Night sweats suck. Many nights since my father passed a couple months ago, I’ve awoken with them. Sopping wet. Itchy. Disoriented.

The nightmare is always the same. My dad calls from the hospital and tells me he’s about to come home. He says he didn’t actually die.

I should be happy, but he tells me that he’ll require full time care and will need my help like before. Help changing his diapers, feeding him, giving him showers, cleaning up after him, emptying his catheter, doing his dishes, changing the dressing on his bed sores. I lay awake wondering if it’s actually happening and fall back to sleep before resolving it.

Rewind

My dad lived in our basement apartment for two months before he passed. He was unable to live on his own. Bladder cancer, when you let it go for as long as he did, becomes excruciatingly painful. My wife and I would hear him moan in agony and discomfort as we tried to sleep. I’d often be awoken by the disturbing slams of his bathroom door as he constantly went back and forth from bed with the uncontrollable urge to urinate.

Seeing him relegated to a childlike state was the hardest thing I’d ever been through. The man who once taught me how to throw a punch, ride a bike, fix a flat, and change my oil was now dependant on me to live.

A part of me knew his death was approaching. He knew too. It was an unspoken truth that neither of us could come to grips with and talk about. It came from the same place inside that said, in a strange but obvious way, that his death would actually be refreshing. Mainly for him. All the pain would be over. Like the last moment before falling asleep. A moment that changes from consciousness to unconsciousness in a forgotten instant. From strain to release. Or whatever happens when that switch is flipped.

But at the same time, another part of me thought he’d never die. You never really think it’s going to happen until it does.

Gnashing

I was cold towards him those last few days. Outright rude, actually. And he gave it right back. I didn’t have the time to work a full time job, run a copywriting business on the side, spend time with my wife, and care for a man who didn’t plan for his final days, letting the responsibilities fall on me, his only son.

The day before Valentines day, we got in a huge fight. As he lay in bed, unable to get up, we exchanged harsh words that neither of us would have said if we could do it over again. I came home from work and went down to check on him. The room reeked due to his uncontrollable bodily function after his surgery to have his bladder removed and replaced by his small bowel. He fought the nurses in the rehab hospital tooth and nail to get out and didn’t fully recover because he was too stubborn. Back home now, he was too weak to get out of bed other than to attempt to make it to the bathroom before it was too late.

What infuriated me was that he seemed to do nothing to help himself. All the food my wife and I’d make for him would just sit there. Of course he wasn’t getting any stronger – he wasn’t eating or drinking anything. He complained about the taste of the food and how it wasn’t cooked right. I took it as a slap in the face towards us who were trying to help him just like he did to the nurses who tried the same. The same rage boiled up from inside that I experienced as a young man standing by my dying mother’s side half a lifetime ago. A rage that is so intense, but so uncontrollable, born out of love and fear of loss, causing immediate guilt and confusion.

I was done. Fuck it. If he didn’t want to eat, and just wanted to die, there was nothing I could do to stop him. So I closed off. I let him know how selfish he was being and he let me know how cold and cruel I was being.

On the night of Valentines day, I went downstairs to check on him again. He lay in the same position as he had for what seemed like forever. Supine. The smell had worsened, but at least home care had changed his bed sore dressings so I didn’t have to that night. He mumbled his apologies. He was sorry for throwing the words at me he did the night before. “You’re my valentine, Jonas,” he mumbled in a oxycodone induced haze, “I’m sorry.”

Those words pierced my soul. This was horrible. This whole situation. I was sorry too. I told him that. But I kept the wall up in order not to lose it right there. I tried telling myself to be empathetic, but just couldn’t quite do it. Come to find out later, the reason he wasn’t nourishing himself had nothing to do with stubbornness. Little did I know that in his gut lay a bacteria that would eventually be his end.

The Last Car Ride

The next day I took him to the doctor for a checkup. He could barely stand when I helped him get dressed. He was severely dehydrated and his lips were drawn back, exposing his teeth like a bulldog. The car ride was quiet. His breathing was heavy. It was awkwardness and discomfort at the highest volume I’d ever experienced.

I saw the look of deep concern from the doctor when he laid eyes on my dad. Quickly taking his pulse and blood pressure, he urged me to get my dad into the emergency room immediately because of the dangerous combination of dehydration paired with an extremely high heart rate and low blood pressure was alarming.

I knew what was happening, but as soon as the thought emerged, I’d stuff it down inside my psyche to silence it. As we drove to the ER, I kept repeating to myself, he’s not dying. He’s not dying. He’s just dehydrated. He’s not dying.

After pulling the parking brake at the emergency room parking lot, I went around to help him out of the car. As he shifted his body to set his feet on the ground, I stood there, hands ready to assist him up. As I clutched his arms, he remained sitting there, staring at the sky. It’s like he knew that this was the last time in his present form that he’d experience the open sky. He gazed up with an expression encompassing both awe and consternation. Like a scared child. I didn’t know how to handle that look. Suppress. Suppress. Suppress. Don’t fucking lose it right here. Be in control. He needs your strength.

I got him inside and situated him in the ER. He sat in the wheelchair with that same frightened look that he had in the parking lot which overwhelmed me whenever I looked at him. I couldn’t be there. He was fine, I told myself. I suppressed the fact that he was on death’s doorstep to the point where I did something that I’ll never fully forgive myself for. I left him there in the waiting room. I wanted the social workers to realize he needed more help. That I wouldn’t always be readily available for him and that he needed full time care. With me there, they’d do like they did before, and assume that I could provide care for him. But I had a baby on the way with an incredibly busy schedule. I loved my dad to no end, but I physically couldn’t do this any longer.

So I left. I fucking left my father in the waiting room of the ER before he was even admitted. Deep down, I knew he was going to die. But I twisted reality around to make myself believe that he’d be okay. That I could just swing back by after work and pick him up after they put him on fluids for a while. The pickup never happened.

He passed a little over a week later. Earlier that day, I gave the command to the doctor that no son wants to give. Do not resuscitate. Comfort care. He was septic and in the ICU with an infected colon. Massive amounts of antibiotics were keeping him alive. Later that evening, he passed.

Epilogue

I write this to end the nightmare. Opening my veins and bleeding onto this page is cathartic and as much as part of me says to not open up, a bigger part tells me I should. I’m going to listen to that bigger part this time.

My ego is embarrassed to share this with anyone else, let alone the web, but I feel like it may give me some release and possibly add some value to your life.

James Altucher says to not publish anything that doesn’t scare you when you press the ‘publish’ button. I wrote a post awhile back about my dad that was pretty revealing, and it felt great writing it, but I wasn’t scared to hit publish. This time I am. But I feel it needs to be done. With all pain comes a lesson learned. And if everyone was comfortable enough sharing their nightmares, I believe it would save countless others from reliving them. If sharing mine with you brings the nightmare to an end, I’ve succeeded.

I’m not sure what takeaways you can get from this story, but I’m sure there are a few. If you’re a parent, try to make plans for your last days. Make those nasty decisions so your kids don’t have to make them for you. Be the best human being you can be so you can have what you need to make these arrangements. Don’t leave it up to fate. Take charge of the upcoming sunset of life the best way possible. Share your stories and feelings with family, no matter how vulnerable you feel. Death comes to all of us and avoiding it doesn’t make it come any slower. Enjoy the short time you have with your loved ones and be hard on them to take care of themselves. Have those same high standards for yourself.

I hope my story moves you to do the right thing, whatever that is. Be well, and take care of those you love. If the day comes that you have to stand by a loved one’s side on their way out, be kind to yourself. Emotions will come up that seem wrong and unreasonable. It’s okay. Realize there’s only so much you can do and no matter how much your ego tries to take responsibility for what’s happening, you’re not to blame. No one’s to blame. It’s just the cycle.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but school ruined our writing.

We were taught to write as if we were standing up in front of the class, giving a presentation. Think about the classroom setting, though. Our audience consists of kids who are being forced (if you went to public school like I did) to sit there and listen to you. And those who are bored to the point of banging their face against the desk are sent to a shrink in short order and put on ritalin. They don’t have much of a choice.

Enter the real world. No one has to listen to us anymore. There’s no teacher to round up our readers and make them sit still. Writers are left to their own devices to make people WANT to read their stuff.

I’m rambling again.. Let’s bring it back…

I was working on an email campaign recently and it just wasn’t working out. It took me a while to figure out that the above principle is why. I was writing as if I was giving a lecture. Like I was in front of the class, behind a podium, teaching readers a lesson. Even the slightest hint of that tone is enough to turn most readers off.

Email campaigns, especially, should be written in the following tone: You should feel as if you’re walking up to someone (1 person) at a party, cocktail in hand, and trying to engage them in conversation.

And why would you walk up to someone at a party and talk to them?

Because you’re interested in them.

They can walk away at any time. Within 5 seconds they can tell if they want to hang with you or if they should start thinking of a reason to walk over to the cocktail weenies (away from you).

If you’re trying to pitch them, teach them something they have no interest in, or incessantly talking about yourself, they’re gone. You must make the reader feel important (because they are) and engage them in interesting, humorful banter that they ACTUALLY WANT TO ENGAGE WITH. (You ARE still reading, right? Ok, good.)

Unteaching yourself the schoolspeak is frucking difficult, but must be done to willingly engage your readers.

P.S. We’re all writers. Do you ever write emails at work? Update your Facebook page? Tweet it up? Write on bathroom stalls? Exactly. This pertains to you too.

P.P.S. I’m starting a new newsletter thingy that I think you should sign up for. It’s pretty neat, if I do say so myself. Every couple weeks, I’ll send you a letter with some recent, quality stuff from The Chronicles as well as other useful, extremely urgent and important content that will bring you instant enlightenment and joy. I appreciate your love.

It’s all been surreal, so far. Ever since we found out in November, soon becoming a dad has yet to really sink in.

But since this past weekend, it’s become increasingly more real to me. Our first ultrasound was last Friday. Seeing a real human being, with eyes, a spine, fingers, toes, brain and four chambers of a beating heart inside there is fk’ng surreal to say the least.

We had the ultrasound tech write the gender down and seal it in an envelope, handed said envelope to a friend, and she threw us a gender-reveal party the following day. It was so nice having friends and family around while we unsealed that envelope to reveal our little one’s gender. And, I’m proud to say, IT’S A GIRL!! Rory Kathleen Ellison, if she shows up on time, will be here on MY BIRTHDAY, August 21, 2013.

I can’t wait to spoil the shyte out of little Rory.

Now it’s starting to really settle in.. And I’m so, so excited. And scared. And all kinds of other emotions that are roiling about my consciousness right now. Knowing that we’re going to have a little girl running around in bedazzled jeans and princess dresses is indescribable. Looking at my wife as the soon-to-be mother of our child has exalted our relationship to a whole new level.

I really like where we’re at and am trying to really enjoy and take advantage of this time right now. The world looks different. I yell at people speeding down my street. I called a kid a ‘hoodlum’ the other day. I’m taking notice of where the electrical outlets are positioned in our new house. Basically, looking out for this little one who’s being slung into this world at hyper-speed to prepare the way as best I can.

But it’s sketchy, because I’m starting to realize there’s so much I CAN’T control. Rory is going to be her own person with her own challenges and all I can really do is help her the best I can from what little I know.

I’ll keep you posted on this journey through fatherhood. It’s the most transforming thing I’ve been through, and I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s to come.

I’m pretty much a homebody – not a big ‘hang out with the guys’ kind of person. I don’t much enjoy clubs or even most bars. However, hanging out with good friends over a drink or two at a douchebag-free establishment (hard to find in Reno) where we can hear each other talk makes me joyful and happy.

See, I don’t have many friends (I know… LOSER). But the ones I do have are in my life because I can carry a conversation with them. They’re into the same kind of stuff that I’m into on a fundamental level, and aren’t scared to challenge me (vice-versa).

So the other day I came across Chase Reeves‘ site, IceToTheBrim.com, and I got the same vibe I get when hanging out with a couple friends, having a few laughs over drinks, and engaged in thought-provoking conversation.

What got me there was a post of his I found about David Ogilvy. Reading it was like taking the first shot. And, we all know, the job of a good bartender is to make sure his patrons don’t leave after the first shot. Chase is that bartender. After reading the post about Ogilvy, I was drawn into shot #2 by his alluring copy, which led to shot 3,4…. I’ve never felt so damn excited to subscribe to an effing newsletter before.

And video… The guy has it nailed, in my opinion. I feel like I’m hanging out at his place, cocktail in hand, learning some really interesting shit while laughing hysterically. It’s the perfect concoction of laugh-out-loud funny and smart (think Steve Carell meets Jakob Nielsen).

At icetothebrim you’ll find tips on copywriting, design, workflow, self-improvement, among other importantful things.

If this is your kind of thing, which I’m sure it is, you should grab a drink (filled to the brim with ice, of course) and head over. You’ll learn some stuff while having a few chuckles at the same time.

I’ve always heard that stress kills. I’ve always kinda believed it, but kinda not. I was skeptical because of my dad who lived under stress for as long as I can remember, never seeing a doctor once when I was growing up.

This is a bit of a longer post, clocking in at about 1100 words, and I’m going to get a little dark here, but there’s a light at the end, I promise. For those of you who want to go straight to the happy stuff, skip to the end now.

The Dive

Almost every month since I was about 10 years old had been touch and go for my dad, both financially and emotionally. We lost our house that he helped build with his own two hands when I was about 12. He lost his wife (my mom) to cancer when I was 16. I remember him staying up until 4am almost every night just trying to figure out how he would get out of the hole. This nocturnal habit never ceased.

He was one of the first computer programmers back in the mid 60′s and did very well until I was about 5 when the programming jobs started to leave the country and his business partners embezzled money. From then on, his mind fixated on the limitations of “There’s no more jobs here. They’re all gone,” and “Don’t trust anyone. They’re all out to screw you.” He carried this mentality for the rest of his days.

When I was in middle school, he landed a job doing systems work for a gold mine in Nevada. He was paid basic living expenses and was told that after 2 years of work, he’d be able to cash out his shares and become a millionaire when the company went into production.

2 years came and went.

He kept accumulating shares of stock, but during times when the company couldn’t pay him, instead of finding other work – because of his belief that there was no more work out there – he decided to grunt it out and wait for that big pay day, getting paid when the company could pay him, and scraping by when it couldn’t.

16 more years of this… Came and went.

Every month, for 18 years with the company, he barely scraped by and widely depended on help from friends and family. Every month the stress would build when the bills came due. Every month his victim mindset festered and grew into deep paranoia and skepticism about the world that he was so much at the mercy of. That big pay day never came, and he was never really happy.

Like I said, he never got sick when I was young. In the 32 years that I knew him, he never visited the doctor. Never even had the flu.

Maybe stress doesn’t kill, I thought. Maybe some people, the higher-wound types, actually needed that juice in their lives to keep them alive.

Not so much. It catches up with everyone.

I lost my dad a little over a month ago to cancer.

My Father’s Lessons

Through all of his years of struggle, he never left. He was always available to talk as long as I wanted to talk. I think I only saw him drunk once or twice. We had countless conversations long into the night about business, relationships, spirituality, and whatever came up.

He stayed by my mom until the day she died and never remarried.

He grew up a farm kid in Nebraska and never worked out- but he had a vice-grip-like handshake from his years baling hay.

My dad influenced so much of what I do today through giving me books at a very young age – many of which were far too advanced for me at the time, making my eyes glaze over, but I read them anyway.

He gave me his old aikido books when I was about 10 and, even though we couldn’t afford classes when I was a kid, I read the books and did ki breathing meditation techniques as an adolescent (weird, right?), making it a long-term goal to train in the art. Finally, I did, and now hold rank of black belt thanks to his influence.

Now that I’m older, I’ve often re-opened a lot of those books that flew over my head as a child.

There were a lot of things he could have done differently, but from what was available to him, he was a great father. It’s just sad that he had to pass unfulfilled. I’d say he did a pretty damn good job, though.

That happy ending I was talking about..

I write this not to be a downer and incite pity. For one, it’s a bit of a catharsis to write about it, but mostly, I write about this to proclaim the lessons he taught me through his good times and bad.

- Stress does kill. It’s flat-out not worth it to stress. This is easy to forget. Remember it and remind yourself constantly. Take hold of the reigns. Do something. Live below your means until you catch up. Clear your head and f’king take charge of the situation ASAP. 

- You are as much of a victim as you want to be. My dad was one of the first computer programmers. Ever. But as soon as the ‘jobs started to go away’ he gave up. So many people made a killing from computers in those early days. He was in at the right time and smart enough to do the same. But when he was knocked down the first time, he projected his troubles on outside forces and it became a habit of belief which never stopped. He never got back up.

- The mind is a great tool but a bad master. Don’t let it rule you. Rule it and you’ll get along fine.

- You can move. You can adapt. Be agile. We can’t control the direction or force of the wind, but we can control how we set our sails. Focus your energy there.

- If you read something inspiring, implement it in your life. Put it to action. Now. Not later. Not when things become easier. Not when the stars align. Now. Before it’s too late.

- Enjoy your friends and family. Even if you’re broke. The good ones won’t care if you’re not rich or if you can’t cover the dinner tab. Your soul thrives on good company.

- You will die. Don’t wait for the jobs to come back. Don’t wait for the company to cash you out. The clock will run out and we have no idea when that might happen. Live.

P.S. I miss ya, Pop..

It’s tough economic times right now. Things are just really hard.

You hear it all the time. Is it just me or has it always been this way? I grew up pretty poor, so even during times when the men on the news said ‘the economy‘ was ‘good‘ I was still having a rough go at it. I was reading an article written back in the mid 90′s about the company I work for and how it was facing ‘tough economic times‘.

It brought to mind several different articles and books I’ve read from all different time periods that have talked about being in a recession or going through these difficult economic struggles that are described in the same way as having a cold or being sick. Like a recession is some sort of condition that just comes about and leaves when you take enough medicine and rest awhile.

Could it be that good economic times only exist in hindsight?

Kind of like when you’re in that shitty job, it sucks sooo bad- but years later, you look back at it with nostalgia and smile about the good times you had there.

Funny how our mind tends to filter out the nastyness of the past.

Knowing this should allow us to be perfectly content in these ‘tough economic times‘ knowing that according to the media and outside forces, we’ll always be living in them, so we may as well make the most out of them and not wait for them to drift away (because they probably won’t). No magic government or banker brilliance is going to make everyone happy, nor should they be responsible for doing so.

Maybe the best way to go about it is to create your own mini economy where everything is perfect? It is possible. Not as easy as sitting back and waiting for the ‘economy to bounce back’, but at least it’s possible.

When I started taking copywriting seriously, I stumbled on John Carlton’s blog somehow (I  think I saw his name referenced in Copyblogger or something) and immediately knew I’d found something worth reading. After reading a few posts of his, I went on to research the guy a bit and see what his background was. Come to find out, he’s a legend in the copywriting corner of the world and is noted as ‘the most ripped off writer on the web’.

I was on a knowledge binge at the time, and was hot on the trail of becoming a copywriter, so I was reading everything I could on the topic. I read Cialdini, Hopkins, Ogilvy, Masterson, Schwartz, Caples… You name it. Everything old-school Direct-Response was getting devoured no matter how much sleep I sacrificed.

But when I found Carlton’s blog, it was like… Cheating. I felt like I’d drunkenly strolled into a treasure trove of battle-tested, real, no-bullshit knowledge from one of the masters.

Carlton doesn’t hold back. You feel like you’re sitting in his office, beer in hand, leaning forward, immersed in his stories of the crazy years while he was hanging with Gary Halbert or in his more refined years writing for Agora, laughing your ass off and feeling the pain of some of his past failures which he’s not scared of holding back about.

These are not dumbed-down diluted posts with no substance. John’s posts are long-form stories about hard-knocks lessons learned throughout his years in the business. These lessons are often interlaced with life stories that have not so much to do with copywriting, but have more to do with living a better, happier, more fulfilling life. He’s prolific as they come, averaging about three of these 1500 word essays a month all the way back to 2007.

Reading them was like being shot through a cannon, going through 20 years of his career at warp-speed by his side.

I promptly threw it into my RSS reader and started gorging myself with his wisdom until my eyes bled, unable to keep themselves open. In a couple weeks, I read 5 years back (about 160,000 words if you do the math) in the archives of “The Rant” – as he so cheekily named it – before marking my spot and getting distracted with work. And I attribute my work so far to his influence.

John Carlton started from nothing. 30 years old and living in his car in Southern California with no real career goals at the time, he met a lady who was a copywriter. Having a love for words himself, he asked this lady how to become one. She looked down her nose at him and told him he’d never make it because it was too hard… Wrong guy.

That little foray lead into an all-out immersion in learning the ways of selling stuff through the written word. Needless to say, he did make it and he made it huge. Not being one for authority and coming from poverty myself, I high-fived the heavens for finding someone I could learn from who has gone before me, self-taught and all, and KILLED IT.

It’s been a little while since I’ve visited The Rant, and was pleasantly surprised yesterday by his announcement on Facebook that he’d published a Kindle E-Book. Without thinking twice, I downloaded it and am reading it now.

I don’t plug things that I don’t find amazing, but this book, I’m just gonna come right out and say it, you HAVE to buy if you’re a copywriter or an entrepreneur of any sort. It’s basically a curated selection of some of his best rants throughout the years that, I guarantee, will change the way you look at selling your wares. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll get angry at him. But you’ll be taking notes the whole way through and will close the book a changed person.

“If language is not correct,
then what is said is not what is meant;
If what is said is not what is meant,
Then what ought to be done remains undone.”

-Confucious

Just a little quote I thought I’d share with you. I’m reading “Writing that Works” by Roman-Raphaelson – the former CEO and Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy and Mather, and this is how the book starts. Thought it was pretty nifty.

“I write like I talk, and I don’t get talker’s block” – Seth Godin

I like this quote. It makes a lot of sense. Here’s the thing, though- Sometimes I DO get talker’s block. Must be nice to be Seth Godin and be perfectly lucid. For us mortals, talker’s block is a real problem. I find myself at a loss for words and stutter with the best of em’ more than I’d like to admit. In light of my verbal inadequacies, I propose the following:

Talker’s block stems from having unclear thoughts.

So, the root of the problem is in clearing up our thoughts before we let the words go, no matter if we’re writing or talking.  Some people do this naturally. I hate them. But knowing this gives me a new focus for my meditation time. I won’t get too Deepak Chopra on ya here, but setting an intention for cleaning up the filter of my brain to allow for the thoughts to flow through more smoothly has proven to be helpful.

Because of my desire to write more betterer, I’ve placed a focus on uncluttering my mind. This has resulted in clearer verbalisms and less stuttering, which, in turn, has lead to less talkers block, and less writer’s block. Much better now.

I’ve been reading a lot about writing lately, and everything I’m reading says to cut to the point as fast as possible. Short words. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.

This is counter to everything I was taught in school where it’s all about writing a four-page paper with 5-sentence paragraphs, never starting a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘the’, blah blah blah.

This is great until you get out into the real world where real people are reading what you write who may not be teachers and professors. This doesn’t just pertain to professional writers.

Everyone’s a writer now.

Whether you write email, text, facebook posts, tweets, or IM’s… Either way, you’re still writing and you usually want people to understand it as quickly as possible.

Not easy to do following the rules learned in school.

I propose ‘they’ change it to- instead of completing a certain length paper with the most long-winded, out-of-touch-with-reality prose,  the higher grade goes to students who state their point in the clearest, most compelling way in the shortest amount of space.

Just an idea…

PS: Oh yeah… If you want to subscribe to my newsletter, you can do it here.