my mental vocabulary. And so, more than being a “highly sensitive person,” I am “thin skinned,” but not in a “fly off the handle” way. Rather, it’s that I simply don’t seem to have a lot of emotional and psychological “insulation.”

When criticism arises,

I enter my PTSD shell,

A set of nestled Russian puzzle boxes.

Dissociating even deeper.

It doesn’t even have to be actual criticism, or conflict. It can be fear of possible or anticipated criticism or conflict that sets me off. Add in some physiological things like consecutive male births (the more consecutive boys a mother bears, the more likely the latest boy is to be gay, and there may be other effects from this “battle of the sexes,” too, for all we know, which is what I am getting at) and a family anxiety heritage, it’s probably not a wonder I feel like I had thinner “emotional insulation” to deal with the events of childhood as they hit me. I don't mean this to be sounding like a pity party. It's simply to say this is part of my heritage as a "survivor." In light of the Penn State and Syracuse scandals, or the Catholic priest scandals, some "survivors" adaptations are even more "primitive" than mine.

Anyway, therefore, I adapted as I knew or learned how. When I say dissociation, it’s literal, though not as severe as it once was, and it’s more conscious, at times, than in years past. I know that nobody likes criticism, and few people claim to deal with it well, though many probably deal with it “OK.” People talk about letting criticism be like water off a duck’s back. Well, to me, this is criticism like a rain storm, not just water, but being blocked out by enough layers of shells (I hope).

It’s easier not to trust just one

Rather than another, too. So I live alone.

Occasionally infused from within with childlike wonder,

While desiring a thicker skin that no wizard has to offer.

Anticipation, anger, anxiety and frustration-fear

What a mix of emotions, eh? But, it's where I'm at right now. Hoping for something to change externally within 24 hour, or I'll likely be dropping an email hint to that end.

Yes, yes, CBD and Buddhism ... the emotional control is all within.

Nonetheless, it's easier with certain external circumstances in play.

More later.

That said, it's better than feeling nothing, or than not recognizing what I am feeling.

===

One day later, having sent my email hint, I've received a response that the process on which I am waiting is muddling along. Well, I can only wait and try to control my impatience, since I can't figure why the hell the process is taking this long.

Alcohol and anxiety

Had an anxiety attack earlier this week, the first one in a few months.

Like most of them, the final relief from it came by throwing up.

Tonight, while taking a brief walk earlier, I got to thinking about anxiety and alcohol. Anxiety issues, in different ways, run on both my dad's and mom's side of the family. In a more clinical sense, they're much more serious on my dad's side.

And alcohol, and somewhat tobacco, I'll venture, was used as an attempt to control that anxiety by many of dad's side men.

I got to thinking about that in my own case as well. I realize that alcohol just masked anxiety, it didn't control it. And, by actually exacerbating one symptom of anxiety, the churning stomach — at least when I was drinking on an empty or near-empty stomach — it actually made it worse.

Here's to one more reason for staying sober.

A bit of rational reaction at work

OK, it's near the end of the work shift tonight, and, the one other copy editor there has spit out all four pages for Saturday's religion section, working in advance. I had proofread them, marked up corrections, and stapled a little corrections check list sheet to each one.

He made the corrections, printed out another copy of the pages for a second reading by either the news editor or assistant news editor, the person off whose personality my anxiety level, already on high, has been feeding since being here, and stapled those second pages on top of the first ones, then placed them on the table for "advance" pages. All by the book.

She, the assistant news editor, picked up these pages, noticed the checklist sheet at the back of each "first" page, looked at the un-proofed "second" page on top of each group of three sheets of paper, and asked me where my correction marks were on each page.

When I first started to answer, I could feel the anxiety in my voice, and in my self. I said that I thought I had proofread the pages, then I remembered that I had seen him print out second copies of a couple of the pages, and with a bit more calm in both my voice and my body, said so.

I don't even need an "I'm sorry, I didn't see that." A semi-legitimate, "oh, OK," or even a halfway legitimate "oh," would have been nice.

She didn't say a word, though. She just put the pages back down.

I understand more all the time the managing editor's comment on the phone, when I was considering accepting this job, and he said, "If you're here a year, I'll help you look for other jobs within our company." Maybe that's not at all behind his "if," but it feels that way.

That said, both he and the executive editor commented on my openness at the time. I'll say no more.

Anxiety rears its head at work again

OK, a work in a bit of slow time, I click a link on one of the politics blogs I read regularly. Te actual link is a PDF, not a webpage. The Acrobat window opens, then my mouse freezes. I thought, "shit," what did I do?" Especially since I had just had replaced what had appeared to be a crappy mouse a week ago.I do several restarts, and full shutdowns-cold starts. Nothing. Mouse still frozen.

I eventually mention this out loud, and the assistant news editor on whose less-than-the best side over her personality my anxiety has fed voraciously since I've been here asks, "Is it loose"?

Well,. it being a PC, I bend down, sin the tower, reach behind, jiggle the cable end, which seems secure in there, but the actual USB port seems a bit loose. Whatever, it did thetrick. So, was that the problem with the previous mouse? And, was I too anxiety-constrained to think of that with it? Or to try the jiggling with this mouse, without outside prompting? Possibly.

A bit of regret? Sure. But only a small bit. The search firm head tried to lay it on me about the money I would be missing, how my priorities were wrong, how that had influenced his company's attempts to help me in the past, etc. (I have no idea if that last part is true; the last time I had an initial interview with one of his clients, I thought it went well, and that he then tried to "force" them on their decision-making process. But, that's another story.)

He knows that, in general, I'm more OK with a smaller town, especially a more remote one, if it's either in a more liberal part of the country, or maybe, a warmer-weather one, if it's not quite so isolated. I've specifically asked him, before, if he had California jobs.

He then asked "where my aggressiveness was." I'll admit, I'm not "Mr. Type A. May never be. I'll admit I could maybe have a bit more at times.

But, overall, I don't like being guilt-tripped, OR anxiety-tripped about how the city/newspaper/company where I work now isn't so good. I don't like that and not being listened to. Especially when I don't always even listen to myself perfectly.

Jobs, anxiety, PTSD and more

Between my "fear of getting trapped" (which is itself a part of what CBT talks about as awfulizing or generalizing), and my not liking some particular things here in O-dessa, I looked at a job in Buffalo, Wyoming! A place where a fully rational me would never even think of living, and never acted to live there.

Fortunately, a nearly fully rational me, at least, is saying no to that. And, I hope, taking a few steps to boost my sanity and emotional well-being here, while working with renewed vigor on getting out of here.

The yelling? It's not quite yelling, but a certain person who has one personality when dealing with underlings and another otherwise, literally to having MPD-like multiple voices.

But, without taking this the wrong way, I have an opportunity to work on working with other ppl while still here, and either work with this person a bit more/better, or work around her more or better.

A serious look at anxiety

The NYTimes mag has a long story, focused on the work of Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan, of much of our current knowledge about anxiety.

Moving, new job and other anxieties

It's been a while since I wrote anything here.

Well, after two months of unemployment, I found a new job, and decided to take it. It's still in newspaper journalism, but I had to leave Dallas for Odessa, Texas. And, unlike three years ago, when I last lost my job, it (with the hindsight of that case) seems unlikely that I will get back to Dallas. (Yes, part of me has wanted to move on anyway, but I'd like somewhere further west yet, I think, if I'm going to sacrifice all the things I like[d] about Big D.)

I am also adjusting to night hours as a copy editor at an AM daily newspaper. That's been more difficult than straight job adjustment. I think I am fighting a low grade dysthymia as well as anxiety.

The first week here, I had no problems with acting out. I was too emotionally and physically tired. Since then, I am at about the level I was before I moved, though no worse.

On the plus side, though at times it may have added to short-term anxiety or dysthymia, I have increased my journaling, especially my structured journaling from Nathaniel Branden. And, I've learned more about just how much buried anger I have, and where some of it hides.

Resilience vs (?) dissociation

Well, it is now two weeks since I moved to Odessa, Texas, 350 miles west from Dallas, to take a job on the copy desk of the Odessa American, a seven-day daily.

The political atmosphere here is not my cup of tea, and, if I had had to move out here, I wish at least it would be on the Midland side, with a touch more in the way of culture, shopping, etc. But, it's not.

I got a congratulations today on my one sobriety e-mail list about my resilience.

Is it resilience, or a side effect/flip side of the coin "gift" of dissociation, at least in part? I think it's the latter, as I still feel like I sleepwalk through life at times, and this is one of them.

Yes, this "resilience" by another name may be helping me right now. But, its original cause wasn't worth the price; even without that original cause, being this dissociative probably isn't worth it, overall.

That said, at least it's not the dissociation level of a decade ago.