Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #128: Mall Rat Reboot, Heat Dome, Hey A Loveseat, etc.

1. Those of you who regularly read this blog know that over the last few months, I have had several dreams involving friends and family. The common denominator of these dreams is that they all have taken place at a mall. It feels like it was the Cape Cod Mall in the 1990s, at least in my dreaming mind. I mentioned after the last one that maybe the dreams were telling me something. Like maybe I needed to go to the mall to find an answer to some question. Well, this week I bit the bullet. While out for a drive, I took a detour and went to the mall. I wandered the corridors from one end to the other for the first time in years. Did I find some meaningful answer to some important question? Nope. Did I see anyone I knew? Nope. Did I stop and find some amazing deal on some product I didn’t know I needed? Nope again. I got some steps in, but all in all, it turned out to be me feeling old walking around, seeing mostly teenagers hanging out. It did make me happy that kids still carry on the tradition of being mall rats. Oh, and I did get some tasty Chinese food from a place called Ruby Thai, which I hadn’t had in a while. If that was the meaning of the dreams, then mission accomplished.


2. Maybe I’m different, but it’s never crossed my mind to take trash from where I live and go leave it outside somewhere. Sadly, it’s common to see full bags of trash left on the side of the road by people who are the definition of worthless. The ones that take the cake are those who bring furniture somewhere and just drop it off. Seriously? If it’s too much money to pay to bring it to the dump, maybe switch to cheaper beer or cigarettes. I guarantee people who drop a loveseat in the parking lot of an abandoned school have an open pack of cigarettes and an open can of some crap beer in the center console of their beat-up, rusty pickup truck. I say all of this because, yes, on Monday Runday this week, I found a discarded loveseat in the parking lot. Next up, it’ll be mattresses and televisions littering the school grounds.

Have a seat

3. Normally, Monday Runday is pretty self-explanatory. We run. We go home. That’s it. This week had a few interesting developments. I just mentioned the loveseat. Besides that, there was a conversation with an osprey. Where we run is a slowly decaying track at an abandoned school, as I mentioned. Located behind the school is a wooden platform commandeered by a family of osprey as a home. As I was running my first lap around the back of the school, I spotted one of the parents sitting in the nest and sharing many high-pitched squeaks. I made sure to stop and explain to it that I didn’t have any fish and also didn’t speak osprey, but sadly it didn’t understand. The second time around, I got to see a pair of the young ones. Their heads popped up and were bobbing all around. I had to be 30 to 40 feet away, plus the tower was probably 30 feet high as well, so I never felt in danger. Although when the other parent returned carrying dinner in its talons, I did make a hasty return to running.


4. My brain still believes I am 30, but my body will vehemently disagree sometimes. Monday Runday was a huge success. Granted, I only ran about half of the time, but it was 4 miles in total, and my body felt good. I felt the mix of exhaustion and energy that I love about running. The next morning though, I had to pay the piper. My body wasn’t really sore, just really tired. My knees, especially, felt like they needed a few extra hours of rest to work normally. I felt like a crushed bag of potato chips. I definitely don’t regret running more than I have in a few months. Still, I am glad that I was smart and held myself back during that run. If it were 7-8 years ago, I’d have run way too much since I felt good and ended up injured. Now I held myself back and yet still felt like a half-eaten rotisserie chicken tossed in a dumpster. Forgive me, I was trying to find the funniest food-related descriptions for some moderate soreness. I was gonna say a pizza flipped upside down on a hot street, but the chicken one was funnier, at least to me.

My body felt like one of these things

5. As the week got going, there was a foreboding sense of dread in the air in the northeast. Something called a ‘heat dome’ was approaching. Temperatures were set to be higher than they had been in many years. Predictions ranged from the low 90s to the mid-100s, depending on where you lived. I am very familiar with heat waves. They are prolonged stretches of hot weather that vary depending on where you live. I just find it kind of funny how language changes over the years. When I was a kid, there were no heat domes, there were no bomb cyclones. There were heat waves, Nor’easters, and blizzards. I know that things evolve. Maybe I am now the old man saying things were different in my day? I feel a bit like meteorologists think weather can be boring, so they invent new, scarier-sounding types of weather so that they get attention. Honestly, what sounds more impactful, a heat wave or a heat dome? It sounds like we’re going to be sitting in a rotisserie. Don’t get me started on other weird ones like atmospheric river and polar vortex.


6. Amazingly, despite it being in the low 90s to kick off the heat wave this week. We had two people signed up to use our infrared sauna at my work. The sauna is great for overall health, but not on one of the hottest days of the year. Of course, inside our office it’s a comfy 72 degrees, so it’s doable. I said that we should just put a lawn chair outside in the sun and place a sign next to it that says ‘sauna.’ Maybe we could shine red lights in their faces to make them feel more like a real sauna. Once it got up over 90 degrees, though, both people ended up calling in to cancel. I guess they built their own lawn chair saunas in their yards.



7. You don’t realize how much you depend on your phone until you go home from work for the weekend and realize that you forgot your charger in the office. There was no chance I’d be driving back into work to get it, so I decided to go the following morning and buy a backup charger. I know I’ll always need one. I went to Ocean State Job Lot since it was close and cheap. Just a reminder that it was Fourth of July Weekend, so everywhere was packed, and outside it felt like standing in an oven. I was thrilled to just get into the a/c and wander the aisles at Job Lot. Once it got to be ten minutes and I had wandered nearly every square inch of the store without finding charging cables, I broke down and actually asked an employee where they were. As you might figure, they were located in the one place I hadn’t checked. Oh well. Then it was option overload. Instead of choosing a typical cord, I got a fancy charging pad. Granted, it was $7.99, but still fancy for Job Lot. What I thought was that it was a pad with a plug so you could have it on your desk out of the way. In a way, it was. In another way, it was a pad with a USB cord to plug into a laptop. Of course, that defeated the purpose of the charging pad. It also came with the same USB I’d have needed for my phone anyway. I am guessing the charging pad will collect dust while I just use the cord. Nice.


8. Stepping outside into the soupy air on a day when the heat index got up as high as 107 is not fun. The sun was brutal even just walking across a parking lot. In fact, it was so unbelievably hot that the asphalt smelled like it had just been laid in certain areas. I was only outside for a handful of minutes on the hottest day of the bunch, but that was enough. It was capped off by seeing the hydrangeas outside of the front door where I live totally wilted. They literally looked like they had melted. Sadly, I wish I had gotten a photo of them when they were still fresh and alive. You can see for yourself the damage the heat wave did. The good news was that they recovered fairly well when the temperatures got a little more seasonable.




9. For all of the injuries over the years, I am at heart still a runner, and still foolish despite my increasing age. That meant that even though the heat index was over 100, I had to get some miles in outside on the 4th of July. It’s a bit of a tradition to run or walk to the water and feel good about myself because I can run faster than the cars stuck in traffic can move. This was not like other years, when I ran a lot of fast miles. I wanted to experience the full heat as safely as I could. This naturally meant running in the sun for stretches of my time outdoors. Even relatively early in the morning, it felt like I was inside a pizza oven. I never worried about myself, though. For years, I ran in extreme conditions, and to be honest, I kind of enjoy the idea of being out in weather others would avoid. I ended up doing five total miles of running and walking. There was a lot of beautiful scenery along rivers, and I made sure to wave to as many people as possible. Except not to those stuck in traffic, they were having a hard enough time as it was.


10. Every year on July 4th, they have the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. That’s all fine and dandy as long as nobody tries to refer to people who gorge themselves on food as athletes. Training to eat dozens of hot dogs is not the same as training for anything athletic. I would never attempt to do a hot dog eating contest. I like hot dogs and could probably down several in a sitting without issue. My reason is that I want to enjoy my food. Jamming bread and meat into a glass of water to slide it down my throat doesn’t sound enjoyable. That being said, I did have my own eating contest on the 4th. My mom made her typically excellent pasta and meatballs. She made me a gigantic plate to take home. Rather than divide it up into two medium-sized meals, I figured, why not try to be a champion and eat all of it? The photo of my plate is below. All you need to know is that in the process of getting all of that food from the container to the plate, I managed to spill some on my table. It was quite a mess, but hey, that’s what soap and paper towels are for. Yes, I finished all of it and quickly fell into a food coma after. I might not have the ‘prestige’ of winning a hot dog eating contest, but I guarantee you the food my mother made was light-years better.




11. And then the bubble burst. After three days of 90+ degree heat and soupy levels of humidity, the heat dome finally cracked. The rain came pouring in overnight on Saturday. I was thrilled to wake up the following morning with the temperature only being 67. My air conditioner got to sleep in. To celebrate the heat wave ending, I took my tired legs out on the bike trail in the morning. Yes, it was still raining, but only lightly. Plus, after having dealt with a heat index of over 100 for a few days, running in the drizzle was heavenly. I chose to go down the bike trail extension, which when completed, will lead the Cape Cod Rail Trail from Yarmouth west into Hyannis. It is pretty much all paved, but the final step is the bridge set to be placed over the busy Willow Street. The footings of the eventual bridge have been built. I am figuring that they are going to wait until after summer or even until the end of the year before they finish the project. That’s my guess, although judging by the Barnstable town website, it might not be done until 2031. By that logic, it probably really won’t be done until the day after I die, yay.


12. I have been sharing and promoting the fundraiser for the feature film I will be producing called The Cabin. It’s been a month, and as of this writing, I am 1/3 of the way to the proposed budget. At this point, I am looking outside of the box for places to share the fundraiser. It had never dawned on me to look for fundraiser groups on Facebook. My friend, producer Frank Durant, suggested that, as he’s done it before. One such group has nearly 300K members. I’m not setting my expectations too high, but even a few new donors from that page would be great. The actual GoFundMe page on Facebook has 2.5 million followers. It’s a huge number, and you can message them to get support for your fundraiser. My issue is that even though this project is extremely important to me, it is not important in the grand scheme of things. What I mean is the fundraisers they share on the GoFundMe page deal with medical bills, housing, and things that are far more serious. I haven’t shared my fundraiser because, next to fighting cancer, donating to a small indie film fund doesn’t seem that meaningful. I’ve still got five weeks until I close the page. I’m thinking sometime in the second week of August to give me and the crew a little time to shore up all of the budgetary needs. It’s all new and out of my comfort zone, but that’s what makes it exciting.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #122: Record Temperatures, Dogs In Golf Carts, Nice Parking, etc.

1. Well, that escalated quickly. We graduated from a typical Cape Cod spring, meaning low 50s with loads of clouds, fog, and drizzle. In a snap, it was record-high temperatures. We hit right around 80 degrees with low humidity and tons of sun. I had a great time going for a morning walk in the perfect weather. I enjoyed it so much that I created a short video of my walking route. Granted, the record highs didn’t last. We dropped to more normal, but still nice, temperatures in the low to mid 60s. It was perfect for mid to late May. Much like the first snow of the season, the first hot day of the season is fun, but as it becomes more common, it gets less appealing. To me, perfect weather is low humidity, partly cloudy, temperatures in the low to mid 70s. If I could bottle that, I would. Now it is the race to see how long it is until I have to put in my air conditioner. Last year, it was early, maybe the third week of June. I am hoping to hold off until after the 4th of July, as I typically do, but I can’t control the weather.


2. The sirens wailed as I walked to my car one morning this week. I was headed to work. I hear sirens almost daily, police and fire. I see the vehicles go by the house every so often. On this day, one fire truck flew by, then another. I had to wait as a third flew by. I wondered where they were headed. It didn’t take long to find out. After not even a minute of driving, I saw the huge plumes of black smoke billowing up from the trees. It wasn’t a forest fire, though. Near the end of the road I live on, I saw the fire trucks congregated. There it was. A shed, a boat that was probably 20-feet long, and a back fence were engulfed in flames. The next-door neighbor was dousing their side of the fence with a hose to try to hold off the fire. Cars slowed but didn’t stop. I wondered all day about the fate of that house. On the way home in the evening, I slowed down by that house. The fence looked like it survived. The shed had a massive hole in its roof. I saw the front half of the boat, but I don’t know if the back end was a loss. Thankfully, the house looked fine, and I can only assume all of the people were okay. Cheers to the Yarmouth Fire Department for getting there so fast and getting the fire out.


3. Aging is a weird thing. It’s like mentally I feel like I am still 18, but that was 30 years ago. Certain songs or foods can immediately bring my mind back to how I felt as a teenager. Even when I look in the mirror, I don’t feel like I have aged badly. Yes, I have more gray than I’d like, but I have a full head of hair. Between 40-53% of men in their 40s are going bald, or are bald. That jumps to 50-85% of men in their 50s. Granted, I could start going bald in 11 years and still be in my 50s, but I have good genes. Physically, though, is where the differences are piling up. It wasn’t when I turned 40 that things started changing. It was actually after turning 42 in 2019. I had a bad hip injury from running, and also battled Covid and lived through it like we all did. Those things all seemed to turn the tide in a way I haven’t been able to come back from. I do well for a few months and lose 10-15 pounds, but then my energy and willpower just get sapped, and I fall off. I think recognizing it is a benefit, though. Every new day, you can try again to get it right. Is that a stricter diet? Lowering my caffeine intake? Reducing my workload so I can go to the gym more? A little of all of them? I have no idea. All I know is that, going back to those good genes, I am likely going to be lucky enough to reach my 90s, as many in my family tree have. That means I have 40-something years left. I can either keep working hard and have more healthy years ahead. Or I can just give up and have decades of a downhill trend. The choice is mine.


4. The heat wave in May in New England broke in spectacular fashion. It was as hot as 88 degrees with a real feel of 101. I decided to make the most of it by going for a walk in the afternoon when I got out of work. I was on the bike trail. It was not as bad in the shade, not very humid. I saw in the sky the thunderclouds billowing above the trees. I knew it wasn’t long until the rains would arrive. I walked 3.5 miles, so it took me an hour. When I parked my car at the bike trail, my car’s thermometer read 84 degrees. When I got back an hour later, it was 74. Dropping 10 degrees in an hour is pretty wild. In fact, the longer I walked, the more I could actually feel the heat breaking. It took a couple of hours, but the heavy rain and a few thunderstorms arrived. It was the ultimate example of ‘if you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait 5 minutes.’ We went from a real feel of 101 one day to low temperatures dropping into the upper 40s the next night. It feels like it might be a wacky, unpredictable summer weather-wise.


5. I don’t know what to say. I guess wild animals trust me. That is my thought process after this week. I was out for a run when I was passing a golf course and noticed a pair of cute little chipmunks running and playing near an open gate. One was lagging behind, and I got the sense that it might end up coming around the corner of the gate when I was walking by. Instinctively, I grabbed my phone in the hopes of getting a photo of one of them. The curious chipmunk not only came out from the fence, but it literally walked right up and sniffed my sneakers. I was able to get a few seconds of video of this tiny chipmunk by my feet before it ran off with its friend. Now, couple this with the foxes last week that seemed all too comfortable with me hanging around. Then go back a couple of years to a little bunny that wandered out from the bushes at a beach and literally climbed on my shoe and tried to eat my laces. I’m not saying I can go sit under a tree, and birds are going to land on my shoulders like pets, but I’ve had more wild animals get close to me recently than I’d expect. Soon, I will have amassed an army of creatures. Too bad it’s all bunnies, chipmunks, and baby foxes.



6. One day each week, I either wait with my youngest niece, Sylvie, for the bus or go with her to get dropped off at school. I look forward to it every time. She is so sweet and kind and always looks to give me something of hers. I have been finding new ways to ‘forget’ and leave them behind. Usually, when she gets dropped off, I get out of the back of the van and move up front, so her mom doesn’t feel like she is a taxi driver. Sylvie has explained to me before how to close the sliding side door properly. You tug the handle once, and it automatically slides closed. As she was getting out, she did that, and I couldn’t stop the door. Only when there were a few inches to go did the door stop. Then it began setting off a beeping to warn you that the door was open. We had to drive to a parking spot so I could get the door closed once the automatic function was turned off. I laughed because I said Sylvie told me how to do it right, but obviously, I am old, and technology will now be my enemy, I guess.


7. My Fitbit has a few times it will buzz to let me know of achievements. They usually have to do with heart rate zones. It also buzzes when I hit 150 exercise minutes per week, or 10,000 steps in a day. Whenever I hit those milestones, it’s a good feeling that I am being active and healthy. The only problem is that Fitbit has a tendency to track steps using arm swinging motions as much as actual foot movement. This came through one day this week when I was sitting at my desk recording my podcast, and my Fitbit started buzzing. I looked and saw I had passed 10,000 steps. But how? I mean, I was pretty close to 10K anyway, so it wasn’t a major glitch like I magically got 10K steps while sitting. No, I think I was gesturing too demonstratively with my hands while recording, and the Fitbit took that as steps. Despite sitting still, I somehow kept adding steps. I guess now I know that if I’m close to 10K but don’t feel like going for a walk, and can just wiggle my arm a whole bunch and get there anyway.


8. I never know what interesting things I am going to see when out for a walk/run. At this point, there really isn’t anything that could shock me. For example, one day this week, I went walking to a little neighborhood located right on Bass River near me. It’s one of those semi-private neighborhoods, not quite gated, with a sign at the entrance with some fancy name to it. This neighborhood is very relaxed; the only vehicles driving through it tend to be those who live there. Those who do live there venture around the roads not in their cars or trucks, but many of them drive golf carts. It is pretty unique. I was walking through the neighborhood and saw a golf cart coming around a corner. It was driven by a girl who couldn’t have been more than eleven. Her passenger was an adorable golden retriever. Just a young girl, her dog, and a golf cart. I just smiled and thought it was par for the course as far as things I see on my walks. Yes, the pun was intended.

Like this, but even cuter

9. Sometimes the stereotype fits. I drove to the Three Sisters Lighthouses in Eastham. There is a small dirt parking lot that can only fit a handful of cars. I pull in. There is a car parked normally, and next to it, some jerk parked diagonally, taking up 2 spaces. When there are dozens of spots, and you park diagonally, you’re a jerk, but it’s not as egregious. When there are like 5 spots, and you do it, you’re an inconsiderate prick. I looked at the New York license plate. My first thought was ‘typical New Yorker.’ I know not all people from New York are pricks, but you do see a lot of them. This jackass wasn’t even at the lighthouses. I am pretty sure he parked there and walked the ¼ mile down to Nauset Light Beach so he wouldn’t have to pay. I got some photos and videos, and when walking back to my car, I saw this idiot and his equally stupid wife getting into the car. A guy had to wait for this moron to back out and leave before he could pull in. Of course, the smug jerk couldn’t even look at any of us watching him leave. It took all of my composure not to just yell at him. The person pulling in asked if I could believe that guy. Needing to vent my anger, I said the guy was a ‘f*cking prick.’ Then I saw his young son getting out of the truck. I quickly apologized for my language, but he was cool. We laughed, and I left. Moral of the story: Whether you’re from New York, Massachusetts, or anywhere, just don’t be a jerk. It’s really not that hard...for most people.


10. For 5 years, I had been running my Facebook business/fan page entirely dedicated to my podcast. I finally realized recently that I was selling myself short. I spend so much time creating that it’s basically a second full-time job. One that I get paid considerably less for currently, but I’m working on that. The fact that I was only promoting my podcast on that page when I also have books, blogs, videos, photos, and film projects, was definitely downplaying all of the hard work I do. This week, I chose to revamp that page from being only about my podcast to everything I do. Fittingly, I renamed it The World of Christopher Setterlund. My plan is to post several times a day there, featuring not only current things I’ve finished, but also shining a light on some of my archived projects. I have a tendency to finish something, share it a few times, and relegate it to a metaphorical box in the back of my closet. I need to promote older stuff much more. The fact that I literally have thousands of pieces of content in various forms that I can pull from means that my back catalog feels totally fresh again. This will be a fun new way to share all of my creative work.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #116: Something Very Bad, 12 Seasons, A Cool Bike Rack, etc.

1. My latest binge-worthy show on Netflix is a recent addition to the platform. Something Very Bad Is About To Happen is a horror series created by Hayley Boston and produced by the Duffer Brothers. It is about a woman who is going to get married, but things start happening that kind of tell her maybe she shouldn’t marry into her future husband’s family. It just came out on Netflix in the last week or so. I already enjoy it. The show is pretty dark, moody, creepy, and atmospheric. I will do my best not to spoil anything. There are eight episodes, and it’s unclear if there will be a second season since it’s being promoted as a ‘limited series.’ Highly recommended if you enjoy psychological horror.

2. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had a man in the gym at work running on a treadmill in an active metabolic test. During that test, for some reason, the power in half of the gym suddenly went out. It was pretty dangerous since it immediately turned off the treadmill when it was going close to 8mph. Nothing had happened like that since, so I thought maybe it was a one-time anomaly. Nope. This week, it was a woman on the treadmill doing oxygen therapy. This is where you perform some sort of moderate cardio while breathing in 93% pure oxygen through a mask. I was in the middle of performing shockwave therapy on a patient's shoulder when I noticed all of the lights went out in the gym. This wasn’t part of the power; it was all of it. I had to ask someone else to go and check if the woman was alright. She was, but it was again very dangerous that the power just decided to go out. There was nothing different on our end, so it might be something that the owners of the building need to get taken care of.


3. It’s the time of year when the herring start making their journey from ponds to the ocean on Cape Cod. We have a few herring runs on the Cape. Perhaps the most well-known is the Stony Brook one in Brewster. It had been getting a major facelift over the past year, so it was unknown if it would be done and reopened in time for the annual explosion of herring through the waters. If you’ve never seen the herring run, think of it as thousands of 6-8” long fish trying to swim from a pond, down a series of fish ladders, and out to the ocean. Then imagine split rail fences on either side of the rushing water, lined with hungry gulls. It becomes a fight for survival with loads of fish being swallowed long before they reach their destination. This year, there is an added level of difficulty as osprey have joined the chat as far as grabbing a herring lunch. As of this writing, I have seen the herring, but seeing as how I drive by there daily on my way to and from work, I’ll be stopping in to try to get some footage of the impending massacre.

A wide view of the herring run.

4. In New England, we have a long-running joke that instead of 4 seasons, we have 12. This is based on the wacky ways our weather evolves over the year. As of this blog, we are about halfway through April. Several weeks into spring. Wherever you are reading this from, what is the weather like? Spring? Summer? Probably somewhere in there. We are currently in Third Winter, aka our 5th season of 12. Just this past week, we’ve had lows dip into the mid 20s and even had a few flakes in the air one day when the high didn’t even reach 40. I’m not saying I need it to be 70 instantly, but at least have it be in the low 50s consistently. Up next in our year in New England is The Pollening. I’m super excited for my allergies to leap out from behind a bush and whack me on the head like a mob hit. Anyway, you know I’d have the full 12 seasons of New England sheet for you.

5. Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple when it comes to exercise. I have a client at my job who is pretty hardcore. I enjoy being able to craft some elaborate, fun, and challenging exercises for her. Sometimes, though, I might take it a step too far in terms of complication. An idea I had this week was a sort of kettlebell drag. I took three yoga straps and tied them together before taking the end of the last one and tying it to a 26-pound kettlebell. The object is to use the straps to pull the bell to your feet. Then you’d walk across the gym and pull the bell toward you again, and so on. The apparatus was all set to go. I had been bragging excitedly about the setup to her. She grabbed one end of the straps, gave it a pull, and instantly, one of the knots I’d tied came undone. Fail #1. So I tied it back up as tightly as I could. She grabbed one end, gave it a pull, bam, another one came untied with a metal clasp, going flying. Fail #2. This time, she tied it back together. One drag of the kettlebell, and she said it wasn’t challenging enough. So I grabbed a thick band and proceeded to tie a heavier kettlebell to the 26-pound one. Again, overcomplicated. One last time, she grabbed the strap and gave it a pull. This time, the third and final yoga strap popped off with another metal clasp flying. We both laughed pretty hard...then she had to do sets on the battle ropes. So the joke ended up being on her.


6. Having a good edible means editing photos on your phone while simultaneously scanning the room, looking for where you put your phone. Not much else can be said about this. I indulge in an edible every now and then. Usually, I just veg out watching Netflix. I started editing photos from a little shoot I did, which is coming up next. I got so zoned out editing the photos that my mind began wandering to someone I wanted to text. I looked around for my phone so I could text, and it actually took me a minute to realize my phone was in my hands. Hey, at least I just stay home rather than subject the rest of society to my foolishness in that state.


7. I took a quick hop over the bridge to get some video at the nearby but remote Scusset Beach in Sagamore Beach. I began with my new favorite thing, using my selfie stick to shoot video out of my car’s roof while driving. That was fun, as was the walk out to the end of the jetty. Naturally, with my location at the Cape Cod Canal, I was able to watch a few boats go in and out, including a much bigger ship. One funny thing about Scusset Beach is that there is a very specific bike rack there that I am obsessed with. Every time I go, I stare at it and inevitably take a photo of it. I don’t know if it’s just the design of it, but it has been a thing of mine for probably 25 years. If I go to Scusset, I will end up gawking at that bike rack.

Almost hypnotic

8. I graduated from middle school (8th grade) in 1992. That was the last time I had been inside the halls of Mattacheese Middle School on Cape Cod. Until this week, that is. I was out for a long walk and ended up deciding to head over to Mattacheese, which was close to 3 ½ miles in each direction. The school itself is closed, although the gym and outdoor fields are still used for youth sports. I was there, and the gym was being used, so naturally I walked in. I was not able to go very far since the rest of the school was still locked. I did get to see the gym, the chorus room where I had music class, and use a bathroom, which was thrilling. Don’t worry though, I let the staff there know what I was doing, so I didn’t look too suspicious wandering down the halls.

Definitely don't look 14 anymore

9. This past week has felt like I am trying to get the train rolling down the tracks again after basically spending the last few months just trying to survive winter. There are so many projects I am working on, will be working on, or want to work on. It feels now like I need to take a step back and try to organize things and make a plan for the rest of the year. My mind is like a front yard after a storm, covered in branches and other debris. I just have to find a place to start cleaning up. I guess I didn’t realize how tough this winter was mentally until I sat down and tried to pick up where I left off with projects, and it was like chasing dandelion spores in the wind. Luckily, there’s no pressing deadline on any projects, at least for this month.


10. It’s amazing how you can fall out of the habit of something that was second nature for so many years. I was a regular at the gym from my college days. I remember working out in the highly retro gym at Cape Cod Community College. There was equipment that was 20 years old when I was going in the late 1990s. No matter what, though, I was at the gym working out 4-5x per week. Unless I was hurt or sick, I was a regular. Now, I have been working as a personal trainer for 10 years, and I find it harder than ever to keep up appearances at the gym. When exercise became work, it changed things. When I worked as a cook, I hated cooking at home. It became an extension of my job. Now with training, it’s becoming the same thing. I do it all day and rarely have the desire to do it again after work. I don’t think it’s all because I train people for a job. I am closing in on 50. My body has seen its fair share of injuries. I have lingering right hip and left knee issues from running, and no doubt am starting to feel the creep of arthritis in my left shoulder and right elbow. Plus, as you age, your energy levels naturally drop. It’s all stacked against me. That being said, I also know, because training is my job, that exercise is a positive solution to a lot of issues. I think this spring into summer will be a lot of me recalibrating what I am looking to do with myself at the gym. I can’t really run. I can’t really lift heavy. What I can do, though, is show up and keep moving.

The end of the jetty at Scusset Beach

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #94: Fine Tuning, Hack Attempt, Soaked Walk, etc.

1. After celebrating my birthday last week, and frankly doing a little bit too much celebrating over the last few months, a change is needed. I can tell that I need a serious detox. I need to eat better and go to the gym more, and probably lay off the edibles for a while. Sadly, as my age creeps up, I start to realize that these changes are necessary. I can either keep doing whatever I want and enjoy a steady decline until I am useless. Or I can make a few changes and prolong my vital years for a while. I’m not saying I’m going to suddenly be the guy who’s at the gym 6 days a week and eating a nearly perfect diet again like I was doing in the pre-COVID years. Still, when you wake up the day after your birthday feeling your age, a little fine-tuning won’t hurt.


2. A major difference between me today and me 20 years ago is consistency. What I mean is that in my 20s, I could skip the gym, or miss a day of vitamins, or skip a healthy meal, and it would have no consequence. I would still feel energetic, vital, and ready to conquer the world. Now, in my late 40s, I can still have those feelings, but there’s a big caveat. I have to be consistent. I have to be consistent with healthy eating, consistent with the gym, and consistent with vitamins and supplements. It’s almost like if I skip any of those for a few days, my body just assumes it’s time to shut down and get old. If I keep up on these things, it’s a way to trick my brain into thinking we’re still in our 20s, or at least 30s. I say this because, as I mentioned in the first entry, I skipped on all of these things for a few weeks, so no wonder I woke up the day after my birthday feeling a thousand years old.


3. It’s kind of ironic that even though I work as a trainer, I rarely use our gym facilities to train myself. I think I see it as still being at work. That means that if I got done before we were closed and I was in the gym working out, and people came in, I could easily be coerced into doing some sort of work off the clock. In those times when I do workout there, like I did this week, I am presented with option overload. Every possible piece of equipment for me and me alone. It leads to a great workout, but also a workout where by the time I leave, I am no longer a solid mass, I am some sort of liquid that flows out the back door and to my car. I was totally gassed and then had to run errands before finally getting home to eat dinner and collapse into my chair like a puddle of melted ice cream. All good stuff.


4. One night this week, I was comfy in my chair, relaxing as the melatonin started to prep me for a good night’s sleep. Then suddenly, my phone alerted. No, it wasn’t a friend or family member; it was a fraud alert from my bank. Some idiot had tried to use my debit card for a purchase, but luckily, it was flagged. Well, there went my drifting off to sleep. I had to immediately wake up to report the fraud and cancel my debit card. It all went well, the fraud was caught, and I wasn’t charged. If you’re wondering just how much the attempted fraud added up to, it was a whopping $10. Yup, that’s right. It’s like if you’re going to try to steal my money, at least go for broke. Ten bucks? Needless to say, I did not get a good night’s sleep after having to deal with that, but I am grateful that this idiot got caught and didn’t get one cent of my money.


5. For those who have been reading my blog for a while, the cute girl I have mentioned a few times in the last few months came back into my work this week. It’s funny how I look forward to seeing her, but in reality, it’s such a short window of opportunity for face time with her. Honestly, it’s like 2-3 minutes, maybe once every 3 weeks. I do try my best to have something interesting to say, or to try to say something that might make her laugh. There’s not much else I can do. I can’t linger too long and pry too deeply into her life since I am at work and she hardly knows me. If this were 15 years ago, back in my prime of cryptic posts, I might have said too much, or used my Internet detective skills to find her online and tried to find a way to ‘bump into her.’ Now, as I am rocketing toward 50, I just try to not look or sound like an idiot while she’s in the office. That has to be enough at this point in my life. I’ll see her again right before Thanksgiving.


6. If anyone is looking for a great station to craft on Pandora, I’ve got a new one for you. If you like smooth R&B from the 1970s through early 90s, create a station with the 3 following seed songs: Knocks Me Off My Feet by Stevie Wonder, All This Love by Debarge, and Oh Honey by Delegation. I created it this week, and it has played nearly nonstop anytime I have music going. If you enjoy that type of music, you won’t be disappointed. It’s amazing how I’ve had my Pandora account since 2009 and still have a few of those original stations. My Grunge station, Torn Jeans and Flannel, was the first one I ever made. Anyone else have Pandora that long, or have you mostly gone to another music app?


7. Not sure if it’s just my site, but this week there has been an annoying glitch on Facebook. I love looking at the memories page to see what was going on in the past, especially since I’ve been on Facebook since 2007. This week, I haven’t been able to see all of my memories. It’s mainly because I get one or two memories that go on repeat. For example, I had one day where there was a sunrise photo from last year that was repeated 18 times before moving on to the next memory, and that memory was repeated 16 times. Then it was just the end. You would think that with the billions of dollars the guy who owns the site has, he might spend a little to fix glitches. I mean, I enjoyed those memories, but not a never-ending loop. Who knows, maybe Facebook is becoming like a dying mall, where yes, it still is operational, but the owners are just letting the tenants move out and the rats and spiders move in.

The future of Facebook?

8. I was lucky this year and got basically a full week of birthday celebration. It finished off this Thursday with my mom, stepdad, one of my sisters, and one of my nieces. Besides just getting to see them, we had a good laugh at the fun array of gifts they got me. Food was a big one as I got two meals of my mom’s amazing chicken stir fry. Then there was a family-sized box of Count Chocula cereal, my favorite. My cake was three slices of cheesecake. This was topped by a flashing keychain alarm and a small pocket knife, since I do enjoy wandering in the woods on random adventures. Oh, and a little straight cash homey, as Randy Moss would say. It was an awesome haul and capped off what was a really fun birthday week.

My birthday haul, pretty legit

9. One of my new pleasures on YouTube is a channel called Ros – Adventure Cat. It is a super cute, very chatty, orange and white cat who has a small camera on his collar. It’s a vlog from a cat’s point of view. It has subtitles for what Ros says as he roams around looking for birds and mice. There are hundreds of videos, and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes cats or just cute, fun content. My only problem is that I am going to end up getting attached to Ros, and someday something bad will happen, and then my life will be shattered. Until then though, I’ll be binging cat vlog videos.


10. I had two choices. I could do some content work in the morning and go for a walk in the afternoon, or vice versa. I chose the latter. I figured if I didn’t get up and out in the morning, I might not go at all. Well, I chose wrong. At first, my walk was fine. It was cloudy but mild. Great. So I decided to do a little longer loop around a new extension of the bike trail near where I live. As I went down that way it began to drizzle. Still, no big deal. Then, there I was, nearly 3 miles from my car when the skies opened up. It started pouring rain. I had to take my headphones and shove them in my shirt so they wouldn’t get ruined. I was walking the bike trail in the rain for over 45 minutes, totally soaked. It ended up becoming a fun adventure, mostly because I had no other choice. By the time I got back to where I parked, it was like I had gone swimming in my clothes. Oh, and of course, when I got back to my car, the rain stopped. The afternoon was sunny and 60 degrees, by the way. Wicked boo.

11. Similar to my game of chicken with my air conditioning in the summer, we have reached the same game with the heat in winter. Yes, it’s not winter for another 6 weeks but in the next week on Cape Cod, we will have several nights where the lows are in the 30s. Luckily, I have a small electric wall heating unit in the bathroom. I can turn this on and it does a fairly decent job of warming up the general area. Saying that, I haven’t used it to try to heat the entire apartment with the temperature hovering above freezing. I try to hold out on the heat until Thanksgiving, since it will stay on until sometime later in March. The irony is that my preferred temperature when the heat is turned on is actually lower than where I set my A/C in summer. It’s kind of a weird anomaly. Anyway, I am sure next week will be a test. How long can I hold out? We’ll see.

What I've Learned In My 40s(so far): 4. Nothing Is Guaranteed and Sometimes A Step Back Can Move You Forward

I turned 40 on November 2, 2017. There is an old saying that ‘life begins at 40.’ I used to think that was just something middle-aged people said to make them feel younger. Maybe that is a part of it. I do believe that the wisdom behind that saying is that you spend those first 39 years accumulating all kinds of knowledge that you then can start to put into practice when you hit the Big 4-0.

For me, as I stare down 47, I can honestly say that my 40s so far have been the most difficult and also rewarding decade of my life. I never thought I’d find a time where I’d feel more unsure, insecure, lost, and yet filled with optimism. My teens used to be the benchmark until my 40s.

I’ve learned a lot in my life. Some of it has been useful as I’ve aged. A lot has been pointless. No amount of studying prepares you for coming to grips with your own aging, your own mortality, or your own demons. No amount of preparation can soften the blow of loss and grief. My 40s have been a trial by fire. They have seen me dropped in hostile environments mentally with no survival gear and having to learn on the fly.

So what have I learned in my 40s so far? A lot.

4. I’ve Learned That Nothing Is Guaranteed and That Sometimes It Takes A Step Back To Move You Forward

I spent years, too many years, working in the restaurant industry. Don’t get me wrong it was a time when I met so many important people in my life. I don’t regret it in general. I just regret that I stayed until I was bitter and angry at my own lack of movement.

In 2015 I decided to take a chance and leave cooking to become a personal trainer. I figured since I was at the gym 5+ days a week and knew my way around the equipment I could use that knowledge to help others become better versions of themselves.

I worked full-time while also going to classes over the weekend to become a trainer. It was new to me as far as how to make it a career. Up until then it was guaranteed hours cooking. They were tough hours and a lot of them were spent under high pressure, but they were always there.

In training, I learned right away that nothing was guaranteed. There was no guarantee that someone would want to pay to train with the ‘new guy.’ There was no guarantee of hours at jobs since these gyms only see trainers as valuable when they are in the actual act of training someone. These things forced me to change my view on my new career in short order.

Rather than committing to one gym, I worked at 2. Both of these were very part-time. This meant that during some weeks I’d work less between the 2 jobs than I did in half a week cooking. I had to keep pushing ahead. I held out hope that as I gained experience I would be seen as a trainer that people could count on to help them.

As much as I was determined to give personal training my best effort there was something that threatened to derail my commitment. Money. As I said there were no guarantees. I got paid more when I trained someone, and it was good money. I liken it to a server getting tips from tables they wait on. When you’re not waiting a table your wage is practically nothing. That is the struggle of training. Not only was I working part-time between 2 jobs but much of my time was getting paid about 2/3 of what I was making hourly cooking. Fewer hours, less money, it was the freight train coming through the tunnel.

I didn’t know how broke I was until I was on my lunch break at one of my gym jobs. I had walked to a nearby supermarket to buy a protein bar and bottled water. When my debit card was declined it was a cold shot of reality. I couldn’t afford water and a protein bar. I had to return the water.

I had a brief resurgence when I reopened a credit card I had closed a few years earlier. This was quickly maxed out to pay rent and bills. Within a matter of weeks, I was back where I was before, unable to buy food and likely a week away from not having enough money to pay any bills or rent. My lowest point came when I had to borrow money from a client I was training. I didn’t ask, but she had seen a social media post where I had vented a little. She reached out and made the offer and I had to swallow a lot of pride and accept the money.

This couldn’t continue. By this point I had been a trainer for 2 ½ years, I had turned 40 and didn’t know how much longer I could go on before I had to give up. I was working at 1 gym at this point and remember it like yesterday. It was May 2018 and I asked my boss for more hours as I was having a lot of trouble making ends meet. He said ‘bring in more clients and I’ll give you more hours.’ I knew then that a change was coming.

I was thrown a lifeline by an old friend I had cooked with a few years earlier. He had moved on to cooking in a retirement home but was now leaving there to move to Maine. He asked me if I wanted his job. Going back to cooking after 2 ½ years away was not what I had thought I’d have to do. However, it was again guaranteed hours and guaranteed money. Plus cooking in a retirement home sounded far less stressful than Cape Cod restaurants in the summer.

One interview later and I had the job. All that was left was telling my boss at the gym that I was out. I was surprised at how surprised he was at my news. I told him it was 100% financial and that I had asked him for hours but he needed to have strings attached to it. I wasn’t giving up on being a personal trainer but at that point, I had to take a step back to go forward.

Cooking in a retirement home was definitely a change of pace. It was new yet familiar. The people I worked with there were fun and helpful and made me not feel like a failure for having to step back into a position I thought I’d left behind. I did keep my toes in the training pool though.

One thing about being a trainer is that when you work with people trying to improve their lives you develop a relationship, a trust. When I got ready to leave my gym job I had to break the news to my clients. Several of them asked me to train them in their homes. My boss at the gym was a former used car salesman. He had no idea of what it was to be a trainer so he thought I could be replaced and none of my clients would bat an eye. That was wrong.

A few people had to switch trainers as I simply didn’t have the time to take on more than a handful of clients. The icing on the cake for me, when it came to the ignorance of my now-former boss, was when it came to one particular client I was to train in-home.

She had worked with me through her first pregnancy and when she returned to the gym she found it hard to get to the gym with a newborn. Training in-home was the perfect solution. My old boss had the hair-brained scheme of sending a new trainer to her house to work with her. Needless to say, she was not having that.

In-home training taught me how to essentially run my own training business and craft workouts all on my own. In time I would leave cooking again and take another swipe at personal training as my main job. This time had far better results.

However, there is a big difference between a job and a passion. I enjoy being a trainer but my passion, my dream, has always been something different.

Remember that nothing is forever. Just because you fail, or feel like you've failed, does not mean that is the end of the story. I believe it was the band Semisonic who said 'Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.' 

Next: Part 5 - There Is No Expiration Date On Your Dreams

Previous: Part 3 - There's No Textbook For Dealing With Grief and Loss

What I've Learned In My 40s(so far): 3. There's No Textbook For Dealing With Grief and Loss

I turned 40 on November 2, 2017. There is an old saying that ‘life begins at 40.’ I used to think that was just something middle-aged people said to make them feel younger. Maybe that is a part of it. I do believe that the wisdom behind that saying is that you spend those first 39 years accumulating all kinds of knowledge that you then can start to put into practice when you hit the Big 4-0.

For me, as I stare down 47, I can honestly say that my 40s so far have been the most difficult and also rewarding decade of my life. I never thought I’d find a time where I’d feel more unsure, insecure, lost, and yet filled with optimism. My teens used to be the benchmark until my 40s.

I’ve learned a lot in my life. Some of it has been useful as I’ve aged. A lot has been pointless. No amount of studying prepares you for coming to grips with your own aging, your own mortality, or your own demons. No amount of preparation can soften the blow of loss and grief. My 40s have been a trial by fire. They have seen me dropped in hostile environments mentally with no survival gear and having to learn on the fly.

So what have I learned in my 40s so far? A lot.

What I've Learned In My 40s(so far): 2. Learning To Let Go of Toxic People, Even Those Close To You

 

I turned 40 on November 2, 2017. There is an old saying that ‘life begins at 40.’ I used to think that was just something middle-aged people said to make them feel younger. Maybe that is a part of it. I do believe that the wisdom behind that saying is that you spend those first 39 years accumulating all kinds of knowledge that you then can start to put into practice when you hit the Big 4-0.

For me, as I stare down 47, I can honestly say that my 40s so far have been the most difficult and also rewarding decade of my life. I never thought I’d find a time where I’d feel more unsure, insecure, lost, and yet filled with optimism. My teens used to be the benchmark until my 40s.

I’ve learned a lot in my life. Some of it has been useful as I’ve aged. A lot has been pointless. No amount of studying prepares you for coming to grips with your own aging, your own mortality, or your own demons. No amount of preparation can soften the blow of loss and grief. My 40s have been a trial by fire. They have seen me dropped in hostile environments mentally with no survival gear and having to learn on the fly.

So what have I learned in my 40s so far? A lot.

2. I’ve learned that it is sometimes necessary to let go of toxic people in one's life, even if those people are immediate family.

I tend to push my feelings to the side for the sake of others. I am an empath through and through which is a good trait to have. Being able to feel what someone else is going through can help you understand and be supportive of them. It can also cause people to look past you and take you for granted.

Too many times in my life I have heard some form of the phrase ‘you have to deal with so-and-so because they’re family.’ That’s a lie. If someone’s presence in your life is actively hurting you then you don’t ‘have’ to allow them in your life.

I gave my father 40 years to show me something. Anything. He was given a long leash, and a thousand ‘second chances’ because he was my father. My parents divorced when I was 4. My father had been out of the house since probably a year before then. When I would see him as a kid he was more of a guy trying to be a cool older friend rather than a male role model to help shape who I would become. Notice I said when I would see him.

I had wanted to have a father like so many of my other friends had. Someone who taught them things. Someone who supported their goals. Someone who was actually in their lives. My father didn’t want any of those things. He wanted as little responsibility as possible.

This manifested itself in devastating ways. It was there when he would no-show picking me up for a visit when he said he would when I was a small child. It was there when he quit multiple jobs rather than pay below the minimum for child support. You know the money that would go to supporting your child? This meant for all intents and purposes he didn’t care if I had food, medical care, clothing, you name it.

I mentioned in the previous section that he would stop at the liquor store on drives home from work. He helped get me that job as a dishwasher/food prep. This meant that he also knew I was making money. This allowed him to ask for money constantly. Not to help with living expenses. No, he’d ask his 15-year-old son for money to buy alcohol and cigarettes. At one point he cleaned out my entire savings, well over $1,200, with the promise of payback in full. He might have paid back 75% and then never brought it up again.

The older I got the more I began to see with my own eyes who my father was. The more I was able to make the choice for myself the more I chose not to associate with him. I wanted a father but what I had was a lazy, selfish drunk who prioritized buying beer over his kids having their basic needs met.

After my Nana died in 2009 I stuck my neck out and got him a job at the same restaurant as me. This was me doing right by my Nana. He repaid me by no-call, no-showing 5 straight days about a month or so after starting the job. Can you imagine the embarrassment of knowing that your father cared so little that he just bailed on a job his son got him? My coworkers promised that didn’t make them see me any differently, but come on, it was humiliating.

From 2010 until I turned 40 in 2017 I saw my father very rarely. As I started having events for my books that I released, or road races, he was never there. I had loads of family at these events, not my father. There was always an excuse. He should have just been honest and said ‘you’re not important enough to me for me to try.’

My final straw came not too long before I turned 40. My father had a medical event that landed him in the ER. Despite being relatively estranged I was there with him like a good son. I was there as the doctors checked him out.

The doctor told my father he would make a full recovery but he needed to cut down and eventually cut out alcohol and cigarettes. By this point, I had switched careers and was a personal trainer. I promised the doctor and my father that I could help him with exercise and some nutrition advice. This was the last-second miracle I had wanted. I would finally have the father I had wanted. Better late than never.

He tapered down booze and cigarettes but only temporarily. Within a few weeks of getting out of the hospital, he was chugging beer and smoking like a chimney as if the medical issue had never happened.

That was it. I told him flat out that since he obviously didn’t care then I didn’t care either. I gave him until I turned 40 but I was done trying to force myself to have a father who only cared about himself. Only one person in the family, an aunt, tried to push the ‘but he’s family’ line on me. Everyone else understood why I was cutting my father out.

Flash forward to the present time and my father resides in a nursing and rehabilitation facility. His brazen ignoring of doctor’s recommendations in 2017 caught up with him. He had both of his legs amputated at the knees due to his incessant smoking and drinking. It would have been gut-wrenching if he had been even a subpar father.

In my eyes, he is living his karma. When I needed a father growing up he couldn’t have cared less. He only saw me when I visited my Nana’s house and that’s because he was living there. In fact, when I was still very young he had told my mother he was willing to waive all parental rights to me and my sister so that he wouldn’t have to pay child support.

It was only when my mother said that my Nana would lose all visitation rights as well that my father relented. Finding out that info as an adult should have been traumatizing. To me, it was par for the course. Why would I give one inch of space inside my mind to a man who prioritized beer and cigarettes over his children? And also why would I give one second of my time to visit such a reprehensible human? As far as I am concerned my father does not exist and as far as I am concerned it can stay that way for the rest of his miserable life.

Do not feel as though you have to keep a toxic, painful relationship going because someone is family. Sometimes the pain of having them in your life is greater than the pain of removing them from it.

Next: Part 3 - Learning there is no textbook for dealing with grief and loss

Previous: Part 1 - Being A Slave to a Demon, and Also Slaying That Demon

What I’ve Learned In My 40’s(so far): 1. Being A Slave to a Demon, and Also Slaying That Demon

 

I turned 40 on November 2, 2017. There is an old saying that ‘life begins at 40.’ I used to think that was just something middle-aged people said to make them feel younger. Maybe that is a part of it. I do believe that the wisdom behind that saying is that you spend those first 39 years accumulating all kinds of knowledge that you then can start to put into practice when you hit the Big 4-0.

For me, as I stare down 47, I can honestly say that my 40s so far have been the most difficult and also rewarding decade of my life. I never thought I’d find a time where I’d feel more unsure, insecure, lost, and yet filled with optimism. My teens used to be the benchmark until my 40s.

I’ve learned a lot in my life. Some of it has been useful as I’ve aged. A lot has been pointless. No amount of studying prepares you for coming to grips with your own aging, your own mortality, or your own demons. No amount of preparation can soften the blow of loss and grief. My 40s have been a trial by fire. They have seen me dropped in hostile environments mentally with no survival gear and having to learn on the fly.

So what have I learned in my 40s so far? A lot.

1. I’ve learned what it’s like to be a slave to a demon, and also what it’s like to slay that demon.

Alcoholism has been a part of my life since I started making memories. Until I hit 40 however it was always a cautionary tale dealing with others. My father was an alcoholic from as far back as I remember. I can’t remember a time when he didn’t have an open can of beer and a cigarette sitting in an ashtray. The smell of smoke and the sound of him belching loudly was as much a part of my Sundays at my Nana’s as Wiffle ball games and hot dogs and beans.

As I grew older and my connection to my father faded further away I made a decision to not become an alcoholic to spite him. My greatest fear in my adult life was hearing someone tell me I was just like my father. I couldn’t help if I looked like him or sounded like him but I could make sure I didn’t wind up a drunk like him. It wasn’t that easy.

I enjoyed having a few drinks once in a while in my 20s and 30s. Every so often I’d overdo it and wind up with a hangover but those events were the exception, not the rule. I feared the alcoholism gene being switched on when I was in my 20s. I can still remember being 21 and sitting in the living room at our house on Broadway in West Yarmouth. I had a 6-pack of some sort of winter-flavored beer and was knocking them back when my mother gave me a stern warning.

She mentioned the gene. She also mentioned that she had gone through dealing with an alcoholic with my father at roughly the same age I was then. My mother said she would not go through that with me. That triggered the fear. The fear of becoming my father’s son was more powerful than the beer, at least at that point.

I kept it in check until I hit 40. It was the death of one of my oldest friends Matt a few weeks before Christmas in 2017 that gave the alcohol the opening it needed. In looking for a way to dull the pain of the grief I turned to a friend I swore I’d never turn to. The only difference between 21-year-old me sitting at Broadway with a 6-pack, and 40-year-old with a pile of vodka nips, was that there was nobody to hold me accountable.

The booze helped me cope with Matt’s death, or at least that was my reasoning. I still wasn’t an alcoholic, I was just a sad person who had lost a friend. These are the lies you tell yourself when you know you’re going down a bad path. There’s always an excuse.

My routine barely wavered for nearly 3 years. I was in a liquor store every day, except if I grabbed enough to last me 2 days. I had preferences on what I bought to drink and didn’t stray from them. In fact, if I switched up my order the folks at the liquor stores would remark about it. That’s how familiar they were with me, they knew my daily haul. Being confronted with this I would frequent a different liquor store for a while rather than taking it as a sign that alcohol was too big of a part of my life.

I used to shake my head in disapproval when my father would stop at a liquor store on the ride home from work every single time he drove me home. Now here I was in my 40s, the same age he was then, doing the exact same thing. I was more like him than I ever thought. A lot of sons want to follow in their father’s footsteps. It’s just too bad that my father’s footsteps always led to a liquor store or the unemployment line.

Sure I could blame the deaths of friends and family. I could blame the financial hardship brought on by taking a chance at a career change. I could blame hitting 40. The truth is that I didn’t want to stop drinking. It was a warm blanket of detachment. If I was drinking every night I didn’t have to actually do the work of dealing with all of the issues I just mentioned. The fact that ended up quitting drinking and have been sober for over 4 years shows that I could have done it if I had truly wanted to.

Maybe I say that with 20/20 hindsight. I don’t know. I think there were times during my time as a functioning alcoholic when I was angry and embarrassed that I seemingly had no self-control or self-respect. These times were typically not long after I’d finished my nightly allotment of booze, or first thing the next morning. By early afternoon though all was forgiven and I was back in line at the packie. Thankfully those days are now long gone but for a while, it felt like the demon was my master.

Next: Part 2 - Learning To Let Go of Toxic People, Even Those Close To You