It appears I have not published anything since September 29th? Huh, weird. Well I have been writing a lot. I have written extensively about my dislike of the city of St. Peters and their blatant extortion and price gouging of our hockey club. I pontificated mightily on the Justice Kavanaugh protests, the ridiculous media response to various nefarious Trump actions. I stood proudly atop my soapbox to insult as many liberal talking points as I could think of. Then I deleted it all. I’d write 4-5 pages on various things that were bothering me at the moment, and I found that the anger had lost its edge, so I put them in the Mac trash can.
It turns out that just the writing can be plenty cathartic. Putting it out there isn’t always necessary. Not that this blog is at all necessary, but I do enjoy doing it. It’s good practice I feel if I am ever going to write something for real that people might actually pay to read.
I recently got an extremely part time job rating ads on Facebook. Yep I am actually getting paid $9 an hour to rate the ads you see in your feeds. It’s only one hour per day, but I am hoping it leads to a more substantial online part time gig. I could use a few more liquid dollars to spend on things like tattoos and Jeep parts. I could go back to work, but I really don’t feel like it. Not in the traditional sense anyway. I cannot imagine climbing back in an office or a cubicle. I would if I had to, but thus far I do not. The closest I come to “wanting” to go back to work would be to climb in a police car again. This often happens on Friday and Saturday nights while I’m watching my new favorite show, “Live PD.” Side note, if you’re not watching this show you should it’s awesome. Anyway I start to remember how much fun being a cop can be, but also how bad and the thought’s chase themselves away pretty quickly.
So. My problems with working are these; I cannot work with the general public, my anxiety issues and general distrust and dislike of people just aren’t a good mix. I need a stay at home job. Most stay at home jobs involve being on the phone. They are all sales and customer service. I have an undiagnosed phobia of answering or making phone calls. I don’t know why, but it pains me deeply to make a phone call to a stranger. I also refuse to open my front door unless I am absolutely sure I know the person on the other side. Our neighborhood gets a lot of solicitors and I am not that great at telling people no. We could end up with a lot of new siding, windows, lawn care, and Girl Scout cookies we don’t need. We have not one, but two No Solicitor signs on our front door, yet they still knock.
Scheduling is a problem. I don’t want to need to accrue time off. I need to be home to get the boys on the school bus, because despite all of our efforts they are thus far incapable of getting out of bed on their own. It amazes me still and even though it is our own failure somehow as parents, I am not sure how they are still this way. By 10 years old I was getting up by myself alone in the house getting dressed making my own breakfast and lunch etc. Logan is 13 and even with two alarm clocks turned up as loud as possible he doesn’t budge. I have literally had to dump water on him at times to get him out of bed. If someone is not here they would miss the bus every day. We could just allow that to happen, but honestly between the two of them we have enough school issues. You have to pick your battles.
It has been really helpful to be home for the boys school events, doctor appointments, and hockey. I need to be home early in the morning and early afternoon to make it to early practices etc. I need to be able to head out of town on a Thursday night for a hockey tournament without worrying about covering my job on a Friday or taking a day off. I’d like to just input data for someone or file things. I don’t ever want to manage anyone but me ever again. I don’t want to provide my goals or sit for reviews or give reviews ever again. I am not a salesman nor do I have any desire at all to be one. I hate thinking I am bothering people.
As Lloyd Dobler says in the movie “Say Anything,” “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.” I have subscribed to a couple job services to help me find a stay at home job, but thus far the Facebook thing is all I have landed.
I wouldn’t mind going to an office, if I don’t have to wear a tie and don’t deal with the public and have a flexible schedule. I can move and file paperwork electronically or physically. Basically busy work that carries little to no stress. I have been out of the full time workforce now for three years. My doctors and wife have been instructing me that I need to use all that time to learn to relax and I have yet to relax or know how to really relax. The only time I find I can really close my brain to guilt and pressure is on the beach or holding a baby. True story. Both entities are my only way of being and feeling at peace. We aren’t moving to the beach anytime soon and the only baby I know right now is eight hours away.
It’s pathetic I know. You’re thinking, “Idiot I’d give anything to sit at home all day.” I am not complaining, trust me. I cannot begin to express my delight at not attending meetings, wearing a tie, stressing over budgets, corporate goals, employee reviews, or deploying overseas, passing inspections, passing PT tests, trying to make the next rank, hoping I score the Ford police car not the Chevy, praying to not have to work a huge fatal accident, a child abuse case or a rape. I do not miss those things whatsoever. The problem seems to be I cannot escape the feeling that I should be doing those things. Liz has been the main breadwinner for quite some time now, and it’s not a macho thing that my retirement checks aren’t as big as her paychecks, but I do feel it doesn’t matter how many dishes I wash, rooms I paint, furniture I put together, tournaments I go to on my own, I cannot compete with the workload she is carrying.
Every day when I do just sit on the couch I can never just sit on the couch. I am feeling guilty for sitting on the couch. I bought myself a Playstation 4 three years ago as a retirement gift to myself. I bet I’ve played it maybe 20-30 times since then. I feel guilty playing it. I think of places I should be. I feel like I am skipping school. I know on paper I have more than earned this retirement. However, I compare my sacrifice to others and feel like I am scamming the system. I hate receiving a government paycheck. There is more money out there I have technically earned, but I cannot accept. I can still work, but my brain is so overworked and wired for stress my support system of people is afraid I could explode back in a full time office environment. I have an additional symptom the past few years of not being able to retain short term memory or concentrate. It turns out after 4-5 concussions, too close explosions, training accidents etc my memory is and will only get worse.
Even volunteer work which I feel guilty for not doing is tough for me. Being around other veterans for veterans causes often triggers things I don’t want to think about anymore. I was going to take a volunteer position with the Humane Society until it occurred to me I would want to take every single dog home. Kids charities, hospitals all send me into a funk for the people I’d be trying to cheer up or help.
Basically every day of my retirement thus far has been keeping myself in a guilt jail. It must sound ludicrous to you. It sounds that way to me as well. My doctor says this is all result of me not acknowledging PTSD, anxiety, depression for 19 years while maintaining multiple stressful jobs often simultaneously. Straight out of the active duty Air Force I took a full time job with the Air National Guard. This led to a newly made and unofficial job category that is really hard to explain to another Guard member much less a civilian. Essentially I was tasked to over see the construction of classified facilities at my Guard base involving the Fighter Squadron, Intelligence, Weapons, Ops, Security, and Maintenance shops on base. Something that had never been done before much less by a 24 year old cop that no one really knew. I had the authority and mission to instruct long time much higher ranking NCO’s and officers to get things bought, people trained, and I had to conduct serious background checks on them all asking them to reveal their most private financial, social, and criminal histories. The real kicker was I could not explain to them why I was doing this just that they had to do it, because I said so and it was “classified.” In the military especially the Guard this goes over like a lead balloon filled with concrete.
I went from there to Boeing PhantomWorks where I became a essentially a “fixer.” I was the only security person in our company who had actually come from the “Customer” side of our business. I could speak fighter pilot and union contractor/worker as well as engineer and software programmer and tank driver. I started traveling to all of our subcontractors and discipline and or threaten them to pull funding if they didn’t adhere to customer rules on doing all things classified. I had to be not exactly truthful to my family where I was going or what I was doing. Sometimes my own coworkers couldn’t know what I was up to. I would go smooth things out between Air Force and Navy or Air Force and Army, DARPA, the NSA, and the FBI, because I had already been around all of these entities in my work for the Air Force and Air National Guard.
I thought after all of that being a police officer in my hometown would be cake. I was so wrong about that. Even in my first cop job in an extremely affluent municipality with a department that took a hands off don’t ruffle feathers of the residents philosophy, I ended up in a stressful office environment. Coming from Boeing as a Classified Computing Security Specialist I was immediately voluntold to work with the city IT guy in installing brand new touch screen laptops in all of our police cars. That is not what I went through six months of police academy training unpaid mind you, to do. I took a $20,000 pay cut to work there as a cop not an IT guy. I fought against it as much as a probationary employee could until I couldn’t hack it anymore. I finally landed my dream cop job in North St. Louis County where the “real cops” worked and I could really help people and all that. There is no comparative stress I can describe other than maybe combat. The rules of engagement and margins for error are much more stringent and harsh on the police officer versus the soldier. Not the best job choice for me.
Corporate Security was next, and again I thought it would be like a permanent very well compensated vacation. Holy Lord was I wrong about that. That job was what finally broke my mental back. No amount of drinking or working late hours putting out fires could hold back the water behind the dam in my brain any longer. I was hired to make a billion dollar financial institution of three thousand employees as secure as I had made government facilities as instructed by the SEC and the Federal Reserve. Only the owner/CEO, Vice Presidents, Managers, Stock Brokers, and the every day hourly employee had zero intention of changing anything. They all fought me tooth and nail for years until I finally got a few supporters and unfortunately had some real world incidents wake them up to the need of security.
I had to fight my way to even get invited to the security meetings. That’s how much they respected me and wanted to hear what I had to say. Things got better and worse. The company itself ended up failing and being bought by a competitor, so the dysfunction wasn’t all in my head. I could write a book on corporate antics people would not believe unless they had worked there. Don’t misunderstand me I loved that job deep down as it allowed me eventually to hire the best full and part time security officers in our industry. I loved the vast majority of people I worked with. I was able to help several female victims of abuse get away from their abusers permanently. I made a lot of people who did not feel safe at their own office feel at least a little safer, because they knew I cared even though my bosses often criticized me for taking the job “too personally.” I worried about these people and they were my responsibility. I can’t think of any way to not take that personally.
While doing all that I was still a part time warrior in the Air National Guard. I had to often leave for training or short deployments. My unit ended up being closed and I had to find a new position at another base or lose my retirement after having put in fifteen years already. I had to change jobs from military police to something else while still maintaining my corporate position as a manager of close to a hundred people at the time. I found a slot as a Chaplain’s Assistant. I was so excited. During all this time I had gone through a major religious conversion. I had become a Jesus Freak. I lead Bible Studies, a men’s group, I spent Saturdays in downtown St. Louis not only feeding and clothing the homeless, but actually hanging out with them and trying to figure out how to help them get off the streets. My daughter and I went on a mission trip to an orphanage in Siberia.
Chaplain’s Assistant training meant an eight week school at an active duty Army base which from coming from being a Program Security Manager and middle management non-commissioned officer, and being the Security and Safety Manager at a large-ish corporation, was like going back to 1st grade and being treated as such. Just being there was stressful. I had to take a voluntary demotion in rank as the position was not available to a person at my current rank at the time. On an Army Base and in a active duty Air Force environment, rank is everything. I didn’t think I’d ever miss that extra stripe I’d get it back when I retired or found another slot. Boy was I wrong.
I hadn’t really considered what counseling people in crisis or in hospital and combat settings would be like for me as I still hadn’t realized I was in a constant state of crisis myself, but I was starting to get the idea that something wasn’t right. Our first field trip to a VA hospital nearly had me jumping out of my skin and I could not get out of there fast enough. My cousin had just been killed in the Battle of Wanat of which I had read official and non-official reports and watched videos. These were all very graphic and personal in their details. Part of our training as Chaplain Assistants was watching videos of real life traumas and what part we play in that as well as doing live action role plays out in the field etc. Back at home base I was voluntold to be a combat first aid instructor for the base. This includes teaching several hours of basic triage including blood and guts videos and role plays.
None of these things had ever bothered me before. I’ve held a man’s brain inside his skull waiting for an ambulance for an hour, I’ve stepped in guts and brains on the highway (on accident it was dark) in a pedestrian versus big rig accident, I’ve been knee deep in raw sewage at an orphanage in Haiti. I’ve been on more scenes of murder and suicide than I care to remember or describe including men, women, and children. Stabbings, shootings, car wrecks of mangled and burnt bodies. Suddenly I couldn’t teach a class with fake blood and wrapping someone’s arm in a sling. I couldn’t bear to be in one more VP meeting listing the number of assaults and death threats our employees were receiving with people who just wanted to ignore them.
It just so happened to be, that at the same time I was asked to quietly resign for sending that one too many email to the wrong executive, the Air National Guard and Air Force decided they would forcefully and mercilessly (or maybe mercifully) retire me early. I was probably really good timing and financially it was going to work out till I got my head together. I don’t know that I will ever be the same or truthfully I am not even sure what the same is or if I ever was whatever the same was.
Truth is, I’ve always been trying to protect and fix people since I was little. I have always felt guilty when I couldn’t. I have always felt best when I was the most stressed out. I purposely didn’t do home work in high school so I could panic cram for tests or write papers at the very last minute in college. I thrived in my military careers taking jobs that I was told I couldn’t do, didn’t have the right rank or was too young to do. I loved being told my company would never ever allow armed security guards and then hiring a hundred of them for 24/7 security. Nothing is more exciting then jumping out of your police car and chasing a bad guy in the dark.
I am not built for any of that anymore, I am totally aware of that. However, I still cannot overcome the feeling I am supposed to be doing those things still every day and I am less of a person for not doing them. Does that make any sense at all? It doesn’t to me, so I wouldn’t blame you if it doesn’t to you either.
Weird I sat down and started typing to talk about the past couple weeks of hockey and family activity. Not sure why it ended up on my work history. I guess I needed to say it this more. Seeing my issues in writing sometimes helps me wrap my mind around them better. Also to explain to anyone who cares or anyone who could help, why I am looking for such a specific part time stay at home or extremely low key back office job. I have been looking for quite a few months and they are far and few between. Why wouldn’t they be, so I get it. I figure it doesn’t hurt to put this out there though. Feels better than politics or something else inviting someone to argue with me about.
Jacked Up Dad 