Depression or ...?

A couple weeks ago I had my annual physical checkup. While he was tapping my knees or telling me "Turn your head and cough" my doctor kept up a running stream of questions ... low-key but consistent. Is it still true that I don't smoke? How much do I drink? What about sexual activity?

At one point he asked me about work. Yeah, sure, I guess it's going OK. It's not like it's going to save the world, but it's going OK. A little later he asked the same question in another way, and I began to wonder where this was going. Most of his questions had an obvious point: when he asked if I've started a new romantic relationship, he explained candidly that he was really asking about unprotected sex. Oh, ... and also about "function": viz., can I still get it up? But what's this about work?

After a while he explained that too. He was trying to determine if I need an increase in the medication I take for my depression. The clues for him were that all I seemed pretty unenthusiastic about work, and I seemed pretty unenthusiastic about finding a new relationship. So what am I enthusiastic about? Anything? And if not, is that for psychiatric reasons?

I told him I didn't think I needed a change in my prescription, so he let it go. But later I started to think about it. It's true that lately I have been sluggish and unenthusiastic about a lot of things. (Work especially!) Is it depression? What else might it be?

The answer came to me quickly: maybe I am mourning. My father died two months ago. Our relationship had its ups and downs, but still ... he was my father. And after his memorial I found myself thinking a lot, Wow, look at all the people who turned out. I wonder if I even know that many people? And how many of them will notice I'm gone when it's my turn? I don't think this is an unusually morbid way to think. Or, to put it another way, I think it's actually pretty normal to think about death when somebody dies. Also to slow down and detach a little bit from the main flow of the world's work.

I don't remember whether I told my doctor that my dad had died. But I think that's part of my recent listlessness.

There's at least one other component. Last week I had an assignment at work that comes around about once a year. For three days I forgot to take lunch and was staying late ... not because of the deadline (though there was a deadline) but because I was having fun. And whatever else I was, I certainly wasn't listless at Jack and Jill's party. So I think the other component in my recent listlessness is boredom. I've been doing the same damned thing every week at work and every week at home and it's just getting harder and harder to give a shit. But give me a change of pace, and I come right back to life

Speaking of which, I've invited Jack and Jill over for dinner tonight. It'll be almost the first time I've cooked for someone else in that kitchen except for the boys -- only a couple of meals for Debbie and I think one for Suzie. I'm looking forward to it. And meanwhile, I should log off and go set the table ....

The Joy of Manipulation

I just got back home from seeing "Our Brand is Crisis". What I read online tells me the reviews haven't been too kind to the movie, but I loved it. Or more exactly, I loved watching Sandra Bullock's character. I'm not quite sure I noticed the rest of the movie.

As it started up, I knew what the story arc more or less had to look like. We were introduced to Jane Bodine in retirement ... she's not going to do political campaign consulting any more. People come to ask her, Can't you help on this one campaign, please? No, no, no. Of course she ends up doing it. Then when she first arrives in Bolivia (where the job is) she gets sick. And for several scenes in a row all we see is weakness: she can't take the altitude, she's throwing up at random moments, she nearly passes out, she sits like a dull bump on a log during campaign strategy sessions. I knew -- everybody watching the movie must have known -- that this is how the story would have to start out. That it would go like this almost until nobody could stand it any more, and then something would call her into action. That she would start directing the campaign -- doing everything totally differently from how it had been done hitherto -- and the candidate would start winning. It's a movie, after all. That's how the story has to go.

Why did I love watching it? Why does everybody love that particular story arc so well that I knew this movie had to go like that? I think it is because we love to watch strength in action. We love to watch strength winning. But it's no fun to watch Godzilla fighting Bambi: that kind of winning is so preordained that it's a little sickening ... or, worse, boring. No, what's fun is to watch the character that you know is stronger -- the one you know is going to win -- start out weak, beaten, bloodied and broken. And then pull it together, start firing on all cylinders, and pull ahead. That's how the story arc has to look for audiences to love it, and I admit I'm one of them. As I say, I loved to watch Sandra Bullock throughout this movie, as she started out weak and beaten and bloodied on so many different fronts ... and then began, bit by bit, to pull it together. Even as we see her fall apart in other dimensions of her life (how many years had she gone without smoking before starting this campaign?), it is exciting to see her start to drive the campaign. Even though the candidate she is supporting is a complete asshole, it is impossible not to root for her.

It reminded me of "Thank You For Smoking". Both movies showcase a main character who acts completely amorally, just for victory. The joy of winning is the pure joy of prevailing in combat, unsullied with any moral questions about Right prevailing over Wrong. The only thing you can applaud in the main character is strength -- victory -- because the cause she (or he) is fighting for is so wretched. And in both movies, the weapon in this war is persuasion. Golden words. Pure manipulation, soft as silk in one minute, and then hard as a mailed fist in the next. By God, it's wonderful!

When I first saw "Thank You For Smoking" I was still living with the rest of the family, and the boys were both at home. It disturbed me a little bit that I genuinely wanted to instill the right kinds of values in the boys, I dearly wanted to model those values so the boys would take them on without question ... and yet I couldn't conceal my glee at the main character's triumphs. I told them, "Now don't either of you go do this" but I still giggled and cackled as he derailed one legitimate argument after another by raising spurious objections that sounded good. It bothered me that I was reduced to saying (in effect), "This is wicked even though I so obviously enjoy it." And for some time thereafter I puzzled over how I could enjoy (so thoroughly) something I disapproved of (so unambiguously).

Of course the answer is twofold. In the first place, as I said above, it's fun to watch strength in action. In the second place, it's a weapon I love. Persuasion ... manipulation ... weaving a net of golden words ... there aren't many weapons in which I claim expertise but that's one of them. Maybe the only one. But I know I'm good at it. Not as good as Jane Bodine or Nick Naylor, but better than your average bear. So watching these movies is, for me, kind of like a boxer watching "Rocky".

Should it bother me that I enjoy being able to manipulate people with words? A skill is a skill. To be able to do good things with words implies being able to do bad things with them. As Plato has Socrates point out, a doctor who knows how to cure people from poisons will also be the most skillful poisoner just because he knows the subject so deeply. So to enjoy the ability to manipulate people with words is fundamentally no different from enjoying the ability to write fluidly. And in practice, the times it has been clearest to me that I have been engaged in pure manipulation have been when Wife was threatening to do something insane -- kill herself, for example -- and I've talked her down from it, talking and talking and talking until I could push, nudge, wheedle, and cajole her into a safer mental space. Those times, invariably, it was the right thing to do and I was always glad I was able to do it. So maybe the end justified the means.

Another amoral conclusion, to be sure. But when I remember how relieved I always was once I could get Wife to calm down from her hysteria and go to sleep, it's hard to feel guilty about it. Not that manipulation of others is a good thing, of course. Not that I want my boys to grow up to be flacks for the tobacco industry.

But I love watching that kind of skill in action, and it's a simple fact that this is partly because I love using the same skill myself in a smaller way. Oh well, nobody ever said I had to look good to myself.

They are both fun movies. Go watch them.

"Is this your first Jack-and-Jill party?"

It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I got up an hour ago. I've drunk two cups of coffee, swallowed a couple of Tylenol, and put some food in my stomach. And I just finished scrubbing the red wine residue out of the toilet, where I threw it up last night.

That was some party.

Jack and Jill moved in next door, maybe three weeks ago. I met them while they were unpacking, and we chit-chatted a bit. She's a pathologist at the local hospital; he just finished a tour of duty as a Navy pilot. They're young and friendly.

Last week, Son 2 was visiting me for a couple of days. Jill was putting out the trash and we talked for a couple of minutes. Afterwards he said, "My God she has a lot of energy."

And last night they held a costume party. They invited me, which was sweet of them since we'd only talked for a few minutes. I went dressed as Number 6. (Nobody recognized the character.) And because I live next door I was the first one there. Jack handed me a glass of wine, Jill let me help put a few last decorations in place, and I got to make polite conversation as their friends trickled in.

And trickled in. And trickled in.

Soon the only way to make any conversation at all -- polite or otherwise -- was to shout, or else step out onto the front porch. The small house was full. Conversations were squeezing past each other. The music was loud, the fog machine worked fine, the lasers were dazzling, and the wine flowed endlessly. There was a cheese board out for a while, until the ants found it; then Jill whisked the cheese away into the refrigerator and all we had was more wine.

Everyone was friendly. Most of them were a lot younger than I am, of course, but they were fun and pleasant to talk to. One guest -- who had already made plans to stay the night -- cautioned me about "Jack-and-Jill parties". She said she had made sure to eat a full meal beforehand, and was pacing herself deliberately. She warned me that these parties were known for getting crazy.

If this had been a horror movie, that brief exchange would have been the scene where the main characters stop at a gas station to ask directions to the lonely old house, and the grizzled station owner drawls, "You folks sure you want to go out there?"

Mind you, I thought I was pacing myself. At any rate I felt fine. I could talk clearly (or rather, shout clearly) and I was walking with no trouble. When Jill pointed out that they had cleared away the furniture from half of the living room to make a dance floor, I shook my head and said, "I'm not nearly drunk enough to try to dance."

So maybe I should have been paying attention when I found myself, a few hours later, shifting back and forth in time to the music and edging onto the dance floor. Maybe I should have reflected that there might be something not quite sober about bouncing to the music with a glass of wine in one hand and somebody's foam light saber in the other. Maybe I should have noticed that something had changed in the party when Jill dumped the scary black robe she had been wearing and started dancing up a storm dressed in only a leotard - a low-cut, sleeveless, legless, bright pink leotard.

In fact it was only when I went to the bathroom and got away from the noise and movement for a minute that I realized just how funny my head felt. Coming back out I also realized that most people had left. I think Jill was asleep. Jack was still putting on more music, but I thanked him for his hospitality and excused myself. Then I made my way, slowly and carefully, back to my apartment. I got undressed and got almost as far as my own bathroom before I had to drop to the floor. I crawled the rest of the way down the hall to the toilet and started throwing up. I think that was about two o'clock this morning.

The next time I saw the clock it was four. I was still on the floor outside my bathroom, and it was very cold. So I crawled to bed, turned out the lights, and wrapped myself in my blanket. When I woke up at seven-thirty I walked to the bathroom to pee, realized I still wasn't walking very well, and fell back asleep for another four hours.

Today is sunny and bright. My head mostly feels better. I can walk in a straight line. So I wrote a quick "Thank You" message on a note card and walked over to leave it for Jack and Jill. I met the guest who was staying over. She called out cheerily, "Hello Hosea!" and then asked "So how are you feeling this morning? Fresh as a daisy?"

Ummm, ... more or less, I guess. It's one o'clock by now, isn't it?

"I'm feeling pretty good. But then, I approached the whole party with a strategy."

A strategy?

"Yes. Oh, was this your first Jack-and-Jill party?"

Yup.

"You'll find you need to have a strategy to get through them. I ate well beforehand, drank slowly, and I had some Pedialyte. Do you know what Pedialyte is?"

Yes, I think so.

"Well it's a great help for parties like this. Keep it in mind."

I will, thanks.

Of course, I don't know if I'll be invited to another one. A bare acquaintance who's the first one there and the last to leave? By the light of day it sounds pathetic and desperate. I guess I can always hope that Jack and Jill were too drunk to see it that way.

Because I did have a lot of fun. It was really out of character for me, but oh yes it was a lot of fun.
    

Memorial

Last weekend we had an informal memorial out in my parents’ town, for my father. It was at the house, and there were close to 30 people there: extended family, neighbors, former neighbors, people who had done commercials with him, friends of my mother, friends of Brother, …. The oldest family friends were all too far away (in some cases on the other side of the country) but they all e-mailed in remarks and reminiscences. So we set out food and drinks, and then just sat and talked and mingled and told funny stories about my dad … exactly the kind of party he would have loved. Normally you don’t think of describing memorials for the dead as “fun” but in many ways it was a lot of fun.

 

 

Living out loud, 2

I explained in my last post that I joined a "Working Out Loud" (WOL) circle at work. The first assignment was to come up with a goal to work on for the next twelve weeks -- something that would be a stretch, but on which we could make some perceptible progress in that time. My goal is "Find out if there are opportunities to work in the area of making [my company] a modern, agile organization." You know that I've worried over time about stagnating in my current job, so it makes sense to look for something new. I'm fifty-four, so it makes sense to look for something new in the same company, because who would hire me fresh off the street? And this is a subject I have opinions on: see, e.g., this post or this one.

So it's a very logical kind of goal. It doesn't even commit me to taking a new job in this area ... it just means learning what's out there. What could be better, right?

And ever since then I haven't been able to find time to work on it.

Well sure, everyone's busy. We all know how it goes. And yet, ... I found time to go to the movies last week. I found time for a long walk this morning. I found time yesterday morning to sit around in my apartment reading my kids's old comic books, that they've left here. So it's not that every single minute has been booked out of my control.

And then I was browsing through the book that started this whole movement, John Stepper's Working Out Loud, and in chapter 12 he discusses exactly this problem. What if you just can't find the time? One of the things he says [top of page 140] is, "Check that your goal is something you care about. The more you care about it, the more motivated you'll be to find time to work on it."

Wait, ... what? It's not enough that I pick a goal which is plausible and logical and has all kind of good reasons behind it, but I have to care about it too? Well, shit. Wish I'd known that before.

Of course I'm joking, kind of. If you really don't care about something then it's not really a goal, is it?

But it got me to thinking: are there in fact work-related goals that I really care about? I think the answer might be No. And maybe that, in turn, is why I am so lousy at career-planning, at figuring out my next step in the ladder: because maybe I really don't give a shit one way or the other because the whole environment is alien to me. Because I can't take it seriously.

It's not that I dislike my job. On the whole I like my job, and I like the people I work with. Moreover, for all that I joke about my job's sillier side, somebody's got to do it and I'm good at it. Perhaps even very good. So that's all fine.

But once I drive away from the office for the evening, I don't think about the place until I show up again the next day. People will come ask me if I've had any good ideas about the problem they were discussing last night and I have to ask them to remind me what it was. There's almost a total disconnect between my work and the rest of my life.

This goes very deep. A while ago someone whose work blog I follow was writing about the virtues of "bringing your whole self to work" -- your hopes and fears and passions, all the things you care about in real life. At the time I smiled to myself and thought, "What a horrible idea! No way am I going to do that." Why not? I wondered. And the first thing that jumped to mind was, If I brought my whole self to work I'd be out of a job. The very first thing anybody would ask if they met my whole self is "Why the hell are you working here?"

Why would anybody think that? I suppose I had a couple reasons in mind.

One reason is that I believe my "whole self" to be almost totally focused on things outside of work. I come in, do my job ... even do a good job ... and leave, but at some deep level I'm kind of going through the motions.

But other people have outside interests too. So that can't be it (or not all of it). Besides, what are we really talking about? I care a lot about my kids; OK fine, so do most parents. I spend a lot of time at the movies; again, so do a lot of people. I spend time at live theater and museums ... fine, maybe that's not exactly a mainstream taste but it's still not so unusual.

At another level, I have spent my whole life with the knowledge that the things which interest me don't interest others. When I was in grade school my friends were the other smart kids in class: but they were all interested in the sciences and I was interested in mythology and history. That pattern persisted -- with refinements -- through my undergraduate degree. I spent a couple of years in graduate school surrounded by people who really were interested in the same things I was, but by that time my attention was distracted by my new marriage to Wife. And in time I left there without a degree and never went back. So ever since then my interests and tastes have all been formed by my academic experience and I'm outside the Academy ... which means that I am a fortiori surrounded by people who aren't interested in what interests me. At this point I take it as my lot in life that if I were to sit down with people and talk enthusiastically about the things I find exciting, I'd put them to sleep. Or else they would get up under pretext of refilling their drinks and then politely escape.

But of course I have interests about more things than the bronze coinage of Poldavia in the 12th century. I'm passionately interested in things like child-rearing, and the many varieties of romantic relationships. Aren't all other adults interested in these things? Probably yes, or there would be no market for romantic comedies in Hollywood. So why am I unwilling to discuss them? Probably because I am too afraid of getting hurt because they cut too close to the bone; but what I tell myself is that my opinions are going to be unpopular. In that respect the essays that I write here come a lot closer to "my whole self" than anything I show at work, but I would be mortified if someone at work connected this site with me.

Maybe that's it. Maybe my "real self" is this character, Hosea Tanatu, that I have invented for myself. Except even that's not really true. Even here I disguise myself, for at least two reasons. The more important reason is that I try to filter out anything that could identify me. So I don't talk about my work in any detail at all; I don't actually tell that many stories about the boys; and there are a lot of other details that I drop or change. The second reason is that writing is work; so there are plenty of things I think about that I never set down for you in words. And in a sense the character of Hosea is as much an artificial creation as the personality I pretend to be at work. It sounds odd to say I leave things out when I go on at such length, but in a sense it is true. Cum clamem, taceo. (cf. here)

For what it's worth, I realize I have written about this before: see, e.g., here.

So often when I sit down with a question or problem in mind and just start typing, I have an answer by the time I'm done. I don't have any good answers this time. Should I change my goal for the WOL circle? Is there a way I can make my life less compartmentalized (and would it be a good idea if I could)? I have no idea. About any of it. Maybe putting some of this in words will help it to gel, though.
  

Living out loud

It seems that the latest workplace fad is something called Working Out Loud. My company is setting up WOL circles in offices around the globe, and I have joined one that starts meeting this week. The promise is that this teaches you methods to make yourself more visible, clarify your goals, and help you achieve them. The promise is also that the same techniques can work in your private life, not just in the office.

I probably don't need to be more visible, but I could sure use help figuring out what I want and also how to get it. So I'm willing to give it a try. What the hell, right?

If anything comes of it, I'll be sure to let you know.

Shouting in my dreams

Last night I had a dream with Father in it. This is the second or third dream with him in it since he died ... probably third. And I ended up shouting at him. I don't remember all of it: something about he wanted me to bring him some cookies, I tripped and dropped them (kind of crushing them) but then gave those to him anyway instead of getting new ones, he complained that they were all broken and crumbled and dirty, and I yelled at him for not being more grateful. It makes no sense, and in my waking mind I can see why he would complain. In my waking mind, the things I did in the dream seem petty and awful. So why did I end up yelling at him and not vice versa?

Of course, dreams don't have to mean anything. Or maybe they mean something altogether non-obvious. Sigmund Freud made quite a career out of arguing that dreams are all about wish-fulfillment. Robert Benchley once argued that "dreams go by opposites". Ebenezer Scrooge famously suggested that bad dreams could be caused by indigestion. It's hardly safe to assume even regularity in dreams, to say nothing of meaning.

So why is it that all the dreams I have had about my father since his death have been difficult ones? I wrote you about one the night after he died. There was a second, though I don't remember anything about it except that it was difficult. And now this one. What's more, the dreams I had of him before his death weren't any better: I've written about this one here, but there have been others and they all involved stress and conflict. Dreams may not mean anything, but it is hard to ignore the pattern.

Certainly our relationship had its difficult side. Often it felt to me like Father wanted to take over my life and live it for me because it was more interesting than his own, or at least that he didn't recognize clear boundaries between us. Other times it felt like he enjoyed telling stories that made me ashamed because he got some kind of charge out of the distress they caused me. It was always a commonplace in our family that "Hosea is very protective about his privacy" ... even when I was old enough not to care so intensely with respect to Mother or Brother, but because I felt I couldn't afford to let Father know even the smallest scraps about my life.

It wasn't always like that. When I was a kid I thought Father was just great, and I made myself a lot like him. He's why I "Talk loud. Laugh louder." Later, when I was an adult, we could still have long, entertaining conversations about stupid, pointless shit: English political history; famous movies (or obscure ones -- I think Father knew every movie that had ever been made); old Monty Python routines; anything that could be entertaining or exciting and that had nothing to do with real life. It helped if I had been drinking, but what the hell -- so was he.

But always -- always! -- I felt I had to pay attention to the conversation, to nudge it or steer it so it veered away from anything personal and stayed on neutral ground. And just as I could not absolutely prevent him from lurching onto topics that felt too tender and personal for me, so he could not prevent my blowing up at him. It didn't happen often -- more while I was a teenager, less after I left home -- but it always lurked there in the background. In the end, having a hair-trigger temper was my last defense.

Maybe Freud was right and dreams -- at least my dreams about Father -- are about wish-fulfillment. Maybe there were a lot of times I wanted to shout at him but swallowed it, and maybe they are all burbling to the surface, one by one. Maybe it's as simple as that.