"When we hold back out of laziness, that is when we tie ourselves into knots of boredom." - Walter Annenberg

I once told my mother that I have enough intelligence to be successful, but absolutely no ambition. During this process, I have thought many times about that statement. Though it is true to some degree, it is not completely accurate. A lack of ambition could be altruistic if it means that hard work, intelligence, and diligence is put to work for the betterment of others in self sacrifice.  I find that not to be the case for me. To put it into its simplest terms, I am just lazy.

Merrium Webster's first definition, part A states that ambition is "an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power". This contradicts my statement to my mother because I have "an ardent desire for rank, fame,or power." But when you couple ambition with laziness that is where you find me standing, or probably laying down would be a better descriptor. I honestly didn't know such a combination was possible.  When you put them side by side, they seem to be diametrically opposed to each other. I can honestly tell you that they are not mutually exclusive to each other.

My ambition for success has given me a chest-full of good ideas. Idea's that I could accomplish given the physical resources, proper planning, and time. But all of my ideas are but meteorites of my mind. They race in at great speed, burn white hot as they enter the atmosphere of my conscious mind, then are reduced to ash before ever coming to fruition. 

I am an intelligent person. Not a genius, but no slouch either. I have the ability to be able to retain information by hearing it and be able to have a pretty good recall rate. I aced all of my tests in high school just by sitting in the classroom and reading the accompanying material. I did no homework and still graduated right in the middle of my class. A good friend of mine told me that I have always looked for the easy road to success. Very true words, indeed.

Now what I am faced with is the mind that wants success and the heart of a lazy man. And my mind is rebelling to see what I have accomplished in life when I am capable of so much more. It is time to take control of my laziness and put my mind at rest.

"I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent." -Giacomo Casanova

The title of today's post is a great place to begin. To begin to understand my disorder, I need to begin to understand myself. For all that I have done, good or ill, I have done so by choice. I am not going to try to say that some evil force has pushed me to do the wrongs that I have done. I am not delusional.  My motivation has always been clear. I have always been about me.

I have always looked out for number one and obtaining what I have believed are my wants and needs, the rest of the world be damned. To acknowledge that about myself is to understand that I hold my desires above the needs of all others in my life. It is to this end that I have committed many wrongs to those who have trusted me the most. I have used my position of trust to get away with some awful things many times in my life. The craving to satisfy my desires has at least in part created the beast with which I now battle. And that fight is not likely to end soon. Just because I have identified what I know to be my greatest failing, that I am selfish, does not mean that the lunatic will now fall silent.

There are many aspects to my personality, this just being one. When you combine this weakness with another dominant personality trait, things can get even more troubling. More on that tomorrow.

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” ― Mark Twain

Per my last post, I said I would give greater detail about the "bad" man that I am. I use the quotation marks to signify that I understand that I am not a "bad" person. And I believe this most of the time. There are times however that I am consumed by the idea that I am a bad person and beyond any hope of redemption. My soul cries out for absolution that I am convinced I do not deserve. It is this that I wish to focus upon.

I will start with some more history. I am an older brother to Jim, three years my junior. I was not a good friend to him while we were growing up. Putting aside the usual sibling rivalries, I was very mean to him and to a couple of my cousins. Their crime? Being younger, easy targets. They would be feel the brunt of my anger and hurt at the outside world. I could not fight back at those who would pick on me, so I gave to my family the punishment that I felt others needed. 

If these events stopped as I grew older, I could almost (almost being the damning word here) believe that I acted no different than any other child in my circumstances. This is not the case, however. Going into my teens, I made the situation worse by being a total tool to my brother. I constantly treated him as if his very presence were an inconvenience to me. The last few years I was at home, Jim began acting out in his frustration, causing great strife between he and our mother. When I moved out it was as if a great weight had been removed from his shoulders, and he returned to his normal self. The strangest thing about that situation was that it took me several years to realize that I was the catalyst for his behavior problems. Once the catalyst was removed, so was the danger of explosion, metaphorically speaking.

Even in my adulthood, this attitude toward him did not change. There was one event that I recall that my mother called me during the late evening or wee hours of the morning, I don't recall which. My brother needed someone to take him to the hospital. I refused because "I was tired and had to work the next day". Pretty pathetic, right? This was the story of my life back then in a nutshell. It was all about me. It was about what I wanted or didn't want. It was about how I didn't want to be inconvenienced. Or if I did do something, what was I going to get out of it. 

As I've grown older, I have changed. I have experienced a spiritual awakening that has opened my eyes. I have discovered the real joy of giving of self. I have found that sacrifice is its own reward. There does not need to be a pay day, because the act of giving to someone has been uplifting to the one who received the gift. The reward is the knowledge I have made a difference, even if its just a small difference. My joy of faith lies within this passage:

Matthew 25:40 (NIV) “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

But somewhere along the way in this journey, there was a split in the road. I don't know where it happened, or when. I just know that my mind divided into two halves. On one half, you have the man that I have become. The man that I want to believe is the real me. The other half seems to be a raving lunatic that is compelled to punish me for the sins of my past while at the same time, not allowing for any hope of redemption. Most days I am the wiser, kinder person. But more and more, the lunatic has had greater sway. And that, ladies and gentleman, is what is scaring me. I feel like I am losing this fight.

That being said, I am now seeking help for my disorder. I am very early in the process so all of these feelings are fresh, raw, and all too real to me. I am saddened by the fact that it took me so long to reach this point and at the expense of those who love me. I only hope that one day I can rebuild the trust that I blatantly destroyed. And I pray that I can put my demons to rest...

Let me be frank with you...

... In my life I have been very blessed. My life has been relatively easy, even when I thought it was hard. My first marriage ended after only seven years under less than pleasant circumstances. When I reflect back on that time I view it more as a lesson in life than an abject failure. I took away lessons on good behavior and bad, as well as actually gaining a sense of self that I did not have going in to the marriage. I learned that I could express my feelings and do it in a positive manner. I learned that it was okay to speak up if I was under fire and that it was okay to stand up for myself. These were skills I did not have going into the marriage and they were learned via the hard way. I truly believe that I grew into being an adult in mind well after becoming an adult in body and it was the experiences of my first marriage that I gathered these skills. Do I regret my first marriage, no. Do I wish it had turned out differently, no. If it had turned out differently, I would not be where I am today.

Now, based upon my previous blog, today is not a good time in my life. Doesn't quite jive, does it? It does if you could see how my brain works. It's not that the failure of my marriage was not a bad experience, it's that I am able to see past the fog of time and see that all in all, I grew up and came away a better person for the experience. At the time it was happening, I was feeling the lowest one could ever feel. The passage of time has allowed me see past the hurt feelings and know that I am a better person for having had the experience.

What I am experiencing now is a completely different animal. Back then it was two people fighting against immaturity and self imposed problems. Today it is a situation where one person has taken a trust that was freely given and abused it without any consideration for consequences. Since I am as yet unsure of the relationship between my sins and my depression, it is unclear to me why I have done the things that I have done. The mental turmoil it has created has definitely fed my depression and even deepened it's hold on my mind. But knowing what I do know hasn't helped me to see figure out the why's. I have effectively taken a wonderful life and marriage and created a world to justify my feelings of self hatred. It's as if I decided that if I don't have a logical reason to be depressed, I'll create one. This was not a conscious decision, mind you, just a possible explanation for the whole mess I find myself. 

One of the most prevalent issue with my depression is that I believe myself to be if not Evil, then a very bad person at least. I will go into better detail about this issue later but for now lets just say that while my thinking mind screams that I am not a bad person, my self conscious mind is convinced that I am and to think differently is to hide from the truth.The way that I keep this thought line from completely taking over and paralyzing me permanently is the realization that if I were truly Evil, why would I care? I have found in my studies in this area that the truly bad people don't even believe the atrocities that they engage in are bad or possibly evil. I only need to point to Adolf Hitler as the perfect example of this thinking. In his mind, he had done everything he did for the good of his people and country. The perfect illusion of "I'm alright, the worlds all wrong" mentality.

More to come later...

In the beginning...

Hello and welcome to me. My name is Bill and I have created this blog in an effort to help sort my thoughts, idea's, emotions, et al, into some kind of cohesive narrative. A great many things are happening in my life and I felt I needed to document exactly where I am in this journey.

Let me begin by saying that I suffer from depression. This may not seem like a big deal, but there are times when it is all consuming. Times that are so difficult to deal with the problems that it feels like my only recourse is to give into apathy. To just lay down, close my eyes, and dream the never ending dream. In my dreams, I am always the hero. I have done everything from fight criminals and terrorists to fending off aliens and monsters. I even remember throwing myself in the line fire to protect my son from a gunshot. This action was so vivid, I jumped (fell) out of bed in my attempt to save him. It's funny when you think about it. I live a far more adventurous life in my sleep than I could even dare imagine living in the real world.

My reality is this; I have done things that I am very ashamed of to people who I love with all of my heart and soul. I have given over to compulsions without hesitation. Never during these times have I given any thought to the consequences of my actions, only after the action was irretrievable. I would then hide my deeds with lies and elegant subterfuge. It was not until I had created so much damage and painted myself into a corner with no more ideas of how to escape that I then confessed my sins to my wife. Until that moment arrived however; I looked at was I was doing, knew I was doing was wrong, and felt the shame of it weighing me down but only after it was done. No real thought would enter my head in the beginning that would say maybe I shouldn't do this. Or if it did, I was very good at ignoring it. When it was done, the shame and self loathing would set in, only I was afraid that if I confessed, I would lose my family. My greed and irresponsibility would surely drive them away. 

Well, the feces struck the oscillating mechanical air mover to a degree that I knew I could not keep up my charade. Bad things were going to happen if I didn't get things reigned in and I knew I couldn't trust myself to do the right things without help. 

To make a very long story into only a long story, I confessed. The relief I felt was immeasurable. The fear of confession vanished. I found that the act of confession was actually very easy! Almost too easy. Even the much feared aftermath was better than I expected. What I did not realize was that confession was only the beginning. Cleaning up was going to be a difficult process for both myself and my wife. And it was not going to be pretty. 

The point of this opening to my blog is this. I honestly don't know if my depression was caused by my compulsions, or if my compulsions were created by my depression or if they are even related to each other. What I do know is that what came next was at this time, the most difficult time of my adult life. And what lies down the rode will either be my salvation or my damnation. Only time will tell...