Three years, still paranoid

I'm a little late, folks. On April 18 it was the third anniversary of this blog. That probably doesn't mean very much to you, but it was 425 entries ago and it means something to me.

I started it because I wanted to talk about some things, specifically the paranoia that was saturating my life at the time. I retired this past January 1, so the main thing making me paranoid, my former boss, Phil, is gone from my daily life. I recently talked to a therapist about Phil, because I worked for him for 20 years and I told her that Phil was very paranoid, and working for a paranoid makes employees paranoid. We had about 15 men in our department and whenever something would happen we'd dread Phil's reaction, making up paranoid scenarios in our heads. It was because we didn't know what to expect from Phil. Phil always looked at things as if they had been done to him personally, as if he would be criticized for the actions of others, so he came down extra hard on us. We became paranoid about Phil's paranoia. It's catching.

My mother was a paranoid, but she was also delusional. She came down with dementia and was put into a nursing home in 2004. She died a year ago, on May 12, 2008. I grew up around paranoia and then I worked for paranoia. In 1995 I went for some serious counseling and psychotherapy and the opinion of my therapist was that I was paranoid. I had caught paranoia from my boss and from the people around me.

So, paranoia strikes deep.

What I found in writing this blog is that the paranoid theme obviously didn't fit everything I wanted to tell you about, so I would go for long stretches without mentioning it.

I don't blame anyone for not going back into my archives, but if you're interested here are links to some of my favorites.

My first entry.

Here's an entry from May, 2006, which shows that paranoia about the current flu scare isn't new. Just three years ago we were worried about Bird Flu, amongst other things...

One thing about my former job as a mailman for a large school district is I met a lot of women. I'm married, and always told my wife about the women I worked with. This is a mom I met a few years ago. Whenever I re-read this I always wonder what happened to the woman I called Biker Chick.

That's enough reading for now. In days to come I'll be linking to some more of my favorites.

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