I often feel almost like I’m a scientist observing my own behaviour. Today is a good example.
I’ve been run down mentally for about six months, finding it increasingly hard to get my mental reserves back up, and while post-Xmas was a boost, a couple of colds and things were annoying me. I felt good for about a week in January, like there was a light I was moving towards, partly as I’ve figured out some of the reasons for the drain, and the realization that the only way out is through. So a beginning of a new game plan for the year.
Then I got a cold for a couple of days, relapsed a week later. Then this past week, some sort of food poisoning. This one hit me and my digestive system hard, but it seemed to be flushing itself out. Between Tuesday and Thursday, I was sleeping about 60% of the time. I thought I was doing okay until Thursday night when I tried real food again, and about 90 minutes later, that was no longer a viable way forward. Stomach is still sore, but living on toast, crackers, soup, and jello plus water and electorlytes also doesn’t exactly fill you full of energy.
Fast-forward to this morning. Andrea’s sink is clogged and has been on and off for about a week now. I was waiting for her to decide if she wanted to completely replace the taps as the stopper lever has had to be fixed a couple of times, other adjustments, the tap leaks, it’s a pain in the patootie. She’s decided just to remove the stopper, put in a hair-catch, and we’ll unclogg the sink. Well, I should be able to handle that.
Of course, here’s where the brain part kicks in. I have very little patience for home repairs. I hung the towel rack in my bathroom, and it’s not great, I can see the flaws every time I look at it. I built some functional shelves for the basement, but that was relatively simple, they’re not great looking, and I had the wood for almost 8 years before I did it. I am really not good at this stuff, and it rarely works out. Ikea shelves are about my speed. And after spending several hours working on something, only to have it look like a monkey with a hammer did it, even if it works, is incredibly frustrating. Hence why my patience is limited.
Each project that I try to do requires a fair amount of mental energy to even start. I have to accept that I’ll give it my best, I’ll spend time on it, go slow, do all the things I’m supposed to do, and it may still completely go to shit anyway. I replaced a simple light switch in our bathroom recently, about a five minute job for most people that took me almost an hour (not including the trip to Home Depot to buy the right switch, with help). It didn’t go smoothly, but it got done. And then when I was almost finished, feeling almost satisfied, I put the one screw in too far and split the faceplate. Always something.
Back to the sink. First, I need the stopper lever out, my father-in-law showed me the hooks underneath, so I’m feeling relatively confident. Two things to do — remove the stopper, snake the drain. Except the drain snake is nowhere to be found. It’s in the garage, and I have to get the car out to do a proper search. In mitts and heavy coat, boots, stomp around out there for almost 30 minutes. I’ve fought with the thing three times in the last year that it was in the way, I cleaned up greatly in the summer, should be able to put my hand on it in 30 seconds. Nope. Two shelves emptied, no drain snake. I’m pretty sure it’s in a small black cloth bag now, but I’m looking at everything to be sure. Nada. Okay, well, if I take the lower pipe off I should be able to clean it out without the snake.
Yeah, hmm. Me and pipes doesn’t sound like a simple level 1 fix. Okay, I’m run-down, I’m sick, I feel like crap and having trouble concentrating, and I just annoyed myself that I can’t find the damn drain snake that should be right THERE. But I’m going to try level 2. Okayyyyy…
I can’t move the connector, need bigger wrench or probably visegrips will do it. No problem, tools are sorted, the visegrips are right … umm. You have got to be kidding me. 20 minutes later, no vicegrips. I have no idea where they are. I found the box they’re supposed to be in, but they’re not. I’d dump it all out on my workbench but that is covered with stuff from the summer that I can’t get rid of yet.
I’ve spent over an hour, and I haven’t even DONE anything yet. Yeah, that’s probably a good thing. The likelihood of my doing a good job when I can’t even find the fucking tools? Not likely. Screw it, I’ll write a cheque to someone else who makes a living off useless tools who can’t do this shit themselves. In the meantime, I’m going back to bed.
So, I have to say, today was a very long day. Here’s a recap…
Started off neutral
Last night, when I was leaving work late (7:15 or so, a rarity for me), I thought my headlights seemed awfully dim. Turned out I had no regular head lights, just running lights or high beams. Sweet. Confession time though, I knew the passenger side one was out from Monday night, so I was looking to have it fixed this week, just hadn’t gotten to it yet. However, with both out, and nights starting earlier (eek!), I needed them fixed. Off to the Nissan dealership this morning. They’re in South Ottawa, not too far from my house, but I work across the river in Gatineau. Their shuttle only goes to Gatineau on the 9:00 run, I had meeting at 10 where I was hosting 7 DGs and an ADM, not an option to be late, so I dropped the car and splurged on a taxi all the way in. $35, but better than being late. Actually at work earlier than normal even. All good, right?
Let’s talk for a second about the drop off though. First, the guy tells me how basically he’s doing me a favour to get me in today because he’s all booked up, and this isn’t an “express service” option. Then, he notices I’m due for a service, which I’d already told him, and he offered to do that too — wait, what? You’re so booked you’re squeezing me in for the headlights check, may just be a bulb even though odd both are out at same time, but you have time to do a level 2 service too? Umm, okay. Anyway, we talk about the afternoon shuttle, I tell him I need to be picked up at the end of the day. Usually they go and add me to a list, but the driver was making a run, so they will “make a note” when he’s back. I figure this is their daily business, so no worries. Before I finish checking in, I remind him I need the shuttle pick up and I’m in Gatineau. No problem.
Still neutral
At work, do my meeting at 10:00. We have a management dashboard that my team runs. Each quarter we go through it in a bit of detail, about 15 minutes to do a check in on “where we are”. It isn’t about the tool, it’s to prompt the discussion, but it’s been working well over the last year. I’ve been running the tool for about 8 years now and it is finally working the way I want it to (my standards are high — not too onerous a product, simple to understand and fill out, and just enough detail for a DG to say, “Well, it’s a bit off the rails here, let’s chat for 30 seconds so everyone else knows why/how, etc.”). For the discussion, not cuz there’s a tool. We start in, 10 seconds in the ADM jettisons it for topic 2 because we have a new government and our priorities are about to change considerably. Topic 2 is all the work we have to do between now and the end of the year…guess what, exact same content as the dashboard, we cover all the topics anyway, just a little less structured. I am but a humble servant, I live to serve. Good discussion, just not what I expected. We discuss a third topic that I wanted to defer, and lo and behold, all the stuff we didn’t have for them by way of background is what they want to discuss at the big budget meeting I’m having in two weeks, where I wanted it discussed anyway. Weird, weird, weird meeting. Moving on.
Huge bump up
I had my performance feedback session today for mid-year. Standard stuff, I’m awesome all around. No, seriously, that’s most of the conversation. I’m a manager, my boss treats me like a Director, we agree on the way forward on all our files with only minor nuancing at times, and he feels like I appropriately consult him when I need to do so. Generally a home run. But then he added some cream, and I have to say, it may have been the single greatest comment I have ever had from a boss during an actual performance discussion. He said he really enjoyed working with me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t saying he really liked me, I wasn’t getting his personal seal of friendship type of comment. He and I have a unique working relationship and we work hard on it together. Normally, there would be a director between him and I, or I would be acting. I don’t want to act, and they don’t have the budget right now for the director position (a fourth one in our Directorate), and while he could reconfigure and overload the other three, we have worked out a structure whereby I directly report to him. To be honest, with all my special files, I’ve reported to a DG regularly for the last 7 years anyway, but now it is without the EX-01 safety net / mentor / boss sitting there to rely upon. When he comments he enjoys working with me, it’s about that type of structure and that he and I together make the files as “fun” or at least as “little painful” as possible. We have a pretty high pain threshold doing the corporate files, including privacy, audit, etc. and yet our conversations about the files are not down in the weeds filling out templates but rather the strategic aspects that touch our programs. I hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms, but I too really enjoy working with him, as I have the last two DGs as well. Honestly, it’s rare that I don’t like my boss throughout my entire career, sometimes because I’m particular about who I work for and partly because I have a very structured way of talking to bosses that has served me well. Mostly along the lines of “here’s the basic files and what I plan to do about them/have already done” and “here’s where I need some guidance / am still thinking through an approach”, with regular check-ins.
But stop yourself for a second…how powerful a statement is that? My boss actually enjoys working with me on our files. Forget the personal side, forget the rest of the performance side, that is a damn good indicator of your performance right there. I can think of some other people where I would not have that kind of working relationship. It’s a pretty awesome compliment.
Of course, I *am* awesome, so what’s not to like? 🙂
Small high continues, starting to trend neutral
Anyway, moving on. Moving forward on hiring a new staff member, working on crunching some budget numbers, and herding cats for a transition note tied to the morning meeting. Not awesome sauce, but it’s working.
The downward turn
I call Nissan at 3:00 because I haven’t heard from them about the car, just want to make sure everything is going okay and on track for end of day. Yep, working on it now, no problem. I ask about the shuttle again, do I need to reconfirm that I’m on the list, nope, they have my number, all good.
At 3:45, I realize I haven’t heard from the shuttle. I work in Gatineau and I am the first stop for the shuttle — after me, he goes to downtown Ottawa. I call Nissan again, wait five minutes, shuttle driver calls. I’m not on his list, he’s never heard of me, am I sure I’m being picked up today? Umm, yeah. He’s already picking up downtown, can’t get me, but offers to drop them and come back for me. It’s at least a 20-30 minute run one way, and he hasn’t even picked everyone up yet. Best scenario he would pick me up at 5:00; worst, well past 5:00, and I wouldn’t get out of the dealership in time to pick up Jacob by 6:00.
The death spiral
I’m out the door, no cabs of course as it is raining, but I manage to run for a bus (my knees will hate me a LOT tomorrow, I can’t run on pavement), get to Tunney’s, switch, make it all the way to Hunt Club and Merivale. Pouring rain. No umbrella. No hat. Wearing a fleece jacket (I was only going to be in a car, I swear that was the plan). Driving rain. 20 minute walk to Nissan.
I arrive, and I’m basically a puddle. I’m wet, I’m cold, and oh, yeah, I’m pissed. I scrambled because I had to, there was no other option, I needed the car to go get Jacob. I had Andrea scrambling for contact numbers in case I couldn’t make it to the school by 6:00, but I was at dealership at 5:15 by a miracle. Creating small floods on their tiles. I was going to enter by the service entrance, and I thought, “F*** it, if someone says somethin g, I’ll show the dealership manager what a pissed off service customer looks like.”
Get to service counter, somebody is having long detailed discussion with them about what they did, what they were authorized to do, blah blah blah, I don’t have time for this. I go over to the service manager’s door, and I reservedly tell him to look at me carefully for two reasons. First, the drowned rat in front of him (soaked hair, jacket, pants are like paint at this point, shoes dripping) is what a customer looks like when the dealership doesn’t put him on the shuttle list after he confirmed it three times. Second, I thought he should also see what $40K in business looks like walking out of the dealership.
He was all apologetic, wanted to know who I talked to, etc. I said, “Sorry, that’s not my problem anymore. I don’t work here, and I am not your customer anymore. I’m done.” And walked away. I was so cold and miserable, plus I’m fighting a cold, I didn’t have any energy left to avoid turning into THAT customer. He came out and chased around to find my service agreement, waved all costs (about $350 worth of service), as he probably should have, apologized again, explained what they did. Very professional. I took my keys, contract, and left.
Turning some of it around
I put on some music in the car on the way to get Jacob, but I’m soaked to the bone. I call Andrea and get her to pull together pants, shirt, underwear (yes, I’m THAT wet), socks, and a towel. In the door, strip, dry, washroom, back out to get Jacob. My wife is awesome. And she thought to give me Jacob’s rain boots and rain jacket. It’s still pouring at that point.
Jacob and I grab some stuff at ToysRUs and then over to Swiss Chalet for dinner. He and I have an awesome boys night, lots of stuff we’re looking at together. Good time. I’ve been looking forward to trying their rotisserie beef, a different take on roast beef, looked good. It’s not. How a rotisserie beef ends up “greasy” I don’t know, but the level of fat and grease was a complete turn-off even for me, and that’s saying something. I still occasionally eat dead bird in a box (aka KFC).
Get home, put the cub to bed, start blogging. Most nights, I kind of take mental stock, “How was today?”, just as I ask the cub. I have no idea how to answer it for today. I survived, that’s good, right?
Oh, I left out one of the best parts. The headlights? They said it was all fixed, but when I got to the house, I realized the driver side one is still out. Awesome. I’m hoping I can live with it until the weekend and I can figure out a new service centre to repair it.
Without naming names, someone read my post about controlling my temper, and said, “Okay so what else did you get from your tadpole years?” Which is a pretty good question, so I’ll see if I can elaborate a little.
First, as I said, my tadpole years were triggered by a realization that I had almost no idea what I wanted in a partner, and to be blunt with myself, no real clue what I was doing when it came to dating, etc. I was just “drifting”. Which is fine if you’re relatively mentally healthy, not so good if you aren’t, yet still care about your impact on others.
Which means I started to figure out the kind of woman I wanted to be with. Up until that point, I did have an occasional “damsel in distress syndrome” going on. Some call it “DIDS”, others call it the “wounded bird” approach. Which means that sometimes I was attracted to wounded birds who needed help mending their wings. This often shows up more often in women, according to the literature at least, that a woman is going to “fix that broken man”, but often that goes further to looking at more extreme forms that include abuse. This wasn’t about being so wanting to help that I would put up with abuse, but I did feel protective sometimes to a point that looked and felt like romantic interest. A bit messed up, even though lots of people have it and think it’s a strength, not a weakness. For me it was a weakness — I had to be with a woman for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, and being with someone so I could “help” them was not a reason to date them. Friends, yes, dating, no.
Overall, and in no particular order, I wanted a woman who was relatively independent. Both smart and bright (i.e. intelligent and quick). Highly functional. Stable, no love for drama for drama’s sake. Worldly, or at least, not simply limiting herself to a provincial / small town view of the world, or simply curious about the world. Patient. Funny in her own right, not just simply laughing at other’s jokes. Not someone who loves cocktail parties and galas, but more board games, reading, a few friends, barbeques. Was I looking for all those things in one person? Not really, but in some ways they were flags for me that would likely lead to an unsustainable relationship due to the way my mind/world works on my side.
For me, aggressively warm, fuzzy, over-the-top social, clingy, etc. — all of these would suck energy out of me way too fast. It would be like a vampire feeding on a corpse. I just don`t have the energy reserves to do that for longer than a day. And I`d quickly resent having to do it, even if they were to “tone it down” as part of the compromise. Similarly, I have no interest in cocktail parties and galas. I remember a conversation with an old boss whose view was that every man should own a tuxedo, because if you have one, you find occasions to wear it. For me, that would be the exact reason NOT to own one, because I wouldn’t want to go to the events where I would wear it. I’m glad others enjoy it, I do. And I see their photos and things, and I’m even a bit envious. But I consider it a good month if I can get away with not wearing a suit or tie at any point during the month. I like getting dressed up occasionally, but I’d rather be at home than somewhere that requires the monkey suit.
In terms of interests or knowledge, I wanted someone with an outward perspective because it would challenge me, it would bring more to the relationship. I don’t mean a globetrotter who’s never around, or doing a long-distance thing, but I also have a tendency to overexplain things, to put my stamp on things, to express my views unsolicited (i.e. I talk a lot), and I didn’t want someone who would just listen and not push back. I’ve dated people who said they liked listening because I explained things sometimes so well, it was great. But not something I want to do every day.
Yet at the same time, I don’t want someone who pushes back just for the sake of drama…some people like it, it adds spice to life, and I admire passion, but it is a bad combination for me as per my previous article about my temper. My temper is vicious when unleashed, and not only do people not deserve it, I don’t want to be the person who says or does things because my temper gets the best of me or because someone is pushing buttons just to watch me blow. Instead, I committed to not being with people who trigger it regularly (certain family members, some girlfriend types), and when I do feel it potentially being triggered or at risk, I remove myself from the situation. Those are the two most effective anger management techniques I can employ. Which doesn’t mean I don’t get angry or irritated, or more accurately, highly frustrated at times, but rather that when I do, I remain in control. Which isn’t always apparent to others who may still find me explosive, particularly when it’s a home-repair project that isn’t going well.
And much of the rest was simple compatibility — I like to joke, laugh, be entertained by stories told in funny styles, do informal things, play board games, read, share books, have barbeques.
As I said, that was one of the main triggers — couplehood.
But it also expanded in other directions. For example, a better knowledge of my interests, personality, strengths, weaknesses. I’m good at explaining things, as I said above, but that isn’t exactly right — my real skill is in explaining things in ways that others grasp the fundamentals, and to see a different way of looking at things. Which some friends have used from time to time to help them understand why person X did something they didn’t understand. When I was at university out west, I got a nickname from the one guy who thought I was partially psychic. Except, like The Mentalist, I was just good at extrapolating from people’s behaviour back to the likely cause and motivation. I’ve lost a lot of that ability over the years, I don’t practice as much as I did then, but it’s still a skill I use from time to time.
I also thought a long time about my career. I “came into my own” at DFAIT, and yet I also never wanted to be like the stereotypical DFAITer. I did a MPA degree but didn’t care what was going on in Parliament, didn’t need to be “seen”, didn’t want to compete with colleagues, network with power players, etc. I like my work, I like my job, I like corporate work. But it is not who I am. And I won’t “play the game” to be a more powerful player in the playground. I didn’t have the words to describe it at the time, but the short version is that regardless of the ocean I’m swimming in, I would rather be a dolphin than a shark. I also realized I’m pretty good at the corporate files, although I only partly realized it during my tadpole years. It was later that I fully embraced it, but the starting point was realizing that I didn’t have to be the shark or top dog or leader of the pack, whatever metaphor floats your boat, I just want to be useful. Maybe that’s just in a supporting capacity.
I also developed a strong dislike for kowtowing to people because of their level. It is too much like schmoozing to me, it seems fake and artificial. So I will talk to an ADM the same way I’ll talk to a colleague on the floor. Informal, open, honest, and probably a bit more irreverent than most.
On finances, I am doing okay now, and that is partly out of the tadpole years. I realized that my income was going to go up, I was going to move up. But just because I did, my lifestyle didn’t have to keep up. Sure, it helps to have a working spouse that has a decent income too, and while we don’t live super extravagantly, we also don’t live frugally either. We spend what we want to spend, and we’re a little more money conscious these days with lots of significant pressures all hitting with a three-year timeframe, but ultimately, we’re in a happy medium-space. We could get by with less, we could spend more, we’re fine where we are. And that’s a pretty good place to be. If I was still single, it would be about the same.
On the extended family front, I also set limits on my role in the family. When my father died, I tried to do everything for my mother. Helped with all the finances, did the eulogy, etc. I remember six months into the year, it was time to do the taxes, I was stressed about the process, and I remember getting frustrated that I couldn’t get my mother to just go to the local store and fax me copies of the receipts or photocopy them and mail them to me. Never mind the fact that I had two brothers and a sister living in the city who could have helped just as easily, I was doing it to help but also because I liked feeling needed. While others were often in conflict, I was the peacemaker in the family. The one who got along with all five of my siblings, and didn’t have any of the five of them actively hating me. But it was killing me. I wasn’t being myself, I was playing a game, following a script. And I said, “Game over.” I stopped being the facilitator. I stopped being the peacemaker. If people pushed, I pushed back. When my mother wanted to stir the pot to create some conflict, I’d let her stir and then just ignore it completely. I wasn’t going to play that game. And I didn’t. When my mom died, she wanted me to play that game again, to find a way to make all the siblings get along. I refused. I did the co-executor thing when I wanted nothing to do with any of it, but when it was done, so was I. I am friends with my siblings who act like they want to be friends. But if they want to create drama or play games? Totally not interested. I have five direct siblings, and if either of two of them died tomorrow, I likely wouldn’t go to the funeral (well, to be completely candid, I wouldn’t be welcome at one of them anyway). Family was family until they made me make a choice, and I chose me. The real me, not the peacemaker role. To them it probably looks like I became a bit of a jerk; for me, it means I found my spine.
The second-to-final piece I got out of it was a more defined interest in other parts of my life. The most visible form of that is writing. An extended friend once referred me to the “guy who blogged before there were blogs” because in the mid-90s, I had an email newsletter that I did for friends that often combined humour with some of my own commentary, and the odd trivia question. I liked doing it. I liked interacting with people. I used to run an email trivia game, pre-website, where I had 75 people from around the world playing my game. Two of those people are on my FaceBook friends list still, 15-20 years later. And I was starting to think about becoming a writer, maybe even a mystery novelist. I’ve gone in different directions since then, but the interest in writing is still very much there.
Finally, I thought a lot about the nature of friendship, relationships, love itself. Emotions. The expression of that emotion. The nature of love in a relationship. And I realized something simple yet profound. In its simplest form, we often go through life feeling things we don’t mention, sometimes for fear of embarrassment or lack of reciprocity. But I hated that idea. So, just as I had started expressing my love for my father, I made the commitment to myself that if I felt love, I would express it. Not in a creepy way, just that if I was in a relationship with someone, and I felt it, I would say it. I wouldn’t wait for the right time, I wouldn’t hold back for fear of embarrassment. I would say it because I felt it, not because I wanted to hear it back.
All of these things came out of my tadpole years. There are others, but those are the main ones. Any one of them could be a separate post probably, but this is the gist of my distilled PolyWogg version. So when people ask me what else came of my tadpole years, my answer is simple.
When I started writing my goals down for this year, the writing target of 500,000 words was a relatively early one. Not the quantity, but that I would set a word target. I have lots of things that I want to write about, even more than I think, “Hmm, I might have something worth saying about that”, and others that are more, “Well, it might be useful or interesting.”. But there is a small subset where I ask a different question, “Am I ready to write that post? Is my writing ability up to the challenge?” This is one of those posts.
A few people have said they would like to know more about my tadpole years, the five years that I was intentionally single where I played “deconstructing Paul’s brain” and then put it back together like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation and hoped for the best. Mostly they want to know why I think the types of questions or process I used was different from someone else’s “coming of age” experience. And they want examples.
Let me start by pointing out that much of the five years was boring. There were few “epiphanies”, few “eureka” moments where the universe suddenly opened its arms and embraced me in revealed wisdom. It was slow. It was methodical. It was boring. But progress, when it happened, was often driven by fear and my reaction to it more than by courage.
Take my temper, for instance. I have a temper. Not like other people say, “Oh, his temper got the best of him.” More like, “he lost his temper with his brother/father, said something awful/unforgivable, and they’ve never spoken since”. I’m not violent, but I am potentially ruthless. Utterly, unforgivingly, mercilessly ruthless. It takes a lot for me to lose my temper…I don’t mean be irritated or impatient or speak a harsh word, I mean actually lose my sh** to the point where I go on the offensive.
Cognitive socio-psychopathy. Psychopath, meaning low impulse control and violent outbursts. Sociopath, meaning someone who knows right and wrong but manipulates around it. And cognitive, meaning it is an on-off switch that the person controls themself.
Am I a psychopath? No, of course not. Am I a sociopath? No, not that one either.
But if you attack me, push my buttons, hem me in until I pop, I will verbally go for the jugular. Let me give you an example. Back in high school, I had a best friend named Paul, nicknamed Ruf (like Rufus). Think Leonard and Sheldon, the younger years. He was dating this girl from another high school, never even mentioned her to me for about six months they’re dating. Very man-like conversations apparently. Anyway, they start having problems, she calls me one night at home and says, “Is there anything going on with him at school? Home? What burr is up his butt?”. I didn’t know, but she was pretty upset, needed someone to talk to, and I was it. No biggie, happy to listen/help. Except he was the paranoid type, and apparently he was worried that if we ever met, she’d leave him for me or something. I don’t get it, but whatever. Anyway she decided she didn’t want to tell him we’d talked. I didn’t care, really, so whatever. Flash forward a few days, she’s admitted we talked, and he gets really upset with me. Rags on me at school, goes in for all this stupid drama about how I’ve betrayed him, blah blah blah. I got pissed, and left. He called me later, went on and on, basically making me feel “trapped”, dumping on me continuously, and I lost my temper.
Now, for most people that would mean a shouting match. Yelling. Maybe just arguing back. Not me. I lose my temper, I go cold inside, and I find the worst possible thing to say to hurt you. In his case, there he was, looking for me to say basically “Sorry” and that “I care that he’s hurt”, etc. He wanted me to validate his feelings, to use the vernacular. And this is my best friend, one of only a few friends I have in total. The guy I hang out with EVERY. SINGLE. DAY at school. And I know what he wants, and I also know that he’s afraid that I don’t care. That I’m not sorry. That he feels betrayed and that he has no control. My best friend dumped it all at my feet, laid his heart upon his sleeve and said, “So what do you have to say?”.
I knew what he wanted, and I refused to do it. I went for the jugular. He wanted me to say something? I said, “Whoopee f***.” Now that may not sound like much. But it crushed him totally, as I knew it would. I invalidated everything he had said, everything he thought he knew about me, every aspect of our friendship that he relied upon. I was HIS best friend too. And here I was, blowing him off when he was at his most vulnerable. For me, it was the equivalent of the memes on FB that says “Share if you agree, only 1% of my friends will do it and I know which ones care”. A passive aggressive, let’s play my game approach to social interactions, and I don’t play that game on a good day, and that wasn’t a good day to test me. Did I feel bad about it? Nope. Did I feel guilty? Nope. It was strategic, not retaliatory. It pushed him away from me as if I’d smacked him with a baseball bat.
We “patched” things up a week or so later, more out of social need than compassion, but our relationship never really recovered from that point on either – the comment was too insidious for him to ever totally trust me again, or even himself in some ways. Am I overstating? A few months later, he was over at the house, and another friend and he were talking, with the subject coming around to me and my “cold heartless ways”, so to speak. They both said, quite openly, they had never ever seen anyone close a door mentally and emotionally as fast as I had with them in the past. One minute? Best friends. Next minute? I wouldn’t scrape you off my shoe.
Fast forward to 1998, and I had seen enough appearances of my evil side over the years that I wasn’t totally comfortable with it being part of me. It is a source of strength, it even has a name to me. Shiva, the Destroyer. It’s the core rock at the centre of my being, what’s left when I stripped everything else away. Except there was little I could do with that piece. Too hard to chip away at alone, and I had no professional therapist to hand me a pickaxe. And it protects me. It’s there if I ever need it. But like the “carry concealed” laws for guns, it is highly dangerous. I never ever want to use it against those I love. So I spent a LOT of time figuring out the triggers.
Since a lot of these defense mechanisms are learned, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what had been happening at the times I resorted to the mechanism.
First, I had resorted to it if I felt relatively attacked. It’s a defense mechanism, it’s triggered when I’m under attack. I don’t mean physically, I mean someone is coming at me generally head on.
Second, I had definitely resorted to it if I had no other option i.e. if I felt trapped, claustrophobic. So, for example, being around my family, with alcohol involved, and no way to just leave. Lack of a car, remote location, etc. Trap me? I bite.
Third, emotional drama. This isn’t quite the same as being attacked. If it is a highly emotional scene, maybe confrontational, maybe not, the energy charge in the situation is enough to heighten my sensitivity. If the other person is a drama queen? Really good chance of ticking me off to the point where I want to verbally hit back. Case in point. Argument with a girlfriend, I’m trying to defuse the situation, she’s just ramping up and up and up, she says something vicious and childish, and leaves. But as she goes, she slams the door. I lost my temper. I stormed out after her ready to tell her in no certain terms the wherefore and howto of certain physically impossible acts. But she saw my face, ready to tell her off and totally temper-fueled, and she thought I was going to kill her. I opened my mouth, and the look on her face made me stop and look behind me to see what was scaring her. I thought the hounds of hell were unleashed. Nothing there. The look on my face as I was about to tell her off was enough to scare the daylights out of her. Would I hurt her physically? Nope. But she di dn’t know that, and had a history that heightened her own fears. In the two years that followed, I made sure to always end the conversation before any drama could escalate to the point where my face alone would scare her, let alone what damage my words might do.
My temper, when released, doesn’t want to make a snide comment. It isn’t after a witty bon mot. It wants to devastate you from top to bottom. God forbid I know a fear you have. That’s what I’ll go for, every time. The type of comment that will stay with you in your psyche forever. Let me give you a simple, easy to understand example. I’ll attack myself. First though, some additional context.
During that same tadpole time, one thing that was haunting me was the question of whether or not I wanted kids. Lots of people think, “How stupid a question is that? Yes or no? Not that hard.” If so, I think you’re an idiot. Having kids isn’t like picking up a new handbag. You not only should know if you want them in general, but also if you want them if you had to do it alone, if you’ll be good at it, can you do it WELL, not just “muddle through” and count it as a win if they don’t end up in jail?
I had a close friend who decided that if she was single and of a certain age, she’d probably adopt on her own. That’s not that unusual in theory, but it isn’t a common situation in practice, truth be told. The numbers are quite low. It falls even farther down the probability scale when it is a potential single father rather than a potential single mother thinking about it. Very few males run off and adopt on their own. Societal bias, personal choice, stereotypes, whatever, it’s pretty rare. Less rare now, but pretty uncommon for 1998. So since I’m male, and I was single at the time, it was simple to say, “I don’t know”, since I didn’t have the option to either do it myself and I wasn’t with someone right then. But that wasn’t determinative.
I could have adopted. By myself. Not easily, but not impossibly either. So I poked my psyche to say, “Do you WANT kids bad enough that you would do it on your own?”. And I don’t mean brushing your teeth, daydreaming, thinking, “What if???”. I mean, deep in the night, lying awake, staring at the ceiling, deconstructing what it would mean, both for me and for the child. Could I handle it on my own? Would I be any good at it? Was I mentally, emotionally, physically capable of raising a child successfully, relatively on my own?
So, I asked myself, “Are you capable of being a good parent?”. Again, I don’t mean gently thinking about it. I mean grilling myself like a fish. What a friend called self-mutilation as I broke down different aspects of my self into things that would work or not as a parent. And here’s the conclusion.
I wouldn’t likely make a good single parent. Let’s look at the criteria related to triggering my temper. Attacked? Kids do like to push buttons. Trapped? Single parent, and lots of people have felt like their life is on a one-way street to nowhere for 18 years. Usually not those who made a choice or who have my level of income, both of which mitigate some of the trapped feeling, but not entirely. Emotional drama? Kids never do that, do they?
So what is my coping mechanism? Escape usually. I step back. I avoid situations where I am trapped, attacked or facing unbridled drama. Those three things do not happen with my wife. Not overtly usually, and never together. She’s the opposite of a drama queen. With Jacob, and her too, sometimes I need to withdraw. Not necessarily physically, I just need to take a small mental siesta to disengage. To focus on the process, not the outcome. Some of that is just living in the moment for some people, but it’s not really that for me — it’s almost, and this sounds terrible, like I decide for 2 or 3 minutes to just not care. I turn off my empathy, my caring, my feeling side. Cognitive control. I mastered the technique during my tadpole years, as I layered my new self back over the core rock that was Shiva.
But I came to the conclusion that while I wanted kids, I was not likely a good candidate to do it “alone”. Combine the fact that I’m an introverted analytical type, reserved in emotion, and that I have a temper, and even on my best days, I’m not a warm fuzzy Father of the Year type. Check out my goals for the year — I have actual goals about “doing more”, being “more” than I am currently. When Andrea and I decided to have kids, I had to confess up front that I was unlikely to ever be a 50/50 co-parent when it came to the basic routine, diaper changes, feedings, snuggling, etc. She would bear more of the load than I would if we had kids. I’m better than my Dad was, perhaps, I’m emotionally aware, I’m present, I’m trying, but I am NOT a natural at this stuff. I’ll likely do better when he’s older and wants to talk about stuff, or when he’s learning bigger things, not unlike “mentoring” experiences now (lots of people have suggested I should become a professor or something and teach because I’m good at explaining things in different ways, albeit it with too many words). But until then, I have to commit to the quest.
So, if I pissed myself off, that would be the area I would go to in attacking me. I would start with basic premise of loving my son, and drive the knife in that I’m not doing everything I can for him, so how can I say I truly love him? Do I even know what love is? It’s not like I had a father who was expressing it regularly. Blah blah blah. But if that’s the area, the attack vector has to be far more oblique. Like asking myself how I’m doing on my goals and bringing the conversation around to goals with Jacob and Andrea. Talking about them doubtfully, like it makes no sense to have “green goals”, and implying that it’s laughable how badly informed I am in that area. Not direct, subtle. Go for my worries, my doubts, and twist the knife so that I keep twisting it long after the conversation is over. THAT’S what my temper would do if I was ticked at myself.
And that’s the kind of issue I worked on during my tadpole years. Some would call it “managing my temper”, others would say “anger management”. But that isn’t what I did. I stripped everything away, and then locked my temper in a steel cage with myself having the only key. Others could get to it by blasting, but long before they could reach it, I will have already exited stage left. Remove the impetus, remove the threat. I can’t get rid of it, not even sure I would if I could. It’s part of who I am, a source of strength. But I don’t want to ever use it. It’s not who I became. It wasn’t an active part of PolyWogg 3.0.
Hah, click bait worked again! Except it’s not really click bait. I did spend last night at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Sometimes called the Royal (mostly by them, it’s their brand). Sometimes called Royal Ottawa. Sometimes called the nuthouse by insensitive twits.
I was there for overnight observation, which will generate curious thoughts from some readers, worried thoughts from some close friends, and relief from some of my relatives. Like my brother Mike, who’s probably thinking, “Finally! I’ve said it for YEARS!”.
When they find out I left in the morning as scheduled, everyone will be confused. Sorry to disappoint, but I wasn’t there for anything “psych” related, at least not really. Instead, it is one of the centres in Ottawa that does sleep tests, making use of the beds overnight and hooking you up to innumerable electrodes. And heaven knows I need a sleep test — it was on my tracking list for this year. I sleep like crud regularly, often waking up multiple times in the night, often having insomnia in the middle of the night, only to hit a perfect deep sleep about 20 minutes before I have to get up in the morning. So I went and got hooked up.
I shouldn’t say innumerable electrodes, because there were seventeen to be precise. Two on my shins to see if I have restless leg syndrome and kick a lot at night. Two more on my shoulders. About five more on your chin and under your throat to see if you grind your teeth in the night (I do, but they didn’t detect it last night). About five to seven across your forehead and beside your eyes to tell if you’re in REM, when your eyes are open, etc. (they basically monitor eye movement by measuring the muscles around the eye twitching and convulsing when you move your eyes). And three to five more in your hair, although I have no idea what they were doing.
Most of the test though is to see if I have apnea — which is the lovely condition where you stop breathing and your body fights to overcome it, thus waking you up. It’s quite common with pregnant women (tied to weight gain), although oddly enough, Andrea’s sleep apnea was improved by pregnancy, not worsened. I told them up front I didn’t have it, because I never wake up gasping for air nor jerk awake.
For those who have never done a sleep test, here’s the deal — if you didn’t have trouble sleeping BEFORE the sleep test, you’re guaranteed to have it during the test.
First, no caffeine after 4:00 p.m. Not a big deal for me (well, I was thirsty a bit right at 4:00 by coincidence, but not after that).
Second, there were restrictions on smoking and alcohol which didn’t apply to me, so easily ignored, but hard on some.
Third, you have to arrive between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m., and get hooked up to all the probes/electrodes. The list of 17 above? They all come with wires too. So it takes time and you’re not the only patient. They have six beds, and two technicians doing the monitoring. You can stay up and read or something after they hook you up, but you’re not going to be doing very much else, so I decided it was easier to go to bed.
Most people who have trouble sleeping have compensated by going to bed later than average — making sure they’re actually tired so that they don’t fight for as long falling asleep. Falling asleep has never been my problem, it’s staying asleep, so I thought, “Might as well turn in early.” So I was in bed by 10:05 p.m. First time in a LONG time. They test the equipment, turn out the light, and then monitor your sensors plus your body position through an infrared camera. Oh, and you have an oxygen nose plug in, taped to your face and looped over your ears. With the 17 electrodes all having wires, plus the nose plug, plus four other wires running off straps around your chest and abdomen, it’s not exactly “comfortable”.
But you’re in bed, ready to go. As I was. Then at one point I was REALLY warm, so I wanted to take my socks off. Which meant I had to press the call button, she had to come in, make sure I didn’t disconnect anything, and good to go again. That was around midnight I think. Oh yeah, no clock in the room, and more importantly for me, no radio to fall asleep to. Plus you can’t take your own pillow. Did I mention they basically remove any of the existing coping techniques you have been using so that you’re guaranteed to have bad sleep? The bed wasn’t made of nails, but maybe they haven’t thought of that yet.
Then at 2:00 a.m., she came in and told me that I apparently do have sleep apnea. Bad from her perspective. So she wanted to try the CPAP — no, it’s not a gynecological exam. CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, and it is basically a nose plug on steroids. Did you see Star Wars Episode 5 / The Empire Strikes Back where Luke is brought back to the Hoth snow base and is in a big tube of water wearing a breathing mask? Well that’s basically what a CPAP mask looks like.
There are two kinds. First, one that goes just over your nose, and made me feel like I was suffocating. You can’t open your mouth at all while wearing it or it suddenly vapour locks to your cheeks and nose. Very disturbing feeling — air pressure to lightly force the air into your lungs so you don’t have to work as hard, but also air pressure that fights against it when you breathe out so that your lungs don’t stop working (I guess, not really sure). The second kind is like the Star Wars mask, it’s a long hose with a breathing mask that fits over your nose and mouth — just like them giving you oxygen in an ambulance, but instead of a thin 8 mm tube for air, this is a garden hose coming at you. Heavy. Needs a full harness to go around top of your head, wrap around to the back, drop down and then back under your chin, up to your mouth, straps on with velcro and seals shut. Kind of like a catcher’s mask.
Sure, that won’t be distracting or hard to get used to wearing while sleeping, will it? Of course not.
Some 45 minutes later, I was still counting sheep and wondering what time it was. I did eventually drift off to sleep, only waking one more time before the 6:30 wake up call. Oh yeah, I forgot that part too. They wake you up around 6:00 and kick you to the curb so they have the space back. Great, very restful. Oddly enough, I actually DID sleep okay in that last 3 hours or so. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be wearing the mask, I think it was more the other things that were distracting (it’s hard to move around and get comfortable in a strange bed and no favorite pillow when you’re connected to 17 wired thingies).
The end result is that the very evangelical technician thinks me (and everybody on the planet, incidentally) should rush to the nearest medical centre and get a machine. But this is no small decision. It’s meant to be worn EVERY night. It also makes mostly white noise while you sleep, not very loud, but I don’t know what Jacob would think the first time he saw me in it. It’s not a simple “grab and go”, or drift off. This is very much sleeping with intent.
On the positive side, cost isn’t really a factor. While the machine is about $900 for the base model, 75% is covered by the government, and my work coverage would cover 80% of the rest, leaving me about 5% normally but we have double-coverage with Andrea, so hers would pick up the remaining 5%. I might have to buy some accessories, like a case and some cleaning cloths, but that’s about it.
I just did the test last night, so I still have some thinking to do. It is intrusive, it is disruptive, it is a bit claustrophobic. It also might make very little difference to my sleep. Lots of people rave as the technician did, but Andrea’s sleep wasn’t much better even with hers on, as others have said too, so it isn’t a slam dunk for everyone.
Plus there’s a psychological element. About 70% of overweight people have apnea, and that is the most likely cause for me. The extra weight basically leads to an enlarged tongue, narrower pathways, and/or extra skin at the back of the throat, and those three possible “blockages” screw up your breathing. To fully accept that I have sleep apnea requiring a serious mechanical intervention rather than an occasional challenge sleeping is to more broadly acknowledge that it is simply because I’m fat. That’s a hard pill to swallow for a whole host of other reasons, and triggers no end of self-defense psych reactions.
In the past, that would be enough to seal the outcome, no deal. But this is PolyWogg 4.0 who said death to squirrels just 16 days ago. I have a follow-up appointment in two weeks to review the results, and if I already have my machine, for the doctor to authorize the government funding, etc. And they will likely invite me back in the future to do another test where I just use my machine plus all their little electrodes again.
Decisions, decisions. While the cost is basically $0 to try, I don’t like wasting anyone’s resources, including the government’s if I’m not fully committed to doing it long-term. I can however try it and see if it makes an amazing difference, generally with 30 days free trial. I could do that this month, next month, next October, whenever. Stay tuned…
And sorry to my brother Mike who got excited no doubt with my being in the mental hospital, even if it was only for a night. He was probably hoping I could entice some other siblings to join me.
