Alive!
So today I’d like to plug something for my daughter because, hey, what are fathers for if not to pimp out good causes on their daughters’ behalf? The Alive campaign just happens to also be something I feel strongly about: suicide prevention.
There’s a Facebook group you can sign up to, and I hope you will. I don’t generally send out mass invitations on Facebook. And I don’t usually add applications, by the way, either. I appreciate everyone thinking of me and sending me invites, but I just don’t add them. I’m thinking seriously about Scrabulous, though.
There’s also a blog for the Alive campaign. Check it out.
At any rate, here’s the information about the Alive campaign:
We sat looking at each other with blank stares; we couldn’t believe what we were hearing. Our best friend, venting his heart out, telling us how the night before he but a plastic bag over his head, grabbed zip ties, and tried to suffocate himself; hoping that he could end it all. With our dinner losing its taste we sat there trying to reason with him. The same clichés that I think people crying out would hear, “you have so much to live for”, “you’re lucky to have friends that care about you”, but none of it seemed to work. We told him to get help but he refused saying “Life is pointless anyway, why can’t a person die if he wants to?” We looked at each other, with our hearts beating in our chests, life pulsing in our veins, wanting to give him the same feeling purpose.
It all started as a joke, I don’t know who said it first but in order to lighten up the mood one of us said, “You know if you’re going to kill yourself you might as well do something crazy.” “Why don’t you go to Colombia and burn down the drug fields, I mean the drug cartel will kill you anyways, so at least you can do something good for mankind.” Our friend smiled a bit, but shook his head “That’s not realistic.” We looked at each other, and the guy across from me said “Well I mean you should stop by the dean’s office and fill up a giant water balloon and throw it at him, you would be the hero of the school.” He laughed again, but again he said, “That’s not realistic”. Then I said, “Why isn’t it? If you aren’t afraid of death the world is open for you to do anything you want.” I looked at my friends and I looked at him, his eyes looking down at his food. For the first time, it all became real.
We are the richest country in the world, but we sit alone at night wanting something more. We are lonely with our riches, following the American Dream. Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, and repeat. The illusion that our lives have limits causes our massive dependency on drugs, on materialism, and on temporary lusts. We are a society with nothing new to give. We weren’t meant to live a life of routine. This trek, this adventure to Alaska is to prove that humans don’t have limits. You can do anything you set your mind to. Who says you need to go to college to be happy, who made it the law that you need to be rich. Our friend told us that he had nothing to live for, so we gave him something to live for. Sometimes that means grabbing a bike and going to Alaska. So keep us in your prayers, and be ALIVE.
MISSION: The mission of Alive Campaign is to promote awareness for suicide prevention and depression through progressive ideas and actions; to include charity, educating the public, and combining both national and international resources in a unified effort to prevent suicide. Finally to open a forum and build a community on which discussion can occur on the issues of suicide and depression.
In my own life, I can tell you that I’ve hit some extremely low points. In fact 13 years ago, I attempted suicide. Pills. I was depressed about every facet of my life…work, girlfriend broke up with me, I wasn’t being a very good father, I didn’t have God in my life. Life sucked. Hard. I sat down one night in my living room, crying, and poured out a bunch of antidepressants onto the table. The only light in the room was a lit candle. And I took all of those pills, handful after handful, drinking them down with beer.
And I cried more than I’ve ever cried, I think. I just wanted so much for life to be finished. I couldn’t take any more. Within two minutes, though, (and they were long-ass minutes) I thought about what I’d be doing to my daughters. Nobody else entered my mind but them. How fucked up would it be to do that to them? I’d hurt them enough already by being so absent. But killing myself? Unforgivable.
So I went to the bathroom and puked up all those pills. Didn’t go to the hospital. Didn’t call anyone. I didn’t have anyone to call, anyway. Nobody gave a damn about me (so I thought). I just went to bed, crying myself to sleep. And the next morning I woke up and went back to work, like nothing had happened. Just going through the motions of life…work my ass off, come home and crash, wake up, eat, watch TV, crash again. It was an awful period.
I’m really thrilled that Alyson is taking part in this campaign that four of her buddies at school started. They’re going to film a documentary as they bike from Waco, Texas to Anchorage, Alaska in two months. Along the way they’ll stop and talk to people, give lectures at schools and churches, all in the name of showing people what there is to LIVE for.
There are t-shirts available and Ford has graciously given them a van to use for the trip. But what they still need, aside from people spreading the word, is donations for gas and especially for the high-definition tapes they need to film. You can donate money to them using a mailing address on the site (the Google checkout thing doesn’t work) and you can also sponsor a mile of their journey, which starts this coming Thursday at 10am.
If you sponsor a mile (only $1, what a bargain!) they’ll put your name in the credits of the documentary! How cool is that? Even better, you can sponsor 5 miles or 10, or whatever you can help out with.
I talked with Justin, one of the cofounders of the team, when I was visiting the girls yesterday. Nice guy, really nice guy. And I just think this is an amazing project. Good thing they’re all young because that’s a hell of a lot of miles. For the most part they’re doing 40-80 miles a day.
The route is all planned out on their site. If you’re in any of the towns/cities they’re stopping in, I’m sure they’d be thrilled to meet up with you. They’ll be going through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, other parts of Canada, and finally, Alaska. All in two months!
I hope you’ll consider donating something to this worthy cause. Suicide is the leading cause of death in 18-24 year-olds. That’s a scary thing. I’m proud of Alyson and all the guys for doing something about it.
I’m hoping to have them on SecondHand Radio soon to talk about it.
Thanks.
PS: Today I’m going up to Oklahoma to visit Chase, who I haven’t seen since Blogher, 2006. She’s just the most amazing lady…cracks my shit up, and she’s sweet and generous and also getting married very shortly. I’m staying the night there. Much partying and photos will abound. I also plan on whipping her so she’ll start blogging again.
Shockinawe
Don’t forget this afternoon’s SecondHand Radio. Read yesterday’s post for more details.
This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. Please donate!
When I first agreed to participate in the GBBMC for RAINN, I pictured a month of nothing but sex stories. Hell, I’ve got enough of them, I’m sure. But when I actually sat down to map it out, I realized that just because I probably COULD write 30 sex posts, that didn’t mean I should. It’s not like they’re all exciting stories, or even good ones.
I’ve read a lot of stories this month, many of them from people I don’t even know. And those stories run the gamut from cute to amusing to horrifying to hilarious. If you haven’t already looked at some of the other participants in the project, I think you should. Some amazing stuff out there. And you never know, you might discover someone you’d like to add to your feedreader on a permanent basis. After all, it was during the LAST GBBMC two years ago that I met Kevin, Dave, Sandra, Belinda, Brandon, Dariush, Stacey, and many others that I’m now friends with.
And now, whaddya know? We’re near the end of April and this fantastic campaign and I have yet to talk about the Big Moment, when I lost my cherry. Do guys lose cherries? Do we even have cherries? I don’t know, but I’m going to say yes.
As I mentioned in an earlier RAINN post, I was going to NMSU-A (New Mexico State University - Alamogordo branch) up on “the hill.” I was 17 when I started the summer at college, right after I graduated high school. Micro- and macroeconomics…snore. But it was cool because, hell, I was in college! And I was taking a class with one of my best friends, Tom.
I was also hanging out in the student center quite a bit, when I wasn’t working full-time at the radio station. It was just me and my Dad in Alamo at that point, since Mom and my sister and brother booked ass out of Alamogordo and moved back to New York. Abandoning the ship, so to speak, Dad was supposed to stay with me until the end of my first full-time semester in December. He wound up leaving for New York the day before my 18th birthday in September. Yeah, that sucked.
But it was also kind of cool because I was on my own for the first time. And hanging out quite a lot with a new friend…let’s call her Betty. When August came and it was time for full-time school, I spent a lot more time on campus. I also started playing intramural volleyball, even though I totally sucked at sports and had never played before. I picked it up fairly quickly.
I met Betty on campus and she was very nice to me. Sweet and smartassy (I like that), she was a year older than I was and never seemed too busy to chat with me. I was really skinny and a smartass myself, kind of a class clown and still highly inexperienced in the ways of womenly wiles.
It was around this time that I got my first vehicle. Well, my second vehicle, technically. But I never drove my van (another story for another time), so…anyway, I had a badass Honda Elite scooter. Check it!
Come to think of it, I wish I still had that scooter. With gas prices the way they are now? Yeah, I got around for a month on maybe a few bucks. Good times.
Betty and I would hang out on campus a lot, talking and joking around. She had a boyfriend named Alfred. Total asshole, as I’d come to discover later. After some time, Betty kind of disappeared and I didn’t know what had happened to her.
Months later, I’m riding my bicycle along New York Avenue and who should I whiz by, but Betty standing on the sidewalk. I turned around and went back by to say hello and catch up. Alfred, who she’d been dating for three years, had raped her and gotten her pregnant. And left her. Nice. She seemed rather okay with it, but I know she wasn’t. Either was I.
We exchanged phone numbers and wound up talking for hours on end. At this point I should mention that my best new buddy was a girl named Wendy. She was also a year older than me and, as it turns out, mortal enemies with Betty. This wasn’t a big deal at the moment, but it sure would come into play later.
One night Betty and I were talking on the phone about lots of things (including her being three months pregnant) and she mentioned something about me getting embarrassed. I boasted that “I don’t GET embarrassed” and “I don’t get surprised, either.” Famous last words.
The next day I was working at the radio station. I’m typing away on the TRS-80 computer, writing advertising copy for a radio ad, when I hear the front door open. No big deal, people went in and out all the time…coworkers, soda delivery people to fill up the Coke machine, whatever. And Debbie, the receptionist and bookkeeper says, “Karl, you have a visitor.”
I turn around and it’s Betty with a big bouquet of flowers. For me. Yeah, I had mentioned to her on the phone the night before that I’d never been given flowers. I found myself turning red immediately and she had this big ol’ shit-eaten grin on her face because she’d managed to surprise me AND embarrass me all in one shot.
When I walked her out to her car, I thanked her again. She got in her car, window rolled down, and I reached in through the window to give her a hug. Instead, she planted a kiss right on my mouth!
“See you later,” she said.
“Um, yeah. Okay,” I managed.
And as she sped away, I thought, “What the fuck just happened?”
Part Two tomorrow.
DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (SecondHand Tryptophan).
Contest Home | RAINN Donation Page | Participants
Prizes | Sponsors | Rules and Regulations
I’m Not Going to Say I Got Dooced, But I Did
I hate mentioning her by name because, while I acknowledge she is a good writer and an accomplished photographer, I just can’t be bothered reading Dooce’s journal. (Why? Because of her no-comments policy, see yesterday’s long-ass post about that.)
But the fact of the matter remains that Dooce inadvertently coined the term “dooced” when she got fired from her job some years back because of her blog. That is, by and large, why she’s so immensely popular now as a so-called blogger. She got in on the ground floor, so to speak. Now anytime someone gets fired because of their blog, they call it getting Dooced. I’m here to change that. From now on, we’re going to call it getting Karled.
That’s right, in case you missed it on Twitter yesterday afternoon, I have been fired as a columnist for one of the local newspapers in town. Why? In short, because of this post. I have been reproducing my regular Monday column here on Mondays pretty much for the last 2-1/2 years I’ve been writing the column. Not any more.
It wasn’t the column itself that got me fired. I spoke with my editor on the phone yesterday afternoon to ask what was going on and to apologize. Yes, I apologized because it was never my intention to hurt her or anyone else at the newspaper. She told me that they had been planning to run the column in next Monday’s paper, but she needed to get permission from other editors first. Understandable.
I certainly never intended to come off as slamming the newspaper. But as my editor told me, it wasn’t the column that they had a problem with. It was the COMMENTS on the post. She was on vacation all last week, so really didn’t have a chance to talk to me about why they didn’t have any people at the charity event. They DID make arrangements to get photographs from some of the people that were in attendance, but couldn’t do the overtime necessary to send out a full-time photographer. I jumped the gun and made assumptions I shouldn’t have made. For that, I take responsibility.
I always took great care not to mention the newspaper by name here, and I never gave out my blog URL in the column, either. It’s a family newspaper and I would never send people to my blog indiscriminately because I swear like a sailor lots of the time.
Nevertheless, someone at the newspaper found my blog and brought it to other people’s attention on Monday. Having worked in close-knit cubicle environments before, I know how quickly word spreads like wildfire in an office. I’m sure it didn’t take much time at all for my blog to make the rounds. At least it’s a nice, new pretty blog design.
I’m upset, yes, for several reasons. For one thing, I should have been more judicious about my comments on the blog. I should have also called and talked to my editor before posting Monday’s post and leaving subsequent comments. But I’m also kinda pissed because what the fuck? This is MY blog and I have the right to say whatever the hell I want to say. I never expected or asked anyone at the newspaper to look at my blog. On purpose. I realize I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.
I certainly wouldn’t have made those comments on the newspaper’s web site. That really WOULD be unprofessional. But on my own blog? Bah.
I’ve been Karled. So yeah, I’m looking for more writing gigs now. If you know of any, please let me know. I promise I’ll be a (relatively) good boy from here on out. Maybe I just shouldn’t run any future columns here, to be safe.
Filed under 2HT Mentions, Blogging, Column, Local Goings On, Television, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Comments (68)
