Category: Introspection

How I Quit Vaping Nicotine

I have a confession…

For just over three months this year, I was addicted to nicotine vaping. This is a confession because I went through it mostly in silence and shame. I’m writing this to share what happened, why, and how I quit for good.

It started out as stress relief, an easy dopamine hit. I gave it a try during a particularly stressful period, and found I really liked the flavor of some of the more icy or mint-flavored vapes along with the rush of the nicotine. I wasn’t particularly worried about getting hooked in the beginning. Over the decades of being an adult, I’ve had pipes, cigars, the occasional cigarette, and had even tried chewing tobacco and snuff in my younger years. Nothing had ever stuck in terms of nicotine addiction.

Vaping this time felt much different. As I narrowed down my preferred flavors and vape manufacturers, week after week I found myself going to the store to get replacements. I went from buying one at a time to getting deals on two or three because I knew I’d go through them. My lungs took a hit, and I found myself struggling with stairs I take daily. Aside from the occasional hike, I did fewer physical activities, and like many addicts, the daily activities of my life like work and home life re-centered around when my next vape break would be.

All of this in under three months

I also went through it quietly, feeling shame for letting something like this grab hold of me, while at the same time enjoying the easy crutch the habit was affording me. I’ve previously joked I don’t get addicted to things easily (although with my late ADHD diagnosis I’ve learned my real addiction is to dopamine), but this one got me; hook, line, and sinker. I knew if I kept at the pace I was going, I was doing more damage to my body, and the lifestyle changes I was going through would take an additional compounded toll. I knew I needed to quit.

An opportunity to quit

About two months ago, I had a work trip to Toronto, Canada. Going into the trip, I didn’t plan in advance on using it to quit vaping, but the thought crossed my mind. Since I was flying internationally, I chose not to take any vapes with me on the flight, and looked up vape shops near my hotel, planning to go to one after my flight got in. The first night I got to Toronto, I looked up a place to eat, left the hotel planning to run by a vape shop and get dinner, but then just never went to a vape shop.

The beautiful thing about travel is it allows us to break from day to day life. A new environment can help break or establish habits. I pushed myself into my work plan for that week, and spent my off hours either at the gym, hot tub and pool, or exploring the west end of Toronto. Focusing on work those three days helped me push through the initial symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, along with taking some Aleve for the headaches.

Those three days were hard, but I was able to use work as a benefit. It turned out to be a successful trip in part because of quitting vaping that week.

As I prepared to go home, I thought about how to keep the momentum of the work trip when coming back to Portland. I thought about where I kept the various vapes in my car and at my desk, and what my plan should be if I really wanted to leverage the opportunity to quit. I read about the after effects of vaping beyond the initial nicotine withdrawal – articles were saying more withdrawal symptoms would occur over the next several weeks. Thinking the initial nicotine withdrawal symptoms would be the worst of it, I decided to go ahead with quitting.

Coming home quitting

When I got back to Portland, I purged everything related to vaping. Before I left the airport, I threw away the vapes stashed in my car. When I got home, I trashed the vapes and nicotine in my room and took the trash out immediately. I set myself up for success by getting rid of everything easily accessible. I shared with those close to me I quit. I couple of people didn’t even know I had started it – I had hidden the habit from general knowledge. Then, I settled in for the long haul of quitting.

Although the physical withdrawal symptoms from nicotine last about three days or so, I had stronger withdrawals and cravings for over three weeks from quitting. Working at my desk at home or my office are where the cravings would hit the most. The urge to get up for a vape break or get a quick dopamine hit from the vape was there for weeks. Driving past some of the shops I used to get vapes from was another challenge. About week three, I was even feeling the taste of it in my throat and lungs during normal day to day activities. These symptoms around week three were worse than the initial symptoms I went through on days two and three!

I have never experienced any similar effects from any other substance in my life. Not alcohol, not cannabis, not giving up meat when I was a vegetarian, nor from any other drug or activity. Quitting nicotine vaping, even though I was only doing it for three months or so, has been the most difficult thing to quit I’ve ever been through in my life.

At one point, I thought about alternatives. On one trip to Target the second week I looked at the nicotine gums and patches. I worried that since I was past the initial physical effects, they wouldn’t really be a fix for the cravings I was going through at week two, and that they’d just be something that would kick off the addiction again. I chose not to use any of those products, and it turned out to be the right choice for me.

Transitioning to long term abstinence

Toward the end of week three, the cravings finally eased up. I’m at the start of week 7 now, and I’m happy to report they’re mostly gone. I’m feeling a lot better. I picked up strength training again a few weeks ago, hike and take walks regularly, and the stairs I go up daily are easy again. My lungs and throat are back to what feel normal, and the other effects I was experiencing while vaping are gone. Thankfully, I also managed to lose weight while quitting, which is another challenge people usually face when dropping nicotine.

Final thoughts

I didn’t plan ahead quitting cold turkey, but it turned out to be the right way for me. I do not want to imagine the toll vaping would have taken had I kept at it long term. This was just over three months. If you’re caught up in this and need to quit, if you’re able, start with a trip for the first three or four days at least. Get out of the usual day to day, let yourself go through those initial symptoms, and have plenty of activities around for distractions through the physical nicotine withdrawals.

Vaping nicotine didn’t add anything to my life, and had started to take a lot more. I’m not going to get into the politics of if it should be legal or not, but I can say from my own experience and opinion, it is the worst habit I have ever started. If you can get on without it, it’s best to quit and better to never start it at all. Best wishes to anyone struggling with it now.

On Juneteenth

Today is Juneteenth. Several people who aren’t Black Americans descended from slaves have asked me to how to celebrate Juneteenth, and I haven’t really had a good answer for them. I know many will tell me it’s not my place to do this labor for them. Yet, as I get older, I see fewer people like me willing to do so. If we don’t share our stories and perspective with others, no one else will, so I’ll take a swing at this. Bear in mind, this is my perspective. I’m not writing this in a stone tablet for you, it’s just a suggestion.

To me, Juneteenth is a holiday where we as Black Americans descended from slaves gather to recognize where we come from and celebrate each other, our lives, our stories, and what we have done with the freedoms we have won and continue to fight for.

Even writing about Juneteenth in today’s culture is loaded with weight from media intended to obscure truth and actively fight against empathy. Empathy doesn’t mean you have to feel guilt over things you didn’t do. It just means you can feel compassion for people experiencing something you don’t. When I look at things like the so-called war on woke, I see it really as a war on empathy.

Woke is a term I first heard in the 90s, and I didn’t understand it at first. I was raised in a predominantly white area. My family largely assimilated, at least in public, to what we consider attributes of whiteness as a matter of survival. Woke was not something said in my family home. In public schools, we didn’t talk about historical redlining. We didn’t talk about current racially discriminatory education funding, voting districts or any number of the issues regarding racial inequality that were currently happening. We talked about it like it was a thing of some long bygone past. Moreover, in my school, we didn’t really talk about Africa. In World Geography we simply didn’t cover it because “we ran out of time”. We didn’t talk about things to the point we could not recognize the continued institutional racism we were still experiencing. It was only when I stepped out of that bubble, gained other perspectives, and learned more about history from more truthful sources, did I learn about the true history and current state of racism.

I struggle to think about how anyone can celebrate the freedom of another without empathy, without the basic ability to place yourself in the life and perspective of another. I’m not saying you have to be Woke to get there, but it starts with empathy. You have to be open to see the world through the perspective of another.

I was raised in a rural mostly white community in southwestern Virginia. The family who raised me was black, but we had taken on so much to assimilate into white culture as a matter of survival the things I learned at school weren’t really questioned. My family didn’t spend a lot of time talking about redlining. We didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the massive institutional forces that we had struggled against. Instead, we just did the things that we had to do to make ends meet, and my grandfather was particularly good at this.

My grandfather was charismatic, wise, not necessarily book smart – he had an eighth grade education from a segregated school – but he was a lifelong learner. He read the newspaper every day and moreover he talked to people. Through my grandfather’s lifetime he experienced violence, but he also moved the needle for our family. My uncle was the first black baby born on a regular floor in our hospital and not in the basement. My grandfather owned land and houses, and rented those houses out to others. He valued education, and put my uncle and my mom through college and got my aunt started on her life. Then my grandfather helped raise me in a world that had vastly changed from the one he grew up in.

It’s hard for me to talk about Juneteenth without thinking about my grandfather because he also hosted parties at our home for the black community as reunions for the old segregated school that he, my uncle, and my mother attended. Those celebrations usually lined up with Juneteenth. When I was growing up we didn’t celebrate Juneteenth for the sake of being Juneteenth, we gathered together as a community to celebrate each other, the successes that we were finding, and our ability to get educated to move the needle for the next generation.

There also wasn’t a commercial aspect of Juneteenth, there’s not a Santa June who’s going to come around and give your kids presents. We didn’t have the recognition with vacation time, or corporate ads, or special Juneteenth colorways of stuff to buy. It was just the gathering of family and community.

This weekend in my hometown in rural Virginia, someone of my generation pulled together a black community reunion like we had when we were kids. My mother, my uncle, and my aunt attended, took pictures, and saw people they hadn’t seen in years. They shared those pictures and stories with us through social media. Living across the country now, I missed it, and I’m sad I did, because to me Juneteenth is that celebration of community, of gathering to recognize where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going. I really want to give a shout out to my old friend Greg who planned that. That is the best way to celebrate Juneteenth, and I don’t know how to share any of that with people who haven’t experienced it quite the way we do in the black community, aside from suggesting that if you’re invited, show up with humility, empathy, and curiosity.

I also talked to my six year old son about Juneteenth for the first time in a way that he could potentially begin to understand his connection to it. We watched a very kid friendly video on Juneteenth and slavery on YouTube. We talked about what a slave was, what they did, and a little of what their lives were like. Then I worked my way up our family tree through my mother’s line with stories, back to my great great grandparents who were slaves – and one slave owner. Being a six year old, he took it in with the aloofness of a child who doesn’t completely understand the severity and complexity of the world. I reflect on that both as a blessing, but also as a first step. As he grows older, as he learns more, as his own ignorance slips away, he will eventually become an adult who has to reason, who has to think about the consequences of his actions, and who has to try and be a good, compassionate, empathetic human being in the world. So today was step one for my son and understanding Juneteenth.

I would say if you want to work to recognize and celebrate Juneteenth, and have no other way, start at my son’s step one. Watch a video on YouTube, read a book, talk to a friend, do something to educate yourself and remove a little bit of ignorance about it from your mind. Reach for empathy and spend some time with it. If you can’t make the cookout, or even if you do, it can’t hurt.

When I get quiet…

This blog is about personal reflections and whatever I feel writing publicly about in the moment. It’s not about personal growth. It’s not about politics. It’s not about building a brand, personal or professional. So there are times I have nothing to say here.

It doesn’t mean I’m silent. It means I’m working on something, most often several things.

A couple of months ago, a partner and I broke up. I did it in a horrible way, and I said things in the process I regret. I don’t say that lightly, because I don’t regret things very often. Usually there is something to learn or take from an experience, but everything I could have learned from it I knew going through it. I just didn’t do better, to my own expectations or any reasonably kind vision of how a breakup should go. So that’s regret.

Part of the last couple of months have been spent processing it, grieving it, and thinking about how I can do better in the future. Apologies, even immediately offered, don’t reconcile pain already caused from cruel things said meant to hurt in the moment. We deserved a better ending than the one I gave us.

The rest of life has come together well in Portland. I have a solid social circle forming. I’m in a regular DnD group. Partnering with others, I’m starting a Druidry seed group. I’m in the hiring process with a couple of different professional opportunities, and hope to have something to announce soon. My son has lost his first tooth, and he’s doing well in school. I’ve explored, hiked, read books, completed another journal, and still doing some other writing as well, thinking about my book project and if I want to pivot it to another format. I’ve written more poetry I need to organize, and heaven help me, maybe get a little more serious about it.

As summer turned to fall, and fall has already begun shifting to winter, I’ve updated my wardrobe for the first time in years with warmer clothes. No more California winters in shorts.

We made it through the election season, all kinds of other turmoil, and I closed my twitter account like many others.

I was worried about moving here, nervous about meeting people and starting a new life. I’m glad I did.

Pronouns Are Basic Respect, Not Political Correctness

My mother took a job as a patient’s rights advocate at a mental health facility when I was about 20 years old. It was an old facility, up on the hill over downtown next to the state prison. The pair were largely what our small town in the hills of southwestern Virginia was known for.

She had been a social worker and a drug prevention counselor most of my life. I had spent time in her offices growing up, and was always aware of what kind of work she was doing and why. My mother shared that part of her life with me. So when she took this new job, I asked her what she would be doing.

“It’s my job to be sure people are treated the way they deserve to be treated. If they want to be called Jesus, people should call them Jesus. There are other rights they have, and I help ensure staff comply with them.”

I thought about that a while. Throughout school, we learn everyone’s name from their name tag or how they’re registered. We take for granted the name they give us is the name they wish to be called by, and generally do it with no issue. What if someone wanted to be called by a different name?

I had done the same myself my first two years of college. Growing up, I went by Alex, because that’s what my mother and family called me. In middle school, the name Alex Cox slowed down by the local southern draw became a mocking homophobic slur. So when I started college, I tried out my first name, Lawrence, with others to see how I felt about it. Although people were happy to call me Lawrence, it never felt right to me, so slurs be damned, I switched back to Alex when I transferred to university, and have been Alex since.

It was relatable that someone in a mental health facility might want to be called a different name for reasons apart from a psychological diagnosis. Even if it’s an aspect of their condition, it’s still their right to choose their own name. Everyone deserves to be called whatever they wish to be known by. It’s basic human respect, as well as great manners, to acknowledge another’s identity in the way they choose to present it.

As time passed and discussions of chosen gender pronouns became a more common topic, I realized it was a matter of what I had already learned and experienced. Gender is alongside our names in terms of our identity and presentation. It’s a matter of that same respect to call someone by their appropriate gender and pronouns as much as it is their name. That someone may choose either, and find offense when others don’t acknowledge their chosen name or gender, is natural.

Using incorrect pronouns, dead-naming (calling a transgender person by their former name), or misgendering someone intentionally is rude, disrespectful, and has no place in well-mannered discussion. It has nothing to do with how one may feel about gender issues and deserves any offense taken by others. Even when done unintentionally, over time, it betrays an inflexible mind which cannot adapt to new conditions.

It is easy to show good manners and respect by calling someone by their offered name and pronouns. It is simple acknowledgement of another’s chosen identity, as you would want others to acknowledge and respect your own.

Letting go of the material…

My time off work is in its fifth month.

I couldn’t have imagined taking time off like this before. It has been a journey, and often I lack credit to myself for the things I have learned and the shift in mindset I have made.

As we turn our thoughts to leaving, we have yet to start getting rid of things. We are packed in a house surrounded with artifacts and relics of the lives we lived before our son, in his early years, and the years of the pandemic. Among the piles of our past selves we have been cocooned, gestating on our next form, the next life, and the things which we may take with us to build our next nest.

Most of this stuff is going to go. Most of it has no purpose or point aside from gathering dust. I have watches for a wrist which rarely wears one. I have out of date computers and tech from a time when I needed many, or at least thought I did in service to my career. There are trinkets and tchotchkes and a weird tea set which is pretty cool but not anything I will ever use again. There is more alcohol than we can drink, more clothes than we can wear, and more toys than we can ever play with.

Our home is a stockpile of abundance, but that wasn’t what has made us happy. We have been happy when we have had a clear sense of enough. What is the least we need at this moment, in this day? A steady and secure home to live in. Food to eat. A book or two to read. A few personal things which serve often enough to have their own daily place.

What point is there in holding onto clothes we don’t wear, games we don’t play, computers we don’t use, devices long out of date, books we don’t read, dishes we don’t eat from, and countless other things packed in boxes we haven’t opened in years? None of these add to our happiness. With too much, they add to our stress and cost of living.

This isn’t an essay on minimalism. I’m not a minimalist, and I don’t think I could ever be by choice. There is a practical matter of how much stuff you have, especially when you’re about to move. There is a mental aspect of how much you’re keeping track of on your own mental ledger of assets. Those things tucked away in the storage closet downstairs are holding onto some neurons you may require for other things.

While I don’t know what our future life will look like, I know enough about it, and me, to know I won’t need as much. We can start the work of setting ourselves up for that by clearing out some of this old stuff now.

The value of things…

I’ve never really been a great capitalist.

When I was younger, people would say things like “you don’t know the value of a dollar” or “you don’t know what it’s like to have to work for money” like it was a faulting of privilege or an impairment for having never been starving. As I got older, as life happened, I was fortunate to never starve, but there have been times I’ve been hungry.

Looking back at this now, my mindset with money comes from more from neurodivergence than any kind of privilege or poverty. I know what a dollar can get me, and I know the numbers in my accounts have real world meaning, it’s just these things are all abstractions until they aren’t. To make them real, I ascribe my own value to them, usually based on return on investment of dopamine. How much for this level of happy?

Over time, as I made more money, this made to larger and larger amounts for larger and larger pools of dopamine. I went through hobbies, places, and people, chasing after higher highs, not putting as much in long term investment. Where’s the dopamine hit in a savings bond?

I think there is something to be said for life experiences. I know I have a ton of them now I wouldn’t have had, and some of those influenced personal growth, inspiration, and creativity. I hope to make some money with that at some point, and maybe that’s the real long term investment.

The thing is, life experiences, dopamine, and long term financial stability are all on this flat plane for me. I know things must be done for all of them, but prioritizing any one of them for too long is hard. So, I have to think about all three… or at least, that’s what I’ve been doing.

Now that I’m aware of it, I know that awareness will drive its own change in priorities for me. I perceive it as a risk, and even a flaw, that I don’t always prioritize long term financial security. Why start a business when I can work for a perfectly decent one for a while? Why monetize something I’m doing when I’m just doing it for the joy (read: Dopamine) ?

It’s another step in unpacking my midlife ADHD diagnosis.

I’m in month three of my break from work. I’m not hurting, but I’m starting to feel the ding of finances at my door. My lease is coming up, I know I need to make a final decision about relocating. I know I’ll need to have some proof of income when I do, or at least I think I will… I worked for so long I don’t know how people get established without a job. The thought has never crossed my mind, but I’m sure any freelancer or contract worker who had to relocate in uncertain times has run into this problem.

So it may stand that I’ll need to look for a job or some sort of income not for need of money, but for need of establishment. Legitimacy. It’s not a thrilling concept for me.

Looking back at my time at Apple, it was a revolving dopamine machine for me. Crazy fires at work fed the dopamine. I’d get rewarded in more crazy things and more pay. The more pay on paper wouldn’t have meaning to me, but the dopamine that would get me did. It was a cycle until ironically, the crazy things at work shifted from problems I could solve to something I couldn’t – a reduction in stimulation. I was half shelved and bored.

Many people look at my career at Apple and see someone with drive and ambition, when I was just chasing the next level of dopamine. The more chaotic it got, the more I loved it and the more I gave into it. While on one hand this makes me wonder if I should do startup work, I also don’t think that’s healthy. There should be some dopamine in day to day work, but not chasing the fires like I did before. I’ve learned that’s not healthy, even for me.

I realize I haven’t written at all about my time at Facebook. From a work perspective, it was a positive, healthy time. I don’t have anything bad to say about my personal experience or my team there, from hiring to leaving. Most of what I have to say about that company is about its products, upper leadership, and social impact, all of which I may or may not write about in the future.

So the value of things for me historically has been driven by the dopamine. I’m an addict. It’s why I never got hooked on cigarettes, drugs, or other stuff. I’m already hooked on my own good-good juice and it’s just a means of optimizing the delivery system.

Thankfully, I have healthy things that ground me with this. I have positive relationships, I have time and ability to meditate and have a spiritual practice, and I have learned developing skills and talents have long term rewards. I have benefited from the experience of building a life or three and doing it well.

Recently I read a phrase in the book Polysecure which talked about people going through major life events associated with sexual or spiritual discovery as having a crisis of deconstruction. That term has rolled around in my mind the last few days. Have I been going through a crisis of deconstruction the last several years? It would seem so, given the work I’ve done and progress I’ve made. I’ve deconstructed close to everything.

If so, when does reconstruction begin? Has it already started? Was rebirth begun during the death? I have this feeling of being near wholly empty, yet having already come so far. While in this time of quietness, I feel the fires of creation most, worried if I’ll hold my form or be scorched away in the process. Depending on the metal, there can be a thin line between malleable and melting. Which am I right now?

So I’m not a good capitalist because I don’t do things for money. At best, money is an awesome byproduct, but I’m motivated by challenge and action than by even getting something which can get me more dopamine. More and more, I want to do things that leave a positive impact on the planet and people. I was challenged with that at Facebook, and moreso when it became Meta, which is a whole other story.

I also don’t like that others have to do things for money, and that it has to be a predominant thought on most people’s minds. There is abundance for all when our focus isn’t on material or monetary wealth. There’s no reason we should have people going bankrupt for medical bills, or not be able to afford a home somewhere near where they would like to live or work.

The rent is too damn high because our policies encourage hoarding and capital investment. They don’t encourage the working class to buy and own their homes long term, and by that I mean multi-generational. Think about it.

John goes to work at a factory and takes a job earning just enough to qualify for a 30 year mortgage. On his income (laughably), he can support his nuclear family to buy exactly one home, own two cars, and ostensibly put one child through college. He has a pension at work and when he retires, his home is paid for, his child is through college, and he has the pension and some savings along with social security.

This laughably idyllic scenario sounds like a win, but then things fall apart.

The pension fails from corruption and bad investment, or maybe a corporate board takes it away. John didn’t plan for social security to cover it alone, so takes another hit. Along comes a reverse mortgage company, and John sells his house back to the bank in payments that favor the bank.

When John dies, he has no savings, no assets, and his house is back at the bank. His kid never realizes the wealth from the house, and never builds on it.

The only winner here is the bank, who got John coming and going. Banks don’t profit from long term, multi-generational home ownership. They profit from new mortgages and new investment. We talk about numbers of home ownership in the country as a benchmark, but really we’re talking about the number of mortgage agreements. Move to the next place! Buy a new home! Bigger! Better! Modern!

We’re at the point where anyone who isn’t in on this ponzi scheme is a victim of it. The multi-home investor, individual or corporate, is the single greatest challenge to affordable home ownership. This self-assured, if-I-can-do-it-you-can-too upper middle class and above is when capitalism goes from stock abstractions to the real deal – they own something of value which will yield earnings. They’re your landlord, your Airbnb superhost, or maybe even your parents. They’re the ones the system has worked out for, and really, the minimum line requirement for long term financial success now.

So this is why I’m a bad capitalist.

I know that line for minimum financial success. Two mortgages, one you live in, one a rental property. I’ve seen that line for about ten years now. I’ve had access to get in that line for at least five years. Yet, I haven’t. I’ve had no interest in doing it. Part of it is because there’s no dopamine in it for me, the other is I want to prove it’s possible without working that formula. Spite. Yay for self-awareness.

What I want increasingly now is a way to change the game. I hate that game. It’s not that I’m not competitive, it’s that it’s loaded, and it’s loaded against regular people who fall victim to it at no fault of their own. It’s what’s driving our growing homelessness. It’s what is driving rising income inequality.

I’m a bad capitalist because I see the game, but I don’t want to participate in it.

Maybe this is where the crypto bros’s pitch comes in. Maybe that strain is what appeals to people who dive into crypto. The thing about crypto is as currency it’s another media for the same style of economy. There’s some cool tech there, and I’m sure there are more interesting things to do with it than pump and dump schemes, long or short term.

I think we need a new vision. I don’t want to be a landlord. I don’t want to run an airbnb. Yet that is where the economy drives us.

I’m open to ideas and thoughts in comments. Keep ’em respectful, please.

Why I Left Apple Two Years Ago

A couple of nights ago I had a dream about working in Apple Retail again. It was a good time in my life. I enjoyed it, made great friends, and it was the start of my tech career. Yet the dream was horrendous. I was back at the same place I started in 2007, and none of the years between really mattered.

Dreams can help us process things we’re holding on to. They can let us know where our pain is, where we need to let go, and where we need to heal.

The last two days reflecting on the dream, I realized my fear related to it was that I haven’t moved on. I haven’t grown. I haven’t lived and experienced anything of value since my time in Retail.

Then I realized that’s the way the last HR Director at Apple made me feel before I quit. In our last conversation, following months of discussions about concerns I had, he diminished my years of work helping build Apple’s infrastructure and services. He made me feel like I wasn’t part of the culture I helped build. He made me feel like I didn’t belong in a place I had worked hard to be in, growing into with skills, knowledge, and experience. He made me feel like, in his words, I was “back in Retail”, as if it were an insult I was ever there.

I’ve been angry with him, but more angry with myself for letting it happen. It’s easy to say you shouldn’t let yourself be influenced by others, or let the words people say hurt you, especially enough to change your life. Yet, what he said that day hurt, because it touched vulnerabilities I had carried for years despite my incredible career, success, and professional growth.

Then I left.

He didn’t make that decision for me. I did. I could have stayed. I could have escalated. I possibly could have fought and sued. I could have sit down, shut up, and kept cashing the checks. Instead, I quit and went elsewhere, leaving behind the work I had done, the team I had built, and people I enjoyed working with (most of them, anyway).

Being honest with myself about this, and forgiving myself for it, is the hard part that has taken time to reach.

The flip side is I needed personal growth. I needed to explore emotions, art, poetry, spirituality, and creativity. I also needed therapy. I needed to heal from long experienced PTSD. I needed to be diagnosed with ADHD and unpack it. I needed to work in a more positive culture and on a different team. None of this happened the twelve years I was at Apple, and there are few signs it would have if I had stayed.

Finally, I needed to take some intentional time off, which I was able to begin three months ago. That time off is how I got to today, where I can sit, write this, and be honest with myself and you about what happened.

I’m sorry to the team and people I left at Apple unexpectedly, and without any guidance about the problems I had navigated there before leaving. I’m sorry most to myself for not taking the time during my career to explore and address the issues I had, so my personal growth could match my professional life.

As for the HR Director, whether he’s current or former, I have mixed feelings about him. I hope he has never said anything to others like what he said to me, even though leaving Apple has worked out for me. Those at Apple who come from Retail do not deserve to be treated like a different class, or unworthy of being in roles they’ve earned, especially since demographics from Retail also intersect with greater diversity, culture, and economic backgrounds. There’s an issue there, not just with him, and I hope Apple works to address it.

I have more time off ahead. I’m writing a book, along with a few other personal projects. I’m relocating. I’m enjoying art, poetry, people, and places. I’m also figuring out what a return to work will look like. I don’t think it will be like before. It may not even be in tech.

Whatever it is, it will be something I can put my heart, spirit, and mind into, and magical things happen when those are in alignment.

Tell Me, Don’t Show Me?

Today I learned something new about myself from watching my son.

We were at the playground, and he wanted to swing. This playground had the flexible seat swings instead of the firm plastic ones. No biggie, I thought. I figured he would get on it himself just fine.

I watch my son. Sometimes he would grab on the chains but not move back into the seat. Sometimes he would move back into the seat but not grab the chains. I tried telling him how to do it, but he’s not there with it.

So I decide to show my son how to get on the swing. I move to the swing next to him, grab the chains, and line up my butt to move back into the seat. I ask him to watch how I do it.

“No” he replied, refusing to even look my way.

“Just take a moment and watch” I plead, getting frustrated by his refusal to do something so simple as to be shown.

“No, Daddy, I don’t want to.” he said firmly.

Why would he refuse to even watch? Why would he refuse help while he stands there and struggles with what he wants to do?

I thought about this as a strange behavior at first. It defied initial reason, so I started to consider it from his perspective.

That’s when I mentally tripped right on myself. I do this behavior. Even if he didn’t learn it from me, it’s definitely something I do as well:

I prefer to be told rather than shown how to do something.

This inverts expectations about teaching and learning for me.

Initially, I thought not wanting to be shown how to do things was about my own ego. Sometimes I feel so capable of understanding what someone is saying clearly, I think I shouldn’t need any other input for understanding. Sometimes if someone starts with showing me how to do something, my ego is hurt because they think me insufficiently capable of understanding them.

Another, more positive and likely perspective, is I am primarily an aural or verbal learner than a visual learner. It makes sense with how I absorb books and audiobooks, yet have a difficult time engaging with video content. I process my thoughts as words, which is great for writing and the spoken word, but less ideal for visual presentation.

Somewhere along the path, probably as I was taught how to instruct to adult learners and had to lean into visual presentations, demonstrations, and a new default of showing, not telling. These are assumptions often made about adult learners who have not been in formal education for some time. It’s also the wrong way to instruct me, and appears now to be the wrong way to instruct my son.

In either case, I am the mistaken one, and I am getting in my own way of effective learning, understanding, and even teaching to some audiences. Rather than get frustrated by people wanting to show me how to do something, I should be communicating my needs on how best to teach me, and be mindful of it when it’s time for me to instruct others.

I’m going to give my son a break and try to do as much as I can by telling him. That’s how he’s preferring to learn right now, and it will probably be better for us to use our most common forms of communication as we learn more about each other together.

Why Do I Keep Getting Back Up?

My confidence comes from learning my greatest ability is the capacity to change. To improve. To learn. To be a better version of me.

I recently read an article with an in comic explanation of why three different heroes keep getting back up – Iron Man, Captain America, and Captain Marvel. The article goes on to analyze why each get back up when knocked down. Iron Man gets back up because he believes in the future. Captain America gets back up because it’s the right thing to do because of his morals. Captain Marvel, though feeling weary of it, gets back up because she’s stubborn.

It made me think about my life, the times I’ve gotten back up, the time I said I only had one last time in me, and even now today, why I keep getting back up. 

I’ve come a long way from where I started out. Some would say I’m fortunate, and I can’t deny there are a lot of things in my life that have looked fortunate from the outside. There is truth and privilege in that. I went through times when I would ask myself why I would be worthy of luck or opportunity while others weren’t. I went through times when I felt misfortune for having persistent health issues, weight management problems, or just being me. The reality is, most of the positive, good things which have happened in my life have happened because I was on my feet and ready for them. I had planted seeds, or been the right person in the right time and place, or I saw something interesting and chased after it. 

I’ve also failed. I’ve felt miserable. I’ve been defeated and broken. So far, thankfully, for each of those times, it wasn’t long before I got back up and into something else. Even now, in the midst of recovery from the initial part of the pandemic, and recovering from leaving my career at Apple, a company I loved, bled, and sacrificed unrelentlessly to for 12 years, I have gotten back up and I’m healing again. This isn’t my worst fall. This wasn’t the one where I said to myself “I got one last one in me”.

This was the one where I’m said “this is part of life, and I may fall again, but this time I’m preparing myself to keep getting back up”. 

Why? 

I believe in the adventure of life. I believe that everything we experience is an opportunity to grow and become the next version of ourselves. I believe in the power of change and transformation. I believe as we pick up and carry ourselves into the new, we bring along the tools and lessons from the past to help carry on in new ways into the new present. Ultimately, and this is with some measure of self-awareness at the amount of confidence it takes to say this, I believe in myself. I believe in my ability to discover and refine the life I want to live, and each version of me, the people around me, and the life I’m living comes a little bit closer to a more authentic, natural, life for me. 

I think this is nuanced from belief in the future, belief in morality, or stubbornly getting back up in spite of the universe. Granted, spite is a huge motivator for me. I know it well, and of the three, I empathize with Captain Marvel the most. The number of people, especially early on, who would have rather seen me not get back up felt staggering. 

My confidence comes from learning my greatest ability is the capacity to change. To improve. To learn. To be a better version of me. It comes from hope that the path I’m on is the right one, and acceptance that even if it isn’t, I can find it again. As I draw closer to being on the outside who I am inside, it gets easier to find fulfillment and deeper happiness.

I’m in uncharted territory now, and have been for the last several years. I’m separated from my birth family who lives along the east coast. I’m seeking out different things than I have in previous iterations of myself. I’ve had heart surgery to correct the major health issue I had the first half of my life, and while I live in the city, I seek out the natural world I was surrounded by but ignored in childhood. I’m a relatively new father, and learning to balance who I am with fatherhood has its own challenges and worries. I’ve become a leader of a small community. There are so many ways my life has changed the last few years, yet I know more are on the way. 

I keep getting back up because I believe in myself. I believe in my story. I believe I am living an incredible adventure. The only way all of that ends is if I stop, so I’m not going to. I will keep getting up. I will keep finding new ways and new paths to follow. I will keep failing and learning. I will keep being optimistic for the things I can do, people I will meet, and life I may live, because I can keep growing to do amazing, incredible things. 

Why do you keep getting back up?

Fixing divisions

Today is my 44th birthday.

Hearing the sound of my 4 year old singing Happy Birthday first thing in the morning is one of the blessings I’m happy I’ve lived to receive. There are many others the last few years particularly I’ve been blessed with. Travel. People. Given the circumstances, even survival.

This year I lost my father, although really it was last year because of politics and disagreement. The things that tend to divide people right now are important yet dumb things to be divided about. Common ground is found easily enough when you stop a moment. Most of us want a peaceful life, a warm home, a full belly, and to be surrounded by others important to us. We get lost in the details of how we get there, and how much we acknowledge and ascribe these same concepts to others.

Don’t get me wrong, my views and my politics are still there. I got opinions. Lots of them. I think there is space to have them while acknowledging commonality. That’s the only way we find our way to some sort of harmony.

It’s easy to point fingers at another person or group. “We could live good lives if not for those people over there.” “Why can’t those people stop doing whatever shit they’re doing that is pissing us off?” Barring active harm to others, that’s what most of this squaring off is about, manufactured by others still to further division, discord, or maybe just to get views.

Our world, our media, our platforms and services and ways we share haven’t been working for us. Not in ways that bring us together. I know the irony and even hypocrisy in me writing this, as I’ve had my own part, and carry my own culpability in where we are now.

A few months ago I started trying something different. I stopped the direct confrontation about views. I stopped posting out of anger and frustration. I stopped showing anger or contempt online for whatever my feed or my news sources had been showing me that day.

I started engaging people without judgement of them. In discussions, I started just stating where I stood without frustration with others. I started treating others with a little more space and care for where they are, because another thing we all have in common is we’re all tired and frustrated and angry and sad and confused, and just trying to figure out the best way to get through this life with the people we love.

It doesn’t stop the anger. It doesn’t stop the discord. It doesn’t change the daily messages coming in that the world isn’t going the way we want it to.

Giving people more space does change our conversations. It changes the way we connect with people. It changes the burden we carry of people we alienate or feeling of otherness from saying “things would be fine if not for those people over there”. We don’t have to share opinions to talk about them. We don’t have to be on the same side of the political, economic, social, religious, or ethnic view to get along with each other. We only need to recognize our common humanity, dignity, and needs. That’s universal. We can all still be heard. We can all still be listened to. We can’t expect it to start with our leaders, or the media, or our apps or platforms or employers or anyone else but ourselves, and how we conduct our own lives.

I started. I’ve given it a shot. I’ve still talked about my opinions. I’ve still listened to others who have disagreed. I still get angry and frustrated and upset, but I’m walking away from more conversations feeling better about how they go, and feeling we actually listened to each other a little better than before. 

If I had learned this lesson a few months earlier, my father may not have died alone in a hospital room in Philadelphia with us never reconciling. So if I can use this pain, this weight, this thing I’m carrying from that for any good, it’s to encourage any of you or all of you who have read this far to start thinking about how you defy the messages of division from wherever you are, stop saying “but for them” and figure out how you can start changing the conversations around you. Wars have been fought for the worst of reasons. The worst reason is to fight one when ultimately you want the same thing.

It’s hard to change what you’re doing, to look at the same thing one day differently than you did the day before, the week before, or the 43 years before. I’m not asking you to change what you believe, or think, or watch, or identify with… I’m asking you to consider how you move through the world. This wild west of a hyperconnected, brain bending, propaganda laden, fake news, talking heads world that we’re all having trouble navigating. 

If you’re struggling with this, if you’re reading this and you’re feeling hesitant, blocked, challenged, or some other kind of way about it, let’s talk. Even if we haven’t in a while. Even if the last time we did it didn’t go so well. Even if I called so-and-so a something or you just can’t see why this is even a thing to begin with. It’s ok. Things change two people at a time. 

With peace, balance, and harmony;

Alex

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