Continuing on 2014 update...

I have struggled with severe depression most of my life. For the last 25 plus years I have dealt with connective tissue disease which keeps me in chronic, constant pain. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore is one  of  3 places worldwide that is using E C T as a treatment for pain. I've been a patient at Hopkins pain program for 20 years and was offered the opportunity to try this treatment. To a large extent it has worked. I'm still in constant pain but I'm able to treat it with Tylenol and another anti inflammatory drug. No narcotics and no opioids. I still struggle with depression but I am getting help from a new medicine. I seem to be feeling better because of it.

Update to 2014

It's been 4 years since I wrote in this blog... It would be silly to say "A lot has happened in 4 years...". so I won't.
Daughter Brianna has had 2 kids, girls, quite beautiful. Daughter Emily is a junior in college, doing outstanding. Son Cameron...I don't know much about, we're not in touch. It feels shitty but I don't have a solution. Dawn and I are still in the drunk junk and happy crap business. Dawn's gift and book store "Celebrate Recovery" is 23 years old and still struggling along. She is 55, I am 60. Not sure how we will survive into old age. I try not to worry or be filled with abject terror but some days it's easier than others. I like to believe that the Universe will take care of us... I don't always feel comfortable with that. Who could?

My mother died this summer. Just before her 88th birthday. She simply wore out. I was in the hospital undergoing Electro Convulsive Treatments... although the T in E C T might actually stand for Therapy... I'm not really sure. Whatever... Every time I had a treatment I forgot almost everything I knew, especially current events. Consequently I got to find out my mom died 6 times, each time as if it had just happened. It was pretty fucked up, to say the least.

Why was I having E C T, you might wonder. I have

The case for feeling different...

I just came across a book on our shelves titled " Be the Star That You Are - A book for kid's who feel different". When I was growing up there was no book like this. I just was different and that's the way it was. I was picked on, bullied, talked down to and generally disenfranchised as much as a kid can be. My days were fear filled and seemed strange to me. I never really got what was going on around me. I knew things that were not appropriate for someone my age to know. My family believed in ghosts and goblins and things that went bump in the night. Our coffee table always had the latest copy of Playboy and Cavalier on it. I was never discouraged from looking at or reading this stuff. Time and Life were also there but they didn't stack up very well against the porn. None of the kids I knew had this stuff available. I thought about sex a lot. I was extremely adept at getting the neighborhood girls to take off their clothes for me. We were unsupervised a lot of the time. It was different then. And I felt different. I knew about things.

As I grew up I was better able to handle this difference inside me. At age 9 I learned about codeine and liked it. It made me not care about feeling different. I learned to drink beer and liquor; eventually I learned about pot and Seconal and disoxin. Dexedrine and black beauties. I still felt different but I got to feeling better about it. At age 14 I was admitted to the county farm (nut house) and stayed there for 5 months. I left against medical advise, my therapist assured me that I would end up a revolving door mental patient for the rest of my life. Very nice. He was wrong. I was never in that situation again.

The summer I turned 15 I worked on rock festival crews, that winter I hung out in the city and crashed at the apartment of some very nice women. That winter I met all manner of people and in the spring took a trip to the Grand Canyon with a lot of the folks I had spent the winter meeting. I still felt different but the booze and dope at least made me feel more plugged in. The Summer I turned 16 I moved to the Washington DC area. Within the first month I met the drug connections that would keep me supplied for the next 10 years. Still feeling different.

I was bone skinny and had hair halfway down my back. Old patched bluejeans and denim shirt... Cowboy boots wide belt, big buckle, little mustache and round wire rim glasses. I was, to say the least, picturesque. I didn't know a soul and I had never lived in a sub-division before.

A very pretty girl who had once been my girlfriend decided to move out East with us. She wanted a change in perspective. My parents adored her. Mom had made welcome in our home, seemingly every young person in Wisconsin whose parents had thrown them out. It was the end of the nineteen sixties and a lot of families were having trouble adjusting to the shifting cultural paradigm. Drugs, hair, sex, war protests, rock music with a political message, an expanded awareness of the inequities of basic rights of women and black people. Wisconsin was a hotbed of protests and open mindedness in the college towns. It was somewhat different on the farms and in the smaller urban landscape. The young people were claiming a freer lifestyle while their parents were clinging to the comfort and core beliefs that were the legacy of the post depression and war

Maybe some leatherwork...

So...today I screwed up another ukulele that I've been building...I have never made one start to finish without screwing something up badly...Other builders are very kind and say great things like 'really good craftsmen fix their screw ups so no one can tell the difference' inferring that I am a good craftsman because I can do this...It's bullshit! Really good craftsmen learn their craft and after doing it for 10 years, yes 10 years, are able to practice their craft with relatively few screw ups let alone every time they build something...the truth is that I am a really good leather craftsman. I did that discipline for 25 years and when I stopped doing it I was a master leather craftsman. At this point I am sure without a doubt that I will never be a good luthier.

I like doing lutherie. I find all the details of it a lot of fun. I had intended to make a living off of it when I started doing it semi full time a few years ago but after 2 years without selling any instruments I decided that there was just no way for me to make it work. So I decided that I would just do it for fun after I finished up all the half built ukes lying around the shop. I'm still in the process of doing that. I am gonna fix the latest screw up and finish that uke and the other one on my bench at the moment...after that I'm not sure what I'll do...maybe some leather work.

It would be great if I could draw this afternoon or do something artistic but tha's not a possibility so I'm gonna blog a little. I tried to get Google Sketchup to load onto this computer but it wouldn't do it...it's just as well because everytime I try to use Sketchup I end up pulling out what little hair I have left. My regular computer is going to the shop today...it's gotten the virus that 2 of our other computers have already gotten...this is the only one that has resisted so far. But that one is the one that already has Sketchup downloaded onto it.

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C ll D This is not Sketchup!

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Apparently I was wrong...this blog is still viewable by all...I'm not sure how to stop that or if I want to so I'm leaving it as it is...the only people who ever read it are Brianna who of course gave me shit about it and Dawn who didn't like something I wrote about...oh well...it's my blog...

Tommorow is my anniversary in AA...23 years...I'll be sharing and of course I will cry...what is it with that anyway? Any glimpse of kindness that I notice makes me cry...not big wrenching sobs (as if) just tearing up and sounding funny...I will do that tommorow evening there is no doubt and I won't like it...People tend to laugh when I share...sometimes I'm actually funny and sometimes I think they don't know what to do so they laugh...

My life is really great except for the undercurrent of anger that lives with me...it's a force and it has a lot of influence on me...a lot of it is attached to a specific event in my life and some of it comes from childhood like most emotional maladys do...I have fought it,prayed about it, gone to therapy to "work" on it...I've chastised, vilified and imaginized about it but it won't go away...a friend suggested that I try to just accept it...not to think it wrong but to realize that it is part of me...that's good advise and I'm working on it...I am...

Tommorrow I'll tell a very small part of my drinking and drugging story and I'll try to give most of the meeting time over to the group to share in...I'll ask that people refrain from telling me I'm a great guy and that they talk about the topic I've suggested...what's the topic? The face of God...I hope that it doesn't put new people off because it's purpose is to help them find and recognize a higher power of their own...we'll see...

Anniversary

Now that I no longer have a public blog it hasn't been fun to write in it. What's the point if only I will read it? Mental masturbation...keyboard masterbation...what ever. Tommorow is my 23rd anniversary...I'll be sharing at the Happy Hour Group...my home group. I cry a lot these days. Never an all out crying jag I just tear up and my throat constricts and I sound funny. It sucks. I know that will happen tommorow.