Baby I'm Just Jogging In the Dark

Yesterday my alarm went off promptly at 6:00 AM just like it does every weekday morning. I hit the snooze just like I do every weekday morning. What made yesterday different was that I actually fell back to sleep until the alarm went off again. Don't get the wrong idea. When it comes to the snooze button I'm no saint. Had it not been for my wife's threat of dire consequences if I hit that snooze one...more...time, I probably could have gotten the record for most consecutive hits. Hated getting up to go to a job I loathed.

Despite the roller coaster of crises we had this summer the job I have now isn't so bad. The repercussions from our little incident in June are still echoing and will be for the foreseeable future thus making work a lot less fun but when you've been to the fiery pits of hell working in a boiler room doesn't seem so bad. With this job it's been relatively easy to get up with the alarm (the first time) and spare my wife the torture of the recurring beep. That's why it was so surprising for me to hear the alarm the second time.

What surprised (and confused) me even more and probably added to my disorientation was that I not only fell back to sleep but I fell back to sleep deeply enough to have vivid dreams. For all of nine minutes I had Technicolor and CinemaScope going on. Also unusual for me because I don't generally remember my dreams.

I was alone outside in the driveway of house in a residential neighborhood. The kind with large lots where the houses are pretty far apart and there's no sidewalk. There were a lot of trees, mostly evergreens lining the street and spread sporadically on the lots through the neighborhood. It was at night and it was pitch black (then how'd you see the trees? shut up it's my dream) and cold. Like see-your-breath cold. I was dressed much like I was on Saturday when I put up Christmas lights in old jeans, a camo Army field jacket, heavy work boots, and gloves. With me so far? Good. So, there I am standing in the dark, in the cold in a coat and steel-toed boots...and I run out into the road...and start jogging.

Anybody that knows me can tell you that this was no longer a dream. It was a nightmare. For a very long time I have lived by the rule that there are only two situations which will cause me to run. 1. There is something behind me worth getting away from. 2. There is something in front of me worth catching. One or the other is a requirement.

I started friggin' jogging.

This is where the psychoanalytical look into my subconscious comes in. The neighborhood and the road seemed familiar to me but because it was so dark I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. It was hilly but I kept along at a steady pace. Then dogs (BIG. dogs.) start barking on either side of the road. All through the neighborhood - it sounded like the frickin' twilight bark. I could hear them barking from behind the trees but never saw them and the farther I ran the louder and closer to the road they seemed to get. Then I started hearing what sounded like a car coming up behind me but every time I turned to look there were no headlights and I never saw a car.

Then the alarm went off again.

So, to recap. I'm running in the dark and don't know and can't see where I'm going. I'm dressed inappropriately and not prepared for what I'm doing. There's some unseen potentially dangerous thing catching up to me. And I'm being assailed on all sides by barking dogs. Hmm. Wonder if I should get out the dream dictionary for this one.

I did notice one good thing. I never got winded during the entire dream. Does that mean my subconscious is in good shape?

Work Stress Can Kill You...But Try Not To Worry

A twelve year long British study involving 10,000 subject has concluded that work-related stress can kill. I'm not talking about the the quiet guy that always seemed so nice and talked to his plants snapping and going postal kind of lethal work stress. Sure we've all heard for a long time that stress is unhealthy, that's a no brainer. The significance of this study is that it is one of the first to actually link the stress to real biological changes to the body.

One of the findings that I thought particularly interesting was that "stressed workers had...higher-than-normal levels of cortisol, a "stress" hormone that provides a burst of energy for a fight-or-flight response." Gee, there's that fight or flight response again. I know I've said this before but it bears repeating. Modern human lifestyles are fighting our evolutionary background. We're still physically hardwired for primitive reactions that served us well in helping to keep the species alive. Now those same primitive reactions in a sense, are killing us. Back in the day if a guy was in danger and the fight or flight response was primed by his endocrine system which filled his body with "stress" hormones - he actually got to fight or flee. Now the saber-toothed tiger is your asshole of a boss. The hostile caveman from the neighboring clan is the schmuck from Acquisitions that's citing regulations to deny your request to buy STRESS BALLS to use to promote your employee assistance counseling program (yeah, that one's real, do I sound bitter?). We walk around constantly primed to fight or flee but we never get the chance to do it. Hormones are the chemicals that control the system. If you mess with the chemicals, you mess with the system.

On top of that good news, the Wall Street Journal ran an article the other day reporting that "Researchers at Yale have identified a gene mutation for rumination..." No, that's not a disorder that makes people think they're cows. It's "the kind of chronic worry in which people obsess over negative thoughts." The gene is "a variation of a gene known as BDNF that's active in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in thinking and memory." BDNF? Hmmm. Maybe we can use that as a mantra to relax when we start to worry about something. BDNF...BDNF...Big Deal Numb Fuck...

Actually, the thing that caught me in this article was that "the discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that depression involves an inability to control negative thoughts, not just excess emotion." I can speak to this from experience. Given the content of this article I would guess off the top of my head that I have this gene. I've been taking antidepressants for a few years. Now I'm a pretty happy guy. Back then, not so much. Now I have a lot to be happy about. Back then, I still had a lot to be happy about. The difference? Serious problems at work threw me into a serious, full-blown funk. I began wrestling with negative thought patterns. No, wrestling sounds too collegial - something you could get a gold medal for. This was like one of the battle scenes in Braveheart or Lord of the Rings. I still lapse into this way of thinking to a much lesser extent and probably always will but now it's more like a slap fight and I can put those thoughts in time out pretty quickly. Back then, they were kicking my ass. Once it starts you get locked inside your own head in a vicious cycle of negativity, playing out scenarios that haven't happened, and won't happen, then get stressed out and pissed off about them. You actually get angry about something that hasn't happened or more often primed to be angry then direct it at little things that have nothing to do with it. I say cycle but actually, it's a spiral, and it heads down. They say that thoughts become things. Well, if you swirl around the drain long enough and you're always negative, and you act like an ass most of the time, the interesting thing is that those scenarios that play out in your head become self-fulfilling prophesies. So yeah, I think these scientists are right on the money with this one.

The key is, as with many problems, realizing what's going on and finding a way to break the cycle. You gotta find your happy thought...and maybe find a Woolly Mammoth to hunt.

Water, Flame, Wine, Music...Peace

For the third or fourth weekend in a row I've been in the garage (which I suppose is better that being in the doghouse) constructing gruesome artifacts. If you read my Halloween posts then you know that I spent the weeks leading up to the big event building zombies, electric chairs, cemeteries, autopsy bodies and other assorted (and sordid) props and decorations. You would think it would be time for a breather. Not hardly.

My middle daughter is playing Van Helsing (hey, shortage of guys, her good fortune) in her high school production of Dracula next weekend. I told the theater teacher months ago that I would help out. With Halloween over and production week starting, the time has come to pay up. Soooo. After clearing the lawn and figuring out where to put all the decorations (I pity anybody that decides to go in the attic above my garage, it looks like the scene in Aliens where the creatures are coming through the ceiling space...only it's zombies), then yet another trip to Home Depot, I spent the weekend building a coffin. Not just a rectangular box, but one of those really cool old fashioned shaped numbers (I plan to keep it and add it to the decoration lineup). Then I had to figure out how to rig up an effect where half of a bloody stake can stick out of Dracula's chest at the end of the play when he's killed. And at the last minute the director told me she'd really like to have a bat fly from the stage up into the lighting catwalk. It's Sunday night, the stake is done, the coffin is not as far along as I'd hoped, and I can tell you where I'd like to make a bat fly for the director. I'll get it finished. But I was stressin' today.

In my commuting blog a couple of weeks ago I explained how much I value my weekends and the limited time I have with my family. I absolutely love Halloween but as I said, this was my third or fourth weekend either in the garage, Home Depot, or the front yard. It's starting to feel like a job. On top of that my wife wasn't here this weekend. She had a family obligation in Florida and yes, I'm not ashamed to say that I miss her. Badly. The high point of the weekend was without question spending time with my two daughters, that and the kick-ass broccoli-potato-ham-cheddar soup that I made for dinner.

Like I said, I was stressin'. So, as I stood there watching the girls clean up after dinner, and I glanced into the garage at the partially finished coffin and the piles of scrap wood and sawdust, I did what any red-blooded American man would do. I poured myself my third glass of Cab Sav, ascended the stairs, lit a few candles, turned on some Native American flute music, and took a long, hot, bubbly, bath. I sat there listening to the haunting sounds, stared at the candle flame, emptied my mind, and soaked until I pruned. After enjoying a totally empty mind for a while I allowed myself to drift to a Caribbean beach which is where I would desperately love to be for real...for a week, a month...a year. Then I got out, dried off, threw on some sweats and did a Tai Chi routine. Now I feel like a limp dishrag, and I couldn't care less what's happening in the garage. I don't care whether or not Dracula has a place to sleep for the night or whether or not a bat rises out of the mist, whistles the finale from Les Miz and flies up the teacher's ass. I'll think about that tomorrow. After all...tomorrow is another day.

Baths. Christ, what a simple pleasure.