The long road home

I've always wondered at what point do you find yourself satisfied with what you've done with your life.  It's something I've been ruminating on lately, perhaps due to my approaching 40 or the struggles my mom has faced recently.   Either way, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it.  Today I stumbled upon a show on the Golf Channel called "Our Longest Drive".  Without going into too much of a tangent it's basically the story of 3 older gentlemen who take the ashes of their deceased golf buddy on a cross country trip in an RV to play a final round of golf in the Arctic Circle on the Summer Solstice.  It's a good story, a feel good kind of thing.  It's touching to see that kind of friendship drive (get it?) those guys to do that.  It's an awesome legacy to leave....which is what started this whole inspiration to write again.

I've spent a great deal of my life chasing the dreams of other people.  Well maybe not so much the dreams of other people, but more so the approval.  I've always felt like lots of the decisions I've made along the way, and consequences of those decisions, were always looked down upon by many of the people that mattered most in my life.  I passed up on college and entered the workforce.  I packed up and moved across the country, twice.  I followed my heart and ignored the red flags that were thrown up along the way.  I knew that at some point, I would finally "succeed" and prove everyone wrong.  I was living my life to get to that magical place where I could finally get the approval I had been chasing all my life by doing the exact opposite of what everyone thought I should.  Pretty backwards, huh?  Along the way I laid a long trail of "someday I'm going to" and "when I get older I'm going to" stories.  It got the point sometimes that I even looked back on some of the things I said and was disappointed that I did NOTHING to bring them to any kind of fruition.    Basically, I felt very much like what I thought a lot of people had felt because of me for quite some time.  Something happened recently that changed all of that.

I was visiting with my mom recently.  I took the afternoon off from work, drove the hourish up to my parents' house and sat with my mom for a couple of hours.  I mentioned to her that I was trying to do some family research and find her childhood home down in Detroit.  She proceeded to bust out this big folder full of stuff that she had from when her parents passed away.  There was so much stuff in there that it prompted all kinds of conversation about what she had set out to do with her life, what her parents had intended to do with theirs and how it all changed when my grandfather's brother was killed in WWII.  Then she said something to me that I had been chasing for years and years. She told me that she considered me successful.  That after all I had been through and all the rough roads I traveled out of "rebellion" (her words, not mine), that since I could pay my bills, put food on my table, etc that she finally considered me to be successful in life.  Guess what?  For as much as I had been waiting for so long to hear those words, it sucked.  It sucked because I didn't feel the same yet.  I felt like I had made so many poor choices in my life, said so many things, built myself up to be something...more, that what she considered success was anything but for me.  I spent so many years chasing someone else's approval that I fully forgot along the way what was most important...the only approval that really mattered was my own.

So here I am now, going on soon to be 38.  Tomorrow is a big day for me.  I register for my first college class in 20 years.  20 years.  There are so many things that I feel that I've started and left unfinished, so many chapters started but words left unwritten that I need to cross some of them off my list.  I've arrived where I'm at in life not by a carefully laid out plan, or by the grace of choices made with a destination in mind.  I've grown to the age of (almost)38 without ever knowing who I am, or what it was that mattered to me the most.  Is this a midlife crisis?  I don't know.  I do know that when I have that registration over tomorrow, that when I set foot on one of the paths that I passed on many moons ago, I'll feel as if the weight that's been pushing down on me for a very long time will have lifted just a little.  That the burden of not living up to your own expectations of yourself will be lessened just a tad, the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel growing a little bit brighter.  Most of all, I'll know that I'm not doing it to please anyone but myself... and that's the most important thing I've learned in 20 years.  No matter what happens or where the winds may take you, the person you see in the mirror at the end of the day needs to be the one satisfied with the choices you make....


"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

And I raaaaaaaaaan.....

I ran so far aaaawwwwwaaaaayayayayyy. Heh. Not really, it was more like almost 2 miles. 1.9ish to be exact, at least according to the little app on my phone I dl'ed a few minutes in when I got smart. First time that I've ran in almost 5 years. I don't mean like ran to the fridge to get a beer, or ran to the bathroom at 2 AM after the bar. I mean I RAN. I ran just to run, to remember what it felt like, to remember the sound of my own heart beating in my ears. It definitely did that. Beat pretty damn hard for a spell. Yes, I said spell, its my "have watched movies with Southern people in them" hospitality. Beat so hard I wasn't sure I'd make it. Then it all came back....the controlling the breathing, the rhythm of the strides...all of it. And it was pretty damn awesome. Don't get me wrong, it was pure agony for most of the time, but damnit, it was the best kind of agony. The "I know how good this is for me" kind. In a way, I think it was a transformation for me. It felt like a passing of the torch (cue Olympic theme) from SmokerCasey to NonsmokerCasey. I'm sure tomorrow it's gonna feel like something entirely different when I stand up out of bed, but ya know what? I can't wait......

What dreams may come.....

I had always read articles about Chantix that talked about how it can give you vivid dreams, nightmares and "potential suicidal behavior or thoughts", but chalked that up to the 1% that I'm never a member of. Obviously, I'm not sure if 1% is the accurate number, but you get my point. I never experience side effects. None. Well, ok maybe one once but that wasn't that big of a deal. So almost none. Anyhoo, day 5 rolled around and I was knee deep in the process of becoming a non smoker. Day went normal as any did, nothing to indicate that my mood was being affected at all. I hardly smoked, which was a good sign. Then I went to bed. Guess what I did for the first time that I could remember in a very long time? No, not that ya pervs. I had a dream. Not the kind of dream where my children will live in a nation where they won't be judged by the color of their skin, but the kind that made me go.....uh, ok? I only remembered bits and pieces of this one, which was odd enough. Without a whole lot of detail it went like this: I was married to the girl that was the odd ball in high school, we lived in a little two bedroom house, we had a Mexican butler (not a Mexican stand-off, heh) and I received text message throughout the day from a Hello Kitty wristwatch. Yup, I told ya, strange shit. Wait, side note. This wasn't any ol' Mexican butler. This was the dude from the movie Constantine. You know, the little wiry Mexican guy that becomes possessed when he finds the Spear of Destiny. Imagine how odd it is asking someone to make you a sandwich and he spreads the PB&J with the spear that killed Jesus.....

So pretty odd, yeah? I thought so too, but I chalked it up to just a weird coincidence. No dreams on Saturday, night 6, so it must have just been one of those rare times when I can actually remember a dream. Those of you that know me wouldn't be surprised to learn that I was wrong. Had another on Sunday night, not as odd as the first, but still with a little dash of "did that really just happen?" thrown in for good measure. Ok, I figured, hell with it, might as well get used to the idea of having some strange dreams. If this were a play, I'd totally be throwing the cue for Monday to enter here.....

Then along comes Monday. Wait. Quick back story, I don't sleep a ton. Most nights its only about 5 or 6 hours. Remember that part, it's gonna be important in a few minutes. Okay, enough of the digression. So here it is Monday, my first day smoke free. Also my first day where my dosage of Chantix, which includes the previous post mentioned mind altering pharmaceuticals, increases two-fold. It wasn't a bad day, as far as the non-smoking goes. I didn't have the usual crankiness, the anxiety, the usual withdrawal symptoms. Turns out I'd have something much, muuuuuch different that day. I had the third dream in four days. Most of the time, I'm lucky if I can remember 3 dreams in a year, let alone in 4 days. Except this one was different. It went on for 5 hours. Yup, 5 hours. Well, seemed like it at least, pretty sure it did. I only slept for about 5 and a half that night. I'd wake up at certain points in the dream, which of course I'd end up looking at the clock to see how long I had left to sleep, so I'm pretty sure it was an all-nighter. You ever have a dream that goes on all night? It's a mind fuck. Period. I can't think of any other way to put it. I woke up and I swear to you, it was like still being asleep. Stayed that way for a few hours. Things just kinda seem.....off. When sleep and awake and dreams and not dreaming run together like they did last night for me, man, it made the morning odd.

So, here I am, 8 days and 3 dreams deep. Which is fine, as long as they don't get too extreme, I can deal. I haven't smoked in 2 days, so I'm quite happy with that. That's so far the longest I've gone totally smoke free when quitting. I've always snuck one or two before when I've tried quitting prior to this, thinking it wasn't that big of a deal. Now that I haven't had ANY in 2 days, I know how big of a deal those were. Now I'm on the precipice of night 9, wondering what's gonna be in store. Come back in a few days and I'll fill ya in. Feel free to leave any kind of guesses or dream requests in the comments, I'll gladly do what I can....

Strange days are coming......

So, not so long ago, I decided it was time to quit smoking. 18 years of wear and tear on my respiratory system had finally clicked on the 60 watt in my head. I couldn't even make it up a flight of stairs at full tilt anymore without feeling as if my heart were about to leap out of my chest and die a slow twitching death in the nearest corner. I tried quite a few times, using quite a few methods, all to no avail. I tried cold turkey. Want to know why they call it cold turkey? Me too, because they should call it "hey just try it this way, the only possible way to torment yourself until you feel like sucking out your own eyeballs with a straw". Needless to say, didn't work. Then I tried the patch. That was a little step in the right direction, which also included a pretty wicked rash where the patch was applied. It did help cut down on the cravings, but I'm pretty sure that was a direct result of how distracted I was by the itch on my arm. Then, I got ballsy. I figured fuck it, no balls, no babies. I made an appointment with my doctor for Chantix. I'm not gonna say that they give this stuff out to people as if it were candy......but it was pretty damn easy to get the little "here's your key to freedom" prescription pad signed. He actually had it filled out and signed when he walked into the room. Seriously. So after a few questions that I'm pretty sure someone with the IQ of a pack of Marlboro Red Special Blends could answer(why do you want to quit smoking? really? duh), away I went to pick up my starter pack.

Here's a little foray into the knowledge woods real quick kids. Chantix works like this, in the simplest of terms. It blocks chemical receptors in your brain from being able to trigger the release of dopamine into your system from nicotine. Simply put, smoking doesn't really do shit for ya anymore other than make ya wonder why the hell you're doing it. The drug slowly builds up in your system and gradually reduces the effects of nicotine as it does. By day four of the first week, the one in which I could still smoke while the drug ramps itself up to full throttle down the highway of my head, I was only smoking half a cigarette at a time. Those of you know me know how good that is.

At the dawn of a new age I found myself, after so many years and attempts at quitting. I actually began to feel extremely confident of the journey I was about to start on. I was happy. Ecstatic would probably be a more apt description. I was 4 days into hopefully the final, successful method that would make me nicotine free.....then things started to get a little strange.....

Older and Wiser....

I remember when I was young and dumb, when the things that mattered most were the things that came in a box. GI Joes. Model airplanes. Those little Snap-Pop things they sell around the 4th of July. Then I aged a little and the things that mattered most came in other packaging. The thrill of jumping my Huffy off a homemade ramp in my driveway (I still have rocks in my knee from a terrrible geometry miscalculation). Swinging from a young tree in the woods behind my house. Still, I aged a little more and the things that mattered most came in the form of little animated dudes with guns in a video game. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with a little Contra every now and then still. Once again, I got a little older and a little wiser and the things that mattered most changed yet again. My POS Grand Am that was the key to my freedom as a teen. Shooting some pool with my friends like it was the last day a pool table would ever be found on Earth. Then I graduated from good ol' St Clair High and thought I was the wisest I would ever be.

Then at the ripe old age of 25, I had a newborn baby girl thrust into my waiting arms and everything I thought I knew about life went out the window. Over the course of many, many nights alone with the coolest little person I had ever met, life's lessons were rewritten over and over again. It was a constant state of flux. Once I thought I had it figured out, then teeth came and life proved me an idiot yet again. Without too much detail, the world did a complete turn around one day and I had to start learning all over again. All of it. How to function in the world. How to be a person. How to let other people be people. Every single aspect of life had to be relearned all over again. Well, maybe not so much the whole walking and talking thing, more like the my place in the world thing. My 30th year came and went, a cross country move did too. Unknown midnight drives up to a mountain to discover that the one thing I couldn't move 1500 miles away from was myself.

In year 32, I came home. Things were rough, I won't lie. Wrongs couldn't be righted fully and halfway isn't good enough sometimes. History can't ever be undone or even forgotten about sometimes. 3 years have passed since I made it back here, to where I was born and raised. In those 3 years I've learned more than I have in the previous 32. I realized that yesterday. I put aside my personal bullshit that stood in the way of things being okay with me and did what was right. I didn't do it to prove someone wrong, which I used to do all the time. I didn't do it to piss someone off, which I used to do all the time. I didn't do it because I thought it was the "cool" thing to do, I did it because I knew it was the "right" thing to do. Ya know what? I woke up today feeling like life had finally arrived. Like I had finally crossed over that line between immature and mature. I'll still crack the poop joke like the 12 year old boy I can be sometimes, but I think I finally found where I need to be in life. It's in the exact same spot it was when the things that mattered most came in the form of PB&J sandwiches with the crust cut off. In this little 4ish square foot patch of Earth I'm currently occupying.

The prodigal son....

So, I spent a few hours in the place of my birth this past weekend. I'm not gonna lie, it was weird for me. Ya see, I don't have what you would call a "normal" relationship with my family. The farther apart we get, the better off things seem to be. Don't get me wrong, i wasn't abused as a child, or locked in a closet for days, or chained to a radiator or anything. Well, there was a cement block story once but that's besides the point. Anyhoo, I have one family member left that I'm tight with, my cousin. Actually, he's more like a brother than he is a cousin, largely due to the fact that we grew up next door to each other basically and we're both such the black sheep of our family that we should have sheep based nicknames. The whole point of the trip up there was to hang out with him for the night, which is something we don't get to do nearly often enough, as well as get together with someone that I hadn't seen in forever. Again, I digress. Back to the point here yeah? There have been a ton of things in my life that have drastically altered the course its taken, all of which have taken place in that sleepy little town and its immediate surroundings. Twice in my life I moved extremely far away, both times finding places that would allow me to....just be. Twice in my life I've been compelled to return home, home is home after all ya know. Both times, holes have been patched, seams have been mended, wrongs righted. Both times things have gone swimmingly for a while then they just kinda fall apart. The glue that holds my family to myself seems to be of the Elmers kind, weak even at it's strongest. I used to beat myself up about that pretty good back in the young and dumb years. Know what I've realized lately? It's just not worth it. This is where you can insert any kind of cliche that you may find acceptable. It takes two to tango. Its a two way street. Any relationship is a two way street. I tried. Finally, after many years of failure and many years of holding things together, tenuously at best, I became okay with things not being the classic example of a nuclear family. Now I've become comfortable with doing my own thing and letting go of the guilt I've carried for things always seeming to zero bend before the break. Which is why I couldn't understand why the trip was weird for me. Maybe it was middle age setting in and the realization that things I used to enjoy just aren't the same anymore. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been living elsewhere for so long that it wasn't "home" anymore. Regardless, things have obviously changed for me. Whether or not they have changed for the better remains to be seen. I'm just glad that the status quo has changed and I no longer feel stagnant in things. Here's to moving on....and Great White hopefully calling it a career soon.

Introduction, Part two

I originally posted this over on Facebook, right before the calendars went from 09 to 10. I've tried to live life this way this year, instead of spending too much time pissin and moaning about what I don't have. Being relatively new over here, I figured I'd give ya this as a warm up to who I am. Excuse the lack of capitals and apostrophes, I didn't like them last year. So, here ya go...


i had a conversation with someone today that got me thinking bout what we should all do with our lives. i dont mean hey go to college, get a degree, get a job, get married etc etc. i mean what we should DO with our lives. life isnt a journey in my book, its an object. granted its a pretty damn big object but hey, an object is an object right? ive always thought that life was just there, a day in day out drone of monotony. groundhog day but with different characters i guess. well lately ive been thinkin differently bout that theory. i was wrong. yes, mark your calendars, i just made a public admission of wrongness. heres where i was wrong, life isnt groundhog day. life isnt doing the same pointless act moving towards a predetermined goal that opens its curtains to the audience upon our birth. its what we're (i just used an apostrophe!) given to have and to use as we see fit. its a tool that we can either carve a masterpiece out of a bar of soap with, or a bucket to hold our self pity in. whats life but an ocean to swim in, dive into fully, embrace like a drunken lover and let the currents carry you where they may? why not treat it as that? as something that we can throw ourselves at, like it were a 1000 piece kitten puzzle, always challenging us to find that one last piece to make it all come together. this is my gauntlet i throw down at the feet of everyone of you this year. use your life for something. carve yourself out a place in the history of those around you. pull the pin on the lets do somethin grenade and chuck that bitch. dont be shy, dont be afraid. just do. get up off the couch, chase that dream, even if its miniscule in relation to whats spinnin around you. i spent so many years diggin myself a rut, being so frustrated with things that i couldnt see straight about it anymore. then i realized that nothing in the world is more important than seeing what it is around you that youre missing. so get up, go see what youre missing, or sit there on the couch and watch me wave as i go bye.

to all my friends that have made the last year of my life feel like the first one to move forward again finally, i thank you with everything i am. those of you that will be around for the next year to come, i hope i can repay to you what you have done for me.