Skip to content

Because Sometimes Endings (34 of 90)

I’ve never been very good with goodbyes.

Actually, it’s endings I disliked. The sense of loss, the incomplete-ness of it. A closed door that is never quite shut but inevitably locked. Always knowing there are things – some unknow-able things – that are happening on the other side.

For years, I fought against endings. And in some cases, this is good. There are some things we most certainly must fight to retain and maintain.

These things are few and far between, though, and they come with no flashing sign: “Fight For This Here!”

Instead, we’re left to constantly struggle between fighting and letting go.

My mind has been tuned, though my alcoholism, to cling desperately to the things around me. To keep, control and hold tight anything that resembles a light. A life preserver in the chaos.

Then a funny thing happened…

***

Almost one year ago, I had a conversation with someone who at one time had been more than a little important in my life. A relationship that was continually almost one, but never quite one.

I couldn’t tell you why. We just never did. And so it wasn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 03 March 2010 † Brad § Life ‡ Comments °

A Very Good Tired (33 of 90)

There’s not much in my tank tonight, which means precious few words are dancing in my head. Then again, I never put a word length on the 90 in 90 challenge. Still, it feels wrong to simply post a few random thoughts. Disingenuous because the goal of the project isn’t simply publishing every day. It’s publishing something of merit.

Yet I find myself completely tapped out. Tired. Spent.

My body reaches for the reserves to power through and there isn’t anything there. Like a marathoner who reached the Wall, my body is eating itself.

Metaphorically speaking.

***

My classes are stories. They are seventeen week journeys through a topic, strolling through the nooks and crannies of the information, building on conversations, lectures and presentations. I demand much from my students, an attention to detail and a level of participation that they are not accustomed to.

That’s what I have been told by them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 02 March 2010 † Brad § Life § Muncie § Teaching ‡ Comments °

Perspective

I’m reminded daily that my perception of the world is oftentimes not the reality of the world. I can’t make people want to be in my life. I can’t make events happen. When I start to get depressed about this, it’s good to remember it’s all about perspective.

Posted 02 March 2010 † Brad § Life ‡ Comments °

I’ll Honor the F—ING Embargo

Big ups to my friends at Boing Boing (Xeni, David, Cory and Mark) for this:

Posted 01 March 2010 † Brad § Media § Science + Tech § Video ‡ Comments °

Nesting (32 of 90)

By all accounts, this weekend was a social disaster.

The kind of weekend that would make me want to scamper back to school, back amongst the living, back to see and touch humanity to make sure that I hadn’t committed any felonious act that was about to end my career.

It’s funny to type that now, but for years I awoke each day Tabula Rasa, wondering if today was the day the demons would finally catch up to me.

Because of that, there’s only ever been one place I felt at home: Austin. Every place else I’ve ever lived was temporary, a stepping stone on my way to the next place. The next start-over. The next re-set.

Until now.

I won’t say Muncie is my home. That will always be Austin. But I feel at home here. And that’s something.

***

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 01 March 2010 † Brad § Life § Muncie ‡ Comments °

On Drinking: 7 Months Sober, Social Media + the Power of You

ED NOTE: This was written on Dec. 11, 2008. I was sober for 7 months. I wrote this for many reasons. Mostly, I wrote it because I needed to talk to the innumerable people who saved my life. Without knowing it. An edited version of this essay will appear in the latest edition of Looking Out/Looking In (13th edition), a university Communication textbook.

But it’s important that there is one part of this essay that isn’t true. It was an honest omission, one I wasn’t ready to write about until July 27, 2009. I’m re-posting this for two reasons: This was first published on Facebook, which isn’t archived, and I was telling a friend this story tonight.

When I first got sober in May of this year, I decided – for many reasons – that I didn’t want to go through my recovery in a public way. That was a change for me as I’ve lived a large portion of my life digitally.

My parents bought me my first computer in 1984 and within weeks I was tooling around on Bulletin Board Systems and other public networks. I left comments. I made friends. Eventually I graduated to Quantum Link, CompuServe and America Online.

The reality is that if you dig enough, you’ll find little bits and pieces of my life scattered across the Net.

For many people, this transparency is unnerving. For me, it’s always been a source of comfort in the storm that has been my life.

As my life unraveled in so many ways throughout my 20 years of drinking and drugs, I’ve always had two things: a loyal group of friends + family who have stood by me when they by all rights should have cut me loose AND my cyber-friends who, for reasons I can’t explain, have stayed up late and saved me more times than I can count.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 01 March 2010 † Brad § Life ‡ Comments °

Search (31 of 90)

It’s 1230 am. Sunday.

The night is slowly coming to a close, although I don’t want it to. This is the kind of night that, would all things be equal, would have me sitting at a bar, slamming Jack and Coke, smoking Camel Lights, telling stories way too loudly, and talking with the wrong kind of woman.

All things are not equal, though.

Instead, I am in my apartment. I finally turned Hank Moody off my television. I’ve now spent the last 3o minutes pacing the house, ready to go out but sure that leaving is a very bad idea. I’d surely make a wrong turn somewhere and end up where I can’t be.

I desperately miss those days. Particularly late in the evening. When I am home, writing. Or trying to write. Staring at the screen remembering the days I wrote. Often.

I must – daily – remind myself that life is better today than it was back then. That what I remember is only a fictionalized version of the non-fiction. I’ve stripped away the remnants of the lost mornings that followed the lost evenings. The sinking horrors of memory flash that blinked, strobe-like, throughout my life. Recalling just the emotion. The horror. The emptiness.

I must remind myself because this way of thinking about that is not native. And won’t ever be.

***

It’s 3 am. Sunday.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 28 February 2010 † Brad § Life ‡ Comments °

“I hear the bells / So fascinating and / I’ll slug it out / I’m sick of waiting” (30 of 90)

I’m sitting in my Muncie apartment, staring out the window into the snowy neighborhood wondering why I’m so happy.

There’s no really good reason for me to be this upbeat. Or a better way to put it: nothing particularly positive has happened in the last few days that would lead one to suspect that I would be in a good mood.

The past week was, in fact, exactly the kind of week that would normally send me into a hibernating funk, locked off from the world, silently sad and miserable.

I haven’t quite been able to make the world work the way I wanted. Everything is a little off. People are doing (great gods) what they want to. Or maybe what they need to. Either way, I’ve not been able to bend things the way I want them.

It’s sounds foolish, but if you’ve ever had run-in with an addict, you’ll recognize the mentality. Maybe it manifests for other reasons too. I suspect it does. I can only speak for me and my addiction.

For so long, if I couldn’t make the world the way I wanted it, it wasn’t worth being in the world.

***

The last time I spoke with The One I Thought Was the One was in 2001. She said horrible things to me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 27 February 2010 † Brad § Life § Muncie ‡ Comments °

“I Hear the Bells”, Mike Doughty

This is the best description of my weekend. Despite the canceled trip to Cleveland (to be made up ASAP), my heart is light. For reasons that are unknown.

That’s okay, though. I’m going with it. Here’s what it sounds like inside my insides:

Posted 27 February 2010 † Brad § Life § Media § Muncie § Video ‡ Comments °

The Year of Friends: Cleveland Fail (29 of 90)

I’m not supposed to be writing this. It’s 10 pm on Friday night and I’m sitting in Muncie, watching The I.T. Crowd, sending intermittent and flirtatious texts to a girl, and writing.

But I’m supposed to be in Cleveland. In a big, Greek household. With my friend, her husband, their kids and her family.

Until the snow came.

The snow that mucked up our visit. One we planned months ago. Because that’s what you have to do when you get older. You plan trips months in advance.

They will move into a new house that’s being built sometime in the late Spring. Now, they are living with her parents. Which makes scheduling a bit tough.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch on my life. The next weekend I have free – or roughly free – is mid-April. Even then, I will have to find a WiFi hotzone on the Friday I drive to Cleveland so that I can deliver a lecture at Berkeley by way of UStream or Skype.

These are the events of our lives, the pull that has somehow kept us from seeing each other since 1994. Sixteen years since I’ve seen one of my best friends from college.

We are grown up now. She with a family; me slowly re-assembling my life in sobriety. Our lives are happily complicated. But it wasn’t always so.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 26 February 2010 † Brad § Life § The Year of Friends ‡ Comments °