LOVE

At the moment I’m feeling breezy good and full of love for humanity.  Here’s something to make you jazz fans smile.

 


and



For me this music is like cracking open a can of pure joy.  I love it.  Enjoy.

Bud

Compassion

Merriam-Webster online defines compassion as follows: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

I am all for compassion.  For helping those who suffer.  I like this definition primarily because it has less to do with a feeling than with a rational approach to what is compassionate.

I have experienced first hand the devastation that often results from doing what makes one feel compassionate to what actually results in the alleviation of another’s distress.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I spent some time at a Christian flop-house, I mean err rehab.  Every Christmas and Thanksgiving this ministry serves around 1000 people turkey dinner.  What struck me most was the leadership of the home had very little to do with the event.  Sure they helped gather food, which is fine, but when it came time to serve the director of the home appeared maybe once, and the operations guy would come out maybe every 20 or 30 minutes to snap some photos.  I’m sure they felt a warm rush of compassion.  I’m sure doing this every year makes them feel compassionate.  But I’m not convinced what they are doing is actually compassionate.

And least you think this is a non-Christian idea remember this Proverb: “A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty.  If you rescue him, you will have to do it again.”  If chapter and verse are important to you then google it.

So there sits the hot-tempered man in his cell.  Sobering up, the reality of his situation becoming clearer and clearer.  He starts to think, “Perhaps I should work on controlling my temper?  Man I hope I don’t have to go before Judge Hardass again, he’s not going to like that I’m back here.”

But instead of working on his distress, instead of leaning forward into change, he calls his father, or mother, or grandmother, or uncle, or aunt, or sister.  And they bail him out.  They hire a lawyer.  They send him to an expensive rehab.  They feel good about what they’ve done to relieve their loved one’s suffering.  He stays 90 days in a lovely beach front facility near Boca Ratton.  He surfs the net, swims in the ocean, talks about his childhood to his therapist, and his sexual pathologies in group.  His dad doesn’t really like taking out a second mortgage to float the $15,000 for the 30 day treatment and promises himself this is the last time.

He meets a girl in group.  She’s from California and her folks thought maybe changing coasts would do the trick.  They’re back in LA, chomping down California rolls, drinking Chardonnay, feeling good about the choice.  The addicts feel good too.  They eat well, they get rest, they spend hours talking about their issues, and they make plans for their future together.  Maybe they’ll go to Orlando, or Miami?  He used to cook, maybe he can get a job as a chef.  She was a teen model, shouldn’t be too hard to get a job walking the runway again.

Time’s up, Doctor says they’re good to go.  The bus ride to Miami is crapped, and there’s a guy who got on the bus in Orlando who has a trash bag that squishes when he sets it under the seat.  This isn’t what he had imagined.  She flirts with a tattooed body builder across the aisle.  He wakes up from a nap an hour outside Miami and the body builder and the girl come back from the back of the bus at the same time.

They have enough money for a week in a hotel.  She doesn’t get a job.  He ends up taking short orders from the late night crowd at a diner owned and managed by a surly fat man from Croatia.  His first check, pays for another week at the hotel.  The rest he drinks up.  The whiskey soothes him like an old friend.   His second check, pays for another week.  The rest he rolls up and smokes.  His third check, screw the rent, screw the booze, screw the weed, screw work.  He finds a dealer with some nice yellow rocks.  He buys a pipe from a head shop that reeks of patchouli.  He’s on the street.

Revved up, he sees the girl and the body builder coming out of a tattoo shop.  He accosts them.  His delusion is not strong enough to combat the body builders fists, and feet.

“I’m sorry son.”  His father tells him as he lays in a hospital bed, due to crushed ribs, broken collar bone, nose, and dislocated shoulder.  “But I just don’t have any more money to help you.  You are a man now and I think you have what it takes to figure this all out.  I’m happy to talk to you and give you some advice if you need it but please don’t call your mother or grandmother asking for money.”

He cries.  He pleads.  In more sneaky moments he pries a twenty or two out of his matriarchs.  Maybe the pattern continues but as he’s burned all bridges to blood and bone, he moves to old friends.  Eventually those roads are blocked.  He moves onto strangers.  And at every stop along the way he learns that all he has to do is make people feel like they are being compassionate and he can get what he wants.  What he has convinced himself he needs.

We have become confused in language and drop words  and meanings carelessly without reference to cause and effect, without regard to long term incentives.  I don’t give a shit that you feel compassionate.  Do compassion.  And of course the only way to do it is to tune up your bull shit meter.

3 boxes and a trash bag

This sounds like a fantastic idea I found at Own your ADHD.

Get three boxes and a trash bag.

Go through the room, pick up one item at a time.

Whatever stays in that room goes in box 1.

Whatever goes in another room goes in box 2.

Whatever you’re unsure of goes in box 3.

Whatever is trash, you know where that goes.

Once you’re done, whatever is in box 2 take immediately to the proper place.

Throw away the trash.

Seal up box three for 3 to 6 months.  If you didn’t need anything in that box during that time then toss it.

wash, rinse, repeat.

What strikes me most about this advice-http://www.adhdactionguide.com, and also check out http://www.everydayhealth.com/ownyouradhd-is it’s practicality.

I don’t much care for debates on is ADHD real-or Bi-Polar-or any other so called disorder.  It’s like asking is the sky real.  Of course the are real.  Do I believe mental health care professionals see the whole picture?  Of course not.  And especially not when we live in a nation which so readily dispenses drugs to deal with symptoms.  Not to mention the notion that a person with such a disorder will do certain things.

When I lived in Arkansas I visited a country doctor who told me once he thought he might be a little bi-polar.  The man worked twelve or more hours a day, still did house calls, and yes would sometimes get depressed.  He never said bi-polar wasn’t a real thing he just sort of implied that perhaps these so called disorders are more common than we know.  In other words normal.  The issue is how we handle our physiological and psychological health.  A host of factors, too numerous to fully account for, can push one person with an internal chemical tendency towards mood swings, into drug abuse and wanderlust, while another is pushed in those manic moments towards becoming a doctor.  The former has a disorder.  The latter never gets diagnosed.

But what is the disorder?  Is the disorder simply that the internal mechanisms of their brain have gone awry?  I don’t think so.  The disorder is the behavior which is not determined by the brain alone.  Factors too numerous to fully account for might be family life, spiritual and religious experience, geographical location, age of the mother when the child was born, number of siblings, socio-economic status, education, age of the father when the child was born, whether or not the parents drank alcohol or used other drugs, the type of  government of the person grows up under, the period of history the person lives in, culture, the list is truly endless.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not trying to devalue mental health care providers.  I am merely stating that it is not a magic bullet.  That perhaps when we place too much emphasis upon that one explanation we become like the blind men in the Indian folk tale.  In that story each blind man is examining only one part of an elephant.  They each stiffly argue that it is like a rope, a fan, a snake, a tree, a wall, a spear.  While they are all in their own way right they are all wrong in that they only have an incomplete picture.  I sometimes wonder if our modern obsession with psychological endeavors is much like these blind men.  They are not wrong but the picture is incomplete as it is so focused on one aspect.  And this is why I am not convinced that ADHD, Bi-Polar, depression, and even Schizophrenia are disorders.  Of course they can become disorders depending on the other factors.  But they don’t have to be.

One prime example from history is a story I heard about Winston Churchill.  I will have to check all the details of course but I trust the person who told me this story claims to have read a biography of the British Prime Minister and I trust this person.  He told me Churchill’s office was made up of many tables built into the walls standing waist high.  When studying or working on speeches, he would have multiple books open on these tables around the room.  Next to each book was a note pad.  Churchill would walk around the room, stop to read a page or two from a book, scribble notes, and move to another to book.  He had a secretary who would file the notes for future reference.  Is it possible one of the greatest leaders of the last century had ADHD?  Yes.  Did he have a disorder?  No.

But that is not my story.  I have used a lot of illicit drugs, although I am sober now.  I have been prone to wanderlust as an adult-we moved around lot when I was child.  I have a tendency to run from struggles, and sabotage success.  I have been given a preliminary diagnosis of bi-polar II.  Several therapists told me my drug use makes a firm diagnosis difficult.  But what I believe now is that even if I am bi-polar, what doctors used to call manic-depression, it is not a disorder.  What is a disorder is how I have chosen to respond.  I’m not saying that I shouldn’t seek out medical assistance.  In fact I have been seeing a therapist for the last couple months and at some point plan on visiting a psychologist or psychiatrist.  And I very well may end up on some medication or other.  I will refuse lithium as it makes my jaw hurt and I become somewhat zombified.  I had okay results with Carbamazipine and I am curious about possible benefits of herbal supplements.  I also wonder if nicotine and caffeine intake don’t exacerbate the problem in much the same way as alcohol and marijuana.

Of one thing I am certain.  Today, at 35 years old, I do not have to let this thing in my brain control me.  Metaphors and similes are powerful things.  I choose to believe that my brain is the hardware of my soul.  I am not a brain I have a brain.  And I can choose to take practical advice like that listed on the websites above.  This view, this metaphor, this choice to see myself as more than just the sum of my physical parts, gives me great hope and freedom.  Yes I have a great challenge ahead.  But with courage I can face it and I do not have to face it alone.

Drama

I have an opportunity to volunteer with the burgeoning drama department at a local Catholic school.  At the moment there is only one staff member running the whole thing and obviously she is a bit overextended.

I am terrified.

The prospect of loosing my hours of hermitage frightens me.  And yet at this moment I fear more the crushing loneliness that I know it’s something I must do.  I can only shut myself off for so long before the allure of chemical respite will grow too strong to resist.  Be it wine or weed they will entice me again and again I will fall into their pit.  We addicts are told we have no power.  This is true but perhaps a bit misleading.  The power exists and is there to grab, to lean on, to stand under, and I must approach it on it’s-or on His-terms.  I’m talking about God of course, the source of power.  Not a being that has all power but a being that is all power.  If I’m an electric lamp I must be plugged in to give light.

This weekend I did not plug in and so the crushing weight of my personal madness nearly killed me.  Saturday I was supposed to go to the wedding of a co-worker.  I skipped it.  I don’t really know why.  Fear?  Embarrassment?  Shame?  Crushing depression?  Its selfishness ultimately, depression as a form of self-absorption.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself?  Perhaps I am just an intrapersonal genius to use Dr. Howard Gardner’s term for those who are aware of themselves.  In his book 7 Kinds of Smart, Thomas Armstrong even supposes their might be more than seven as we move into the future, perhaps even a metaphysical or spiritual intelligence.  These are people who are aware of their relationship to the deepest questions of life.  Perhaps their really is nothing wrong with omphaloskepsis and we naval gazers should say so when derided by our more social peers.  It’s a real word I promise (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omphaloskepsis).

Nevertheless I should have gone to my co-workers wedding and will have to apologize in a couple hours when she shows up to work.  I’ll try and make it up to her with a gift as well.  And I will also have to join this teacher-one I know is single and I’m guessing is going to be painfully cute.  Cute girls are always a pain to me, they remind me of what I lost in Old Mexico.   But enough of this pity party.  I have been granted a new day and so must pursue it with whatever courage I can muster.  I’m thankful for this outlet.  Thankful for life.  Thankful for friends and family who are patient with me.

Got to jet now.  Talk to you digital acquaintances latter.

Weekends

Lately weekends suck, lonely times of crushing depression and a nasty voice in my head telling me, “Stay in, you suck, no one wants to see you.  You’re a loser.”   I post a blog a day, watch whole seasons of television in a day, play online video games, surf the net, read, pace, walk, call friends-I like talking to people when I don’t have to look at them-anything to stop my madness.  I do not know how to fight this and I don’t trust much of what I hear I should do.

The Devil Hounds

The door of the double wide swings open to a subtle and growing brightness and the soldier steps into the day.

He stands on the steps made of four-by-six pieces of wood and says, “Come on Rodney.”

A black and white bull terrier follows him.  Bolting into the yard he jumps as he approaches an eight foot poll anchored in concrete.  Rather than the large ball children bat around at recess a tennis ball is tethered to the end of a rope attached to the top of the poll.  The dog expertly catches that ball and begins to spin.  He is a small dog but his head is massive in proportion to the rest of his body.  His jaw clenches and he twists and twists letting the rope pull him up as it tightens.  When its energy is full Rodney let’s it go and spins and spins as the rope unwinds.  The soldier does push-ups half a dozen paces away.  They’re both doing their physical training for the day.

An hour latter, when the sun has flushed the earth with light, the solider comes out of the double wide again, ready for work in drab military fatigues.  A sweet young woman with brunette hair stands in the doorway holding a baby.  The solider kisses them both.  The woman watches as the soldier kick starts his motor cycle and races off to train other soldiers on the base.  Other men would be late leaving at this hour but this soldier will risk getting a speeding ticket.

“We’ll need to get ready soon.”  The mother tells the baby, who coos and farts and giggles.  “That’s right we’re going to lunch today with daddy.”

She’s drying the baby off when something enters the house unseen.  The thing has been toying with the dog for sometime now.  Playing with his mostly loyal doggy sensibilities.  Flipping switches in his little brain, opening doors that shouldn’t be opened.  It enters the dog.

The mother and child are on the bed when the dog jumps up and begins nipping and barking at the boy.

“Back Rodney!”  The mother pushes the dog off the bed.

Rodney jumps up on the bed again.  “What’s wrong with you dog.”  The mother picks up her baby boy, he’s already wrapped in a large blanket.  She retreats to the other side of the bed, the towel dangling from his feet.  The dog nips at the blanket trying to get at the boy.  Inside the dog, whatever it is, runs around with a bull horn shouting; usurper, usurper, destroy the usurper, destroy, destroy, destroy the usurper, usurper, usurper, destroy the usurper, destroy, destroy, destroy the usurper.  It’s wearing a weather torn suit, and it’s laughing as if this sort of activity is the most fun it can have.

Through the thick towel the dogs teeth eventually purchase on a bit of flesh from the boy’s back.  Whatever is inside the dog goes ecstatic with the rush of  doggy endorphins and begins to bang its head against the side of the animals cranium.  It’s naked now and doing unmentionable things, the whole time it’s face etched in a monstrous grin, thin lips stretched  ear hole to ear hole over pointed teeth.  The baby sees this.  The mother does not.  The baby is the target.

The mother kicks at the nipping, rage filled animal, rushes into the bathroom, puts the now screaming baby into the tub.  Locking the door behind her she turns to face the snarling animal.  She punches it in the mouth.  Her fist twisted sideways down it’s throat she is able to push it out of the trailer.

The doctors at the hospital tend to the mother’s bloodied wrist and they put three stitches into the baby’s back.

That night the solider puts a plate of food at the edge of the woods behind the trailer, and as Rodney finishes his last meal the soldier puts a thirty-thirty round into the dog’s head.  The dog shell is empty and whatever was in it jumps into a raven perched on a power line above.  The raven screams.  The soldier buries the pet at the edge of the woods.

Thirty-five years latter the boy is a man living alone.  The scar on his back is faint if visible at all.  The dog has long since decayed and whatever spirit it had  was dispersed back into the great doggy spirit, the animal spirit that is only what’s good about the beasts.

But the devil hounds are still active made of something less organized than flesh, something able to invade sinew and neurological connnections.  The scar may be faint but the boy was marked, nothing to be done for that but to fight.  Hard to fight what can’t be seen.  Hard to fight what’s inside.  A difficult battle to wage without loosing yourself.  The man thinks to himself as he ponders how to finish the story.  How can he?  He doesn’t know at thirty-five if he’s half way or two thirds of the way, or maybe even 99% through the story of his life.

What he does know is that the devil hounds have been after him this whole time.  Mayhem, rage, fear, drunkenness, loneliness, rebelliousness, morbidity, and a host of others.  All nipping at his heals.  He feels better equipped now of course but he has never stopped engaging with them.  Never stopped imagining, never stopped the conversation  so loud in his head it must break out his lips-this looks odd to others of course, why is he talking to himself?  He doesn’ t care.  They’re not in this battle.

Demons or chemical imbalances in his brain he often wonders.  Why must we think the two are mutually exclusive?  Isn’t all language a metaphor?  And aren’t metaphors mystical things?

He tells his mother and father they must not fight his battles anymore.  He is not a baby.  Parents now have their own war to wage and he must wage his.

This activity starts to bore him.  This taping and pecking away at the granite in his head to try to come to some resolution.  Hit publish and be done with it.

Not yet.

Just a few more words.

Just a few more clear thoughts, to keep the monsters at bay.

Dad’s Commanders

When I was a little boy in Panama I played at commander.  I new my father was a company commander, over three to five platoons, up to 160 men, and for some reason I believed all of his soldiers where commanders as well.  I played at commander in the jungles around the various bases we lived on in Panama-we moved five or six times around the canal zone during the four years we lived there.  I grew up around soldiers and often watched my father leading them.  One of my fondest memories, from the time dad was stationed at Ft. Bragg North Carolina, is meeting two or three of his lieutenants on a pier on the outer banks at 1am to fish.  They joked about my nickname, Bud, and we had a blast pulling little blue fish from the Atlantic Ocean.

While I missed my dad, especially during the last few years we lived in North Carolina, I have always felt pride and wanted to honor his sacrifice for our country.  I have seen servant leadership in action.  I understand the competence it has produced.  Dad is 63 now and has been retired from the Army almost as long as he was in.  I still want to honor his service and have a special place in my heart for the men and women who willingly serve both here in the United States and on foreign soil.

My own time in the Army was brief and painful.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone but I’d rather learn from that experience and maybe now I can do something to make up for my failure.

I had a telephone conversation the other day with a man selling radio spots in support of troops with TBI or traumatic brain injuries.  With improvements in the technology of the gear our troops use many of our soldiers survive injuries that would have in previous wars resulted in their death.  They return home alive and yet with severe to mild TBI.  In fact this has become the signature injury of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The sad thing is our government is not ready to deal with these injuries.  They wait too long for the treatment they need and sometimes the organization even dismisses their symptoms as mental rather than physiological.  Here is a link to story run by NPR, especially poignant is the video of Sgt. Victor Medina,   http://www.npr.org/2010/06/09/127542820/with-traumatic-brain-injuries-soldiers-face-battle-for-care.

The trouble is with mild brain injuries there may be no visible scars and it is much easier for a bureaucracy to dismiss symptoms like Medina’s and Margaux Mange’s see (http://www.hbot.com/blog/hbot-staff/promising-treatment-soldiers-traumatic-brain-injuries-andor-post-traumatic-stress-di) as simple headaches, or psychological problems, or in severe instances as preexisting conditions than to provide the care they need.  I do not believe this is a problem of people not caring I believe it is a problem inherent in a bureaucracy where excessive multiplication of administrators creates red-tape that often does not exist in private enterprises.  I don’t know how we should handle it but it is good to hear that funds are released for soldiers like Sgt. Medina to receive care from groups like Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation- http://www.mentisneuro.com/index.html.

In my next few blogs I’m going to present some ideas at solving this problem as well as finding out some good places to donate money to help soldiers, men and women who were willing to lay down their lives, find that life again.  I am not sure dropping money on the VA or DOE or any other government organisation is the best option, especially when those groups unwittingly create incentives to lethargy of action.

Here’s one final link to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine for those who’d like a more technical explanation of what is going on, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa072972#t=abstract.  They estimate as many as 270,000 to 370,000 thousand troops are suffering from brain injuries.  I may not have made a good soldier myself but  maybe I can use my gifts to help them.

The Low People

As a part of avoiding the many demons that stand on street corners enticing me with the familiarity of being stoned I have been going to a recovery group.  The group is full of other low people like myself.  Well not entirely like myself  which is why I go.  It is a reminder of where I have been, makes me thankful for what I have, and gives me courage to face life as it comes rather than trying to strain my vision attempting to see a future that is blocked to me.

Before coming to Dallas in April, I had spent seven months in El Paso living in a surreal combination flop house and Christian program.  The program was for men who want a change in their life.  For many of these men the change was simple, a bed and three meals a day.  These were low men, most of us over thirty, bloody and bruised from repeatedly throwing ourselves against the dark wall of normal life.  I have been on the street but have not lived there as my friends from the home did.  In my early twenties, after leaving a rehab in New Jersey, I spent three or four days on the streets of Manhattan.  My insanity watered by the confusion of hearing one perspective on my problems presented as God’s answer, grew up with the frenetic pace of that city.  Yes even at 1am more people were up and about than at 10pm in most southern cities where the streets are rolled up early, don’t all polite respectable people hit the bed before midnight?

The home in El Paso, on Alameda Avenue, three miles from the Mexican border was John Steinbeck on Jesus.  It felt as if all the denizens of Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat had been transported through time and space  and out of imagination to live in one decaying old building.

The building itself was originally constructed circa 1950 as a clinic of some sort.  Offices in the front facing the street, a large central kitchen and dinning area, and a single long ward stretching perhaps a 100 feet to the north east towards the rail road tracks.  The original roof is still on that building, three other layers of roofing above it.  Whoever decided that was a good idea probably never had to sleep on a top bunk as dripping water insisted they stay awake.

Several other structures dotted the rest of the yard.  A red brick building leaning on its foundation perhaps fifteen feet south and east of the main building was stuffed with obsolete computers, the remains of a failed wood shop project, and the collected curiosities of the homes few long term residents.  Behind that was a dirt yard and a shack built on the dry earth we used as a thrift store to supplement the meager donations used to run the home.  Most of our customers were re-sellers at one of the half dozen or so flea markets within a twenty mile radius of the home.  Or else they waited in the long line to return to Juarez at night to sell what they’d purchased in dollars for pesos.  One such family had been coming to the home daily since it’s inception in May of 1976.  Odd to think this old building had been transformed into a ministry for the homeless just a few weeks before I was born.

But I wasn’t homeless.  I had come to the Home from the Ranch, a 150 acre youth home in Arkansas.  I lived in a FEMA trailer that never got delivered to victims of Katrina.  I taught creative writing, English, History, Social Studies, and Drama to the children of divorce and abuse, gross neglect.  My students were the hurting children from fairy tales.  Pinocchio, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel had all found their way to the Ozark mountains.  It was a great place.  The kids got to do therapy with horses and a PhD, but it had its foolish moments, not least of which was my insanity.  Breaking forth again…I could not stop using.  I cannot excuse myself anymore by saying it was only pot.  What happens when my dealer drys up?  I drink myself silly.  I couldn’t stay there, couldn’t claim to know Christ whilst transforming myself into a grotesque beast akin to those who put the Fairy Tale children there in the first place.  When I become hypocritical I feel hell at my heels.  I have come to believe it is those such as I was who are really damned.  And perhaps many others are under the great umbrella of grace without even knowing it.

So this is why I go to the group I do.  It’s called The Well Community, and is built around the clubhouse model of mental health see wiki article here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clubhouse_Model_of_Psychosocial_Rehabilitation and first begun, here; http://www.fountainhouse.org/.

The members of the community suffer from the full spectrum of mental illness and yet there is such great hope in this way of treating people.  There are a plethora of ways we  put blinders on to the humanity that surrounds us because it appears ugly and broken, and perhaps shows us something in our own hearts that is ugly and broken.  We can even extend a hand to help and still only see our acts as a condescension to beings we think are less human than we.  This is vanity of course and this is why I join with them, these low people.

I have a place to live.  I have a job, despite the foolishness of management, I do get some satisfaction from.  I have a truck to use, even if it isn’t mine.  I have plenty to eat.  I have all I need, and joining those who feel as powerless as I, has enabled me to breath in some small measure of peace.   At least it’s helped me stay sober and stay put.  Just a year ago the stress I face now would have had me packing up and leaving town on a Greyhound, babbling to myself as we hit the road.  Not today, today I’ll stick around.

SLEEP-brings some answers and even more questions

I went to bed around nine last night.  I woke up at midnight, I woke up again at a quarter to 3, and again at 3, and again at a quarter to 4, and when the clock read 4:05 I decided I might as well just get up for the morning.  Sleep amazes me.  It feels so close to death, maybe that’s why I wake up so much.  The mind defrags itself, the brain rebuilding itself, making links and connections, and I burst awake throughout the night ideas and thoughts fresh but I still don’t know what to do.

Late in the afternoon yesterday I dropped off a check and picked up a check.  Returning to the office I had hoped to just drop of the check and head home.  It was already a quarter to 5PM and it had been a long day-I was up at 4:30 or 5 yesterday.  That wasn’t going to happen, a customer was on the phone and I remembered that I needed to call another prospect anyway.  So I dealt with Mr. M, which took nearly an hour, and actually felt good, helping to confirm his financing and cleaning up a possible mess.  Then I called Mr. Q to see how his meeting with our tech had gone.  It turns out Mr. Q had rescheduled the meeting.  He’s a public defender and ended up with a case going to trial, which of course means jury selection and probably a steaming mass of paper work.  Mr. Q and I chatted for a bit and I encouraged him to start a blog.  The stories he must have would make a great series.

This has me thinking more and more about CRM as the core of a successful enterprise.  CRM or Customer Relationship Management is the way a company tracks the service it provides to it’s clientele.  I have noticed where I work we do not do a very good job at this although we may convince ourselves we do.  The problem as I see it is this.  How can we make sure everyone has a great customer service experience so we can maximize our ROI?  The right hand has to know what the left hand is doing.  The industrial age is over we live in the information age now and consumers have a much higher expectation regarding the service they receive.  It doesn’t matter if you sell widgets or, like the enterprise I work for, a service to homeowners.  The issue is enabling the sales team to provide clear up front communication and continue that communication throughout the process.

I am a bit overwhelmed by it all.  Perhaps this is because I have the heart of a poet, the soul of an artist.  Perhaps this is because ethics have become so important to me.  I have been an addict and I know how to manipulate people-my hypocrisy does not escape me.

It starts with compartmentalization.  I close off the part of my mind that knows what I’m doing, that knows I’m angling myself to get what I want.  I gather all of that up, put it in a box close and nail the lid shut, wrap chains around the box, put alarm bells on it, and shove it to the back of my mind.  This happens in an instant, and then I can proceed to say and do whatever is necessary to get the prospect-or mark-to give me what I want.

This is a big problem, especially in enterprise.  As a drug addict it’s usually only money I wanted, cash right now.  Once that transaction is complete I move on and never see the mark again.  In business this isn’t the case, I still have a product or service to deliver.  And if I lied the lie is going to come to out at some point.  That’s the problem with George Costanza’s philosophy-remember Jerry’s neurotic friend from the 90’s sitcom?  In one episode he tells Jerry; “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”  Emphasis expertly placed on you.  This is wrong of course a lie is a lie, I don’t have to be aware of what I’m doing for it to be a lie.  As I said It’s fairly easy to box all that up and convince myself that I believe something that I know deep in my heart isn’t true.  And truth cannot be held back by lies, sorry George.  The truth is like an glacier, lies are a papier-mâché walls we build to hold it back.  The glacier moves slowly and we might feel good for a moment, but eventually the glacier will bury our flimsy lies.  And we wonder at the ills we find in our society, especially when George’s little joke is the modus operandi of so many of the pious faithful in our age.

So that’s one obstacle I see enterprise faces in this information age.  Lies drip off our tongues too easily.  Both from buyer and seller.  Of course in Western culture the buyer has the bigger responsibility vis-a-vis caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware.  This is the trouble with good faith, bad faith for again one can easily convince oneself that I was acting in good faith and who can say otherwise?  Only God has access to a man’s inner motivations.  Of course no CRM system can deal with that problem.  This is one reason I suggest scrapping our public education system, especially the notion that character development has no place in the class room.  Of course it does.  Education is an ethical issue.  It makes no sense to create a bunch of really smart scammers.

The next obstacle is choosing the right systems for an enterprise.  Systems that provide checks and balances against the aforementioned human tendency to turn down the volume on truth.  There are so many options I’ve become somewhat dizzy with considering which is the best for our company.  Monday we let one solution walk out the door-the company is only allowing so many licenses in each market-and it’s such a great program that I’m sure the guy will sell the remaining licenses by the end of the week.  Not that we needed to just buy it but the people I work for aren’t even sold on the concept yet, as if they think all this internet and IT stuff are just fads rather than a revolution akin to the invention of paper, or the printing press.  Which at this point has me wanting to through up my hands in exasperation.  It would truly suck to get us to buy into a system and have people in the organization subconsciously sabotage it.  And it wouldn’t take much.  If the guy who still clings foolishly to his paper based day-timer forgets to copy over that he has a doctor’s appointment or jury duty into the global calender that could mean burning a lead, upsetting a vendor, or alienating an employee.

Funny how so much came out of pondering my sleep habits.  Anyway I would gladly take any suggestions as to what direction our company should take.  A simple step could be migrating our email over to gmail although I’m not really sure it’s even worth it.  Perhaps, we should just let die what needs to die.

 

 

Rage

I don’t want to hurt anyone so I censor myself.  I don’t want to be accused of slander, or malicious gossip.  I don’t want to end up worse off than I was when I got back to Dallas.

Again I took the quick route, the easy way.  I knew what I was getting into, knew it from when I was a younger man.  Doesn’t matter I was troubled even then.  Perhaps back then I was just ignorant.  I can’t claim that anymore.  I’m fully aware of my hypocrisy and it smells.  It stinks to high heaven and yet more and more I have peace washing over me.  Not because of my circumstances but because I sense God enabling me, maturing me, so as to deal with them, to face them with courage rather than rage.

Rage?  Mt. Vesuvius style anger, boiling, always boiling.  And at just the right moment add a pinch more bitterness, add a pinch more suffering and boom, an explosion beyond imagining.  I’ll go off fat man or a little boy.  And this is wrong.  Watching myself in my minds eye, watching my fist sinking into jaw, cheek, lip, eye, and nose, over and over again imagining what it would look like to make blood flow.  Not going to really happen so I just stew and stew.  Better I don’t drink, only makes it worse, like pouring brine on a sore.

Okay I wish I  could just spell it all out but there is too much of risk of prying eyes.  I have a dilemma and I’m unsure what my next step should be.  Really the only reason I’m writing now is because writing is cathartic for me.  It’s as if I can just sit here and let my mind go and my fingers will take over.  No, no zen yet, I’d probably have to sit here for another hour for that.  Not going to happen, I have to pee, and it’s getting close to my bedtime.  I like waking up at a quarter to four the solution to a problem on my tongue.  Look in the mirror to read it.  No one else here.

Anyway, I’m not super proud of this post and I’d actually like to ask someone their opinion.  So ask me and I’ll PM you the specifics.  Or wait, maybe tomorrow I’ll write about where I came from and why I’m back in Dallas.  This’ll be the third time I left and came back to Dallas.  Maybe one day it’ll just be a visit in stead of for good or a year or two.

Goodnight…