Another Year

I have received direct calls for help, but this straightforward clarity is rare.

A parent may call, looking for help to save their child from the wrong path. Or a friend calls, looking for tools or techniques to help save their pal. Mostly, awkward conversations occur and the issue is danced around, never to be clearly revealed. Someone is hurting, they have approached the end of their rope, and can barely hang on. But without total transparency into the pain and desperation, many times we miss the cues to please jump in and help.  

Realizing something else is needed, many times we cannot see, understand, or perform what might save us. Trying to save someone before they are ready to be saved has never worked for me. I have tried and tried to insert myself when trouble exists but until they themselves decide to change, the effort is mostly futile. When we are open enough, truthful enough, and brave enough to ask for help, answering such a plea is something I have never skirted.

Crossroads, the proverbial intersection of one life path piercing another, is an interesting junction. Neither direction may kill us, if we are smart enough and if we are careful enough. Still, sometimes we struggle with the decision of which way to go. Our heart is resoundingly screaming to go one way, but our brain holds us in place. We think we know the correct path to travel but many times we remain frozen, unsure, and unable to commit.  

Mostly without an adequate life compass, I have been more careful and safe than I have been reckless. Yes, I have leapt without first seeing a safe place to land. Yes, I have thrown caution to the wind hundreds of times, attempting to do something great and not rest within mediocrity, settling for a life I might otherwise describe as simply “ok”. Yes, I have unceremoniously found myself on the ground, in the dirt, broken, bleeding, and waking up from another accidental unconscious episode. But yes, more safe than reckless because I am doing what I think is best, not waiting for tomorrow, standing up to act, and not hoping for a miracle. This keeps me safe within my own heart, leading with my personal values, drama, and pain be damned. I would not change my past, nor could I go back and reconstruct the path that got me here, unable to recount all the twists and turns that landed me here, here in these shoes. I have had an awesome journey so far and have many miles still to go.

Where I have gone, where I will go, and what I will become is an endless web of gut decisions. I tend to defy risk, mostly because for so long, until I was 26, I did next to nothing with my life except dance with the devil, so I feel I have some ground to make up. Do I have it all figured out? Of course not, sometimes I don’t even know what “it” is.

I strive forward, trying not to pause, and trying to learn. I have leapt instead of studied, I have run instead of rested, and I have cried instead of wondered. I have been broken more than I have triumphed. I have bled more than I have celebrated. And after each fall, I got up. And as each wound healed, I reflected, trying to learn more than I knew before.  

My opportunity to do something great exists all around me. It is ever-present, if I listen, and if I look.

I’ve had days. I’ve had days when I don’t get out of bed. Those days when taking a shower is improbable, if not impossible, and the kitchen feels three miles away. Days when I don’t even look outside, or can hold a single positive thought. But those days, and it’s been a while, over three years since I last got stuck standing still, I am confident those days are all behind me now. My last period of stuckness was also complicated by an anti-depressant medication which produced the exact opposite results than what was intended. Still, I respect, honor, and look out for these hard times both within myself at home, and also out there in the big old wide world with others.

Currently, my diagnosis is neurocognitive disorder, caused by too many sports head injuries and not as a result of other common sources like the degenerative brain diseases of dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's, or Multiple Sclerosis. Neurocognitively, I can, and I do, make some improvements but the work is hard and slow. Mostly, the damage has been done to my brain and all those concussions cannot be undone. Concurrently, my doctor and I have spent hours and hours discussing CTE, the other degenerative brain disease made famous amongst professional football players. I never knew any football players who took their own life as a result of CTE, but when legendary bicycle sports athlete Dave Mirra ended it all in early 2016, it shook my world. I began to explore all of the effects of repeatedly throwing ourselves on the ground as professional bicycle athletes. That’s when I started selling the motorcycles, and even began to plan how to sell my kids trampoline so I could stop making excuses why I couldn’t jump with them despite constant pleas for me to come play. Every time I got on the trampoline, I suffered a concussion. Although CTE cannot be diagnosed clinically and is only identifiable during an autopsy, my doctor confidently says, “you have it”. Well, maybe I do and maybe I don’t have CTE but I cannot change my past so I focus on my present and my future.

I can still positively affect my future, despite my past. I try to do what’s good for me and I try to avoid what is bad for me. All of the motorcycles are gone, they shook my brain too much. The same thing with the snowmobiles and jet skis, so they are gone too. I am not risk-averse but I more intently focus on what I am doing at the moment and try not to tumble on the ground anymore. Still, I wait for nothing, and I go when I have decided a thing is worth my effort.

Today, I am packing a couple of bags, filled with clothes and daily necessities, a supply long enough to support me for a year if need be. I have closed my memoir notebook, for now, the mega-project that I began on February 1st in this wild 2020 calendar year. The life memoir that I am writing for my two kids Travis and Lauren will have to wait a while. The memoir currently has 22 chapters, 698 pages within the Word document, and 267,755 words saved electronically, with at least a few more months of work still to do. But for now, I am answering a call for help.  

For the first quarter of 2020, I reevaluated all my volunteer work, all my consulting, and performed a hard assessment of where I was spending my time. Every meeting, every lunch meetup, every phone call, was challenged to make sure it was equally as important as the writing of my memoir. If not on par with my writing, the conflicting other activity was terminated, suspended, or deferred. I would call that behavior discipline, and that discipline has continued all year, until a few weeks ago in early December.

My uncle Ralph, The Admiral, had two strokes recently and left him with a paralyzed right side. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t make his own meals or walk his dog. There were more things he couldn’t do than things he could do. He spent two months in a specialty stroke center in Salt Lake City. We talked a few times shortly after his stroke, while he was still incapacitated. The first time on the phone with The Admiral and I could barely understand a word he said. It was heartbreaking. The next phone call was better and The Admiral continues to improve.

From the beginning after his strokes, I offered to The Admiral that if there is anything I can do, just let me know. And then on Saturday, December 5th, The Admiral called me. He was back home in Jackson Hole and asked if I could come to Wyoming and help him with his day to day living and with his recovery. Most everyone else The Admiral called was busy. I left home five days later for Jackson.

Then for almost three weeks, I cooked, I cleaned, I laundered, I shopped, and I helped in every way possible. The days were endless but I did not tire because of why I was there and who I was helping. The Admiral is my dad’s older brother and the last surviving senior member of our family. My parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles are all dead except for The Admiral, retired Rear Admiral Ralph G Bird of the United States Navy, former commanding officer of a nuclear-powered submarine and all-around human hotshot.

I am back home in Madison for a few days, packing and preparing for a return trip to Jackson that may last a while, indefinitely to be precise.

You, the people in my life, you give me strength, thank you.

Sometimes I can find all the strength I need on my own, which has certainly been the case most of my life, but not always. Sometimes I need a hand, sometimes I ask for help, and sometimes I lean on you, thank you.

Last year I wrote a new year poem for 2020, filled with optimism, enthusiasm, and focus.

I constantly write to myself, and write for myself, to better sort out what I am feeling and plan for what I will try to do next.

I share my plan, here below, for 2020, this the poem I wrote last year. My 2020 plan worked pretty darn well because I was working on the right stuff.

For 2021, my plan is this: to show up, to help, and to work hard as hell on the things I can influence, while I can.

My hope for you is that you see what can be done and you get busy doing it. I wish for you the clarity to differentiate the things you can change versus the things you cannot. I hope you rest when you tire and then enthusiastically get back to your plan.

I am who I am and not who I am not. I try not to lose sight of who I am. I reinvent myself regularly, based on my current reality and for 2021, I will reinvent myself yet again.

Thank you for being part of my world.

Thank you for letting me be part of your world, and I hope you do great shit in 2021.

And as those wise philosophers Wayne and Garth so eloquently put it, game on!

My 2020 new year poem from last year:

ANOTHER YEAR

Another year wiser from past

Another year deepening these ear’s skills

Another year wondrously exploring

Another year watering these plants of positivity

Another year betterment of presence

Another year simplifying whilst growing

Another year safeguarding the golden goose

Another year giving readily, little things, with great care

Another year knowing, brightening this light within

Another year garnering this appointment with life in the present

Another year performing life service selfless

Another year arising, bleeding, unwavering

Another year time-void, no measure but existing in moments

Another year slowing, raising awareness

Another year suiting this size that fits

Another year surrounded within millions of peers in this night’s sky

Another year speaking with her, life, at every sunset as she brightens another land.