While I was asleep, she was working.

Less than a year ago, I discovered I had Attention Deficit Disorder. Less than four months ago, I finally got treatment.

The first shot of medicine turned on my brain. The lights came on, the world came into focus, and I could finally, at long last, think about what I was doing instead of all the other things I could or should or would be.

It was a thrill and a full blown life changer. I wanted to run through the streets shouting, “I’m awake! I’m awake! I’m alive!”

And I could reason. I could think before I spoke. I could plan before I acted. I could stand in someone else’s shoes. I could reflect back on things I’d done.

And that’s where the fun began to fizzle.

My mind was suddenly flooded with things I’d said and done, things impulsive and unreasonable and damaging. Now, I wasn’t just merely awake. I was ashamed.

I didn’t want to look at all of it. I wanted it to all go away. And I wanted everyone around me to pretend it never happened, including my wife of 23 years, who is now to be my ex-wife because she’s no longer much for pretending.

When most people get divorced, they like to tell you what a battle axe or a booze hound or a bore or a bitch they were married to. I’d like to do just the opposite, because I was married to a giant.

There’s been a lot of material written on how to support a person with ADD, but there’s been far too little, in my mind, on how to support the people who live with them.

And I’ve written a lot of things about my struggles and strains, but I’ve written far too little, in my mind, about the ones my wife endured.

I want to tell you all about Carol. I want you to know how terriffic she is, but in order to really do that I’m going to have to confess a few things.

My name is Ken but you can call me Rip Van Winkle because I feel like I’ve been asleep for years.

I say I was asleep because I was so unaware of what was going on. I was unaware of how I was really behaving and how difficult those behaviors made life for the people all around me, especially Carol.

I would get up and leave without explanation. I’d end a conversation, exit a room, leave an event, quit a job or a project. or discard a responsibility all without saying a word. No consultation. No negotiation. I was done and that was it and I was gone.

And Carol would be left to explain what she didn’t understand herself. “That’s just Ken,” she’d say, “I’ve learned to live with it. Ha ha. Hee hee.” Then she’d shrug and carry on alone.

Everything was black and white and I was always right and I could talk until you just gave up. So she did.

I had a million ideas and I’d sell her on everyone until she just couldn’t buy any more.

I left messes for her to clean up, bills for her to pay, children for her to raise, a marriage to keep afloat, and a life to manage that was becoming increasingly unmanageable.

I failed at so many things that I often felt depressed and I’d stay home and wallow while she went on out into the world, having to come up with explanations for why I wasn’t with her.

And if she ever made requests, comments, or suggestions I could turn on her and snap.

I forgot where I left my keys, my billfold, my notebooks and pens. But even more often than that, I forgot where I left her.

I could be charming one minute, chilly the next, and downright cruel another.

I’d often forget or just neglect to buy things for birthdays and anniversaries and other such days. Flowers were a rare treat indeed.

Yes, for Carol, life was like a box of bitter chocolates. She never knew what she was gonna get.

I spent day after day thinking about what I wanted, but spent almost no time thinking about who I was or who I was hurting.  If it sounds like I’m beating myself up, I’m not.  I know who I am now and I know I’m not my past, which is why I no longer have to hide or defend it.  But more importantly, neither does Carol.

It’s amazing on its own when you think of all that she endured, but its ten times more so when you think of all she managed to accomplish in the midst of it.

She managed to keep smiling and laughing and cracking jokes and putting everyone at ease. She managed to build an impressive career, raise two wonderful kids, and create a home all their friends feel welcome in.  You should see her with babies and the elderly.  Hell, you should see her with everyone she meets.  Whether she’s working, volunteering, or just enjoying the ones she loves, she absolutely shines.

I hope my children know what a champion their mother is. I hope they realize how strong and courageous and determined to do good she is.

I hope they understand and appreciate all that she’s done for both them and me. I hope they take time to stop and think about how incredibly fortunate they are to have such a woman in their lives, such a giant, such a tiger, such a soul.

I’m going to steal a compliment I heard the other night and change it just a tad to tell you who I think Carol is. When they were handing out heart, Carol got in line again and again and again . . .

I can see these things now because I finally admitted that something was wrong, got help, and managed to wake up. It’s just too bad I didn’t wake up before she became so exhausted.

She’s finally getting some rest and moving on with her life, and I have lots of work to do. Luckily for me, I had an excellent teacher who taught me how to live by example.

She’s often told me I have the biggest heart. The truth is mine isn’t even a fraction the size of hers. But thanks to her, it’s growing.

I’m awake. I’m awake. I’m alive.

Thank you, Carol. I wish everyone had an ex like mine.

I have spent the past three months making peace with my past.

Watching a twenty-three year marriage end is not an easy thing to do, especially knowing it is ending in large part for “what I have done and what I have failed to do”. That last part is the old Catholic in me speaking.

I say the old Catholic, because I can no longer be called a Catholic or a Christian or even a religious person. I’m just a person, just a human being, one who asked too many questions and found too many answers incompatible with the faith he once held onto.

But I don’t hate the faith I grew up in. I just see it for what it is, human just like me, with its good side and its bad.

It is at its best when it speaks of unconditional love, encouraging each of us to be Christ to one another. It is nothing short of majestic when it asks each of us to reach out and lift up; to feed and clothe and make well; to console and comfort and relieve; to forgive and heal and renew.

But just like you and me, being human, it has a tendency to muck everything up.

In the same breath with which it speaks of unconditional love, it begins chanting a litany of conditions. And for those who don’t meet them, it points to a fiery pit of suffering in which there will be no forgiveness, no healing, no light, and a torment that will never end.

It thinks it has to threaten us and frighten us to get us to behave, undermining its very own message about the transforming power of love.

It’s really too bad, because it almost got it right.

Love is transforming. Love has the power to make mountains out of mortals. A healthy dose of it can be all one needs to become inspired and energized and strengthened.

But love is quickly drained of its power the moment you add a condition, an if, a requirement for its dispersal.

Every human being has a need to be loved and to be loved for who they are. Not for what they have or say or do or think or believe, but simply for who they are.

Love with conditions attached isn’t really love at all. It’s merely manipulation.

Real love breeds love. Manipulation breeds resentment.

Those who receive real love learn to give it. Those who are manipulated learn to play games with people, tell lies, hoard possessions, withhold kindness, and start wars.

You can see it all around you if you look for it, people withholding love from people who don’t meet their arbitrary standards.

But don’t look all around you. Just look inside your heart.

What conditions are you attaching to your love? What requirements do the people in your life have to meet before you treat them with kindness? Which ones do you have to meet to be kind to yourself?

Did you find some? I found a list too long to repeat.

Want to change your life? Get rid of them.

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying it’s powerful.

If you can honestly say your religion teaches you to love in this way, then by all means hang onto it. As for me, I had to let mine go, so I could start letting go of conditions.

I’m letting go of them day by day and that’s how I’m making peace with my past. Dropping my conditions for forgiving myself and accepting the past for what it is, the history of an imperfect human, with his good side and his bad, trying his best to learn what he can about love.

And what I’ve learned so far is that I believe in it, that I need it, and that I need to give it.

I’m an atheist, but much to the chagrin of other “nonbelievers” I still use words like soul and spirit and redemption.

They all have a natural meaning to me, but they say something about what it is to be human that more clinical words can’t express.

Love can be explained in biological terms, but for me it can only be experienced in poetic ones.

Here’s a video that reflects what I feel almost each and every day.

Video: The Spirituality of an Atheist

This time, I’m keeping it simple.

I have to. I simply was not designed to manage vast amounts of information.

It swirls around in my head until it gets tangled and mangled and completely unmanageable.

No, I was made for simpler things.

Trust me. I know how to make things complicated. I’ve been doing that all my life, but once I make them that way, they tend to slip out of control.

I started this new blog to get away from an old blog, because that old blog had become something of a menace. I didn’t know what it was about. I kept changing the taglines and the categories and the voice and the direction.

Oddly enough, it was supposed to be about calming down in order to be creative. But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of all that and began to spend more time worrying than I did creating.

On this blog, I’m doing what I was telling everyone else to do on the old one. I’m relaxing. I’m taking it easy. I’m keeping it very simple.

You may notice there are only four categories: Sketchbook, Photo Album, Notebook, and Picture Shows.

And that’s all there will ever be. I’m assuming you can figure out what kinds of things will go in them, and if those things are good things, I figure you’ll come check them out.

As time goes by, I may add a page called Other Stuff, but I have no idea yet what that other stuff will be.

That’s also why I chose this layout. It’s simple. And I happen to think it’s beautiful. My thanks to the good folks at ElegantThemes.com.

For now, I’m just going to put things in my Sketchbook, Photo Album, and Notebook. And every now and then, I’ll make a little Picture Show for all the world to see.

I went to make images of a rather impressive bridge, but this pair of old work gloves on the railing provided the most satisfying shot of the day.

If I hadn’t been open to the possibility of finding beauty in something so ordinary, I would have missed something extraordinary.

I had to let go of my anxiety and reach out to this photographer

photograph: tambada by elcabedmc on Flickr

in order to draw and share this.

I’ve screwed up a lot in my life. I’ve done some really dumb things, uttered incredibly regrettable words, made a long list of truly asinine decisions.

And there are the things I didn’t do. The risks I didn’t take, the deeds I didn’t dare, the kindnesses I failed to deliver.

These things wreaked havoc on my life, either messing up or totally destroying finances, careers, and, worst of all, relationships.

Here’s the sad thing. Most of them could have been avoided.

It wasn’t my lack of talent or knowledge or motivation that lead me to them.

Instead, it was my inability to relax, be present, and enjoy the freaking ride.

You see, I’ve had a partner almost all my life. His name is Anxiety, and he’s pretty doggoned loyal.

He shows up every morning and stays late into the night.

He used to go to school with me. And then he went to work with me. He accompanied me to every job interview.

He even tagged along on dates, stood beside me at my wedding, and took a vested interest in my marriage.

He coached me through every relationship, all the way through, and often right out of them.

He gave me lots of advice. Give up. Stay down. When that doesn’t work, freak out.

And whenever things fell to pieces and I found myself alone, he really went to work, helping me sift through the damage, helping me assign the blame, helping me remember the long and sordid history of the calamity I call my life.

Today, I took a look at him. He was wringing his hands and shaking his head and pacing around the room.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked.

“What’s that?” he replied.

“You’re a horrible partner.”

No response.

“You’re a horrible partner,” I repeated, “you really are.

You take everything I love, everything I care about, everything I feel excited about and turn it into an unbearable ordeal.”

Still no response. He knew I had him pegged.

“Dude,” I said, “you strip the joy out of living, you rip the fun out of every new experience, you suck the air right out of the room.

“You know what?” I said.

He said nothing.

“You’re a jackass, and you’ve been making one out of me, too. I think it’s time I put an end to it.”

Finally, he spoke. “What do you plan to do?” he said.

“I plan to find some new partners. I’m thinking about working with Love, Hope, and Excited Curiosity. I hear they’re highly undervalued and completely underutilized.

And I plan on reaching out to people. I signed up for some photography classes, I’ve been contacting artists and photographers I admire, and I’m going to start getting out more.

And one last thing. I’m no longer taking your investment advice. I’m going to stop investing in fear and invest in myself, instead.”

Then I showed him the door.

I know he’s still out there. I know he’ll never leave for good. But I want him to know he’s not welcome and he’s damned sure not my partner.

Author’s Note:
I wrote this over three years ago when I realized I had been on the wrong bus almost all my life. Since writing it, my life has gone in many different directions, not all of them to my liking.

But every time I pick up a pen or a camera, I feel like I’m back on course again. The photograph below reminds me of that.

How do you know when you’re headed in the wrong direction?

It’s easy to miss your destination if you’ve given no thought to where you’re going. If you took the first job that came along, or the one everyone told you was right for you with no consideration for your own desires, you may feel as though you’re traveling on the wrong bus headed somewhere you never wanted to go. That feeling came over me one day like a thick, green cloud of exhaust fumes.

I was sitting in a hotel conference room listening to a mantra from the pages of a popular business book, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, a book about how good companies become great ones. It was required reading for everyone in management, and on this particular day the members or our region business team seemed very excited about one line in particular. Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. They really loved that line. They repeated it over and over.

Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. In other words, hire the right people and fire the wrong people. Not exactly ground breaking, but it really seemed to excite the speakers who chanted it.

The rest of us took it as a thinly veiled threat we could deliver to our teams or apply to ourselves, but it impacted me in an unexpected way.

Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. In my mind I saw a bus filled with passengers dressed in business attire and clutching briefcases. I realized my job was a seat on that bus and I noticed how so many of the passengers around me clamored and scraped for their seats, how they played games to take them from others, and how, in order to keep them, they often held their tongues, stifled their thoughts, and pretended to be enthused about where the bus was headed.

And after all that clamoring, maneuvering, and pretending, most of them spent much of their time complaining about their seats and dreaming of the day when the bus would finally stop and let them off at a place called retirement.

Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. Over and over they said it, and each time I heard a voice grow louder in my head: I’m on the wrong bus. I’m on the wrong bus. I’m on the wrong bus.

I realized I’d spent a good portion of my life on one wrong bus after another, trying to fit in and keep my seat. But no bus would ever be the right one, because being a passenger on someone’s bus had never been my dream. If I were ever going to reach my destination, I’d have to stop riding around on one wrong bus after another and start driving my own dreams.

Are you on the wrong bus? Here are five road signs to watch for.

1.You purchased your ticket using price as your sole criteria.

Even though you don’t buy a job, money’s definitely a major criterion when choosing a career. If money’s the only thing keeping you there, that’s a very strong sign you’re on the wrong bus. You wouldn’t take a bus to Toledo when you want a trip to Vegas because a Toledo ticket was half the cost. Why would you settle for work that sucks the life out of you, even for higher pay, when you deeply desire to be inspired and energized? Drudgery at double the salary is still drudgery.

2. You hopped the first bus out-of-town.

Did you take your current job because it was the first thing to come along? Maybe your circumstances didn’t allow you to be choosy, but yesterday doesn’t always dictate today. Start taking steps right now to get your own set of wheels.

3. You took this bus because everyone else was taking it.

Your friends were doing it, your father or mother did it, or maybe your family has been doing it for generations. But you’re all grown up now and life is not a game of Follow the Leader. Mary H. Jacobsen wrote an entire book about the perils of “Hand Me Down Dreams.” Start exploring other destinations, find out where you want to go, and look for the first safe exit. If your parents jumped in a lake . . .?

4. You find yourself looking out the window and wondering.

What lies beyond the streets you’re traveling? That bus you’re on, the job you took some time ago, may have been just the thing you needed. A job can teach you the ins and outs of a business, develop skills you never knew you had, and yes, pay the bills, but it’s okay to change. It’s okay to grow. I’m giving you permission to explore new options. If you find yourself in a daydream, stay with it and see where it takes you.

5. You just can’t wait until the stupid thing stops.

Constantly checking your watch is perhaps the number one sign you’re on the wrong bus. In all my travels (all the jobs I’ve ever held), once I got beyond the learning phase, once I’d mastered the ins and outs of the job, I was bored – painfully bored, and I watched the clock like a time-keeper at a sporting event. But when I’m taking the steps to build my own vision rooted in things I truly love and serving the kind of people I love, I only check my watch to make sure I haven’t missed an entire day. And that’s a clear sign you’ve taken the wheel and started driving your own dreams.

You in the Driver’s Seat

Doing work you love transcends time. You get lost in it. You’re absorbed by it. An intensity comes over you and as Barbara Sher writes, “Life is just too short to live without that kind of focus.” And it’s way too short to spend riding around in circles on a bus going nowhere.

Everyday, there’s a battle going on inside you: love vs. hate, will vs. resistance, passion and compassion vs. disinterest and indifference.

You have to choose a side.

Choosing won’t make the enemy go away. It’s in you, and you can forget about exorcisms.

You’ll have to join the fight and there will be days when you want to surrender.

Just remember your job, to help the good side win the war.

And it’s a new war every day.

Your bones may grow brittle, your hair may thin out, your eyes may fail you a bit more each day.

But your center never ages.

I’m attempting to learn to break things down. Drawings, tasks, goals, myself.

I have to in order to build things up, but my desire, of course, is to make things whole with a sweep of my hand.

I want my drawings to emerge complete from the tip of my pen or pencil. I want to reach my life long objectives with a half-hour of planning and an afternoon of sweat. I want to be strong without confronting my weaknesses.

This, unfortunately, is not how things or dreams are made. Anyone whoever designed a really great car probably began by tearing one apart.

To create the things we imagine, we’ll need to examine their parts.

A drawing can be broken down into points, angles, shapes, and shades of black and white.

A dream can be broken down as well.  Actions, steps, minutes, miles.

Sometimes even you and I must be broken down before we can emerge as something new.

Creation’s dirtiest little secret is that it always begins with destruction.

Destroy something today.  Break it down, tear it apart, shred it to bits.  A project, an image, your life.

When you’re through, examine the pieces.  They could be the ones you’ve been missing, invisible little essentials lost in the bright lights of the  big picture they’re a part of.

Over and over we ask ourselves, “Where do I begin?”

And since we’re not always sure, we sometimes don’t.

Perhaps a better and far more intriguing question would be, “Where will I wind up if I do?”

That question has a pull to it. It opens up our curiosity. It tempts us to begin wherever we are so we can discover a place we’ve never been.

The first sketch of the day is seldom what I’m seeking. But it’s often the doorway to the next sketch and the next and the next until I find myself somewhere far more satisfying than the Land of Never Starting.

Who cares where you begin? Just begin. Then come back and tell us where you went.