I love the DMV.

Okay, "love" is a bit of an exaggeration; maybe "blossoming relationship of non-hate" would be more accurate. On the 15th, Melba and I went to the Culver City office of the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Recalling the hell I've experienced in DMVs past, I took the day off to do battle with the usual runaway bureaucracy and the sloth-like dregs of civil service.

I could not have been more wrong. The DMV was a breeze.

Seriously. I'm not kidding. And it wasn't just a simple stop, either. Melba took (and passed) the written driver's test, got her picture taken and got her California license. I got a one-trip permit to move a car for a friend, renewed my ID, and even got some info about my driver's license. And we were out of there in 45 minutes.Not only were the folks working at the DMV speedy, they were friendly, too. Pleasant, efficient people who seemed genuinely happy to help. Amazing. Not only was that office speedy and efficient, Melba received her fresh new driver's license in the mail a snappy 5 days later, a week earlier than quoted. What service!

Kudos to you, Culver City DMV.

I am not my job.

My resume has been online and relatively up-to-date on all the popular career sites for a few years now. I get calls on it from time to time, and something a recruiter said to me on a recent call reminded me of an article I read about the dangers of blogging about work, and how it can have a negative impact on one's job search. I think about that article often (I'd link to it, but I can't find it now), and I've even considered pulling this blog down for fear of someone using my thoughts against me. The scenario I see in my mind is an evil HR flunky Googling me and poking around here, then using it as an excuse to toss my resume in the circular file. Cue hapless tuba riff. But then, I always return to one thought:

If a company doesn't hire me because of what I write here, then that's not a company I want to work for.

Sure, it's easy for me to say that now, in a time when I'm not desperate for a job. But I'm a strong believer in things happening for a reason, and I would much rather stay at my happy-but-underpaid job than to shutter this blog. This little collection of posts has become a small yet significant piece of who I am, and I won't give it up that easily. Even if it means losing out on a fatter paycheck. I've got principles, yo!

Therapy, sessions 7 & 8

I'm combining my posts from the last two sessions, since it seems like we've been covering the same topics over and over again. A topic we only touched upon briefly, but I think is very important, is my way of dealing with anger. Specifically, I keep anger stashed away for fear of expressing it. Most people who know me well seem to see me as a pretty even-keel guy, and I've got a pretty long fuse. But things do bother me, and I've never really figured out how to express anger in healthy ways; I just stash it away and ignore it. Hell, I've never been in a fight or hit anyone in anger in my life, despite wanting to on more than a few occasions.

I'm sure most of my reluctance to express anger stems from my fear of becoming my father. Seeing how he let anger ruin his life and hurt his family left an indelible mark on my psyche. I've gone to the opposite extreme; never expressing anger in any way, never letting anyone get close to me.

I plan to bring this up in the next session, see if I can learn something.

Defeated by marketing.

Since I'm cheap, I like to buy my personal hygiene products from Costco. I get the fat box of 1500 Q-Tips, the three mega-tube pack of Crest toothpaste, and the 2 liter bottle of Kirkland shampoo. I love it.

Recently, I was distressed to find that my favorite three pack of deodorant came with an unwanted guest: a new Gillette! Fizzion!! Mach42!!! razor. Not good. I despise the way razors are marketed. I can just see the bastards in a meeting somewhere: "Johnson, here's how we do it. We'll give the razor away, then bend the dumb lemmings over for the blade refills! Genius!" Unfortunately, the strategy works so well that the assholes who market inkjet printers are following that model to the T. But I digress.

Every year or so, right around Super Bowl time, the marketing assholes add another goddamn blade to the razor and sell it like it's god's gift to hair removal. "EIGHT BLADES!" "The first blade lifts, the second blade reaches into your follicle and gently strokes your manly ego, the third blade... blah, blah, blah." Bullshit. Total bullshit.
But the fucker works.

Yeah, I know. I know. Trust me; I did NOT want it to work. I wanted to hate the damn thing and its five blades, and gleefully throw its shiny, racing-striped, ergonomically-gripped ass in the trash, but goddamn if it doesn't work REALLY well. Crap.

Now I get to buy refills for the damn thing.

Therapy, session 6

This session was another one where my head just spun afterward. I was very glad to have my notebook, even though my notes are a frantic, scribbly mess.

We talked a lot about how I'm alone in my life, how I'm most comfortable when I'm alone, mainly because that's how I've always managed to keep myself safe. I've lived most of my life feeling that if I never let anyone in, they'll never be able to hurt me. I fear the unknown; the possibility that I could be hurt by someone I trust makes solitude mighty appealing in comparison.

This is a recurring topic in my therapy so far; I feel like we go over this stuff almost every session. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that my dad really put the fucking zap on my brain back in the day. He never hit me or physically hurt me, but the toxic words he pounded into my impressionable little head sure did the job on me. When I think of the possibility of someday having children of my own, I see myself, hear myself saying those same things that he said to me. Those same things his dad said to him.

When I was about 13, I had this friend named Mike who was a year or two younger than me. Mike was a good kid, a little ditzy, but fun to hang out with. One day he was over at my house and needed to call home to let his mom know where he was. At the time, we had an old-fashioned rotary dial telephone (my dad didn't believe in touch-tone) and Mike had never seen one. He didn't know how to dial it. For no reason at all, I grabbed the phone out of his hand and in just about the meanest tone, I said "You're a stupid idiot!". The moment I said it, it echoed in my own ear as if my dad had been there saying it to me. The realization hit me like a brick, and my mouth snapped shut so hard it hurt my teeth. I like to think that I apologized to poor Mike, but I don't even remember what happened after that. I hope I apologized.

I can't ever let myself do that to another person again. Ever.

Would I be as bad as my dad if I were to have kids? Hell no. But he wasn't as bad as his dad - my grandfather was an alcoholic, a master of verbal abuse and used to beat my dad with a belt. I'm sure my dad used to tell himself he'd be a better dad than his dad was. I'd just as soon break the cycle completely and never have children than perpetuate that family tradition in any way.

Not only am I afraid to let others in for fear they may hurt me, I'm also afraid of repeating the past. My solitude keeps me safe, and it keeps me from hurting anyone else. I've got to somehow get beyond that and learn to trust. Trust myself, trust others.

Therapy, session 5

Session 5 was a good one. We spent a lot of time talking about my intense need to project an image of serenity and competence and happiness to the world, when the reality is that I'm often not serene, competent, nor happy. I hate to admit it, but this is a habit I learned from my father. As a kid, I remember how he was often concerned about putting on the perfect game face for his friends, his co-workers, and the neighbors, when the reality was we were a terribly unhappy family.

Over my lifetime, I've wasted a nuclear reactor's worth of energy stressing out about how I appear to everyone in my life, convincing everyone that I'm okay.

I've wasted every single one of my relationships because I never felt like I could trust anyone to know that I was not okay, and that I did indeed have flaws.

Some of the most intense embarrassment I've ever felt has been when I had to admit to a girlfriend that I needed help, needed bailing out of a tough spot. Admitting that I'm a shitty money manager, that I have ongoing problems with the DMV, that I'm not as smart as I like to think I am, that I have no clue what I want to do when I grow up.

I'm terribly selfish and over-protective of my thoughts and my fears. I don't trust anyone enough to let them know what is really going on in my odd little head. I need to change that.

Therapy, session 4

My fourth session was a total fucking blur. Part of the reason why I haven't been keeping up on the therapy posts is that I really have no clue what we talked about in session #4. I left her office thinking the session only lasted about 10 minutes, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember what we talked about by the time I got to the building's stairway.

I know we talked about a bunch of topics, but I feel like none were of any real substance, and nothing got enough focus to stick in my short-attention-span brain.

The upside of this is that I've since started bringing a notebook with me. After each session, I sit on a park bench outside her office and write down as much about the session as I can remember. The process feels just like the way I used to try and take notes in the morning after a dream; I sit there furiously scribbling notes as fast as I can write before the synapses evaporate.

Overheard in Santa Monica

Okay, yes, I know I've been missing from here for far too long to just pop in and post something so trivial as an Overheard without an explanation of what the hell I've been doing, besides posting, for the last month.

But I'm not gonna. Nyah!

As I was walking back to work from my therapist's office yesterday afternoon (more about that in the next few posts), I passed by a small, unmarked storefront on Broadway and heard:

"Hey, I really appreciate your help. I have a fluffer coming in at about 3 o'clock - she'll take care of you."

Is the Valley so full of porn that it overflowed into Santa Monica?

Also, Blogger thinks I spelled "fluffer" wrong. Ah, Blogger. So innocent and naive.