Emotional Wreckage and Actual Wreckage: A Corner Turned...

Like just about anyone that grew up in the 80's, John Hughes "Rite-du-passage" films had a tendency to jam its way onto HBO and the various Ted Turner Networks on an almost endless loop. And if you were watching TV back then, you probably saw what many consider his magnum-opus, Ferris Beuller's Day Off. The title character, played by the immortal Matthew Broderick, had one of the best closing lines of a film ever, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." That never quite resonated with me as it has with many others, I prefer another line from that movie in the deepness and meaning of life areas, but I'll work that in a little later. 

I probably needed to find better role models in those days.
Still, the world is a shittier place without him in it.

Anyway, Ferris' quote is still pretty pertinent especially in regards to the last year and a half or so of my life. Life moves pretty fast, other things move pretty fast too, and if you don't look for it, it'll definitely hit you and hit you hard. I don't think it's any secret that for the better part of the last twenty years, I've kinda dealt with some depression issues. It didn't really manifest itself in anything too typical, like that refusal to get out of bed type of stuff people typically experience. For me it had a little more to do with just plain not caring enough about myself to not engage in pretty self-destructive behavior. During the Dorm Days, it meant I would hammer ALL THE BOOZE, eat ALL THE FOOD, excel at all the things college had to offer that weren't really all that important to actual academic pursuits. Let's just say my studies suffered a bit. Post college, the booze and food were still there, but now I had to keep a roof over my head as well, so I threw myself into work. I did it all to such a degree that well, I didn't leave a ton of time to myself. I had a fun job that I wasn't having any fun doing, my personal relationships kinda suffered. I was miserable. Then I turned 37. 

37?!

I discovered that 37 is a magical age. Kids, when you turn 37, every single, solitary bad decision you've ever made arrives on your doorstep to collect its bill. I was always a big guy, but I put on a ton of weight, really fast. I started to forget stuff, probably because of all the brain cells I annihilated back in college. I stopped going to concerts, or even going out at all. Christ, usually the only reason I'd leave my house was to go to work so I would have a house to come home to. I couldn't even sleep longer than an hour at a time, and I'd wake up in places other than where I'd fall asleep. SCARY SHIT! What was I doing? Who knows? I felt like shit all the time and looked even worse. Something had to change. 

It's hard to put a finger on a catalyst. I think the root was when I reconnected with an old friend on that Instagram app. Our lives had gone on vastly divergent paths and something about her creativity and zeal for life hit a button in my brain and got me thinking about the old, better days. That's the type of person I wanted to be again. Right around then, after a particularly shitty night of drinking alone and feeling sorry for myself, I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the disgusting thing staring back at me. It was time. I decided that I wanted to live instead of die. 

Also a bad idea to get me wet or feed my ass after midnight.

I made a few changes. I got some help. Started getting some counseling to work through the garbage in my head, and the big one, I bit the bullet and got my guts rearranged. SIPS Duodenal Switch it's called. It wasn't cheap, but as the surgeon told me, "No natural method is going to help you and you are going to die. This is the only way to take it off and keep it off." Basically, they cut about 80% of my stomach out, and re-arranged my intestines so I hardly absorb any fat. This is what they call a two-pronged approach to losing weight. You can't eat very much, and what you do eat barely gets absorbed. It works as long as you follow the rules. Cut as many carbs as possible, focus on protein and smearing butter on virtually everything because you need to eat a ton of fat in order to make the giant handfuls of specialty vitamins I have to take every day for the rest of my life to work. Exercise like a fiend and get a gallon of blood drained out for nutrient level testing every six months are just a couple others. Also, stay sober for a year and change or your liver will shut down. 

Not exactly the picture of health. But I'm much better now.

Kind of a pain in the ass, but I've followed the rules so far and seen the results. 250 lbs down and I'm getting pretty close to just getting the rest cut off me. I look like a fucking war-crime naked, but my clothes fit a lot better, hell, I recently raided my closet down home and am fitting back into my old high-school gear! CORDUROY AND SWEATER VESTS FOR MILES! I can run for ten minutes without stopping where I couldn't run ten seconds before. I still can't hit the ball out of my own shadow, but I can play 36 holes without wanting to die for the first time since college. Oh yeah, golf is fun again, work is fun again, life in general is fun again. Actually, I can't really say "again," because I don't think it ever really was for me. 

So I almost died, managed to bounce back, and then last April, I almost died again! This time, instead of slowly murdering myself over a twenty year span, I almost took the easy way out. BIG OL' CAR CRASH! Driving out to the mighty Rose Park for a little round of golf one morning, I approached an intersection right by my house. I was hanging a left as the light turned yellow. It's a fairly high speed street, but I thought the truck that was approaching was slowing down for the red. I was wrong. Dude gunned it instead and two vehicles can't occupy the same space at once. They estimated he was going sixty but I don't remember much of the actual impact. Just the spin as my Dodge Charger pirouetted a couple times around in the intersection and I got punched by every single airbag in the car. 

All that's left.

I sat there for a moment. The radio was still playing "Problems" by the Sex Pistols. I looked down and wiggled my toes. My fingers were still there too. I tried to shift the car into park, but the knob wouldn't budge. "Shit" I thought, "the transmission is fucked." I was probably a little concussed. There probably wasn't a transmission left. The door was popped open so I unbuckled the belt and swung my legs out. Traffic was piling up and I was so supercharged with adrenaline, I felt like I could've dragged the car off the road myself at least until I saw the front-end or rather the lack of one. Surprised at how uninjured I was (maybe I'm bulletproof), I jogged over to the other guy to make sure he was all right. He was all right, the only damage his truck incurred was a missing bumper. As I went back to my car to start emptying it out and get my paperwork for the cops I realized that I most definitely wasn't bulletproof. My ribs were jacked up and I was in shock. The tow-truck dragged the husk of my beloved Charger off the road, I collected my citation from the police for failure-to-yield and went home. 

My mother came over to take me to the doctor, and as I painfully sat in my easy chair, something weird happened, I just started laughing. My mom and sister looked at me horrified. Maybe I am a little nuts, because that was really the only reaction that felt right at the moment. Despite all my best efforts, both self-inflicted and accidental, I was still here. For reasons I can't even perceive I was still here even though I shouldn't be. For some reason, I found that hilarious. At least until all that laughing tightened up my ribs and tears started pouring out. GODDAMN THAT HURT.

So I'm still alive, and from now on, I take absolutely NOTHING for granted anymore because nobody knows exactly when their ticket is gonna get punched. And I'm bound and determined to live my best life from now on. Whatever that is. I'm going to do it. The problem is, I don't have any idea what that means. For the first time in my life that I can recall, I like myself. I've got confidence that I've never really had. My job is satisfying. I've got great pals and my relationships with my family are as good as ever. As that other main character (and who some have theorized is the actual main character) in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cameron Frye said, "I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it." 

"And the times have changed my friend
I'll be here to the bitter end
With a guitar in my hand, I stand a little taller
And I've been to hell and back
I ain't falling off this track
From the back to the front page
From the gutter to the stage"

But something is still missing. And I need to figure out what that is.

So, I'm gonna hit the road for awhile. Just me, and my thoughts. Sure, I'm going to be seeing some old friends, revisiting the past and figuring out how I got to this point, along the way. But I have a feeling the next couple weeks and this trip I'm taking might bring a little clarity to my head. I'm going to try to mix in a few dispatches from the road for you folks, and even if I don't find what I'm looking for, at least I'll have some good memories and a few awesome sights to share. Anyway, thanks for indulging my ass on this story. I promise to go back to telling dumbass college stories, inane commentaries and reviews of shitty movies again soon. 

Flashing back a few years...

Okay, this first one is from a few years ago. This is the first time that I ever really described in writing one of the two main reasons why I love the game as much as I do. I'm not the most religious guy in the world, but I definitely felt something otherworldly. Or maybe the wind finally quit blowing down there, who knows?

Confessions of a NyQuil Addicted, Hard Rocking, Golf Pro From Hell Part 2:

(Originally published on the old blog back in November of 2005)

It's been a really weird year. Financially, it's been decent, but I'm still barely above water. Like idiots, my sister and I re-upped for another year in our apartment. It's the kind of place that I'm pretty sure any building inspector worth their salt would probably condemn on the spot. Our landlord is a total asshat. But the location is too convenient to leave. I worked pretty hard on fixing things up inside and trying to make it nice. But the end result is a beautiful crumbling mess. It'll get better.

Business was pretty good this year. Shop work was pretty much the same as it always is, but despite being crippled by a no-compete lesson policy that prohibits me from advertising my rates, I've actually made a few new lesson clients this year and have really improved as a swing teacher. Hell, I even taught a semester of an actual "for-credit" golf class, which probably makes me the worst former college student on record ever to actually teach for a major university. Da Professah! I even managed to win a few bucks in tournaments this year, although I was a major under-achiever in that department.

Now on to the meat and potatoes of this episode of "Confessions." I recently returned from a weekend getaway to Las Vegas with some folks I met on my vacation last year out in Hollywood. Had a hell of a great time out there with the Cracker, Nate, Cross, Gray, Desiree, and Renee. Drank more than should be legal, lit some cash on fire playing the slots, and made one of the greatest blackjack comebacks of all time to come out ahead a whole dollar! Saw the shark aquarium at the Madalay and some Muay Thai Kickboxing which was some brutal shit. May the Westward Ho rest in pieces. Their $2 margarita was quite simply the greatest liquor value known to man. It was kind of refreshing to be able to walk around on the street with a drink, compared to Utah where you can only drink in a basement with the lights turned off. The Bears won and I still lost my bet. But it's little sacrifices like using my shitty luck to propel them to victory that make a playoff contender! The Fremont Street Experience was the freakin' bombola!

The last time I visited Sin City was waaaaay back in December of 1996! That was the last time my family ever took a road trip/vacation together. On that trip, I was kind of in my "retreat inside myself" phase so I pretty much wandered the strip by myself or with my buddy Curtis the whole trip. Pausing only to eat breakfast and dinner with my family, I had a damn good time. Even won a couple small jackpots. Much like now, I looked a hell of a lot older than I was. Hell, I was just a senior in high school! As an icing on the cake, I returned home to find out I was seemingly the only person in the whole debate club that wasn't suspended that week due circumstances surrounding what ended up being pretty much the only tournament weekend I didn't attend in two years! Funny shit!

Unfortunately, I've got some serious regrets about that trip. Little did I know, my family was crumbling all around me, and my ass was just too much of a space cadet to realize it. This was probably the last opportunity I would ever have to have some quality time with my sister, mother, and father all together. Three months later, my mom split town on us and threw my life into a tailspin. It seemed like everything I had ever believed in my life was now bullshit. For awhile I completely withdrew from everything, save for a small group of friends and my dad. At first I was bitter, and pissed off, throwing blame around like any ignorant teenager probably would.

Then one day, the following summer I was out by myself playing golf at good ol' Carbon Country Club. As was typical at the time I was thinking about what a mess I was. It was late in the day, right around dusk, and the course down home seemed completely deserted. I striped my tee shot down 18 and walked to my ball. When I reached my ball, I had a good look around and something weird happened. I noticed the grass was the most beautiful shade of green I'd ever seen. The sand in the trap seemed pearl white, even though it was the same shitty sand we'd always had. The clouds in the sky looked to be on fire as the little remaining light cast what seemed to be the air around me in the most surreal shade of blue. The scene gave me pause, and then for the first time a sense of total calmness came over me as all the chaos and strife in my life seemingly lifted away. It was almost like someone or something else was there standing next to me letting me know that everything was going to be all right. Then I stepped up to my ball, and shanked it straight into the weeds. But you know what, I didn't care, because I was in a good state of mind. Things were going to be all right.

Now, in the years since, I've certainly had some ups and downs. But ever since that day I've been chasing that feeling again. That's kept me around golf more than any reason. Just so there's a chance I might feel that indescribable presence and feeling of calm again. I'm telling you it felt better than any over the counter, prescription drug or liquor I've ever had. Who knows what it was, but I'd love to feel it again just one more time.

The Great Westward Ho Blackjack Comeback of 2005
L-R Alan, Nate, The Golf Monster, Cracker