47 and Counting

I am 47 now, have been for 11 minutes.  Actually, since I was born in Providence, and not at midnight, I am +/- 47 at the moment, but in a few hours it will definitely be official.

I am actually excited about this birthday, but not for any reason that any normal person would be, I am excited about it because 47 was the first number I wore playing football, as a middle linebacker and running back on the freshman football team.

I know this is a lame reason to be happy about a birthday, but so be it.

Actually, I just thought of another reason to be happy about this birthday, and that is because I have someone in my life that I know for certain loves me unconditionally, and that is a great feeling to have, no matter who you are, and no matter if that someone is a cat!!

Yes, I speak of Bella, but you all probably knew that already.  Bella is just simply awesome, someone I hope is with me for a long time, and someone who makes my life better.  Actually, she is definitely exactly the way the woman would be that I would marry and share my life with...oh well!!

Anyway, just thought I would share a couple of very bizarre thoughts related to my 47th.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Free At Last Free At Last Thank God Almighty She Is Free At Last

Torture.  Trama.  Physical abuse.  Mental and emotional abuse.  Injury.  Financial hardship.  Emotional hardship. Loneliness.  Aloneness.  Despair.  Deletion.  Promise.  Promises.  Elation.  Depletion.  Desertion.  Accusation.  Humiliation.  Frustration.  Exhaustion.  Expansion.  Sadness.  Melancholy.    Mishaps.  Crack-ups.  Cracks.  Cracked.  Medication.  Exhilaration.  Exasperation.  Imagination.  Good sensations.  Bad sensation.  No sensation.  Relief.  Elation.  Disbelief.  Depression.

This could go on forever, and has.  No one deserves any of this, let alone all of this and more.  At some point everyone's time should come to bask, even for just a moment in the sun.

I am so glad her time has come.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Anatomy of a Decision

There have been so many decisions that have been made over the course of 46 years and 357 days, that it is hard to look at just one and say "that is the one."  I would like to say that I do not regret any decisions I have ever made, but at present I cannot do that because frankly I have not looked at each one to no whether or not regret is a factor.  I definitely know that some that I could regret, or perhaps even should regret, some that family and friends regret me making are not decisions that I do in fact regret, nor will I ever, but there is one that I had almost forgotten about because the dominoes since have fallen so fast, and so intensely that for a moment I had forgotten what the first domino was.

Almost exactly seven years ago I was standing in the parking lot of Steamboat Springs High School looking at the gorgeous day, and looking up at the mountain that I had been considering calling home for some time, and trying to make a decision.  I had, at that time, just been offered a job teaching math, coaching football and lacrosse, in Steamboat.  The job paid pretty well, especially to do something that I enjoy doing, and something that some people would say I was born to do.  The job also included a flexible schedule such that ten days a month I would be in snow every afternoon.

Seven years ago I was fairly fit, I was coming off two very successful years coaching football and lacrosse, and I was not yet fat and ugly.  Seven years ago I had a knee that was still very solid and very capable of skiing anything.  Seven years ago my view of life was very different than it is now.

This was a very difficult decision for me, but the consensus seemed to be if you have a chance to coach college ball then you coach college ball.  I am glad I can now say that I coached college football, and I do not think I will ever forget that experience.  I am glad that I have had the chance to coach lacrosse at the college level as a head coach and now know that I could have been, am now, good at that, but I have to wonder how happy I would have been living in that community, a community I had felt a part of for a long time prior to the offer.  I have to wonder if I had been in that community for the past seven years would I had found someone that I wanted to spend my life with, or t the very least significant time with.  I have to wonder if I would be a happier, more at peace person today if I had simply stayed there.

It is hard to explain exactly how I felt in that moment, but I can say that there have not been a lot of moments since, if any, that have felt that good.  For those few moments, standing outside that school, looking up at unmistakable beauty, knowing that someone, a group of someones, wanted me to be a part of something they were doing, thought that I could contribute, to be valued in that moment and at peace.  To say that every moment since has been a step down, or a step backward would be such a gross understatement that it would not be doing it justice.  At the same time, at least I had that moment, and having remembered that time, that moment, and knowing some people never even get that, I guess that memory will have to be enough.

I could have done without the seven year free-fall however.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Obsession

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success"


 I know this works, it is how I was able to ever get an "A" in school, it is how was able to have any success athletically, and it is how I was able to have success with the firm.  It is also what has made me successful at times as a coach, only to have that success lessoned as my obsession was diverted.  Interestingly enough this is also what has made my relationships flourish early and dwindle over time.


Obsession is what this quote is really describing.  Obsession is what makes CEOs successful, it is also what causes them to have heart attacks, lose their families, or just simply be detached.  Obsession brings great wealth, and power, and yes, huge amounts of success but, for the very few, the infinitely small percentage of people that obsession helps in this way, there are millions upon millions that get chewed up and spit out by this very same approach.


When you have one thing that is yours, and yours alone, that can be a great and wonderful thing, it can also be your undoing.  For me over the years it has been both.  When it has been good it has been really good, when it has been bad I have wanted to die.  That is the nature of giving everything you have to one thing and one thing only.  It is easy for me to see how the approach in this quote can make for great success, but understanding that a microscopic distance away from such huge success is epic failure.


Thank you again for getting this far with me.

Validation - Sort Of

"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out." - Roy Croft


People much smarter and more eloquent than I tend to take what I think, feel, and/or obsess about and find a way to put it into words that I never could.  The above is another quote from the same colleague and again this strikes a cord.


It is amazing how for all of my life I have felt this, lived this, believed this.  Coming up on forty seven and counting, not to mention single, I have, at the very least, been questioning all that which I believe, if not beginning to lose hope, faith, in what I believe.


I have had some wonderful relationships, some wonderful interludes, some wonderful ships pass by in the night, and it can definitely be said that I liked the person I was when I was with those people, I liked the person I was becoming when I was with those people, and I liked the strong, confident person that came out around those people.


I don't know why I am being sly and saying people, women, there I said it.


I have always said that I love women, and I guess that is a true enough statement, there is something about them, but there are seldom few that can actually make me feel this way and it has to do with love more than lust, chemistry more than thought, attraction, yes first physical, but then in all other ways.  And, most of all, it has to do with the power of caring more for someone else's happiness than for my own, which when that happens does in fact make me someone I like more, respect more, enjoy more, and that is the power of being in love, at least to me.


Thank you again for getting this far with me.

The End Before the Beginning

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France 


No wonder I am so tired!!


This quote comes to me from a colleague and struck me directly.  With all that I have done in my life, the places I have traveled, the things I have seen and experienced, the people I have met, I have always felt profoundly sad, depressed even, at the end of each "thing" that has happened in my life, eventually followed by the excitement of the next.  I always thought this was because I am so goal oriented that this was simply the vacuous feeling once the goal was achieved and the days and months spent attaining that goal were over, I had never thought of this as grief over what was being left behind, what was ending, at least not until now.


Where does the phrase "to die a thousand deaths" come from??  Wherever, and whomever, it now seems vastly appropriate.  Just the eight years with "the firm," I was constantly reaching the end and forging a new beginning, essentially every few months.  We did this with such regularity and absolute abandon that I was on a golf course in Chicago on a Thursday afternoon, packed and on a plane for London on Sunday, back in Chicago on Friday to put everything I owned in storage and back in London the following Monday for a year of working in Europe.


For my year in Europe there were three hellos and three goodbyes.  Wow.  Just never really thought of it this way.  Another thought that came across my desk today had to do with the true cost of something rather than simply the dollar cost.  The vacation home may cost three hundred grand, but what about the five years of working nights and weekends it took to get it.  What was the true cost of the way I have loved my life, and the experiences I have had?


Single, alone, tired, old, fat, bald, glasses, no kids, hmmmm, what cost indeed.


Thank you again for getting this far with me.

The Answer

Three "serious" relationships totaling a little more than a decade.  Recovery time after each, increases with each singe, totaling a lot more than a decade.  Three stints honoring significant requests that I will never regret totaling almost four years.  Let's see, that is already almost twenty five years right there, and then factor in absurd focus on job, and/or current coaching stint, and you get 47 and single in two weeks and two days.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, all the time spent ring shopping, and the one engagement, and the two fortunes lost because love is not just blind, at least not in my case, it is deaf, really f---ing dumb, and blind, plus extremely broke!!

Thank you again for getting this far with me.