Peyton Manning

if you've got 20 minutes you might want to listen to this

Re-traumatized. Healthcare Proxy. Go ahead, dare yourself to think about your future.

Today I know that I will ramble and honestly, I’m not really looking to self-edit.

I realize that last week I was going on about the effects an upcoming visit with my father was having on me. I had nightmares and panic attacks in the weeks leading up to the visit. One of the terms I was sort of groping for, something to sum up that experience was re-traumatization. But as I started to look for a nice easy digestible definition of that phrase, I find that one does not exist.

Now the question to be answered was: should I retraumatize myself by seeing my father? And my answer is, “Yes.” But I do so with a fair amount of self-awareness and a lot of self-discipline. In the days leading up to the visit I didn’t have even a sip of alcohol. I did a lot of breathing exercises. I was invariably lead to think of awful things said and done (spanning the years) but I also allowed myself to remember that I left home while I was a teenager and I haven’t looked back except in so far as to analyze. (I refuse to be bitter so I never look back and say, “If only….” There is nothing productive in that exercise.) “So how did the day go?” You ask. Technically it was okay. In all I spent 8 hours with these people and I have to say it left me feeling awful. But I knew it would leave me feeling gutted so as soon as I hit my saturation point I pulled the rip cord. I wobbled home, crawled into bed, and curled into a ball. The day was done.

If I were a former junkie my counselor would have advised me to avoid junk and the people and places where I could find junk. And that’s good advice.

But I have this need to overcome these people. I want to be near my abuser and be able to “take it.” This is not healthy but like I’ve said, I prepped for it and I spent a total of 8 hours with them and I could’ve left at any time but I thought, “Let’s see if I can handle it until dinner.” (I guess you could call this the macho side of trauma.)

The nice thing about working in New York City is that a lot of people are not in La-la land. Or at least some of the people I know are not in La-la land so it was cool to talk with other adults who aren’t sentimentalists who think that we have to be living these storybook lives or else there is something wrong. As far as I’m concerned there is no pathology. I see my father and I see someone who was abused, someone who is an alcoholic. I see someone who was a really bad parent. And his wife is no picnic either.

All-in-all I’m good. I knew that I’d have Sunday to recover and even though my Saturday night was filled with nightmares; Sunday night I slept like a baby, which was a blessed relief.

But enough about me. Let’s get into the nitty gritty of death and dying. Which is to say, let’s talk about right now. 

All of the following is true:

I have a 92 year old friend. She lives on her own and is completely mentally with it. I saw her for dinner on Tuesday. Saturday night she was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. I know a 92 year old man. For the most part this guy is totally with it. He lost his balance on Wednesday, took a serious header -- got all banged up and bruised and was hospitalized for observation. Aside from the obvious bruises and a concussion he’s “okay.” I know of a 72 year old woman who has started to show signs of memory loss and has been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s. She lives alone and basically sits around all day watching TV.

Now the 92 years olds have money and healthcare proxies. The 72 year old has neither money nor a health care proxy. Her kids are about to have to figure that out.

Have you started you journal on aging? The aforementioned are my most recent entries. And for good measure let’s add one about my 94-year-old grandmother. She sits around/lies in bed all day, never leaves the house, and barely speaks to anyone. All of that goes into the column marked, things to avoid in my 90s.

Do you have a health care proxy? If not, you might want to get one. And don’t go for the obvious choice = your spouse. Go for someone who has the balls and heart to make the difficult choices in difficult times. Pick someone who will do exactly as you wish when you are no longer able to make decisions for yourself. proxy 

Have you started to look at who you want to be at 70 or 80 or 90? Will you live alone? Will you be home bound? Will you have enough money? Will you have enough to eat? Will you have a roof over your head?

I’ve mentioned that I want to die young, happy, healthy and wealthy. Yes, it’s a tall order but I’d rather put in the hours now and come as close to achieving that than find myself bed-ridden, poor, and miserable.

You’re going to have to take my word for this: the way you die speaks volumes about how you lived.

It shouldn't be this hard.

Today as I write this I'm emotionally exhuasted. For the past couple of months I've known that my father would be coming to town. I don't plan on spending more than a couple of hours with him and his wife but ... prepping for this visit is taking a lot out of me. About a week ago I experienced disrupted sleep and I couldn't figure out why. This past weekend as I walked around I started to get my first glimpse of where my anxiety was coming from. It was the impending visit.

They say that time heals all wounds, and whoever they are, are wrong.

I've been working for the better part of three decades to heal all the damage done to me by my mother and father. And here I am, getting to put in even more hours.

I was surprised to find that I'm facing suppressed rage.

A couple of years ago when my girlfriend cheated on us, I flipped out, went totally volcanic. In the days afterward I started to explore the roots of anger and rage. It turned out that my reaction to my girlfriend's actions was based on something that predated her arrival in my life by some 40+ years. This came as something of a shock. At the time I was certain that her actions had caused my rage. Wrong. I was pissed off at her, rightfully so, but the torrent of rage was disproportionate. As I trudged through that I started to notice all kinds of things.

In general I'm hotheaded and opinionated. And in some ways anger has served me well, or at the very least protected me. But as an adult I think there is room for a more sophisticated approach. In my efforts to turn back the aging clock so I can die young I've realized that holding onto old, ugly emotions is a sure-fire way to age prematurely.

With my father's visit a few days away and without medicating it, I don't find the present-tense unbearable but it feels pretty darn heavy. All the things I'd love to turn to: sugar, alcohol, sex. All of those substances have been taken off the table and I spend my morning and evening commute, riding the train, sitting with the rage.

I s'pose you're probably thinking, "Who is this privileged white person to hate her parents?" I'm not going to get into specifics because I'm just not going to but I will tell you this: when I hear of children who have been badly abused I have a lot of compassion for them. I know that if they turn to drugs or alcohol or end up in abusive relationships, they might never travel far in this lifetime. I'm referring to traveling emotional distances, not going to China on a steamer ship.

In general I don't hate my parents, mostly because it won't get me very far. Right now the rage is masking the hurt and I guess I'll just have to sit with the rage a little longer. My sleep has been a f*cking mess and I don't want to confront my father because even if he said, "I'm sorry," it wouldn't take away the pain, it wouldn't heal the wounds. In fact after being abused for 16 years (from 0 to 16 years old) by both my parents, there is no such thing as healing the damage. What I have found is that I have to be able to let it be part of me without letting it disrupt me. And yes I'm over-simplifying things here but I've also never actually written about it in this way. I will give it more thought and see if I can some up with something more coherent.

What I'm trying to say is that for the most-part I'm okay because I earned that experience (or have allowed myself to be okay). For many years I spoke with neither of my parents. And I'm hoping that in the coming years I can get better at letting "it" be a part of who I am. I'm perennially optimistic, by choice. I know that I will "survive" seeing my father. But I want to rise above that. I want to be 100% fine and I don't want all this f*cking anxiety. Until I'm anxiety-free in the face of him, I know that I still have work to do.

Elliot Smith and notes on Dating Myself.

I guess I'm dating myself and by that I don't mean that I'll be making references to the past, I mean that I've been taking myself on dates. This will have to do until someone shows up. & to make life interesting/possible I've got myself on a budget.

For those of you who've been following this blog you know that I like to put my money where my mouth is. The way I see it, to do otherwise obviates having both a mouth and money. Although I could end up rich and tongue-tied, right now it's all frugality and being opinionated.

The thing is going on dates with myself is fun. Really. I'm not making that up and you know I wouldn't lie to you. This past week was busy on the solo-social scene. I went to the International Auto Show at Javits Center. I stopped at Camp Jeep where they've got this course that might make for some seasickness unless you enjoying heading down hill at a grade of 31 degrees. Just f*cking intense. (Ticket for the Auto show $12.00.)

Did I mention that I'm on a budget? Yeah well if you recall I cashed out my IRA, took all my savings, and paid cash for some land at the end of last year. This means that I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck. If you've got nothing else to do, try it sometime. Nothing will put you in the present faster than having no money. (If you've got debt you can't play this game. This game is only for those who are debt-free and want to feel the squeeze of trying to make their money go somewhere, of trying to feel the value of a dollar. If you've got debt you're living in the past and you will have a much harder time of living in the present.) And yeah if this were a two-way conversation you could bust me int he sense that now I've got the sense of security of owning land. Because if worse comes to worse, I can always pitch a tent on my property. I guess that, a ten speed bike and a minimum wage job and I'd be back at a beginning of sorts.

On another self-date I went to see Kenneth Weiss rock the harpsichord and ottavino. This guy brought down the roof. When was the last time you heard someone perform a song that's 450 years old and you liked it? If it's been a while, check out the early music scene in New York City or Boston. (Ticket was $20.00 and included free wine before and after the performance.)

Today was a matinee of The Other Woman. I wish I could recommend it but... while there were some funny moments, on the whole it didn't work for me. Afterwards, it was a burrito at Chipotle and a stroll. (Movie $8.00, burrito $8.50.)

And in reading Torment Saint, a biography of the late musician Elliot Smith written by William Todd Schultz, I have met my polar opposite. Elliot possibly committed suicide age of 35 but he was neither young nor happy at the time of his death and from what I can gather he spent the better part of his life as a brilliant singer-songwriter who suffered depression and struggled with substance abuse. At first I thought I would be annoyed by the book but I'm keeping an open mind and coming to know a version of Elliot. In some ways Elliot Smith could end up grating on your nerves but if you move past your judgment you can see there was a lot of talent and beauty, but man there's is some real pain in there. Listen here.
Or here.

I'm sticking with dying young, happy, and rich.

My calculations were off. My legacy doesn't exist.

I'm going to talk about a couple of "ifs" from the weekend. Or perhaps I will talk about "hads." Had I been asleep in my bed when a large section of the ceiling (from a pre-war building) above my bed collapsed, I would not be here today. That might strike you as hyperbole but just a small chunk, say 12" x 12", weighs 8 pounds. A section, roughly 4' x 4' fell.

While that means that I would've died healthy and relatively young, my legacy would've been nothing worth noting.

The whole "I want to die young, happy, and healthy" is tied to my legacy. I want to die young, happy, and healthy having something to show for my time. This does NOT mean that I need to have amassed billions of dollars and have a wing of a hospital, or a library, named after me. But I don't see a reason to be here, if not to leave a permanent positive mark.

Had those chunks of pre-war plaster fallen on my head, GAME OVER and I would've failed myself. Big time.

This collapse came on the heels of a few other weird things. I'm going to bundle all of these up and name it, The Most Recent Wake-up Call.

What did I do in the midst of all this? For one thing, I continued to breathe. And I was up half the night cleaning up debris and dust and thinking how lucky I am. Next, I finally got up the guts to sort of ask out a woman I'm supposed to be with. And I'm taking a much more practical approach to things. Earlier in the day on Saturday, I'd had a long talk with my business partner to let her know where I stand on a few things, so at least I would've died knowing that she and I were square. And Spring, on the east coast, has finally sprung so there are months of opportunity ahead of me. And I don't plan on squandering them.

In terms of the material world, my heirs would've been a bit bummed out (I guess, "boo hoo, she's gone") but I'd hope they would rejoice in the money and land I've left to them. For those of us who are still here, we're meant to enjoy this life.

I'm a little dazed by the close-ish call. Just waaaay too close this time.

Joy Behar

I believe it was Joan Didion who said, "New York City is for the young and the rich."

And it could be argued that she's right. While I'm neither young nor rich, I've decided to make the most of my days in the Big Apple. I try to do one thing per week that can be done only in NYC. For the past 5 weeks: Nets versus Bobcats ($35 ticket, Nets won); Paul Taylor Dance Company ($10.00 ticket); Baroque Organ Concert ($10 ticket), worked a Brooklyn food market (free + ate a lot of free food from other vendors); Joy Behar "Me, My Mouth, and I" workshop (free).

I could review each of these events but really it's been so freakin busy I don't have the time to make the time, but I do have to talk about Joy Behar for a minute or two. Whether or not you've watched her on The View or if you consider yourself a fan, this woman is f*ckin funny. I wasn't a fan, and not sure I've become a fan, but I got a free ticket, in fact I was a "guest of Joy Behar," yesterday. The rehearsal was held from 2:00 -- 3:30 pm. I told my boss I had to run some errands and let's just say, my lunch hour ran a little long.

Joy is workshopping a new, one-woman show. Should she ever take this thing live, go and see it. She's really really funny. You'll be walked through her career -- from Long Island housewife, mother of one, and wife to a sociologist. Until she edits it down a bit you might feel things get a bit long in the tooth, but the laughs are large and frequent. I'm not a fan but I have a ton of newfound respect for that woman. She tells a ton of stories. My favorite moment comes toward the very end. She's been asked who was her favorite person to interview. "Catherine Denueve." When Joy was seated next to Catherine, she was overcome with admiration to the point where she couldn't even speak and just stared "At the face of France." Catherine asked one of her people, "Is she a lesbian?" "I am now," was Joy's reply.

If you get a chance to see, "Me, My Mouth, and I," do it, if only to spend an hour with an extremely intelligent, funny woman.

If Joy were to ask me my response, I'd say, Thank you. I realized that she had the guts to risk something of herself, and in doing that, ended up making a chunk of change. It was fascinating to sit in a room with this woman who built herself up from nothing.

I felt that she handed me the blueprint and for that I'm totally grateful. I have no more time to be chickenshit.

something to consider

What's Revenge?

Dude, what were you thinking?

A really long time ago I knew Dana Giachetto. It was during the early days of The Cassandra Group. That was several years before he went to prison for stealing a lot of money from a lot of people. Most notably he took money from a few celebrities but there were everyday people who lost their life savings owing to Dana’s mismanagement of their money.

This post is not meant to bash Dana. It’s just that this morning I caught a Page Six headline and my thoughts have been on Dana this morning. I’m wondering if people can be rehabilitated or if we just change our actions. Are there things essential to our character and who we are that remains unchanged and unchangeable? I’m thinking about myself as an alcoholic. I’ve stopped binge drinking but I’d still love to. I’ve altered my behavior because I know that I can’t drink like that and expect to have a life worth living. I’d only end up destroying everything. (And I know that because I did it a couple of times before I realized that it wasn’t fair to the people around me.) Deep down I know I want those drinks. 

I wonder if there is something compulsive about con men (con artists, to include women). And it’s interesting that Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the Wolf of Wall Street since Dana stole a lot of Leo’s money back in the day. I boycotted the Wolf of Wall Street. More or less because my time is valuable to me and I don’t need to see a movie that glamorizes drug use and that sort of excess. I did the drug use part on my own and I’m not sure I want to head into the excess.

                What these con men do amounts to nothing more than theft. In the end it’s depressing. It’s like the world’s oldest recipe for getting screwed: a person who is not financially literate couples his/her greed with the con-man’s scheme and it’s bye-bye to ALL the money. The con man (usually) does NOT pay restitution, serves his time, and eventually he’s joins the rest of us in polite society. I guess biding his time until his impulse kicks in and he starts another scam. And if he can, the con man sells his story to a magazine, book publisher, movie maker, etc etc.

The nice part of this day, including the melancholy, is that it’s forcing me to reconsider my value system. What do I really want? How do I want to spend my days? How can I get the most out of life without putting myself through the ringer?

This past weekend I saw the ex. We talked for a while, trying to figure out how to move forward. It turns out there is no moving forward – together. There is acknowledging the past and moving on. For the first time I was able to hear a few things she had to say. Okay so she was shouting and in that moment a few things fell into place. I could really see things from her perspective. It was nice for me to finally “get it.” I’ve realized that even though I say I’m flexible and I want to negotiate, most of the time I want everything my way.

I’ve heard people talk about “closure” although I’m not entirely sure what that is. I don’t want to be closed off. I definitely take an holistic approach which can be excrutiating. I want to sit in the ocean of my totality. That means that all the experiences, good and the bad, are swirling around my head at all times. But in that chaos I seek, and sometimes locate, stability. This might be sort of what a Zen master would refer to as riding the wave. (Ok so I’m not a Zen master and don’t know any, I’m guessing that’s what it means to ride the existential wave.) I want to possess the skills to be in the present with enough talent and ability to maintain my composure and even be “okay.”

Luckily there’s plenty of good news: I’ve got my health and realized that I haven’t had a cold in at least a year, so my immune system must be in pretty good shape. I’ve still got a job and a place to live. And going on three years of being clean. All of this leads me to sum up life as “no complaints.” But man I’ve got a case of cabin fever. I never used to be the sort of person who longed for warm, sunny days but right about now I’d be stoked if it were Springtime or one of those perfect summer days in mid-June.

In the meantime it looks like Dana owes his octogenarian mother $150,000 for bail. The money can be re-couped if he’s found not guilty of the current charges.

When a Giant Gain Causes Pain

This is such an interesting article at the Wall Street Journal. read here.

I have no way of knowing how many of you who read this blog are male or female. And I can totally see how most men reading this article, would've been like, "Lady. Sell the stock and move on." This is not to say that the men who lose spouses are heartless, I just think that men and women have been raised to deal with things so differently that a man would see the loss of his wife as the loss of his wife and a gain in the stock market as a gain in the stock market.

I for one have a huge tolerance for risk. I have money in the market. I watch the market go up and down and I watch the price of my stocks go up (and a little down). Yeah, I'm one of those boring "buy and hold" investors. And I only invest what I can stand to lose. Thus far this strategy has worked for me.

In some ways I think that women could benefit from learning to compartmentalize when it comes to money. It's this simple: money is money. Don't attach any emotional significance to it.

For me, money gives me the ability to pay my bills, buy food and clothes, and support a few business ventures (until such time as they support me).

In general I think that women do themselves a huge disservice when it comes to managing money. And sadly, they have no one to blame but themselves. They don't pay attention and then they make really stupid choices. Here's a true story: I know a widow who inherited everything once her husband died. This included a woodlot with a temporary conservation restriction. A guy shows up and offers to buy the timber on the land. She says (without consulting anyone), "Okay." She pays the back taxes and sells the timber and does so at a loss.

People. Don't end up like that widow. If she'd maybe waited a bit, no longer been grieving, and then asked a couple of reputable foresters what they thought and made a wise decision. (If she were feeling adventurous, she could've started a cord wood business). At the very least she could've just done nothing and come out ahead. That's right. By doing NOTHING she would've benefited. Instead she made an ill-informed choice and lost the money and her trees. (Don't even get me started on carbon sequestration.)

I suppose if you were one of my clients (yeah I have a life coaching business on the side) the homework I would assign would be this: take a week (or as long as you like) and identify where in your life you would make the most gains by doing nothing.

How's that grab you?

I'll let Stan's arm do the talking

Ok, I'll let Beckett do the talking on Stan's arm

read here

Fail better people. Starting right now.

And in the words of someone else: fail fast.

Fail fast means that when you fail, admit it and move on, pronto. Don't sit around pitying yourself for your loss; go out there and figure out what it is you are supposed to do. We only fail at the things we ARE NOT MEANT to do.

You always get what you choose.

“You won’t always get what you want but you always get what you choose.” John C. Maxwell, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth          

This past weekend I went for a couple of mini-walkabouts. While my version of walk-about bears little resemblance to the Aboriginal Rite of Passage, I’m sticking with the nickname.

Along the way I made a pit stop at a B & N Bookstore and grabbed The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. I grabbed a seat and read a couple of chapters. After years of attending self-help workshops and reading numerous books on just about everything, there wasn’t a lot of new information in this book and this dude loves to quote other people (which always irks me a little bit) but I like what’s going on with “you always get what you choose.” I’ve often thought I was living the life I chose but, and this is big (for me), I haven’t recently gone into mantra mode on this particular topic. So. I’ve spent the last few days taking stock of every single aspect of my present circumstances and asking myself, why do I choose this?

Okay so if you’re not obsessive and not really into self-improvement, don’t try this. But if you’ve got a hankering to roll up your sleeves and get dirty, try it. In each and every situation you find yourself in ask, why am I choosing this?

Thus far I’ve got a lot of boring reasons. Mostly it’s about maintaining the status quo (read: paying my bills, eating, etc). BORING.

Why would I choose to be bored?

I’m going to worry the risk-taking gene and see if I can figure out if there aren’t a couple of things that can be changed. Okay, I’m actually contemplating an entire life-overhaul. I don’t need to add a hobby. I need to get rid of all the things that are getting in the way of me achieving my highest good.

What I know is this. While I’m not that young, I’m not old. And I’ve packed it all in and started anew a couple of times. Perhaps it’s time to do it again.

The only answer I can come up with: I’m not being creative enough to come up with the way to live a more exciting life.

By exciting I don’t mean that I have to go sky diving every day, rather I’m more interested in being fulfilled. Luckily I’m grateful so I’m not complaining while I figure things out. Instead my attitude is: I’ve got my health, I’ve got a job, I have a place to live. How can I add another few layers of texture?

In writing this and thinking about it I’m getting that nervous/excited feeling. (Totally gives me the shivers.)

Read here: about the dude who quit his job, earns a little less, and is more happy.

Onward!

I've been sort of quiet on the blog front. Basically I've been pretty quiet on the personal front.

My manuscript was rejected a couple more times. But. I have it out for a blurb and I think it'll be funny to get a blurb before I get published. (Which is so ass-backwards it fits me to a tee.) And I've got the book with 3 more editors.

And I am really and truly not fazed by the rejections at all. I need only one publisher to fall in love with my book. Until she shows up, let the rejections keep rolling in.

Otherwise, I've been holed up in my apartment. Very much isolating and very much enjoying it.

Onward!

oh. and Happy New Year!

If you're not a hater, check out this movie

Not sure if you've heard about The Short Game. And I'm not going to write a review of it here.

I will say this: it was fascinating to watch how each kid was so molded by his or her parents and/or Daddy Caddy. It was cool to watch these kids perform at this elite level. I will be watching for the next 20 years to see where they end up. In particular, Allan Kournikova.

If you've got Netflix, you can watch here.

Oh yeah. All these kids are total outliers.