Happy 64th to me

Can I tell you my wish? Read to the end:)

Yesterday, October 13^th, I turned 64. Yes, on Friday the 13^th.

No need for presents though…I’m set. But thanks for the thought.

Okay, okay, if you insist, I’m registered at REI.

I’ve lived for 64 years. Old, in a way.

But I feel young, like I’m hitting my stride, like everything I’ve experienced is becoming useful to me now. I finally know what I really want.

I feel like I understand God and religion better.

I get my marriage like I never have. Not that it’s perfect or that we don’t argue or that my wife doesn’t frequently have the thought pop into her head, So, when’s his next campervan trip to the mountains? But now I get this relationship; I understand her; I understand me; I understand what makes us, us. Come on, if you don’t know that by 41 years…

My sons still seem to like me. Well, actually in low doses, like the duration of a couple pickleball games.

My career is going along swimmingly (a word that only 60-year-olds use).

I did have a heart attack, though, at 48. It’s been 15 years now and I’m still kicking. I feel healthy and can move around the court like a 35-year-old. (Well, maybe a 39-year-old.) I’ve resisted the be-on-drugs-the-rest-of-your-life path and committed to the change-your-lifestyle approach. You know, change your diet, change how you handle stress, and improve your fitness. I could be wrong in choosing this tack, and I may keel over tomorrow, but drugs threw off too many side-effects for me and the thought of leaning on a medication seemed like just a shortcut.

Handling stress—what I think was the main culprit for my heart attack—made much more sense to me. So I’ve taken the last 15 years to study stress and I’ve realized I am one tightly wound dude. Read my book, Letters to My Son in Prison, and you’ll see. Vulnerability and rawness and intensity are the most consistent themes in all the reviews I’ve gotten. And as I’ve read those reviews, I realized, Man, I’ve got stress issues. I can grind on myself like a butcher; I can loathe on myself like the worst troll on the internet.

But where is the correlation between stress and a heart attack? Yes, I’ve heard it mentioned a hundred times. In fact, the day I showed up at the ER with a feeling of odd pressure on the inside of my biceps, the cardiologist’s first question was, “So, do you have a lot of stress in your life?”

But Google it. There’s not much there as far as causation. ChatGPT it. Still not much there. To me, the most solid correlation is the atherosclerosis that can result from stress-induced inflammation. But still, it’s not very prominent in the literature.

But I don’t care what the internet says. As I moved on from my heart attack, I saw stress woven through my entire life. For example, I noticed how my internal temperature rose on the court as my anger built up; I noticed how this feeling would sometimes last into the next day; I noticed the sweat on my palms when a business deal started going south; and I noticed the tingling in my body when my wife left the house to go to work after we’d argued.

I had never really taken note of these things before—I just thought they were normal life. But after my event, I knew I needed to change. This was life or death now. If I didn’t moderate some of my Hulk-like frustrations, I was going to snap.

So that’s what I’ve done for the past 15 years. Now I’m stress obsessed. I’m like Maverick in the cockpit during a dog fight, spinning my head every which way, looking for any sign that I’m getting out of control. I’ve adopted my own acronym, OASD (obsessed about stress disorder).

Here are just a couple of the things I’ve learned in the past 15 years:

1.      An extra shot of Vodka will take the edge off for a night. Maybe two. But then it'll bite you in the ass. Now I measure carefully, enjoy deliciously, and never step over that line. I don’t want a blessing to become a curse.

2.      Sometimes it’s good to hash it out with your spouse. But sometimes it’s better not to. Just let it go…smile…and move on. Sometimes a little sweep under the carpet is just fine. I think total honesty is overrated.

3.      I’ve also wondered if I’m not as tightly wound as I think I am. It’s hard to know. Who knows another man’s mind? I’m going with Popeye on this one, I am what I am.   

4.      Competition is unhealthy for me. I get too angry. I get too uptight. My company actually has a Leader Board at work that rates all the salespeople. I’ve never clicked on that link—I will never click on that link. Don’t get me wrong—I play hard and compete vigorously and strive to be the very best I can be—but competition and tournaments and comparing myself to others is just not my jam.

So, here’s my birthday wish: God, grant me the serenity…you know the rest.