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.