Jay CoDon

What if gay was straight and straight was gay? My friend showed me this video today and, at first, I was just going to share it on my Facebook, but then I stopped.

This needs to be shared, but I needed to add my own words to it. I should caution: watching this at work is fine unless you mind people seeing you cry. Even a burly man like myself cried.

Bullying is a problem in America. It is a problem around the world. Kids are afraid of being who they are. Constantly, they’re bullied. Daily. Hourly. Minute by minute. As Shane Koyczan said, “the school halls were a battleground.” You never know when the enemy is going to show up; when you’re going to be attacked; when you’re going to be … Destroyed.

I should know. Minute by minute, hourly, daily, weekly, and yearly, I was bullied. For years it went on. For years I was the brunt of the joke. Fat jokes. Jewish jokes. Being in the plays made me gay. “I’d rather die than go on a date with Jacob,” said one girl to a friend of mine. I’d rather die…

I would come home and I’d cry. Every day. If there was an ROI on crying, I’d never work a day in my life. Those years. They were numbing.

You learn how not to feel. You learn that it’s better to be cold than feel that pain. And so I would walk into the fire. I would accept what was said and I stopped crying. I stopped feeling.

Finally, one day, I snapped. What would provoke a short, scrawny little guy to jump onto a 6’2, 250 pound man baffles me so many years later. But he did. His arms wrapped around my throat. I could feel him trying to choke me. And so I took all 250 pounds and I slammed back hard into a locker. I turned and watched as his body crumpled to the floor. I crouched down, made sure he could see my eyes, and I said, “Don’t ever touch me again. Don’t ever talk to me again.”

From that day on, the battleground became a peace zone. No one harassed me. No one teased me. My tear ducts got a break. I got a break. But the lessons I had learned stuck with me. I was cold. Calculated. Calloused.

Bullies want you to hate yourself because they view happiness as relative. They’re afraid of what’s different and because of that fear, they’d rather make you feel bad than try to elevate themselves. They’d rather tear you down than build themselves up.

I remember about a month ago I was presented with a situation that made me tremendously uncomfortable. I reacted poorly. The person talking to me could sense the ignorance I had. While it didn’t cause a problem–to my knowledge–I recognized that had I taken it farther, I would have been in the same regiment as a bully.

Because bullies are cowards. And fear comes from lack of knowledge. Instead of continuing to react about that situation, I educated myself. Was I more comfortable it? I don’t think so. Was I accepting of it? In part. But I understood. And therefore, what fear I had could go away. When fear isn’t in your life, neither is hate.

I recently went through an emotional change in my life. The first response for anyone when that happens is to be afraid. And when you’re afraid, that’s when fights happen. That’s when you start to say things you don’t mean. That’s when you call someone “a bitch” or “ugly” or “fucking useless.” But really, if you meant those things, you would have said them when you weren’t fearful. Fear very easily contributes to anger which very easily contributes to hate. We don’t like to be afraid, so we’re angry at what makes us afraid.

But what if, instead of being afraid of that change, we didn’t allow that first response? What if we didn’t allow ourselves to react so poorly? What if, instead, we simply thought and tried to understand. Wouldn’t that be better?

I walked away from that emotional change in my life fine. Sad, but fine. Isn’t that better than angry?

If those were behaviors that we were taught at a young age–to ask questions, to try to understand, and to gain insight into what the other person is thinking–wouldn’t bullying go away?

Bullies do what they do because they don’t know anything else. They don’t know. So when that gay teenager is being bullied for it, it’s because the bully doesn’t know. Does that make it right? Absolutely not. But it’s their ignorance that is fueling their hate. I pity them. I pity their lack of constitution and self-respect.

It’s okay to have fear. But it’s the cowardice bullies that allow that fear to turn to anger and then hate. I pity them. I pity the most cowardice people I’ve ever met: bullies.

I’m sure this has happened to everyone. An idea comes into your mind, you start to formulate it, things start to develop, and you are fucking excited. The idea is really starting to flesh out and you realize that you’ve got a great idea.

And then the next realization is that you’re going to forget everything you’ve just thought about.

I’m lying in bed last night, looking at the ceiling because I couldn’t quite fall asleep right away, and I’m thinking. I’m thinking about my weekend, about the girl I’m with, my work, and all of these other wonderful things. Suddenly out of nowhere, a lyric pops into my mind.

So my eyebrow raises and I begin to mouth the words to myself, not wanting to wake the person next to me, and then hear a second line come to me. Now I’m mouthing the two lines, one after another, just trying to get a feel for them. Suddenly a melody pops into my mind. Now I’m trying to hum it without actually humming it because, once again, I don’t want to wake the person next to me.

Before I realize it, I now have an entire first verse, I have a melody in mind, and I realize I’ve written my first electric guitar song. This would definitely make Chris, my friend and probably the guy I’ll start a band with, happy. I’m stoked out of my mind.

And then I arch my back a bit and go, “Oh wow, this bed feels nice.” And, “Oh wow, I am really comfortable next to this person.”

Then it hits me. “Jacob, you’re going to forget this idea…This idea is going to be gone tomorrow morning.”

Now I am stuck with a conundrum. Do I pull away from the cuddle fest (Yeah I said cuddle fest. Got a problem with that?) that is going on and find a way to write the lyrics down? Do I grab my cell phone and hum in to it in the bathroom so I don’t forget it? But nah…This is so comfortable. If I think really hard tomorrow morning, I’ll remember.

Just as I anticipated, the idea is gone. I really tried to remember it, but it’s just not there anymore. Does it suck? Sure, but I’m not too upset about that because something else will come to me as well.

All I need to figure out is how I can try and remember my ideas because who knows, the next idea could be a  million dollar idea and forgetting that would be an awful thing.

Have a great weekend!

What do you when you hit a wall with something you’re working on and you hate what is in front of you?

Do you cling to your pride and hold on for dear life or do you give up? Do you start over? Do you completely shred what you have and start again?

I suppose the answer is relative, but for the most part, I find the correct answer is to cut your losses and move along. I’ve done it so many times in business.

But what about when you’ve got something that you’ve been working on and you loved where it was going, but then out of nowhere, you despise it?

I’ve been writing a song—I talked about it in this post on apprehension—and I was actually really thrilled with where it was going. I had written two verses, rewritten the chords, had a great chorus, and even had found a bridge. I was having fun, too. So naturally, I want to keep working on it when I can.

I open the song this morning and start to read it. And I’m humming along, secretly playing air guitar under my table, as I go along with what’s on paper.

And then I hit delete.

Gone.

For those couple of seconds, I sat there staring at a totally empty page with only the title in the upper left hand corner.

I couldn’t stand what was there. It didn’t sound fun. It didn’t sound entertaining. I didn’t want to even think about singing that version. It can be an emotional roller coaster when so much of what is written on the paper are actual feelings. It can be exhausting.

So I did what I thought was the best thing and deleted it all. “I’ll start all over,” I told myself.

But after those first few seconds of looking at the clean slate and trying to figure out where to start, some of the lines from the song I had just deleted started to pop up again. Then I said something to a friend that was almost a punch to my own gut. And what I wanted from this song became very apparent.

The theme presented itself to me in such a simple way: There are two different possibilities. And I had realized that having to pick which one I wanted was pointless—I had already made that decision last week.

And suddenly, the song started to write itself. Rather than it being an arduous process of getting my emotions on paper, it was quickly flowing out of me. I know where I wanted this to go. I know what I wanted it to do.

What I realized was that a lot of what I had written worked. It needed tweaking. A word needed to be changed. A sentence needed to be written. And in one instance, an entire four line stanza needed to be removed and freshly written. Despite the need for changes, though, it worked.

Rather than reacting and just shredding the entire thing, I iterated. I modified. I changed. And in the words of my friend, “I fucking love that. Best verse in the song.”

Will I ever be completely happy with what I write? Not likely. That’s the artist’s dilemma. When that happens, though, I just need to iterate and not freak out and hit delete. Command Z might not work next time.

On a separate note: I’ve decided to convert this thing in to a personal blog rather than one where I work with clients. My consulting days are done, at least for now, so I’m just going to use this to get shit off my mind when I am on that lovely roller coaster of emotions.