"What dreams may come"

The other night, a surreal feeling of calm overtook me on my way to the car. I stopped, stood in the parking lot, took a deep breath, and miraculously felt like a whole new man. As that overwhelming urge started to subside, I realized what it was. Since it had rained all evening, I had stumbled into that post-shower pot of new, fresh air that was absolutely intoxicating!

Rain is natures way of starting anew. For all of the dust, fowl odors, pollution, and whatnot that is kicked up in the air day after day, all it takes is a fresh little rain shower to wash our most precious necessity fresh and clean. Even in the dark, our planet is never asleep so I like to think of the rain as Mother Nature's attempt to recline in a hammock somewhere and catch a few z's. Doesn't Mother Nature have to sleep in a hammock? And in one of those Corona commercials. It's just fitting...

So what else would Mother Nature do during her little siestas, but dream? She must dream of all the beautiful things that she can create once those dark skies subside. A waterfall, a tropical paradise, rolling prairie that goes on forever, snow capped mountains, and streams or rivers that you could only see in a post card; all dreams of our beloved Mother Nature. Rain is so important for survival on this planet, just as dreams are so important to our emotional survival. We all need washed clean so we can rise the next day with that spring rain-esque feeling of new beginnings.

Has anybody stopped to critically think about Mother Nature? I'm not talking about global warming, greenhouse gases, or climate change but Mother Nature the person. Who is she? Where is she from? Does she have a family? How about a sister I could go out with? How does she feel about global warming? How much education is required to be considered for the planet mother position? Do they require references and what kind of background check is involved? Are they hiring for any other positions? Do they have casual Friday? Do they offer dental?

What I'm getting at is who asked her to be Mother Nature? Did she volunteer? I mean who would do such a thing? That is an awesome responsibility! What if she gets sick or has a death in the family? What happens when Mother Nature decides to take a personal day? What happens when Mrs. (I'm assuming) Nature starts going through menopause? If she travels does she experience jet lag, and what happens to the planet because of it? In that case, what happens if her circadian rhythms were to get messed up and the moon came out in the day and the sun came out at night? What if...

What if she became so sad and tired of all of the death and destruction from hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes that she stopped dreaming altogether? As if she made it her job to protect us all from the destructive aspects of weather by trying to stay awake forever? How would this planet survive without rain? How would we live without dreams? After a year of struggling with this same issue, I can tell you that life is pretty miserable without dreams and it's even more painful when you abstain from dreaming in order to protect those you hold dear.

Over the last year, my life improvement has stagnated. And though I've tried to attribute it to a number of different factors, the truth is that I've lost my desire. I've stopped dreaming. I've taken a blind eye to what is necessary to improve myself, and I've chosen to stop growing as an individual. I'm afraid to dream because I fear that my dreams and personal growth will take me in a direction that is not in sync with the futures of my queen or princess. The good news is that this isn't a unique problem. I think that a lot of people stop growing as individuals when they get into a relationship for fear that their personal growth might steer them away from this fresh joy in their lives and they don't realize they've lost their individuality until the relationship hits the skids.

The problem is that this doesn't feel like some hesitation to conform. There is something much bigger at play. Fear. I am afraid. And though I thought I was afraid of leaving my royal family, the truth is that I am afraid of failure. You see when I started this journey, the fog of depression was so thick in my mind, that I was completely indifferent to the whole process and the ominous road that lied before me. Plus, at 510 pounds, I had nowhere to go but up. Now, I'm actually starting to look like a normal human being and I'm developing the muscles and physique of a damn fine human being! I'm looking better, I'm feeling better, and I'm studying in a degree program that actually feels like home. For the first time in my life, those size 62 pants where I keep all of my emotional shortcomings and bad decisions have a few metaphorical coins in the front pocket and I'm afraid of losing what I've accumulated thus far. As I have said before, it isn't how low you get that is so painful, but its how fast and how far you fall in comparison to where you began. What began as my abstinence from dreaming to protect my family became me hiding behind them for fear of what the future would hold.

I recently had a philosophy assignment where I had to discuss Nozick's "Experience Machine." Nozick's machine is a device that could be programmed to create any and every experience in the world; sex, power, fame, or even peace. So the question became whether or not you would get into the machine. Nozick believed that most people would abstain because just having the experience without the toil and effort to achieve it would result in an empty victory and hardly worth the experience. My comment was that it isn't whether I would get into the machine, but don't we as a society already have experience machines? We drink alcohol, we abuse narcotics, we take antidepressants, we overeat, we engage in loveless intercourse, and we tell lies. Aren't all of these things a way to escape from the pain that we feel inside; if only for a single moment? I have come to realize that I was wrong.

Truth is, we already live in an "Experience Machine!" In this world, there isn't anything we can't do! You want to be the President? Fine, go be the President. 44 men have already used the "Experience Machine" for that one. Wanna fly? We can do that! Swim with the dolphins? Go to the beach, go to Sea World, or go get stoned with Ricky Williams (running back for the Miami Dolphins) and you can fly and swim with a Dolphin at the same time... I'm talking about "manifest destiny." If you want it then go out and get it! The only thing standing between you and your dreams is yourself!" Now granted, if you want to experience flying like a bird so you jump off a skyscraper, you will die, but what piece of equipment doesn't have a bug or two? I'm sure you all have witnessed Microsoft's "blue screen of doom." Maybe Nozick can fix those qwerks for version 2.3 or hopefully Apple CEO Steve Jobs will buy it and develop it into iLife...

So say the door to this magical device is like a bright, beaming light in an endless plain of shadows and darkness, then I am huddled on the ground, paralyzed with fear, just outside the grasp of the light. It isn't the endless possibilities that frightens me, but more the high probability that I'm going to follow the wrong one. I have made too many mistakes in my life and here I am. I don't have any drugs addictions, I'm not in debt, I don't have a litter of children spread across the country, and I'm not a felon! My teeth are clean, I'm in perfect health, and I've still maintained my friends and family. Why? Why? Why? Aside from the 300 extra pounds that accumulated throughout my body and the long list of emotional problems, I'm still standing tall and that is what is so terrifying!

They say that the odds of being struck by lighting twice are better than winning the lottery. In my case, I feel like I've won the jackpot twelve weeks in a row so now I really need to stay indoors, even when the sun is shinning, because it just seems like my time to be struck by lightning is long past up. I want to do right by my life and I want to follow my dreams, but I feel I need to always be zigging and zagging to avoid the lighting for fear that this will be the one that takes me all the way down, and worse takes the people I love down with me. This might sound absolutely ridiculous, but I can't help but feel this way and it is driving be bananas!

Unlike most of the blogs I write, there is no happy ending, there is no right choice, and there is no solution; only more questions. Though I don't know the correct path, it is time to move forward. Fear not only makes us human, but it also guides us by teaching us who we really are. I need to bring accountability back into my life and it starts right now. Today I weighed 361.5 pounds and though I have made incredible headway, I am absolutely ashamed and embarrassed for the world to quantifiably know just how many mistakes I've made. But accountability comes through honesty, so from now on I'm going to publish my daily weight right here on my blog so that there will be no more excuses or explanations for what is happening with my weight; just one number plain and simple.

I like to use other's words in my writing because I feel that there are so many people wiser than I who can create a masterpiece of the emotions I'm trying to convey. It was definitely a toss up, but I settled on, "And in the end on dreams we will depend cause that's what dreams are made of..."

Run, run, run away
Like a train runnin' off the track
Got the truth bein' left behind
Falls between the cracks
Standin' on broken dreams
Never losin' sight, ah
Well just spread your wings

We'll get higher and higher
Straight up we'll climb
We'll get higher and higher
Leave it all behind

So baby dry your eyes
Save all the tears you've cried
Oh, that's what dreams are made of
'Cause we belong in a world that must be strong
Oh, that's what dreams are made of...

Dreams by Van Halen

Un-Thanksgiving?

I used to listen to Sean Hannity's radio show and I recall he used to make fun of a certain staff member that he called Flipper. This young woman, Flipper, was a vegetarian, so she would get excited about Thanksgiving for the "Tofu-rkey" they had every year. I just assumed that Flipper was this crazy, vegan, hippie young woman that probably didn't bathe properly, so I enjoyed her berating.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I just can't seem to get psyched about it. Last year, our family had multiple feasts, on multiple dates, at different locations around the state. Also, every Thanksgiving, including the one previous, I would count down the days to the turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Thanksgiving used to be my Christmas because it was an opportunity to pig out all day on my absolute favorite foods!

This year, it just doesn't even sound good. Maybe those 10,000 hours of healthy living habits have come a little earlier than I thought. I'm don't even plan on spotting myself extra calories tomorrow and I think I might be able to get in a work-out before we leave town.

1.) I was really in a bad place if gorging on starches and belittling vegetarians was what I took so much pleasure.
2.)Does anybody know where I could purchase a "Tofu-rkey"?!?!

700 days and counting...

"Life's a dance you learn as you go. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow. Don't worry 'bout the parts that you don't know. Life's a dance you learn it as you go..." John Michael Montgomery

700 days ago, I finally admitted to myself that I had a problem. At that point in my life, I was so ill that I didn't even realize the 300 pound sack I was carrying on my back, how disheveled I had become, or how I was living in a self-produced landfill, by choice! I will never, ever forget the horror when I stood on a specially manufactured scale, 700 days ago, and saw the numbers 504 pounds flash before my eyes. It was like I was run over by the reality bus!

They says that it takes 10,000 hours to become a professional at something. If I'm spending at least 12 hours a day (gotta sleep sometime) practicing the healthier living techniques that I'm constantly learning then I should be able to consider myself a pro in 833 calendar days. I'm excited to see what that is going to look like!

The thing that I'm most proud of is that all of this work was done without any smoke or mirrors. I've had zero surgeries and the one and only diet I've used is that silly, little food guide pyramid that I learned about in the fourth or fifth grade. Had I taken that scheme to heart then, I might not hurt in my knees, hips, upper back, lower back and feet. I'll admit that I do complain about the exercise a little much, but I have honestly enjoyed every second of this arduous task and am truly excited to see what tomorrow has in store.

A Step Back?

On the evening of July 16th, 1999, a luxury aircraft piloted by John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off. Tragically, the accident killed John, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Kennedy, Jr. was at fault because he hadn't logged all of the hours required to receive his pilot's license. In this incident, the pilot lacked the training needed for flying at night, but nonetheless ventured out on the night of the 16th. According to the NTSB, Kennedy crashed due to a phenomenon known as spacial disorientation. When flying at night over open water, pilots can become disoriented. Their instincts tell them that they are flying upside down and steer to correct even though their instruments indicate they are flying level and right side up. They believe that their instruments have failed, when in fact their eyes have failed, and they fly the plane straight into the water below.

When this tragedy occurred, I found the whole thing to be very peculiar. How could one's senses deceive them so much and in that event, why wouldn't you trust your instruments? Instruments were developed because we as humans are flawed. Instruments are the means of impartially telling us how we're doing, where we are, or where we are going. As I've endeavored on this life improvement journey, the scale in my bathroom is my best barometer of my performance in my life and a fantastic indicator of my future.

I purchased an iPhone six or seven months ago and I'm satisfied beyond words. The first app I put on my phone was the calorie tracker from livestrong.com. The app and website are both incredible! With livestrong in my pocket, I put the pencil and paper away and started tracking my calorie consumption digitally. I wanted to slow my weight loss so my skin didn't look like a ball of pizza dough, so I set my calorie level so that I would lose about a pound and a half a week. The most incredible thing was that I could use the app to track my activity as well. So, as I would burn calories through exercise, my phone was telling me I could eat more to stay at losing a pound and a half a week.

Before I knew it, I was using this new tool to get back to my old tricks. I'm embarrassed to say it was all about the food again. I gained back about 22 pounds in the last 8 months and it's clear that my behavior has changed. "If I ride the bike for an hour, then we can go to Olive Garden for supper... I'm absolutely exhausted and I'm going to hurt myself if I keep pushing, but ten more minutes and we can go for ice cream after supper," but why? Why do I feel the need to abuse myself?

The whole time that I was so sick I was functioning at 25 percent speed and I had fallen behind in so many aspects of my life. Now I'm struggling to catch back up. On top of this struggle, we've been working on remodeling the house, which isn't a small task. If that wasn't enough to impair my progress, for some reason I feel such a sense of obligation towards putting a smile on my little princess' face. She's been going through a really rough time these past few months and I just have this overwhelming urge to buy her a pony every time I see her beautiful eyes glaze over with concern and sorrow. Their pain is my pain. Their worries and fears are my worries and fears. All this and I can't even think of when I took a day for myself.

See, for some reason, I prefer to get caught up in other people's problems instead of dealing with my own. Instead of focusing on myself, I've been going bananas with worry about finishing the house because my queen is worrying about the house. It is easier to concentrate of making my princess smile than making myself smile. I've been so caught up in the feeling of responsibility for everyone around me that I had convinced myself that eating 4,300 calories a day was a good idea!

The good news in all of this is that even though I've gained 20 pounds, I've increased only one pant size because I was working out so much that those extra calories went to muscle, and believe me it went to muscle. My arms, legs, and abs are in incredible shape, but my flexibility has gone south. I stopped going to yoga because it was too slow and relaxing and "I just didn't have time for that shit!"

So, with shame in my heart, it's back to the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid)! It's back to a fixed number calories and the end of this flexible spending nonsense. I need to make it less about the food and more about myself! It's back to a variety of exercises with no consideration for Olive Garden, Dairy Queen, or any other place I have no business frequenting. It also seems that I'm not as emotionally advanced as I thought, so I think it's a good idea to get back into therapy. Finally, I need to have a little faith in myself and my loved ones that the world won't fall apart if I let them down off my shoulders, because holding them up there just isn't fair to anybody.

I thought that spacial disorientation was such a ridiculous concept, but it turns out that your instruments are only as good as what you want them to indicate. I was slowly working my way back to the ocean and I was actually proud, if not arrogant, of what I was doing. When I was in North Carolina, I would become flabbergasted after talking to some fellow "life improvers" because they had lost 60, then gained 40, then lost 120, but then gained 150, but this was the time they were going to be successful... How is this possible? It turns out that this sort of oscillation is just a part of the human condition that we all must endure, myself included. "It's not how many times you fall down, but how many times you get back up." This is what happens when you focus on the goal line instead of the next defender or when you start running to first base before you even hit the ball. Recovering addicts will say that "today is the first day of the rest of my life." Well, I happily embrace today so that tomorrow might be a brighter day.

I don't know what to say really. Three minutes till the biggest battle of
our professional lives. It all comes down to today. Now either we heal as a
team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play, till we're finished.
We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here, get the
shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb
out of hell. One inch at a time.

Now I can't do it for you. I'm too old. I look around, I see these young
faces, and I think... I mean I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can
make. I pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who's
ever loved me, and lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You
know when you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's part of life.
But you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life's this
game of inches. And so is football. Because in either game, life or football,
the margin for error is so small. I mean... one half a step too late or too
early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow too fast, you don't
quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every
break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that
inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for
that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we
add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between
winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this - in any fight,
its the guy whose willing to die who's gonna win that inch. And I know if I'm
going to have any life anymore, it's because I'm still willing to fight and die
for that inch. Because that's what living is! The 6 inches in front of your
face...

"Do not take with alcohol....."

So, as you know from following my blog, I've been on antidepressants for almost 18 months now and on the label is clearly says, "do not take with alcohol." Every time that I have to go to the doctor for a refill she says, "now be sure not to take this with alcohol." So, what do I go out and do?....... That's right, I take it with alcohol.

Because of my lifetime body correction program, I don't drink that often, but I have noticed that being drunk just hasn't been the same. I feel so much more happy when I'm intoxicated. Now before I'm hauled off to Alcoholics Annonymous, let me explain. Now that I've made such strides in improving my life emotional and physically, I feel so much happier when I happen to be intoxicated now compared to when I was intoxicated before I got control of my life. I might have seemed fun before, but to be honest, I was just so damn angry! Now, all of the anger seems to be gone and when I drink, it's just happiness, for the most part, and I'm a lot less uninhibited than I was before. The hangovers have been worse though, but I figured it was from not drinking as much anymore.

As I've mentioned recently, I've just discovered an allergy to wheat; so no beer! So, I've had to switch to rum for occasions that call for mass consumption of alcohol. Saturday night was my first "no beer night" and I'm so ashamed at my behavior. I'm not going to go into details, because I don't remember most of them, but one moment I was fine and the next I was plowed beyond all recognition! I felt so incredible! I guess the alcohol intensifies the effects of the heavy amount of antidepressants I take and I felt on top of the world. Half way into the night, I was walking the streets wondering if I had taken ectascy, because emotionally, it's what I felt like.

Yes, to answer your question right now, I've taken ectasy! Back to the story....

I knew I was becoming a burden to my friends, so I got a cab back to my vehicle, climbed into the bed of the truck, and slept (quite uncomfortably). As great as I had felt the night before, I felt the polar opposite the next day. The hangover quickly ended, but emotionally I was in the toilet. I spent the next day and a half in this horrible, terrifying haze of depression, pain, and despair, and the worst part was that I absolutely knew better! I finally took something which killed the depression / anxiety, and managed 12 plus hours of sleep before I got back to my good 'ole self again.

So, it's with that story in mind that I officially hang up my Lambda Chi drinkin' shoes for good. I've got too many good things in my life now to start playing games with my sanity and emotional wellbeing. The thing is that I know that with my family history of depression, this isn't a temporary decision. That thought makes me somewhat sad because even with all the pain in my past, I have so many good memories with my brothers at Lambda Chi Alpha, and a lot of them have alcohol involved in some way or another.

Now, at this point, the former President of the chapter is jumping up and down in front of his computer screaming, "I told you so! I told you so!" because he and I used to argue in college because he was trying to change the "drunkerd" mentality of the house and I just couldn't understand why. Looking back, if only I had some sober memories with my brothers, then I might not feel that ending this tradition means I'm ending my place within the fraternity. Now any public service manager of any chapter would jump in and mention all of the good things that Lambda Chi does for the community and how important brotherhood is, and they're absolutely right. Fraternity does have an incredible amount of positive qualities and traditions beyond alcohol, but in college I was too busy with the bad traditions to commit some of the better traditions to heart.

The good news is that alcohol, cab fare, and 1:30am munchie food is expensive. My only problem now is I need to think of a new excuse to lay on the couch and watch football instead of working on the jobs on my "honey-do list." Now, I just need to be ready for when Hank Williams sings, " Andy, why do you drink?" so I can scream, "I don't!"

I'm reminded of that line in the movie Road Trip, "Josh.... this is college. The window of opportunity to drink, do drugs, and take advantage of unsuspecting young women is getting smaller by the day. In ten years, we're going to have to pay for these kind of girls!" And since I'm probably going to hell already, I'll tie that quote into the Sound of Music, "when the lord closes a door; he always opens a window...."

To be fair, it is my list and I'm the one giving myself a hard time for not getting this stuff done, but that is another issue for a different day!

A Bittersweet Relief: A End to my Personal Hell

11 months ago, the rambling weight loss train I was riding came to a very abrupt and difficult stop. I was losing about 2 and a half pounds a week until the beginning of August when the weight loss stopped. I tried all sorts of changes in diet and exercise, but to no avail. I saw a nutritionist, an endocrinologist, had all sorts of blood work, and even worked out with a trainer, but nothing I did could move the scale. As September rolled into October, I started insisting to my physician that something wasn't right, but all she had to offer is her nagging suggestions to have bariatric surgery.

By November, still with no weight loss, I started developing sinus infection after sinus infection. By February, the infection had spread to my eye and caused my right eye to swell shut. My eye was so badly damaged that I couldn't read or use a computer almost a month. So, I was referred to an opthamologist who referred me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. After rounds and round of antibiotics and cortical steroids, I still saw no improvement. By this time I started gaining weight at a rate of about 3 pounds per week, no matter what I did or ate. Plus, to make matters worse, the steroids were making me retain water so I was puffing up in my face and stomach. After a clear CT scan of head, which also proved I had a real, fully-functional brain, it became clear that I had some sort of allergy issue. So, the doctor took some more blood and sent it off to Dallas for some allergy tests. I couldn't believe the results.

It turns out the ONLY things I'm allergic to are dairy, eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, chocolate, and wheat. It just so happens that I just named about 70 percent of my diet. My doctor said that these food allergies, especially eaten in large quantities on a daily basis, would cause the sinus congestion and drainage, which would feed the infections, and cause all sorts of congestion in my gastrointestinal tract. According to my math, I should have lost 45 to 55 pounds in the last 7 months and instead I gained 25!

I have cut dairy completely out of my diet and I've limited my exposure to the other allergens. I feel so much better and I've lost 9 pounds in the last 14 days! The problem I'm facing now is that I was trying to keep my weight loss pace fairly slow so that I could build more muscle and allow for my skin to slowly shrink, but the general consensus is that I'm going to lose 40 plus pounds in the next few months. After these last nine pounds, the skin in my stomach has already starting to sag and ,without being too graphic, I'm starting to notice a butt crack in the middle of my stomach and the skin under my arms is beginning to sag....

I can't describe how relieved I am to have all of this behind me and I'm hoping upon hope that I don't end up looking too grotesque. I don't like enduring all of this mess and still ending up self-conscious, but the alternative is unacceptable. So, life goes on and tomorrow is a new day with new challenges and opportunities. More than likely I'll eventually have to get plastic surgery to remove all the extra skin, but at this point it can't be helped. I'll just have to keep documentation from my doctors for when Oprah calls again! Onward and upward. Tomorrow is going to be a great day!

Is it my back, my hips, or from my belly button down that hurts?

So, it turns out that I'm getting older......

Chicago, Illinois; "the windy city." This is such a fantastic city. I happen to be in one of my favorite vacation spots because one of my favorite fraternity brothers is getting married in a few weeks and it's his last "hooray" before that long ride off into the sunset. The bachelor party. A time honored tradition and an experience that fraternity men take very seriously.

I have to say that the best man has put together quite a weekend. We're golfing at a little course on Lake Michigan this morning and then we're off to a VIP patio party as we watch the Chicago White Sox host the Texas Rangers and then it's a change of clothes into a collared shirt, washing off the long days activities, and applying cologne and, in my case, lots of deodorant, for some night clubs and evening cocktails. Then tomorrow, it's up bright and early to get home for Mother's Day festivities with my special ladies.

My fraternity brother, this weekend's bachelor, has a great apartment in downtown Chicago and the early morning golfers stayed at his home last night. It has been great. The nighttime drive to the big city, followed by some chips and pizza and John Madden football until the wee hours of the morning.

So I'm laying on an air mattress on a hard wood floor in this great downtown Chicago apartment as I was unpleasantly greeted by pain, the morning sun over Lake Michigan, and this horrible, horrible realization: "I'm getting too old for this!" I'm laying here with my back and hips in knots and I couldn't believe I was trying to think of where to find a soft piece of ground to lie and stretch before we hit the links this morning! Ashby doesn't need to stretch! Not to mention the discomfort is only being exacerbated by the one beer and three hours of sleep. Now don't get me wrong. My friend is a wonderful host and he has a great home with an absolutely incredible view of the water, but sadly...... "I'm getting too old for this."

So, as the I can see the morning sun glissen off the lake as I'm taking in the 3 part harmony of gentlemen slumber, I can't help but think about how this sunrise seems to make a new chapter in my life. With the discomfort of older age, followed by it's realization, came competing thoughts of:

"I wonder if they've got some eggs...... we need to be up and moving by 7 am tomorrow morning.... How am I going to do that with 15 other guys in two apartments...... How am I going to get my hips to move for golf...... I'm hungry, I wonder what I can make for breakfast..... Should I be cooking in somebody else's kitchen without permission? That seems rude..... I wonder where's the nearest Starbuck's...... Where are we going take "my Queen" for Mother's Day dinner? ..... I need to get a card and wrap her present.... I wonder what she's doing right now.... I need food to take my morning medicine; what can I eat???? I'm going to need food this evening to take my medicine; what should I do???? How am I going to pull this off with 15 other guys in an apartment???? I'm not getting drunk today! I'm not getting drunk today! I'm not getting drunk today! Even if I came back early to sleep, there are going to be early drunkerds that are going to be filing in as the night rolls on and it's going to be a re-telling of the night's events that I experienced and I'm just going to be a mess tomorrow..... AHHHHHH!!!!"

So, this calming sensation came over me as I pulled my laptop out of my messenger bag, found the nearest unsecured wi-fi networks (thank you "WillisTRondos crib" and your free internet), logged onto Hiltonhonors.com and found the nearest hotel to this location so that I can collect points.

"Wow, the Drake Hotel, I didn't know that was a Hilton hotel. How swanky! 129? Dollars? Not bad! Badass! I should get the breakfast buffet for $7.50. That's a good price and you know it's going to be an awesome breakfast. If I'm in by midnight, I can get up at 6:30. Get a good breakfast to make up for less sleep than I'd like and a busy yesterday, not to mention today, and then roll back over to the apartment by 8 to pick up the no doubt hungover or possibly still drunk "Dial" and "the Switzer King" (obviously not their real names or even nicknames) and be back home by noon because we gain an hour."

A frequent fly er number and a few clicks later, and hurricane of swirling thoughts and concerns rolled away and I re-gained control of my environment.

I really don't like the idea of getting older to the point of needing these extra considerations in my life; not necessarily the Drake Hotel, but legitimate meals and a decent night's sleep in order to function. Those things just didn't use to be so important. I could get by for days on $3.45 General Tso's chicken, Taco Bell, and two and a half hours sleep on a couple love seat cushions on a cold concrete floor, but those days are clearly over. I should also mention that as frustrated as I might be by these extra "guys weekend requirements," I'm more relieved that I've got a life that's actually worth the extra effort.

So, I'm going to try to work out another half hour of semi-fulfilling sleep before a very long day, but this wouldn't be my writing if I didn't quote somebody smarter or more articulate than me.....

"Oh, I'm much too young to feel this damn old......"

Here's to new beginnings!

Winnie Cooper, where have you gone?

So, I'm on campus today and I keep seeing this girl that looks so familiar. She walks by, I stare and smile, she smiles, and we go our separate ways. Two hours later, we pass each other in the hall, and I could just swear that I know this girl. I mean, this is a beautiful woman. Long, flowing black hair, great smile, petite figure, a face that looked like an expensive porcelain doll, and she looks like somebody I've seen at least a million times. At this point, I almost say something, but I’m hesitant because she doesn’t seem to recognize me, and I’ve got one of those faces that everybody recognizes. I wish I was just being arrogant, but not a week goes by that somebody doesn’t ask me if they know me, or did I go to school in Terre Haute, or didn’t you get arrested once in…… As I’m sitting in the lunch plaza, this girl walks past me again and by this point it’s driving me crazy.

“Excuse me miss, do I know you from somewhere?” She stops looks around and asks, “Me?”

“Yes, you. I swear you look so familiar and it is absolutely driving me bananas!”

“Bananas, huh…. That’s a funny expression. I’m sorry, but you just don’t look familiar. Sorry.”

I thanked her for her time and she found a table to sit and eat. I finished my lunch and was in the process of throwing my tray away when it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I ran over to her table, which was full of about twelve, 18 to 21 year old women that looked like the cast of 90210 and I exclaimed, “Holy shit! You’re Winnie Cooper! You look just like Winnie Cooper! I’m sure guys tell you that all the time!”

“Who?” she asks…. If you only saw the look on her face, you’d swear I had been speaking Vietnamese or told her about a cowboy that rode into town on Tuesday, stayed two days, and left on Tuesday!

“That’s Samantha….. What the hell are you talking about?” asks another one of the lost dozen.

“Winnie Cooper, she was a character on the Wonder Years….. She was Kevin’s dream girl….. She was everybody’s dream girl! You know; from the TV show…. Not ringing a bell?”

As I’m staring at 12 zombies, I fade off with a, “yeah, I think her real name is Danica Mackellar or something.”

“Oh, you mean Danica Patrick? She’s super hot! Are you trying to tell Samantha that she’s hot? Are you asking her out? Who are you?”

I put my head down and walked away with a “sorry to bother you” and “enjoy your lunch.”

I don’t generally get embarrassed, but that encounter left me at least a little anxious, to say the least. So I threw away the rest of my lunch and headed off to my next meeting. After the meeting, I’m walking down the hall and I don’t believe it; I’m crossing paths with Winnie Cooper, or Samantha whomever, for a fifth time today! I keep my head down as I pass, but she puts her hand on my shoulder and stops me.

“Hey…. I wanted to thank you…. That girl, Winnie whatever, she’s like really pretty. That was a really nice thing to say, and you don’t even know me. I’m touched.”

I just about jumped out of my skin. It wasn’t because of the hand on my shoulder, or her level of attractiveness, but because somebody actually understood what I was saying! I kept my bone structure inside my skin, washed all emotion from my face, cleared my throat (unsuccessfully I might add), and responded in this raspy, emphysema type voice and said, “Oh… (throat clear; this time successful) you do know what show I was talking about.”

“Oh no….. I’m sorry,” she replied. I looked up the Wonder Years on IMDB and that girl is really pretty, but uh….. Maybe I’ll watch that show sometime.”

“You know,” I responded, “I wouldn’t bother. The show was pretty terrible and Fred Savage hasn’t been in anything good since The Princess Bride (again, blank stare), but that Winnie Cooper was something spectacular.”

And as I was walking away, something occurred to me….. Where have all the dream girls gone?

By dream girls, I mean the type of women guys would fall in love with on network TV and resent their girlfriends for not being as hot and cool as those Thursday night beauties. You know, the beautiful dream of some poor sap’s life that was so unattainable that she could be considered the antagonist of the show. The match that wouldn’t ever happen in a million years, but as the show’s final episode would premiere, this hapless son of a bitch gets the girl and America celebrates in joy and relief as Kevin and Winnie ride off into the sunset or Ross and Rachel finally make it work!

I used to all but pray to see that moment when I was growing up. If Ross could end up with Rachel, then maybe there was a hope with the girl I was smitten with on the cheerleading squad or even the girl in the science club. And in the final months of my long trip down to the bottom of the barrel, as I lived “protected” from the world by my piles of pizza boxes, empty liquor bottles, and newspapers from the floor to the ceiling, I was inconsolable as Dr. Shepherd left Meredith Grey to get back together with his wife. Meredith was heartbroken, and I’m ashamed to say so was I. I thought he could see past her dysfunction and love her no matter what, and as my weight climbed to one quarter of a ton, and the depression continued to sedate the neurons in my brain, I too was losing faith in that dream girl to save me.

I will clarify by saying that I was no doubt extremely drunk, but the general trauma stuck with me for weeks. Why would Meredith (me in this case) go on living if she didn’t have anybody that understood her?

And the problem was that these protagonists, in my mind, we’re totally deserving of the glory. Of that group of friends, Ross was the smartest and most successful. Kevin’s determination was admirable, to say the least. Ed was an accomplished lawyer, handsome, charming, and charismatic as he perused after Carol Vesey. Meredith was a surgeon from a famous family, but season after season, America would scowl together as asshole after asshole joined the show and didn’t appreciate the gift of America’s dream girl as our hopeless little hero would be devestated before trying to find new ways to steal away her heart. For me, it was just too close to real life, but there I was, looking for the instance that broke the rule.

Now all of this talk no doubt seems pretty irrational, but that's just it. I was absolutely irrational! I was operating under a very misguided set of ideals. I was emotionally ill.

What’s funny is that type of show doesn’t even have an ounce of my interest for me anymore. If it isn’t Entourage or Heroes, then it isn’t even worth my time. I just don’t care if “Grey and McDreamy” get back together and I think Scrubs is over and I don’t even want to know what happened to “JD and Elliott,” because the truth is, I found my dream girl. She’ll be the first to admit that she doesn’t look like Jennifer Anniston or Sarah Chalke, but through episode after episode, she’s got me inspired to overcome and endure whatever obstacles arise to bring about a happy resolution at the end of the day. I find her absolutely irresistable. She is my happy ending. She is my best friend.

I wasn’t intending this to be so sappy, but my “Queen” has been out of town for the last few days helping a good friend who is being treated for breast cancer that has metastasized to one of her lungs. I couldn’t believe just how lost I was when she was gone. Not to mention that when I was presented with the opportunity of doing just about anything I wanted with my free time, I watched a few movies, caught up on some sleep, did some laundry, straightened up the house, and read a little. This beer swilling, overindulgent, life of the party has finally found his life’s center. I have finally found home.

Thinking back about all of my dream girls, both from television and friendships in the past, I don’t think that I really wanted them, but I wanted to be good enough to deserve them. I wanted to have the appearance, skill set, and confidence to be somebody that the “top girls” wanted to be with. It’s almost as if it was a way for me to imagine that my inabilities and insecurities didn’t exist. That would also mean that these issues have been developing inside me since I was in junior high school! I wanted to be Ross, Kevin, Ed, JD, and Dr. Grey because I was going to mixers and running away from girls that asked me to dance!

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone
tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were
often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking
for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I,
could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my
expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born
with: that I am nobody but myself."~Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royale”

I can’t believe it, but I finally found me! It took me almost 27 years, 507 pounds (less my 165), countless trips to Taco Bell, pounds and pounds of skittles, more beers than I’d like to admit, a few recreational drugs, and a minor arrest or two, but I found my center; my peace. With this knowledge in my back pocket, it is only upward from here. Sure, there will be the occasional bump in the road, there always is, but as long as I stay true to who I am, happiness and peace will be close by for the rest of my days. What’s funny is that I actually planned on having it all figured out by now. Since I was 14, I had it all planned to be done with graduate school, get married at 27, and to live out my days in peace, harmony, and bliss. So, I’m not married and I’ve broken just about every moral absolute I grew up with, but as I see it, I’m right where I wanted to be, when I wanted to be it. I thought I was lost. It turns out that I’m right on track!

Thank your local "evil doer"

As Bernie Madoff admitted in federal court to running a “ponzi scheme” and defrauding people out of billions of dollars, I was reminded of the quote by philosopher Bhagavad Gita, “Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.” What I find fantastic about this situation is that there isn’t one single victim in this whole scandal. Madoff’s actions were abhorrent, but these “victims” absolutely knew better. He was out-promising everybody else on Wall Street, but he had the genius to market it as a limited opportunity and then sat back and watched as the people climbed over each other to throw their money at him. I’ve never met anybody whose parent’s didn’t tell them the most classic bit of advice, “if it’s too good to be true; it probably is,” but the idea of having a leg up on everybody else was just too good to pass up. Bernie Madoff was a good marketing program away from being the Nigerian government official that wants to share Nigeria’s millions of dollars in exchange for “borrowing” your checking account in the United States.

Adam Smith, the father of economics, described greed as an “invisible hand” that pushes us as a society towards prosperity. Utilizing the desire for greener grass, which exists in every human being, is the genius of capitalism. A market that limits individuals’ restrictions to pursuing their dreams is what has made America the centerpiece of the world economy. It is arguable that this country was founded by businessmen that wanted to avoid paying taxes to a king that wasn’t very friendly to business. The one problem with an economic system that is run by anybody with a dollar bill or credit card in their pocket is that the market is always in motion. Just as the pendulum always sways, economic prosperity can be here one day and gone the next. And as the pendulum starts to sway into negative territory, there are always going to be people there to try and snatch that last buck out of the air and there’s always going to be people willing to throw it out in the hopes of getting the new Mercedes or Prius before their next door neighbor.

On the TV show The West Wing, President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen tells the story of a farmer with a hole in the road in front of his house. The hole was full of water and the farmer complained about how he had to spend all day with his tractor pulling cars out of the hole. In anticipation of paying a wrecker hundreds of dollars, they would always tip the farmer very well and thank him for his generosity. So finally somebody asked him, “If you’re pulling people out of this hole in the road all day, then do you farm your fields at night?” The farmer chuckled and said, “No, at night is when I fill the hole back up with water!” Bernie Madoff had the hole, the tractor, and even put a sign along the highway that read, “This shortcut will take 3 hours off your trip, GUARANTEED,” but the fact that people always choose to ignore the inevitability that there are no shortcuts in life means that there are very few "innocent" victims. In this world of communication and capitalism, shortcuts last only a few seconds before they become the way.

As you all know, I’ve lost a substantial amount of weight in the past 15 months, but I was almost heartbroken the other day when my doctor asked me if now would be a good time to discuss bariatric surgery. She said that sometimes no matter what you do, the weight just won’t come off and this bypasses all of that stress and struggle. It would be one thing if the surgery rewired your body to make you process food differently, but instead they just make your stomach so small that if you eat too much you’ll die. That’s essentially the same as surgically sewing your mouth shut, or better yet, telling a person that you’re going to shoot them in the head if they don’t drop 20 pounds!

I would be more than willing to take a few weeks off and live on a few hundred calories a day, just like post-op for bariatric surgery, if my doctor told me I needed to drop a bunch of weight in a hurry, but it’s easier with the surgery because there isn’t the hell of options and choices as there would be with a voluntary calorie restriction. Since when did limiting your options ever become a good thing?

I think that the scary theme behind all of this is that there are always going to be choices in life, whether we like it or not. You can pass all the laws you want to prevent the Bernie Madoffs of the world from unethically and illegally capitalizing on the greed of others, but there will still be those who choose to do bad deeds just as there are people that will always remember what Mr. Madoff did, but will gladly give their money to the next snake oil salesman that comes along. Why? Because we need that type of behavior for our country and financial system to prosper. We need multi-millionaires to want to be billionaires. We need the billionaires to try to buy up the world because that is what drives us to prosperity. The Bernie Mardoffs are just the cost of doing business. So, don’t pass more legislation or get the government more involved on Wall Street, just don’t give you money to these people! There are perfectly legal, safe, and legitimate places to invest on Wall Street where you won’t risk losing your 401k. “Don’t write checks that you can’t cash.” If you can’t afford to take the risk, by God don’t take it! Because if you lose it then it’s your ass that’s wasting away in some retirement facility in New Jersey while your friends are living out their glory years in Florida.

I heard D.L. Hughley say tonight that “this is the perfect example of what unregulated capitalism can do.” I was enraged by his comments, because I believe that capitalism is responsible for everything in his life, from the development of his iPhone to the existence of a demand, and the funds to pay for him to speak his opinions on the television. After I thought about it, I realized that he was absolutely correct! But, capitalism at its worst is better than alternative markets at their best. In many other countries the genuine manipulators, or villains, would be getting the proletariat to rise up against the bourgeoisie, not steal their money. In other countries, this pendulum swing would be the beginnings of a coup, but instead it happens to be the beginning of one of our finest hours. To top it all off, Mr. Madoff is going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and I assure you any hotel without room service (i.e. minimum security prison) will be prison for a man that lives in a 7 million dollar apartment, and we, as a society get one step closer to figuring out that perfect balance between individual greed and prosperity for all.

The man inside the television keeps trying to tell me of all the hard times that are ahead and we could have another Great Depression on our hands. They try to scare me with stories of “The Dust Bowl” and “Hoovervilles,” but they don’t mention what an incredible accomplishment it was to endure for a country as relatively young as ours. If you ever had a conversation about the Depression with somebody that lived in it, they’ll tell you it was hard, but they also talk about all of the amazing things they did to get by. It always seems that the word, Depression, was the most somber part of the entire conversation. After that, they end up talking about what they used to make their own clothes and the random things they would utilize to improvise a tool they couldn’t afford or to entertain themselves. Today, we look back on that generation of Americans and fondly call them, “The Greatest Generation.”

Those great Americans serve as the perfect testimonial to democracy, capitalism, and the human spirit that freely burns in each and every one of our hearts. History has given us all of the examples of how this sort of storm has been weathered and most importantly demonstrates that we actually can survive the storm!

After 9/11, President Bush went before a national audience and said that the most patriotic thing we can do as a nation is go out and shop. Everybody laughed and called him stupid, but 7 and half years later Congress and President Obama are putting together stimulus bills designed to spend trillions of your dollars. Essentially, it’s the country going out on a huge shopping spree. We as a nation will get through this time, just as they did 60 years ago, when we stop fearing this certainty and make do with the situation that we’re in. I strongly believe that we would be a lot closer to pushing unemployment down and the Dow Jones back up by turning off CNN and going down to the corner and buying a pack of gum. Just 25 cents could be your part in turning us back towards prosperity. You can hardly buy anything with a quarter anymore, but if every American put just one quarter into our economy, it would be a quick 75 billion dollars without any tax increases or expansion of our national debt. We as a country, and a as a society, got ourselves into this cyclical quagmire and we can just as easily get ourselves out of it and it might be just as simple as two dimes and a nickel.

They say that the night is darkest just before dawn and walking away from the sun or hiding your head in the sand isn’t going to get you any closer to the light. The sun will shine again, if you keep moving towards the light. And sure, there are Bernie Madoff’s, Enrons, and Worldcoms in this direction, but I promise you they are the minority and not the majority. I also know that there would be more wolves lurking about if we walked away from the light and remained in darkness. We will make it through this, because that’s what we do in this country. This country was founded on the backs of hard working, society oriented folks that never dreamed their hard work would prosper into this magnificent light that shines around the world as a beacon of hope, freedom, and prosperity. Newsman Charles Kuralt once wrote, “The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.” The people on Wall Street might have put us in this economic slump, but our financial prosperity is always going to be made on Main Street, and that’s why the only money near my mattress is stray change that fell out of my pocket……

God, the Devil, "UU's," and the Conservation of Energy

Since two weeks of age, my heart, soul, and destiny belonged to the lord. I was born in early December and I was in attendance at our Presbyterian Christmas Eve event two weeks later. I was baptized into the church before I could speak, or even walk for that matter, and absolutely bought into the belief that we live only to service the lord; hook, line and sinker. As I grew older and older, and my family condition of mental illness continued to manifest, I was confident that the lord was going to protect me so I went on dreaming of my storybook future, because I believed in the lord. I didn’t need therapy because I was religious. I didn’t need antidepressants because I had the lord.

So, as my life continued to spiral downward, I started with the bargaining. “Lord, I am really getting to a bad place. If you’ll just straighten out my life, then I promise that I’ll live my life in service of your glorious name. I’ll make the a difference in this world, do good works, and help as many people as I have time to on this planet. Just please let me pass this drug test!”

My dad used M&M’s to teach me math as a child. I didn’t know they tasted delicious until I started pre-school. I started presenting science fair projects in fifth grade and started studying calculus my junior year in high school. Logic drives my life so much so that I can only see the world in black and white; never grey. Mathematics, science, and logic has been the biggest driving force in my life, so how did I get to the point where I’m bargaining with somebody, that I have no proof exists, and giving him responsibility for MY life?

After I topped out at 507 pounds and pretty deep into my “fake it ‘til I make it” phase, I still believed that god had this master plan for me and he was going to reward me for my hard efforts. As soon as I lost enough weight, the lord was going to compensate me for fixing my life by bringing me “my partner” in life and making my life easier. I actually believed that God favored skinny people because they were taking better care of their “temple” and it just seemed like skinnier people had easier lives. I mean they were the ones getting laid at bars with women they just met while I was beery belly up to the bar slamming beers trying to make the pain subside.

After about six months of hard work, my storybook life was coming together. I had an awesome girlfriend, a family, and the weight was just dropping off. The lord had come through for me until we hit a bit of a snag. There was a situation that I thought I could handle, we were out socially, I started drinking, made a jack ass of myself, and then ran up a $150 bar bill because I thought this “storybook life” was just an evil glimpse at a life I was never going to have. I ended up trying to walk from Greenwood to Speedway (suburbs of Indianapolis, approx. 15 miles apart) in a pouring down thunderstorm. I was piss drunk walking down the middle of the road, trying to describe to the cab company where I was, while the rain was falling so heavily that I couldn’t even open my eyes to see where I was going or to watch for oncoming traffic.

After an hour or so, I had finally had enough. In a Capra-esque sort of overly dramatic move I looked up to the heavens and cried out to the lord. “Kill me! Fucking kill me! Stop fucking with me you vindictive son of a bitch and just end this! Strike me down and end this misery! Are you enjoying yourself you fucking sadist?” This rant continued at the top of my lungs in between long sobs and choking fits from shouting in the rain. When I had no more energy to shout, I decided to take a break under a bank drive-thru overhang and smoke a cigarette. In my alcohol-induced haze, I spent a while attempting to light a rain soaked cigarette as something came over me. It isn’t god that dictates my life; that is strictly my responsibility. I’ve invested all of my efforts and energy into someone or something that nobody can prove exists. God doesn’t have to suffer the consequences of my actions; I do. They say that’s where the effort of faith comes in, but it’s my belief that faith is for suckers and for people that live off of others. It was time to question everything. It really doesn’t matter who or what is in control of this universe because I need to concentrate on my own destiny and what I can do to affect it.

So, with this newly discovered self reliance, I found the Unitarian Universalist church. It was so surreal to go to a doctrine-less proceeding, where you were free to practice your own system of beliefs. Instead of the Apostle’s Creed, it was a devotion to religious freedom and the journey to find our own spiritual origins. I even joined a very interesting group called Build Your Own Theology where we explore our individual religious histories and plot our spiritual futures. With this branch of religion, I’m free to explore all of the “nooks and crannies” of life without having anybody tell me what I’m seeing or what I’m supposed to be seeing.

One thing that has frustrated me about these open minded, spiritually flexible church-goers is their strong belief in the idea of community. There seems to be this huge emphasis on the idea that an investment in community with fix all of societies woes and we are beholden to our community more than we’re supposed to be accountable to ourselves. This has left me somewhat dumbfounded because these people that criticize Christians for their blind faith and obedience to this all powerful, all knowing “God,” place their independence, free thought, money, future, hopes, and dreams into this collective they believe can overcome our shortcomings, as a society, to solve all of life problems; without having the individual power to effect the ideas or decisions of the collective. That’s sounds a lot like a religion.

It seems in religions throughout the world, the major principles are arranged as God first, the church second, and the individual third. Take the Roman Catholic Church for example. It starts at the very top with God, the Holy Ghost, as the most important position within the faith. Just below God, is the pontiff, followed by the Catholic Church as an organization. Then the organization is broken down by archbishops, cardinals, priests, elected officials within the local church, and finally the individual. God, the Pope, and the church, as an organization, are the only sacred institutions, with no mention of the individual. If there was even the least bit of concern for the members of the church, then maybe the Catholic Church wouldn’t be opposed to practices such as birth control in third world countries that can’t afford to feed all of “God’s miracles.”

Generally speaking, it is my experience that all protestant organizations, as well as religious hierarchies throughout the world, are organized in this sort of “top down” fashion with considerations for God and the church, before the individual. With regards to the Unitarian experience, it really surprised me at how much it felt like every other church I’ve attended; from the hierarchy of the organization to the schedule of events during the service. The principles and vocabulary are slightly different, but the experience seems the same, minus the guilt at the end of the sermon. So, it really feels like every other church, just without God at the pinnacle. If God is absent at the focal point, then it would seem like the entire organization would flow through the fundamental ideal of the community, or the Unitarian Universalist church. It’s God first, the church second, and the individual third, but without God at the top of the pecking order.

Now don’t interpret this as any sort of dig at the Unitarians. I am so thankful that I’m actually in a position to freely question and explore my spirituality without any sort of bias, pressure, or specific doctrine. It isn’t my intention to undercut the Unitarians or any other sect or religion, but to demonstrate just how close we all are as a people to understanding the answer to our most fundamental question of how we ended up here and what is our purpose in existence? The verbiage, practices, and stories might differ from faith to faith and church to church, but the behavior is consistent throughout mankind.

So what is a spiritually confused, at times mentally and emotionally unstable, obese man to do?

If you have read anything about me, you know that I’ve plateau-ed at my current weight for about 8 months now. My energy level has been terrible and I’ve felt as if my depression and anxiety were getting worse, instead of better, and I was afraid to see how many emotional stabilizers it would require to get me to a good place in my life. I’ve talked to doctors, nutritionists, herbal specialists, acupuncturists, and reflexologists only to consistently get the same result: constant fatigue and no energy response from food. It’s like my metabolism is stunted, but my thyroid is perfectly normal. After a great deal of exploration and examination, my girlfriend and I figured out that I must have some sort of insulin response problem. For 8 months I have absolutely killed myself to get this burden off my shoulders to no avail. As month after month with the same burden on my knees, I would work harder and harder and commit more energy to easing my life. I’m in the cardiac shape of somebody a lot smaller than I, so imagine doing 7 hours of aerobic activity with 150 pounds of weight strapped to your back. I’ve been working so hard only to break even and it is so frustrating!

Why is it that every positive step in life gets harder and harder? I know that nothing comes without work, but shit this is getting ridiculous. How much determination can one person have? How much crap must one person eat, figuratively, to get to a point where it doesn’t hurt to get out of bed in the morning? It’s great that all my efforts have slimmed down my waist line and bulked up my chest, arms, legs, and shoulders but I really just want this weight off my back! When I exercise, I’m just killing myself because I’m pushing all that weight around with a great deal of vigor, but when I stop to rest, I’m still exercising because I’m have to hold my large mass up off the ground. I just want some relief.

So tired, sluggish, exhausted, and absolutely pissed off I put on my exercise clothes and went for a walk. I was planning on a two mile walk to the cell tower and back. As I got out on the road, the wind started to pick up and I became just a big parachute. My legs started to ache from pushing my massive frame through the straight line winds. As I was getting so tired and frustrated at the strength of the wind, I looked up at the sky and started taunting the heavens. “Is that all you’ve got I screamed? All of this energy all around me and you can’t knock my fat ass over! You can’t keep me from getting to that tower because I’m bigger that you, stronger than you, and better than you!” The wind zipped and roared as I kept moving forward, battling the urge to turn around and have the wind push me to the comforts of home. Louder and louder I screamed as I grabbed myself inappropriately as a sign of total disrespect to the world around me. “Is that all you’ve got? Harder damn it!” And with one final step, I reached out and put my hand on that tall metal structure and breathed a sigh of relief. At that very moment, as the pride was swelling over me, the wind subsided and it was totally calm. There, at that victorious moment was this deafening silence as I gazed into the face of God.

I promise I wasn’t on acid or “shrooms” and I didn’t electrocute myself by touching the cell tower or fall and hit my head. I actually saw God, Allah, Buddha, the all powerful lord. I realized that God is everywhere around us. He is the thorn in our ass and the joy in our hearts. He is that cool refreshing feeling in your soul when you kiss somebody you love or when you lose your virginity and he is also the pain in your heart when you lose a loved one or are diagnosed with a terminal disease. He is in the wind, the water, and every ounce of matter in our universe. Physics will refer to this concept as the laws of conservation of energy and the conservation of matter. It states that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but only change form. It says that energy is all around us. There is energy in every piece of matter around us and that physical and chemical forces can convert that object, and its energy, into another source of mass and energy. For example, there is a great deal of energy at the core of this planet. The heat from the earth’s core works in concert with the mass of the overlapping layers of rock and dirt to create this incredible pressure. The pressure is so intense that, over time, it converts the dirt and rock to coal. The coal is excavated from the group and burned to produce electricity. The electricity is used to create heat or light. You might think I sound stoned, but you have to admit that there is certainly energy in many different forms all around us.

Man has always known that there was some sort of energy greater than their individual or collective powers which evolved into the birth of religion and spirituality. As this idea of expressing the collective energy of this earth as one or a collection of beings spread throughout man, different languages, as well as the influence of power and profit formed spirituality into the religions we have today.

What I realized when I had that epiphany at the cellular tower is that God, Satan, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, Mohammed, and all of the angels in heaven and hell are really just frames of mind within ourselves. These aren’t spiritual beings that decide the outcome of our lives, but they are our personal interpretation of the events in our lives that influence our perspective and our decisions. I’ve always believed that the devout amongst us seemed truly happy. It always seemed like my priest or minister had their bright disposition and outlook on life because they truly knew god, but I was mistaken. It isn’t because they found the all powerful, but because they had actually found peace in their own hearts.

If I want to find peace and happiness I need to keep my “temple” in the best shape it can possibly be. Not because it is god’s will, but because I am ultimately responsible and accountable to myself and only myself. When it comes down to it, the all powerful, my girlfriend, my parents, or even my community don’t have to own the consequences, good or bad, of the decisions that I make. That responsibility lies solely with me. In order to be happy and endeavor to do what I want in this world, I have to be my own personal god. I need to worship at the altar of Andrew J. Ashby in order to finally find peace. Granted, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to walk on water or raise the dead, but who wants that kind of responsibility anyways?

Thanks, but I'm holding out for Dr. Phil..... Just kidding :)

A few months ago, my girlfriend and I were getting in the car and she told me, "baby, when you're famous, I don't want anything special. Just to get to sit in Oprah's green room when you go on the show."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"If you keep losing all this weight, " she responded, "you're gonna be on Oprah for sure.... Plus you're just a damn rock star!"

I thought she was out of her mind, but it turns she wasn't to far off, again. When my girlfriend and I were at the young survivors conference in Dallas, a couple representatives from a center in North Carolina, where I started my new life, called and asked me if I could go on Oprah!

I've mentioned this place when I first started blogging and I should explain a little more. It was a residential weight loss center in Durham, North Carolina. There was no surgery. No trick diets. No gimmicks. It was really like a Weight Watchers (registered trademark) Hotel with every different kind of doctor, physical and psychological, nutritionists, trainers, and "relaxation specialists (massage, reflexology, & ect.)." It was a great place for me to get the advice and help I needed to get started overcoming my "one million mistakes." The best part about it was the math was so simple. "You weigh this much, you're this tall, you're this old, you need this many calories to maintain your weight. Eat less and you'll loose weight. Add exercise and you'll lose more weight. It's going to be hard, but you can do it!" Their whole concentration is on the behavior of overindulging. Their approach was if you figure out why you aren't taking care of yourself, you can build yourself up emotionally and weight loss would be a byproduct. I thought it was a good theory then and 175 pounds later and think it was truly the best thing that ever happened to me.

So, Oprah's show started contacting these sorts of places for people that have lost a bunch of weight and they wanted me to go on the show! Oprah was looking for people that had lost some substantial weight already and still had some weight loss to go. I, for example, have another 100 pounds to lose. They would highlight me and the facility I started at and then track my progress. I was so moved by the honor of even being offered, but I had to politely decline.

You see, I've never been focused on losing weight. I've always been focused on improving myself emotionally, by actually taking care of myself and putting myself before all others (in my own mind), and the weight would come off. I don't freak out when I put on a pound or two because I know I didn't overeat by 7,000 calories and my weight just isn't that important to me. My physical and emotional health is, but my weight is just one factor and as all the other factors in my life come into harmony (lets all hug trees) then my weight will come to a healthier level, as it has already made a very large shift in the healthy direction. I realized that with the national spotlight, there would be an incredible pressure for me to lose weight and that pressure was going to cause me to start looking at my weight differently. I still have a lot of things to do before I'm 30 and having the nation follow me around will just slow me down and cause me to lose my focus. That reminds me, I need to post my top 10 things to do before I'm 30 (even though there are 12 now). So, I sent back the following reply:

"I just saw your message and (name removed) just called me. I'm sorry, but I have to say no. I believe that this last 100 pounds is going to be my hardest to lose and I really just don't need that sort of complication in my life. Plus, that sort of publicity and attention would be just the excuse I'm always looking for to take a break from this endeavor. I can't afford to mess this up because I think it really is my last shot to get my life under control. Thank you for the offer, but I respectfully have to decline.

Sincerely,
Andy Ashby"


You readers might have thought you were in the "IN" crowd by following some writer before he became famous, but I'm happy to say you're stuck with little (ironically still) 'ole me. Once I'm at a point where I've found center in my life, or even when my antidepressant/sleep medication isn't changing every three months, then I can start putting myself out there for whomever to examine. For now, I think I'm just going to stick to my computer and let my writing tell my stories.

We'll meet someday, Oprah.... I promise!

Sorry..... I've been busy.

TO MY READERS:

Sorry that I haven't posted in a few days, but I've been really, really busy! Guitar lessons are going well. I can play my CAGED chords and the first three lines of "Silent Night." Oh, I can also rock out on "Mary had a little lamb!"

I started a body cleansing vitamin regiment 6 days ago which was tons of pills and frequent trips to the bathroom. I feel so much better and I lost 5 and a half pounds. I thought this was going to be the catalyst that broke this awful plateau, but to no avail. I gained it all back by this morning.

I'm still tightening up and getting in better shape, but my weight has stayed the same since last August. I'm not getting frustrated though because I'm eating for the right reason and living a healthy lifestyle, so weight loss will eventually be a byproduct. I'm not hitting my exercise like I'd like, but this week WILL be different. I need to push myself just a little harder to get everything in and I intend to do it. My super-intense workout is getting easier and gaining speed and endurance on the track as well as in the pool!

I promise I'll have a good blog tomorrow, but I wanted to check-in and reflect for a second.

LIFE IS GOOD!

The Random Wednesday of Greatness: Prologue

It amazes me that as this journey is becoming more commonplace that it still isn’t getting any easier. I’ve been on this life improvement train for almost 13 months now and it is just as difficult, if not more now, than it has ever been. Previously, I referred to getting to my highest weight as filling my size 62 pants with one million mistakes and that to lose the weight I’ve got to fix, reverse these mistakes. I figured as I managed to untangle this bad wiring that it would be easier to get to the more complicated issues. I feel like I’m working harder now than I was 12 to 13 months ago.

When I got started, I was so fat, that exercise really just had to include movement and I would lose weight. At 507 pounds, walking around the block could be considered cardio because my heart rate was getting up to 145 beats/minute pretty easy. My weight has plateau-ed for about 5 months now so I started working out with a personal trainer. I’m on a fantastic workout, but I thought getting out of bed before was a struggle. I have to brace myself to get myself on and off the toilet because my legs burn so badly. I’m even getting lightheaded from the pain. I’ve got to do that workout on my own tomorrow and I don’t know how I’m going to summon the strength to do it!

Not to have one of those TMI (too much information) moments, but there is a correlation between my weight plateau-ing and having regular bowel movements. I know that isn’t something one wants to talk about, but it’s been such a struggle and it’s made me so miserable. I’ve tried various daily amounts of fiber and other supplements with no improvement. At one time, I was taking two ex-lax a night before I went to bed, just to help with the discomfort. I’ve talked with different nutritionists and doctors with conflicting opinions. It turns out that I needed more pro-biotics in my diet. I’ve been taking a daily dose with my breakfast for the past few days and my excretory issues are over! As I’m losing this weight, my body chemistry is getting all out of sorts. It’s so frustrating to think that I’m improving my body and screwing it up at the same time.

Now that I’m having multiple, daily trips to the restroom, my weight is surely going to start dropping rapidly. My problem is that now I have an excuse to stop the mega-workout. In just a week, I’m going to see incredible results, but I don’t know if I have it in me. 13 months ago, I had to lose weight. I was unhealthy, sick, and lonely. I had to lose weight or my life was quickly going to end. Now, I’m in excellent shape medically. I have a girlfriend, a family, a great sex life, zero physical limitations and all I had to do was make a commitment to a passive effort. I never really had to push myself that hard, I just had to show up every day and stick to my menu plan 95 percent of the time. Pushing past the pain in an attempt at bettering myself, even further, is actually an active attempt at greatness and I don’t know that I’ve ever done that in the 27 years of my life. Not to “toot my own horn,” but I’m a pretty smart young man so school has never been a struggle. Because I wasn’t taking care of my body, life has previously been a breeze. I have my fair share of mental and emotional daemons, but the antidepressants that I’m on, and my lifetime commitment to stay on them, makes dealing with these emotions much easier.

One of my favorite monologues is from the movie Any Given Sunday. Al Pacino gives this speech before the big game and he talks about how “life is this game of inches” and how fighting for the next inch is what life is all about. I’ll kill myself for the next inch, but trying to make this leap absolutely terrifies me. I get so inspired by this line from the movie Varsity Blues that goes, “We have our entire lives to be mediocre, but we have the opportunity to play like gods for the next half of football.” So many great dramas revolve around the idea of the protagonist rallying against insurmountable odds to succeed at this moment of greatness (like a big game, battle, trial, moment of truth). You see, that sort of thing is sexy. It’s damn right heroic! I can get inspired for that moment of truth. I can push myself for the big game, but who wants to summon that courage and strength for a hard, painful workout on some random Wednesday?

There are very few people that rise to greatness for the purpose of personal accomplishment and not for the glory. I don’t have the self esteem to want this for myself so what possible motivation do I have to struggle through this pain? I do believe that tomorrow is one of those forks in the road that will dictate the rest of my life. It is clear that tomorrow will be one of those defining moments. I think the underlying issue here is that I’m 27 and I’m still learning who am I and what I have the “stones” for. I could talk for another two pages on that, but I don’t know that we ever really know who we really are. I think that is what makes life so exciting and why no two days are ever alike. So what will tomorrow bring?

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has always been a very special time in my life. For the majority of my youth, it was just me and my mother. My father moved out when I was just five and even though my mother remarried, for all intents and purposes, it was just the two of us. During a particularly rough time when I was young, I wanted to do something special for my mother for Christmas. I didn’t have but a few dollars and nobody to take me shopping, so I decided to cook dinner on Christmas Eve. My cooking knowledge was limited and we didn’t have a lot around the house so I treated my mother to the most elaborate spaghetti and meatball dinner that a seven year old could put together. At the time, I didn’t really understand the pressure that she was under, but I could tell that my efforts had meant the world to her and with that, a family tradition was born.

Throughout all of my struggles, missteps, and issues in my young life, I’ve always kept this tradition alive. If my mom and I are together Christmas Eve, we’ll enjoy our Italian delight, but if we’re apart, no matter what I’m doing, I make time to have a salad, spaghetti, and meatballs on Christmas Eve. A few nights ago, I had the pleasure of sharing my December 24th tradition with my new family, “rock star” and “princess.” We have had the most hectic time since the beginning of October and the few days leading up to Christmas were really passively guided chaos, but for dinner on Christmas Eve, I drove to Fazoli’s, picked up a family order of spaghetti and meatballs, and we sat and enjoyed my traditional meal.

You see, December 24th was the one year anniversary of the “first day of the rest of my life,” as it were. It was on the 23rd that I came to the realization that I had to make some changes in my life. On the morning of the 24th, I weighed myself, for the first time in 7 years and was shocked to find out that I weighed in at 507 pounds! It was such a shock, because I had been too depressed to even look at myself in the mirror for the last five years, so I really had no clue what I looked like or how fat I really was. After that moment of truth, I’ll admit that not even trying was my favorite option by far. I was in such pain and I knew that I was getting closer and closer to the end. Why not just ride this misery train to its last stop and give up? In a very overdramatic fashion, I wasn’t, couldn’t really, give up and I decided that I was going to live my life the way I always wanted. I had known my calling in life from a very early age, but I always lacked the backbone and initiative to tell the people close to me what I wanted out of MY LIFE. I announced to the world, even though nobody was around, that on this day, December 24, 2007, that I was taking ownership of my life and that rolling around on the bottom of the barrel was officially over. It was time to put on my “big-boy pants” and make the necessary changes in my life.

So, one year later, I’m 172 pounds lighter and having the time of my life. Even though that is a milestone, it still isn’t what makes the 24th so special. Because of the way I grew up, it’s always been clear to me that I would never leave my family like my father did. As the years after high school have passed and my mom has moved to Florida, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know my father a lot better and we actually have a pretty solid relationship. He has helped me through some very tough times and I owe him a great deal. I’d even come to the point where I’d forgiven him for leaving and justifying it by saying that understanding yourself is hard work and he just hadn’t had the opportunity to figure himself out in time to save our family.

With that idea fresh in my mind, I ventured into this relationship (with “rock star”) where I got the opportunity to see “how the sausage was made” and I was shocked to say the least. She is in the process of getting divorced. It is such an ugly situation where a mother is pit against the man she loves in an attempt to provide for her child. What a nightmare and absolutely unfair/inappropriate situation. My girlfriend’s ability to persevere through this situation while encouraging her child to have a happy, healthy, fun, and loving relationship with the man who walked out on them is a trait that I admire so much. Through all of that, plus all of the other struggles in her life, my girlfriend is still one of the nicest people I’ve ever know and she still sees the best in others even though she has a plethora of reasons not to.

Finally, watching this divorce unfold has reinforced such an appreciation that I have for my mother. Even though I cooked on Christmas Eve, she managed to put food on the table for the remaining 364 and a half days of the year. Even to this day, through all of the evil she has seen in her lifetime, she continues to touch peoples’ lives and show them the potential that they have within themselves. She is an administrator at a nursing home in Florida, but the word administrator doesn’t do her efforts justice. Her employees would probably refer to her as a “staff mother” before a boss. On many occasions, I’ve seen her talking to people making minimum wage emptying bed pans and encouraging them to get their G.E.D. and helping them find options to pay for it. She treats everybody equally and possibly better than she treats herself.

Even though December 24th now marks a date of personal accomplishment in my life, my traditional dinner will always be an honor to the women in my life have persevered over so much and still held true to their belief that good really does win over evil. These “superheroes” are champions of the human spirit and a great example of how not to sacrifice your principles no matter what the circumstances. These women have earned my admiration and respect 1,000 times over and I feel that a spaghetti dinner on Christmas Eve is the least I can do to show them how amazing they really are. Hopefully, and maybe with a little help from this essay, they can see themselves in the light that they deserve.

I consider myself fortunate to have one woman like this in my life. I have no excuse to be anything less with two in my life. They are the single greatest motivator in my life and I celebrate this tradition in their honor. Every day that I venture to live like my queen and my mother puts me one day closer to godliness (whatever religion or creed you subscribe). The world would be a better place with more people like these two; my life sure is.

In the beginning..... How sacreligious is that?

One summer in college, I worked for one of my fraternity brothers mowing lawns. We were mowing at the Nazarene church in our hometown and I had taken a break to refill the lawnmower. I took this opportunity to talk to the beautiful, young lady friend of mine that had stopped to chat. As I was chatting away and very distracted by her very large, round “features” I scraped the gas nozzle against the rim of the tank as I removed it the nozzle whipped around and splashed a substantial amount of gas into my face; specifically my eyes. I threw my hands firmly to my face as I shouted every curse word I knew, and even made up a few! “Shit, fuck, god damn mother! Fuck god! Oh god!” The preacher ran out of the church and calmly explained to me that god could hear the filthy words I was saying. I turned to him and replied, “Then that means that god watched while my distracted dumbass managed gasoline into my eyes and didn’t do anything to stop it! So I’m not particularly concerned if I offended anybody that would watch that happen and do nothing.”

I don’t know where I’m going with this story, but I can tell you from experience that questioning religion, or even blindly, wholeheartedly committing your life to religion you don’t fully understand, is what I like to call one of the million items you use to fill a size 62 pair of pants. What does that mean you might ask? Well, you see, nobody is born clinically obese, or an alcoholic, or a drug addict, a sex addict, a family-less workaholic, or even a criminal. Lots of people, smarter than myself, will talk about “nature versus nurture” and how much of our behavior is learned versus how much is engrained into our psyche, but I can say with absolute certainty that there aren’t any babies that are born that wear size 62 pants. You see, there isn’t just one bad choice that causes you to be fat. If only it were so easy that we could just find Marty McFly from Back to the Future, hop in his Delorean, and go back and tell ourselves not to pick up that donut or that glass of scotch, or that hit of cocaine when we we’re at a moment of weakness in our lives. Instead of one bad choice that ruins our lives, it’s this progression of bad choice after bad choice until we get to a point that it’s nearly impossible to correct our path.

Though I’ve traversed the gambit of all sorts of addictions and self-destructive behaviors, obesity is the one that was going to kill me. When I look back and try to think of all the bad choices I’ve made, I struggle to find a number. So how do I quantify it? Well, I’ve counted to a thousand before, and I’ve had one hundred thousand of something before so I guess a million is the first number that I really can’t conceptualize. So, for conversation sake, we’ll say that at my worst I filled my size 62 pair of pants with one million small mistakes. The problem is that you have to remove as many of those items as you can to get those pants to shrink and that is easier said than done. These tiny mistakes are all intertwined, like the cables behind your computer or television, and it takes focus, self-awareness, perseverance, and most importantly patience to whittle down those 62 britches to a more suitable size.

On December 24, 2007, the beginning of the better half of my life, I weighed in at 507 pounds. For 10 years at that point, I had succumbed to a family history of mental disease, specifically depression, and the fog that I had been living in had caused my life to completely spin out of control. I had been living in an efficiency apartment where I had hung bed sheets to block out the sun and the walls were lined with stacks of pizza boxes and newspapers from the floor to the ceiling. In the middle of my “fortress of solitude” was an old, worn out mattress and box springs that sat on the floor, because I’d broken the frame 50 or 60 pounds ago. I had my big-ass TV perched as high as I could so that whenever possible I could just lay and watch TV and zone out of my quickly deteriorating life while my garbage protected me from the evils that lurked in the world just outside my defenses.

I got started at a residential weight loss facility in Durham, NC. It was a great place because their program didn’t have any tricks to lose weight. The nutritionist was very straightforward. “You weigh this much, you’re this tall, you’re this age, you plan to exercise this much while you’re here. Well then here is the lowest number of calories that you can eat safely.” With that magic number in mind, I started planning my meals and they would prepare them. I quit drinking alcohol and soda. I quit smoking (yes mom, I smoked. Sorry!). I was drinking a gallon of water a day and exercising two hours a day. Inside, they had classes on proper nutrition, cooking classes, life management, meditation, and group and individualized therapy sessions.

After 1 year and 1 month not to mention the 6 weeks I spent in North Carolina, I have lost 172 pounds! None of those 172 pounds was ever lost because of surgery, starvation, or trick diets. It was all lost the good old fashioned way with hard work, determination, a lot of sweat, and painstaking planning! I’m still counting calories and I’m in the gym about 8 hours a week doing either weight training, boxing, yoga, or training for the Indy 500 mini marathon. I’ve plateau-ed pretty hard at 172 for a while now. I’m still slimming up all the time, but the scale seems broken. I’m not worried about it though because I’m really not dieting. I never did and I never will. For me, this is a lifestyle change and I give my body what it needs based on how busy my life is and how heavy I exercise and the weight loss is just a byproduct.

So, after a year, I’ve managed to shrink to size 62 pants down to size 42’s that I bought the other day from Old Navy. It was the first article of clothing I’d bought myself outside of a store specifically for fat guys since I was in high school! In keeping with the theme of the million mistakes inside my big-ass pants, I’ve managed to get half of that garbage out, but half still remains. The part I worked off we’ll think of it as the poor mistakes that my daemons tricked me into making. Now, if I’m going to make any more improvement in my life, I have to tackle those daemons, faulty ideals, and misconceptions and re-learn what it means to become a man.

Writing is my creative outlet so this blog is my therapeutic release. I need to relive my mistakes and that ugly trip down to the bottom of the barrel so I can learn where those daemons are hiding so that this whole voyage to hell doesn’t happen again. I don’t care who reads my blog, but all of my readers should understand that I’m telling these stories so that I can see them in proper perspective and to have my story heard, because everybody’s story should be told at least once. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, colorful ones at that, but I’m not proud of any of them. Please don’t think that I’m writing this for sympathy and I’m definitely not trying to tell people how to live their lives. I’m just trying to keep fixing mine.

Finally, the terms “Queen” and “rock star” are for describing my amazing girlfriend and “princess” is her seven year old daughter. These two women have taught me so much in such a short period of time. If you want to read an incredible story, read her blog. She is truly my source of strength and my inspiration and if you read her story you’ll understand why. www.rosieblankenship.com .

Enjoy the journey! I’ve found that it goes down a lot smoother with a beer or two….. Of course that would be light beer, specifically MGD light 64, and with a designated driver!!!!