Blog - 50 Shades of Dave

Is this some sort of drill?

Wikipedia entry of the Washington Navy Yard shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Navy_Yard_shooting

It started out as a normal Monday morning. I had just started at this new job in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington DC about a month prior and I was getting settled into the new environment.

I had been commuting from my home about an hour and a half away each day and trying to keep my hopes up that my supervisors would see what good of a job I’d been doing with my “hit the ground running” attitude that they’d let me work from home a couple days a week. It was a bit difficult since it was a relatively small group of people and they traveled a lot so I still was learning The Who’s who in the office but things were looking good.

I was prepping myself for our Monday morning staff meeting and I saw a janitor with his large trash can going through the hallways while I walked back to my cubicle with my first cup of coffee. I sat down at my computer and heard “POP..POP POP” like a firecracker but more metal sounding. I initially thought the janitor had dropped a trash can on the floor but then heard someone yelling from the main hallway “SHOTS FIRED!”

My cubicle neighbor next to me popped up over the cube wall and looked right at me yelling “SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!” Like I was supposed to know what the hell that meant. We stared at each other for what realistically was a couple seconds but felt like a few minutes. During that time I thought to myself “is this some type of drill? Did I not get an email about this or something? Am I supposed to hide under my desk? Nobody told me what to do..”

Then in the rest of the office, I heard screams and yelling and saw a bunch of my office mates moving away from the doorway leading to the main hallway where the shots came from. I got up and followed and we all huddled into our Captain’s office since it was the biggest one, we could lock the door, and he was gone for the day.

We must have been there for a few minutes and someone said that we should probably try to evacuate since we were on the ground floor and had a fire door we could leave from. I ran back to my desk to grab my uniform hat (called a cover…because what good Navy officer goes outside without his/her cover on his/her head?) and ran out with the rest of the group.

We were outside and huddled together across the street on the sidewalk next to the parking garage where I was parked…damn! My keys were still at my desk, no chance of driving home until this is all over..

There were streams of other people from other offices coming out of the building too and I was relatively calm at this point. The building we worked in had armed security guards and surely this must have been a disgruntled worker. It sounded like a hand gun and they must have subdued the shooter easily enough.

So now we were all just waiting outside for a few minutes and we saw more security guards running toward the building. Then more security guards with bullet proof vests and machine guns… and then one of them yelled at us “GET AWAY FROM THIS BUILDING!!” And I could see the fear in his eyes..

Holy shit..now this is getting serious is what I thought to myself. This is something that won’t be over in the next couple of hours.

Luckily I had my cell phone and I knew my wife, Chantel, was home. I called her as we began swiftly walking away down the side street toward the nearby food court..

“Hi honey, you might want to turn on the news but there’s a shooter in my building and I’m ok…I’m going to turn my phone off to conserve the battery and I’ll let you know what is happening as soon as I can.”

She was shocked but knew that I needed to get moving and we said we love you to each other and hung up. Later on that evening she said that she’d never heard me have fear in my voice like I did then…

A “Normal” Childhood – Part 1

Is it abuse if you don’t know what non-abuse is?

I had a pretty normal childhood.

I mean every kid had a dad who was gone a lot (he was in the Navy), and a mom who burned their only child with a cigarette and chased them around a 9th floor condo with a butcher knife, right?

What? You mean that’s not normal?

I know, I know..it’s not normal…but to a 4 or 5 year old who didn’t know any better, I just thought that is what moms and dads do. I’m not justifying my mom’s behavior now or anything..I did eventually come to the realization that what she did to me was fucked up. And my response to it was just as fucked up…but never realized how fucked up it was until recently.

Let’s start with the most fucked up situation. The one I like to call “the one with the knife.”

I remember we lived in Hawaii and my parents had a condo. My dad must have gotten a deal on it or was renting one out or something because he was also acting as kind of the maintenance man for the entire building too. I don’t know..what do you expect? I was like 4 years old at the time.

Anyway, it was just me and my mom in the condo at the time. Not sure if dad was as work or what, but I remember sitting there in my tighty-whiteys playing with some toys on the living room floor and watching cartoons.

My mom was in the kitchen and had asked me to do something. I can’t remember what she wanted, but basically my response was “Not right now, I’m watching cartoons.” And the next thing I know, my mom is yelling at me at the top of her lungs..calling me all sorts of names and I knew I was in trouble.

Before I even got a chance to say “ok ok, I’ll do it (whatever it was)” she was in the kitchen area and grabbed the biggest knife we had. It looked like a fucking machete to me, but I’m sure it was just chopping knife. And she was storming right toward me with the knife in the air, saying she was going to kill me.

I ran around the condo for my life. I could only outrun her for so long and I could only say a few things as I was too busy crying for my life for her to stop. Literally, begging her to stop.

But she wouldn’t stop. She kept chasing me around the condo with this butcher knife in her hand and a crazed look on her face.

I literally was scared for my life and then I had a realization. We had a balcony and that was my way out…I couldn’t run past her to the front door, so that was my way to save myself. So I flung open the sliding glass door and ran out into the balcony. Remember, it was 9 stories up…

Then I began to climb the railing. Also remember, I was 4 fucking years old. And I remember thinking to myself that I’d be better off jumping from a 9 story balcony than being chopped up by my mom. What other 4 year old has that kid of thought? Pretty normal right?

I remember yelling to my mom, who was now standing by the sliding glass door, “Get away from me or I’ll jump!” I guess the sight of her kid climbing a railing and yelling that must’ve snapped her out of it, because she lowered the knife and walked away. I don’t remember anything being said after that. I climbed down from the railing and went back inside the condo..the rest of the day was a fuzzy blur to me.

I can’t remember if I went to my room, got sent to my room, what my mom did, or even when or if my dad came home that night and if he did, what was said. ABSOLUTELY.NO.CLOSURE.

I can’t remember if I ever trusted my mom since that day and I can’t remember how I even felt about it: sad, mad, nervous, whatever. I had no feeling about the situation at all. I guess that is when I became “disconnected.” And it was never discussed, ever.

For the years that followed, I remember having thoughts and feelings that I was some kind of robot. I’d see movies like E.T. or Flight of the Navigator and remember thinking that I was like the kid in those movies where nobody really understood what I was thinking or feeling, so the notion that I might not be “normal” or a “robot” was entertaining to me.

Of course, at the time, I didn’t have any inkling of how this knife situation would effect me for the rest of my life and still does today. Even as I type this, I still don’t feel anything about it. It’s like it just kind of happened like somebody crossing the street…no consequences, no ramifications..it just happened and was inconsequential. Obviously, it’s not because it’s basically the reason I am who I am today, and the keystone of why I feel the need to write about it.

I can honestly keep typing on and on about this, and don’t know the appropriate way to wrap up this post. I may come back and revisit this to add addenda to it in the future as I keep trying to sort through the feelings I have or supposed to have…

More to come…

On Integrity

June 1, 2018

Integrity – Doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do

Integrity is weird. I mean, do you teach it to someone, or are people born with it? Or is it just something that is learned? I don’t know the answer and I don’t know if there even is an answer.

All I can tell you is that I’ve thought about integrity a lot, especially when I was going to the Naval Academy, because they tried to beat it into our heads. Not sure why, maybe it’s because they wanted to ensure that everyone that is there had the same level of integrity…there’s another thing, are some people more keen to integrity than others?

Whatever…enough questions, now on to a story of how I learned about integrity when I was young. Though at the time, I didn’t say to myself “Hey Dave, you’re learning about integrity here..” I just thought to myself, what the fuck? Why did I do this and what did I learn from this? I guess it’ll make sense when you hear what happened.

Anyway, I was 11 years old and in 5th grade. I remember that we were going through some bullshit in math like long division or fractions or something and I just wasn’t into it. I remember my teacher, Mr. Kinghorn..he was one of those teachers that had his “thing” that he was all into and taught us other crap because he was supposed to teach us other crap, like math. Well, his “thing” was that he was always in charge of the annual school musical presentation. And everyone in the school knew that if you were in Mr. Kinghorn’s class, that you would automatically required to perform in the concert. I’ll probably write about that in a different post, because that’s a whole ‘nother story.

So, we basically blew through math and reading and the other school crap to get to the end of the day where we would have to practice songs. So needless to say, my interest in math kind of matched the rest of the class’ interest and also that of Mr. Kinghorn’s. I remember one time, I had a word problem involving long division and it had something to do with kids wanting cookies or some shit. Anyway, I turned in the assignment with some scribble on it to show my work and Mr. Kinghorn calls me out by name in the middle of class and says “David, how the heck do 4.7 kids share 15 cookies?” I shrugged my shoulders and he marked the question wrong and sent it home with me.

My dad, being the math genius he was, had a polar opposite approach to math. He thought that I should just “know” the answers by looking at the problems, because he was able to do that when he was a kid. So after a few failing assignments and half-assed test scores, I came home with a C in math on my report card. My dad was livid!

He yelled at me up one side and down the other and asked what the hell was wrong with me, etc… I tried explaining that it wasn’t really my fault because we weren’t getting taught this stuff because of Mr. Kinghorn’s affinity to music instead of math, and I guess at that point my dad proclaimed that I shall bring home my math book every day from school so he could teach me. And if I didn’t, then I would have to write 100 times “I will not leave my math book at school.” So it was stated, so it shall be done..

This went along for a week or so, with my dad showing me the art of long division, and then one day, I FORGOT MY MATH BOOK AT SCHOOL. I remember riding the bus home (we lived about 20 miles from the school, so it would have been impossible for me to go back and get it) and figuratively shitting myself because I realized that my math book was sitting in my cubby in the classroom. I dug through my backpack and verified that yes, I will be toast when I get home.

I got home ready to feel the brunt of my dad’s wrath, but my parents weren’t home. I felt a little relief, but not much as I knew what I needed to do. I did not know where they were or how long they’d be gone, but I’d better start cranking out those 100 sentences. So I began..writing, and writing, and writing. In my best penmanship “I will not leave my math book at school.” It must have only taken me like 30 minutes to do, but at the time it felt like days..almost a prison sentence.

I finished up the 3 pages of handwriting and sat quietly in my room..thinking to myself, maybe if I make up some of my own math problems, it’ll ease the punishment. Then my parents came home right before dinner. I came out of my room crying, holding the papers in my hands. I said “Daddy, I forgot my math book and I wrote my sentences.” He looked at me and took the papers and looked at me again and said: Ok, thanks.

And he went on his way doing his dad stuff. No yelling, no cursing, no demeaning. I remember standing there thinking WTF?!?! At least spank me or call me a name or say some type of curse word. But got nothing.

Then I went back to my room to hang out and stare at the wall wondering what the hell just happened. I was harder on myself than my dad or mom could ever be, and I think he knew that. And from that point on I never forgot to bring my math book home (until at least my I asked my dad if I could stop bringing it home after the 5th grade).

Looking back on that whole situation now, I think that might have meant that I have integrity? I’m not sure, but that’s what I think anyway. I did the right thing because it was the right thing to do – which is what we had to regurgitate at the Academy when we were asked what integrity meant. I fucked something up (no math book), and I had consequences (writing sentences) and I did it, without being reminded or told or scolded into doing. And then I learned from it and didn’t make that mistake again…it actually did bring my math grade up to a B, so that’s good.

I’ve tried to live my life with that mindset..if something needs to be done, then just take care of it. I don’t need to look busy because the boss is around. That was the furthest back in my memory I could go to think of an example of me having integrity. Like I said, I don’t know if it’s something that I learned in that moment, or did it purely out of fear of my dad’s wrath, or what. But it’s always stuck with me and I don’t feel guilty or have any remorse in forgetting my math book. It was an honest mistake as opposed to saying to myself “nah, fuck that old man..I ain’t doing no math today!” I owned up to it and did what I was supposed to do.

I hope my kids have similar examples while they were growing up..minus the mean dad part. Because I’d hate for them to live a life without integrity..or learn late in life what it really means. I might ask them this weekend and see if it’s not too late to teach them if they have no idea what integrity is. At a minimum, it’ll create 5 better people in this world that hopefully have it.

Carpool Karaoke Therapy

May 27, 2018

One thing you’ll learn about me is that I enjoy music…all types of music.

I’ve been known to sing/hum/bop along to all types of songs from old folk songs to gangsta rap, though I’m not a very good singer at all! In fact, most of the times, I can’t remember the actual lyrics, but do know the melodies by heart, which I’ve always found strange. My wife, Chantel, is just the opposite…she’ll know the words to every song on the radio, but doesn’t know how the instrumentals go…

Normally, in the course of my commute home, I would spend the hour or so of the drive talking on the phone with Chantel about the day’s events and typically what frustrated us that day with either co-workers or our own kids. My therapist knew that a lot of my anxiety and frustration stemmed from events at work, so she had been giving me a few things to try out, one of which I’m calling “Carpool Karaoke Therapy.”

She knows that I have a hard time “leaving work at work” as I’m sure much of you out there reading/watching do as well…so she asked me what I typically do while I’m driving home. I told her about the conversations I have with Chantel during the drive and she suggested a couple things: 1) Don’t call Chantel on the way home and 2) Crank up the radio and sing.

I initially laughed it off, because like I said before, I’m not a good singer but she said that I wouldn’t be performing in front of anyone anyway (well at least not until the video accompanying this post gets posted)…

She said the process is that I get frustrated while at work..I drive home and talk to Chantel and re-live the frustrations…and then never really “decompress” from the stress which makes the environment at home by the time I get there, a culmination of frustration.

Instead of re-living the frustrations of the day, the drive home will now be a decompression time and by the time I get home, I can still talk about the events of the day, but my mindset will be changed and everything will be much better.

So I tried it out.

One of my favorite genres of music is grunge/alternative from the 90’s. I remember being in college and there were certain songs which bring back lots of memories…whether they were heard at pep rallies, or at parties, or just screwing around in my dorm room. Most of these songs were grunge/alternative and one of the popular radio stations we’d listen to was 99.1 WHFS out of Washington DC. They had the annual WHF-estival where, at the time, some lesser known bands would go to play, and would eventually make a name for themselves. I never got a chance to go to a WHF-estival, but kind of regretting it now, especially now that 99.1 in DC now plays Tejano music, which is quite a bit different from their original programming. I did manage to find a Facebook group (I Miss WHFS) which relives the old days though.

Anyway, grunge/alternative was introduced to me by one of my roommates, Andy. He had an eclectic taste in music as well, and broke me out of my hip-hop/R&B rut and would drive our other roommate, Terry, totally insane.

A few years ago, I found the Lithium channel on Sirius/XM and matched almost exactly what we’d listen to on WHFS. So whenever I’d get the chance, while I drove around with the kids, I’d tune it in to Lithium and give the kids a taste of some good old grunge…which I think played a major part in my 2nd son, Jonah, joining a bunch of buddies as the lead singer of their band, Charade. <——Check them out here!

A good reason for me to listen along to Lithium was that I didn’t necessarily need to know the words or even carry a tune to sing along. And nothing was “auto-tuned” so it helped that I could just yell along to whatever song was playing. I felt a little like a fool the first couple times I would sign while driving, but found a totally different reason why it would help too….breathing!

I had told my therapist that there would be times where I would feel like I hadn’t taken a deep breath in hours…just breathing shallowly throughout the day and increasing my anxiety. Well, singing kind of requires breathing, so being able to take a nice deep breath before belting out a verse or two of whatever Pearl Jam song was necessary. So in addition to decompressing me during whatever drive I was driving, it also regulated my breathing which was a double benefit!

So now, I sing along to whatever songs I know…both to just reduce my stress and also to annoy my wife and kids if they happen to be in the car with me. 🙂

I suggest you try it out too…see what kind of music allows you to decompress and helps you relax after a long day of frustration. What are your favorite songs or types of music to listen to? Comment below and let’s expand our libraries! 🙂

Keyboard Therapy

May 22, 2018

I’ve been hitting a wall lately on how I want to approach these next few blog posts.

Everything in my life is so intertwined that I can’t just pick a spot and start telling a story, so I think I’m just going to crank out a slew of posts all together and post them within a few days or weeks of each other and just update the posts when I get things published with links, etc.

So I’ll start off with this one you’re reading now.

Here were some of the events leading up to eventually me starting this blog…some of them may not be related, yet, somehow eventually it’ll all make sense as to who I am today and will hopefully lead me to be a better person.

I was abused as a child – blog post to be written (I’ll insert links as they come out of my brain)
I was part of an active shooter situation and survived (Washington Navy Yard shooting in 2013)
My oldest son attempted suicide in 2015
My wife, son, and I began going through therapy together as part of my son’s suicide attempt counseling, which eventually became therapy for me and my wife. The therapist, within a couple sessions, said I have some classic symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) possibly from the Navy Yard shooting.
In the process of retiring from active duty, I moved my family to Iowa in 2016.
I underwent a PTSD evaluation with a therapist, where I was diagnosed with a mild case of PTSD, but still have anxiety and anger issues at times.
My anger issues began surfacing more and more when in 2017, I decided to saw screw it and called around for a Psychiatrist to give me some type of medication to help me deal with things.
Eventually, I began seeing a therapist in late 2017 where I told her all I wanted was just a prescription for something to make me “just not so on edge all the time.”
I never got a prescription, but began weekly visits with the therapist and my PTSD was determined to be caused by the trauma I experienced as a kid and eventually manifested through the Navy Yard shooting.

So as time goes on and as I get around to sitting down and typing, I’ll eventually have blog posts for each one of the above items, but this is basically how I got around to starting this blog for myself and anyone else who might be going through the same thing. I suspect there’s a lot more people who are in the same boat as me.

I usually have used my dry, sarcastic sense of humor to hide my true feelings..or even just buried my true feelings deep inside me. I remember in 2009, my wife found thing thing called Facebook and wanted me to set up an account for myself. I told her that nobody would want to hear what I have to say about my life, but I reluctantly set up my own account to get her to stop talking to me about it. Eventually, I found Facebook as a way to channel to vent my frustrations about work/life/etc. in my dry, sarcastic sense of humor. My “friends” found it funny…and would suggest to their friends that they “friend” me since everyone loved how funny I was. I guess I could bring up a lot of my old posts since I have archives of them and put them up here for shits and giggles, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was just being me.

Then people would expect me to be funny..and not just on Facebook either. I had to be funny/sarcastic in real life for them (a lot of my “friends” were co-workers and neighbors, etc.) So whenever I had something really important to discuss, people would just pass it off that Dave is just being funny and not really meaning anything by it.

So, eventually, I stopped posting on Facebook. And eventually deleted my account. I’ve since created a new account, but only for the purposed of a different venture that I have which I’ll explain at a later date.

I was completely off social media for a little over a year from 2016 – 2017. I realized that there was much more to life than posting funny quips or memes. But yet, I was still unhappy and angry. That’s when my plea for medication came out, especially when my own family was scared of even talking to me.

So now, I’m back on social media…and back to typing up my feelings, but this time through this blog. Where hopefully I can be taken a little bit more seriously and start with a clean slate and actually help people get through their issues too. I’m not an expert or a therapist or a doctor, but I have been through some crazy shit and sometimes I do wish I could take a pill every now and then to just take the edge off and chill out, but something is telling me that it would only be a band-aid. My problems will still be there waiting for me when the dose wears off.

I need to confront my demons in my brain and this blog is how I’ll be doing it. Instead of swallowing my feelings (yes, I can sometimes literally swallow my feelings down when I get sad or proud etc) I’ll be pouring them all out on here…through my keyboard therapy.

How do you deal with hard feelings? I’ve always been told that I’m stand-offish and robotic. I’m tired of being that way, and I’ve seen some improvement over the past couple of months with my therapist and through typing up these posts. I might venture in to videos and podcasts, but baby steps for me right now.

I Know NOTHING!

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates

May 14, 2018

I’ve been told all my life and career that people HAVE to be the best and HAVE to be recognized as “experts” in order to be successful.

Who the hell made up that stupid fucking rule? And who the hell determines if someone is an “expert?”

In the current environment that we live in now, we have so-called “experts” (gonna stop using quotes because I’m lazy so when you see me use experts, just assume that I’m using air-quotes now) that:

Designated themselves as experts
Were told by some institution, and maybe got some piece of paper, saying that they’re experts
Or (and this is the most realistic option) are just basically full of shit.

I used to own a gym. I also was a member of gym business mentoring group. That group basically pumped us up full of crap all the time to make us think that we knew more than the other guy and to fake it until we make it. I was grinding all the time trying to tout myself as a self-professed expert in being fit, even though I was struggling with my own fitness and weight issues. I had more fun and was more happy when I was just a normal every day schmo who enjoyed working out with others and wanted to share that.

Well, that’s how my mindset has shifted now. I’m no longer the expert at anything. Wait, I take that back. I’m the expert at ONE thing and only ONE thing..and that thing is that I’m the expert in who I am and what I’ve experienced. That’s the only thing that nobody else knows besides me. The same goes for you. Nobody else knows you better than you.

All I’m going to do from now on is relate my own experiences and thoughts to others and explain that I’m by no means an expert in any way…but hopefully, any interaction I have with people on a personal or professional basis can be a win-win where we both benefit by learning from each other’s experiences. If one person’s experience doesn’t apply, just move on and find someone else who can relate to your situation better, and vice versa. Stop being so butthurt about people not wanting to listen to you because you think your opinion matters or even worse yet, your opinion is the way it’s supposed to be because you’ve called yourself an expert.

I really don’t know what the point of this post was to be, other than the fact to state that I honestly don’t know anything and I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life being an absolute sponge when it comes to soaking in other people’s thoughts and experiences. Sure, I’ll share mine along the way and if they want to soak it in, that’s great. If not, no big whoop!

Paralysis by Analysis

May 14, 2018

Have you ever had this? Where you have these lofty goals of doing something or starting a project or accomplishing something that you know needs to be done, but then….you just don’t do anything?

Whatever the reason or whatever you call it, it just sucks!

The big thing for me I think is a fear of failing at something. Take this blog for example…

I said to myself a couple months ago “hey, you know what would be cool? Starting a blog…”

And then nothing happened for a loooooong time.. No writing, no ideas…just fear.

Then I dedicated myself to starting a blog…starting.

Then more fear.

Then I said to myself, “Well, let’s read up on articles or watch videos on how to start one..”

And then more fear. I didn’t want to just dive right in and start doing anything because I guess the perfectionist in me wanted to make sure that I did it right the first time, instead of putting some shit posts out there and seeing that I shouldn’t be writing about this or that or whatever.

So a few more weeks went by..stalking bloggers’ youtube channels, listening to podcasts, hanging out on twitter and instagram…

And now I’m saying fuck it. I’m just going to do it and put my thoughts out there in haphazard order and if it sticks, then it sticks..if it doesn’t there’s always the delete button right?

So here goes..I’m done being a victim of “Paralysis by Analysis.” Because you can spell analysis without the word “anal” and I don’t want to be anal*…

*not sure where that came from, but that’s just the kind of sense of humor I have and I’m not going to edit it out! 🙂

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