For the truly bored/insomniacs:
My Timeline
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1989
Graduation 1.0
I graduate high school in Greeley, CO.
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1995
Graduation 2.0
I graduate college and do whatever feels good and fun, like getting married and climbing and mountain biking and snowboarding in Tahoe and Colorado.
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2003
Real Life
Highlights up until now are graduating college and being married (beautiful dreamer), and divorced (selfish asshole). I learned that risk-taking and impulsivity are great for forming relationships- and destroying them. I have a massive tumor excised from next to my heart. I get into PA school because I find medicine interesting and think it’ll pay well, but I don’t love it. I love reading, writing, philosophy, fixing things, and playing in the mountains, but I think I’m being “practical” by pursuing a career in medicine.
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2005
Graduation 3.0
I graduate Physician Assistant school. I get a job as a PA in Orthopedics.
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2007
Marriage + Fatherhood
I marry my wife, a beautiful, driven and accomplished woman who checks my website content for accuracy. Our first child, a son, is born. I begin a long process of withering, marked by a retreat within as the responsibilities of career, marriage, and child-raising descend, all at once, like some unholy triumvirate from the sky. TV, drugs, alcohol, and extreme sports are how I find my freedom to mourn my lost independence.
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2010
Fatherhood 2.0
Our second child, a daughter, is born. Having children continues to feel like a duty. A very painful duty. Hemorrhoids come to mind, but my thinking isn’t clear now, just as it wasn’t then.
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2011-2018
Decline
Some stuff happens, everyone got older, all of my relationships deteriorate with the exception of my climbing partner who is, possibly not coincidentally, also a middle-school therapist. I feel like I’m spiraling out of control and feel lonely, frustrated, sad, and angry, sometimes all at once. My wife is seriously unimpressed and is clearly either a saint or emotionally stunted. We, mostly me, talk about divorce a lot and yell often in front of the kids. I am “misunderstood” at work and frequently in trouble, which I wear as a badge of honor. I am cut from my ultimate frisbee tournament team after conflict with that dickface of a captain, and I realize no one is really going to miss me, even though I’m clearly the best on the team when I feel like it. Shit starts to hit home. I learn about dark nights of the soul, and I hypothesize that when they talk about an eternal lake of burning fire they may be referring to regret and shame. I can feel the stress hormones withering my internal organs. I fall in love with good self-help books and discover podcasts. I carry daily anxiety and have 3 or 4 panic attacks depending on your criteria. I am hospitalized twice for hyponatremia while playing ultimate, and sustain a life-threatening seizure at the World Ultimate Championships. Waking up in restraints and a diaper will force a close look at your decision-making. I enroll in a coaching course after finally listening to my heart.
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2019
Stuff Starts Changing
I coach whoever will let me for varying amounts of money, and feel great joy. (One interesting aspect of coaching is that the amount of work put in by the client is nearly always proportional to the client’s perceived value, which appears to be set by price. It’s like having a free gym membership vs an expensive one- which one is more likely to force YOU to show up and participate with Maximum Effort? Which do you think brings better results?) I begin personal trainer certification as part of an exit plan when it looks like Kaiser might go bankrupt, and become certified by the American College of Sports Medicine.
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2020
Coaching Stuff
I quit practicing medicine to pursue coaching full time. Practicing medicine is brutal in this country, corporate existence can be frugal for the soul, my father was in home hospice and dying, my wife and family didn’t really like me and my mid-life crisis was full blown. Other than that, I was fine. Because of coaching, I was able to be with it and make some meaning of it all. Now I can see I was suffering burnout for years and that it’s hard to see burnout yourself. I decide to transition careers to coaching, which requires you to care deeply about everyone, including myself and total strangers (the two have more in common than you might expect), and it transforms my life because it transforms my heart. I finish the 6-month coaching certification while staying home and holding down the fort- homeschooling kids and Mr. Mom duties during COVID. I have repaired my relationships with my wife (mea culpa!) and kids and myself, and know what it takes to walk this walk, day after day. Being transformed helps greatly: my anxiety is gone, my health is pretty damn good, I’ve made more friends in the last year than in the prior 10, and I’ve reunited virtually with old college roommates I haven’t talked to in 20 years. It’s like I’m awake again- and it feels great! My former teammates in Orthopedics continue to be surprised and I think the more crusty of them is waiting for the phase to pass- after all, people don’t really change do they? Ha HA!, but victory is mine, sayeth Me! Because not only do I not take that personally, but I’m coaching some of them now!