I should begin by saying I was never passionate about academia. In fact, I had no interest at all in academia. I almost became an accidental academic.

The only reason I went to graduate school was because I was badly burnt out after five years working in the Psych/Security unit of a prison for women and seven years as a criminal defense private investigator. I wanted a break. Hell, I needed a break. As a working class guy, I had no idea that you could actually get paid to attend graduate school. When I learned that, I applied to half a dozen different universities in half a dozen different disciplines. American University offered me the best deal: free tuition AND a small stipend to study Criminal Justice. So that’s what I did.

That was my plan. Take a year or two off, loafing as a graduate student, then find something else interesting to do. But as I was finishing my MS in Justice, I was offered more money to go for a Ph.D. So, again, that’s what I did.

A couple of years later I found myself with a contract from Fordham University to teach Sociology. I loved teaching and I was good at it. But I disliked academic politics, and I positively hated academic writing. Still, it was relatively easy work, so I didn’t complain. Then one day I was sitting in my Lincoln Center office reading an old paperback book I’d picked up at some second-hand bookshop and the Chair of the Department wandered in. He asked what I was reading.

Here’s a true thing about academia: it’s about specialization. For example, you can’t just study history. You have to study English history. But not just English history, English history of the Tudor period. But not just Tudor history, but Tudor history during the reign of Henry VII. And not just the history of Henry VII, but the fiscal policies of Henry VII. Academia is about narrowing your interests until you become a specialist in a small segment of a larger field of learning.

As a larval academic, I was expected to decide on an area of specialization and spend my time concentrating on it. I was expected to study the appropriate academic journals. Instead, I was reading a 1951 science fiction novel about venomous, carnivorous plants capable of locomotion (that’s right…walking plants) and the collapse of society.

“Are you reading this for your classwork?” I was asked.

I could have said yes. I mean, I could easily argue that the story examined economic systems (these dangerous plants, triffids, were cultivated as a source of industrial quality oil). I could say in all honesty that the collapse of society (a strange ‘meteor’ shower had turned most of the world blind, leaving only a small segment of the population capable of sight) resulted in a variety of localized ad-hoc systems of governance and justice, which could be explored through various criminological theories. I could accurately claim there was value in studying how a 1951 novel explored the ways new social norms and mores were formed from the bones of the old system. I could have absolutely justified reading The Day of the Triffids.

But the truth is, it never occurred to me that I needed to justify it. I told him the truth; I was reading for the pleasure of it. I was actually surprised by the disapproving, judgmental look on his face. I was even more surprised when I discovered the university had advertised a tenure-track position in the Sociology Department, and I hadn’t been asked to apply. I applied anyway, but I wasn’t even offered an interview, despite the fact that my teaching evaluations were among the highest in the department.

There were probably other reasons I wasn’t considered for the position. There’s often an unspoken (and sometimes loudly spoken) bias by academic theorists against practitioners. Some academics assumed my years as a private detective and as a prison counselor tainted my views. There’s a saying: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. But after my brief encounter with the department Chair over Triffids, there was an obvious shift in attitude.

You could say triffids killed my academic career. It’s probably more accurate to say triffids saved me from an academic career.

I’m getting over my very first case of Covid, which has been unpleasant but tolerable. I mention that because…I don’t know, maybe that helps to explain my PTSD episode this morning. Maybe?

It’s been a while since I’ve had one of those. I still have occasional lightning quick PTSD moments, but they’re mild and not disruptive. It’s like a jolt of static electricity–a sharp moment that passes almost instantly. In fact, the spark of this morning’s episode is my most common trigger: a light shining from under a closed door. I wrote about this…okay, this is weird. I just checked, and I wrote about this almost exactly ten years ago. August 21, 2014. I’m NOT going to read anything into that.

Okay, quick recap. DON’T READ THIS & DON’T CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE IF SUICIDE IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU.

A million years ago when I was a medic in the military I responded to an off-base call involving a patient in ‘respiratory distress’ in the basement of a hotel. The basement was dim, but you could see to walk through the corridors. There was bright light coming from beneath the doorway of the room we were led to. We opened the door to an Asian guy who’d hung himself a couple of days earlier. It was ugly. There’s more detail in the post from a decade ago, if you want that information.

Anyway, light beneath a closed door is such a common trigger for me that when I see it, I’ll usually say, “Dead Asians” and everybody understands 1) why I’ve gone quiet for a moment and 2) why they should probably turn off lights when they leave a room and close the door.

Normally, that’s it. I see the light, there’s a moment of shock, then I’m fine. No big deal. But for some reason, this morning when it happened, I found myself…well, fucked up. It was my own fault; I’d left the light on in the laundry room while I did something and when I started to return to the laundry, it hit me. I didn’t want to open the door. Which was silly, and I did open it, and of course there was nothing in there but the washer and dryer.

But for the next hour or so, I couldn’t shake the…I don’t even know what I couldn’t shake. A feeling, I guess. Not so much the image of the dead guy, which is still pretty clear in my mind, but the feeling of getting ready to open the door and seeing something so awful that it would still be with me decades later. I don’t know about anybody else, but on these rare occasions when the PTSD spanks me, I find myself replaying several of the other awful things I’ve seen and done. It’s like I’m getting all the horrific shit out of the way at one time, so I can get on with my life.

I took a photo of the laundry room because that’s what I do. And then I thought maybe I should write about the photograph, which would require writing about why I took the photo, and what the hell, I might just as well write about the whole thing, right?

Does it help to write about it? Nope, not really. Didn’t help to take the photograph either. I didn’t expect it to. But it seems…not important, but worthwhile to write about it, because that puts it back into perspective. I’ve lived the sort of life in which I encountered a big chunk of horrible shit. Horrible shit is supposed to stay with you; you don’t want to be the sort of person who isn’t affected by horrible shit.

But it’s worthwhile to remind yourself that it doesn’t have to live with you all the time. This evening I’ll grill out some chicken and asparagus; I’ll have a nice meal and a good craft beer and spend the evening with people I love. THAT is what lives with me all the time. The horrible shit…it’ll dissipate. And with any luck, I won’t have another episode for months or years. I’m okay with that.

I used to have recurring nightmares. Well, I still have recurring nightmares, but they’re not recurring as often. For a few years, I’d have 2-3 nightmares a week. Like most folks, I occasionally have your basic bog standard bad dream (somebody chasing me, shit like that), but they’re qualitatively different from the recurring nightmares. I can shrug those off. I’m talking about the sort of nightmares that wake you up and sometimes leave you too jittery to go back to sleep. Or too afraid to try to go back to sleep for fear the nightmare will return, and you’re just too fucking fragile to deal with that again.

Now I have a nightmare maybe every month. Maybe every six weeks. Okay, wait…a tangent. Sort of. When I say I have recurring nightmares, I mean I have four basic nightmare scenarios that repeat themselves; the scenarios are based on actual incidents. I’m not going to discuss the scenarios or the incidents that sparked them because that would take too long. And besides, the incidents don’t really matter; what matters is the nightmares.

I’m writing about this because last night (well, early this morning) it happened again. I had a nightmare that woke me up. Here’s the weird thing: when I had them more often, I learned to cope with them. I was so familiar with them, I was often able to defuse them WHILE DREAMING. “Oh, right…light shining under a closed door, I know that one. Just open the door, see the horrible thing, and get on with it.”

I knew what to do when I had those nightmares. If I was too spooked to go back to bed, I knew how to distract myself so I could relax. Read for a while, maybe listen to some music, drink some cold water, eat a spoonful of peanut butter. Something mundane and ordinary to mute the effect of the nightmare.

But now that the recurring nightmares are less frequent, I find I’m sometimes more discombobulated by them. The nightmare that woke me up this morning had one of the usual recurring tropes (the sound of an empty Coke can being twisted back and forth in order to break it into two jagged-edge pieces suitable for hacking at arms and necks). Just at the point where the blood starts, I woke up; the last thing I remember was hearing a voice saying, “That’s not going to be covered by the manufacturer’s guarantee.” Which totally took the edge of the horror, so when I woke up I wasn’t so much terrified as weirdly but uncomfortably amused.

And yet, I was still too anxious to go back to sleep. None of my distraction techniques worked, mainly (I think) because my mind kept repeating that ridiculous phrase, which kept the nightmare alive in my head. Sort of alive.

So here’s me, three hours later, having had my morning coffee and read the news and banged out the Wordle (got it in four, as usual), and still nattering on about the nightmare. But now I think I can go back to bed and get another hour of sleep.

Thanks for listening.