Wyoming, I love you – Stop trying to kill me

Final approach to Shannon Airport was pulling back the curtain on a dream. I didn’t know the world could look like that — clouds cartoonishly perfect and puffy, drifting lazily over hills green as Granny Smith apples. I could make out little specks, which on closer inspection, were grazing sheep. “Nothing in the world will ever be as beautiful as this,” I thought.

Which was true… until this weekend.

It’s not you, Ireland, it’s me. I met someone. Her name is Wyoming.

Everything, even reality, is subjective, i.e., I can’t speak for other people because I’m not other people. Or as my friend Bob likes to say, “We’re all beautiful snowflakes.” I can’t speak for you but for me, the drive from, say, Park City, Utah on up to Yellowstone National Park via U.S. Routes 16/30 and Highway 89 was the best road trip of my life, even with a nasty head cold. (It wasn’t always this exciting, but close).

Existentially, I’m a journey-not-destination guy, with my love of the open road superseded only by – yeah – my love for Wyoming, even though it has tried to kill me. I know you’re thinking: Get out of that relationship, Wyoming is no good for you. You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s complicated.

How to be a sloth fan boy (w pictures)

My spirit animal

I hesitate to mention I dig sloths because I don’t want a reputation. I knew a couple with the unfortunate last name Whale, who, no surprise, almost exclusively received whale-themed gifts. Olivia, my ex-wife, is “the chicken lady.” I don’t want to be “the sloth guy.”

That said, I do own a sloth T-Shirt that I never wear because it’s that thin unflattering material Millennials gifted us along with skinny jeans, slim fit suits, and Tinder (way to contribute). I don’t wear it out as it accentuates my insecurities/man boobs.

In addition to buying T-Shirts I don’t wear, I have a minor Etsy addiction. We all have excesses that drain our bank accounts (see Kids), this is mine.

New arrival from Merry Old England:

So why am I a sloth fan boy? List it up, baby.

1. Sloths are lazy

Outside of Cracker Barrel (“The Crack” as a friend calls it), being active in Utah is sort of expected, like having babies and exiting the highway across three lanes at the last possible second. The exercise expectation, and no booze, is how these human-shaped mountain goats live well into their 90s (I read the obits).

That said, when I’m not moving, I LOVE being lazy. Olivia will tell you: asked how I wanted to celebrate my 30th birthday, I said stay in bed and have cake brought in every hour on the hour until I fell into a sugar coma, or real one.

2. Sloths don’t rush for anything

Honey badgers don’t care and sloths don’t rush. They don’t have to. Outside of a runaway train or regrettable jog, I don’t either.

Paradise Glossed: 2016 in Review

Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty.

– Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

This past week, my dad and I were discussing public vs. private life, particularly image cultivation in the selfie age and Christmas letters.

Christmas letters are passé, but if you’ve never written or received one, essentially they’re an annual brag-fest, something social media allows us to parse out 365 days a year. The Christmas letter was a big picture version of what social media empowers on a daily basis, that is, to be person and publicist, to share pictures of the shrimp tartare that came out perfectly, but not the coconut shrimp we burnt to a crisp. We’ll check-in at the concert but gloss over the day the cat peed on the new rug, the dog peed on the cat, and the washing machine broke down.

Similarly, Christmas letters are full of updates on exciting trips, how well the kids are doing, new babies, new pets, new jobs, promotions, etc.

To be fair, Christmas letters and Facebook bluster are perfectly natural human inventions. It’s in our genetic makeup to think we’re smarter/more gifted/better than average. Immunity to reality is a survival mechanism. If there wasn’t a little rose-tint in our glasses, we’d find it hard to get out of bed in the morning, besides, too much realism throws the social order out of whack. For example, we take great strides to convince ourselves and one another that children, money and marriages make us happy, despite the fact that, in the aggregate, they don’t.

Call me a curmudgeon, but studies back me up. If you’re like most parents, you point to your kids as your greatest sources of joy, which isn’t wrong, just delusional. Memories of cooing babies in bassinets, marching band finals and blissful weddings have merely blotted out the vast majority of child-rearing moments: dull, selfless service to people who at some point pretend they’re not related to you.

Anyway… one year, my mom took over for my dad writing the Drake family Christmas letter and dispelled with the “happy family” crap. I’m not sure how much she dialed back the braggadocio, but any honest assessment of, say, 2003, would have included several graphs about chemotherapy, hair falling out, fear of dying, my sister’s struggles with suicide, and my alcoholism. Merry Christmas, everyone!

This is my attempt at that – a realist’s assessment of 2016. Realism doesn’t mean discounting the good, it just means taking the good with the bad. Because frankly, while popular culture is pulling out all the stops to record 2016 as the worst year ever (discounting 1348, 1919 and 1968, to name a few), my 2016 went down as one of my best.

For your consideration:

OCD guide to camping

I’m stuck between two camps as it were:
People who think camping is magic and people who think it sucks.

Why it sucks

Why #1  Nature needs a bath

Dirt everywhere!

I’m a little OCD (and when an OCD person says they’re a little OCD, multiply that by a factor of five). Seriously though, mine isn’t scrubbing hands raw or dancing a jig after locking the door, though I do gag myself with a toothbrush every morning while scrubbing my tongue. Stick it out and look sometime. The thing is weird, gross, unsanitary and every time Miley Cyrus sticks hers out I want to cut it off with garden sheers.

No, my OCD isn’t all that life-altering – not depriving me of slothy fun like leaving the dishes unwashed for a few days. Mine is the minimalist variety, making me difficult to live, camp and decorate with (ask my ex).

The opposite of a hoarder, I just hate having lots of stuff. If something isn’t nostalgic, aesthetically pleasing or useful, it’s gone. Philosophically, minimalism aligns with my belief that our world is in chaos, at least in part, because things are being loved and people are being used.  The dark side of consumerism: Full closets, empty hearts.

So clean counters calm me. Artless walls please. Clutter make me crazier than a soup sandwich.

With the knowledge that after a couple nights at camp, I’m dirty, tired and sleep-deprived, after three consecutive days of watching the Republic National Convention in bemused horror, I was primed for a break from the burning garbage heap of reality. Neatly situated around a four-day weekend, I set out to be nanook of the woods, make fires, rest, renew and get the heebie-jeebies.

Why #2  Nature hates you

My campsite along the Green River with my own semi-private sandy beach:

Thing of beauty, eh? It was BUT what the carefully applied photo filters don’t show is the skeeter-swatting, ant-flicking, tumbling over tent stakes after sneaking out to pee at 2 a.m. Nature is a ceaseless buzzing, grimy reality, and for an OCDr without booze, Wellbutrin or Prozac, icky-sticky camping quickly devolves into PURE HELL.

The art of noticing

He’s an aberration in a sea of same faces.

Inside a jungle beard, a mouth moves – baby snake in grass. His feral eyes mushed in bags so wrinkly I wonder if I can guess his age by counting them, like growth rings of a tree.

Snake-mouth hisses into his phone: “I’ll be back there at 9. He can deal with me then. Listen, I can’t talk. Phone says my data’s almost up. There’s ‘sposed to be Wi-Fi in this train but the somsabitches around me are using it all I guess.”

He stink-eyes the whole train car, as if we’re all live-streaming “Doctor Zhivago” out of spite.

In mass casualty triage, we were taught rapid assessment – quickly tag victims based on condition – Green for ambulatory, Black for dead. I’d gauge most train passengers at 6 a.m. are somewhere between ambulatory and non-ambulatory; some can respond to verbal commands, others have trouble lifting their heads. Warming up my brain too is a little like trying to boil on the simmer setting.

In that way, this cranky guy was refreshing. Utah is courtesy-conscious, which I like, but there are days I wished I was in Chicago where I could yell “Fuck!” at the end of a train platform without anyone caring. A couple folks might glance, shrug it off as “Guy having a bad day” and look back at their phones.

Here, loud talking, much less loud cursing, is frowned upon. If you forget your inside voice, the recorded “Train Lady” even reminds you – the sweet disembodied voice I picture like a Sunday morning version of Melissa McCarthy, gently chiding: “Be considerate of others. This is a shared space. Keep conversations and audio low. Headphones are required.”

The angry man doesn’t hang up, as promised, and his volume continues to climb. Not a single one of my fellow Wi-Fi sapping somsabitches tells him to stuff his stupid snake mouth. Why? Because it ain’t Chicago. Utahns are do-goody, but non-confrontational. Being mindful here isn’t about presence, it’s about minding your business.

Don’t rock the boat in the sea of same faces.

A dark and stormy night

This is all my fault, I thought. It’s because I wanted a real meal.

The Rawlins, Wyoming Denny’s seemed like an oasis 30 hours into Operation Get Jesse Outta Dodge, four shy of Utah. The skies then, a bit cloudy perhaps, but not a hint of snow.

Yet here I was, best guessing where my lane was, losing ground on a tractor-trailer – its taillights my lighthouse, the Budget rental van my ship being pushed out to sea.

I couldn’t see five feet ahead. The only clear thing was the immutable fact that along this exit-less stretch of I-80, if you stop, you stayed stopped.

I felt faint. My fingers tingled. It was a panic attack or the Big One, but probably just panic, so I cracked a window, focused on breathing and sheer-willed my container-on-wheels up the hill. Cars littered ditches. My wipers were caked with snow, so I started performing a maneuver I call “The Michigan Pitstop” – Reach your arm out the window and with a well-timed flip of the wiper, thunk off the gunk.

I swerved to avoid a car crawling along, whose driver, I guess, had slept through the part about momentum in physics class. Trailing me was my sister, driving my Mazda. In the side mirror I could see her yo-yo’ing – lagging behind then riding so close I’d lose sight of the headlights. Later I learned she was trying to catch any slush I might kick up. In my haste, I forgot to top off the windshield washer fluid before we left Connecticut.

An apple pie reminder burp reaffirmed – This is how we die, and it’s all your fault.

An hour before, at the gas stop in Rawlins, I was aching for Something Resembling Food, which, don’t quote me, I think is the Denny’s slogan.

Now it’s true that the walls of my arteries are, on a chemical level, Fruit Roll-Ups. I’ve subsisted four decades on the diet of a drunk 7-year-old. But once we hit Wyoming, every gummy bone in my body was begging for a break from sugary snacks. Little did I realize, in my self-care, I would become a boulder blocking my own path.

God, you so funny

Today was “one of those” – a lot on my mind. The good news is I’m finally starting to recognize when I’m nearing the tipping point. I felt a tad shaky so I decided it would be a good idea to hit up an AA meeting on my way home.

I found one in Wethersfield: half cutesy New England town, half commercial clusterf—. It’s near Hartford, which gave me hope that it might have a nice cross-section of people.

After a quick bite I pulled into the parking lot of Corpus Christi, a big, beautiful church, tall spire, cross, all that good stuff. I arrived early to scope it out. There were already plenty of cars and they kept coming.

Jackpot, I thought. There was even a version of Ruth and Jim, the sweet old couple I have a crush on from another AA meeting. This “Jim” wrestled “Ruth’s” purse from her so he could carry it, in a gallant way.

I worked my way inside. There were easily more than 200 people in the worship hall. What luck! I’ve found the biggest congregation of recovering alcoholics in the state!

Well, I was half right.

I settled into a pew towards the front and tried to gauge the crowd. There was a lot of “Father, Son, Holy Spirit” gesturing going on but it’s a church so I didn’t think much of it. Suddenly four priests in full fancy garb took the stage.

“Welcome everyone to the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist,” one of them said.

“Oh heck no,” I thought, darting up and b-lining for the exit.

Back at my car I realized that I was completely blocked in. Haha God, you got me. Good one. Now let me go please.

I frantically texted a couple friends like a scene from a survival movie. Colleen texted back, “Oh no. It’s Ash Wednesday!”

FML. It’s the beginning of Lent and all I’m trying to do is give up alcohol. Look I’m sorry I don’t go to church for religious reasons, but give me a break God, I’m trying here!

What could I do, short of running back into the church and saying, “Um, excuse me… would the idiot drivers who parked me in be so kind as to make a lane?” But I didn’t do that. Since I was hopelessly stuck and have a weird eye infection going on, I decided a little shut-eye might offer some relief.

As it grew darker, I noticed an annoying light coming from across the street. I opened one eye to spy the neon glow of a sign flashing the words “LIQUOR STORE.”

I screamed – screamed – “You have to be @#*! kidding me!”

A mini miracle… at that very moment people started streaming out of the church. Free at last! The service must have been the fast food equivalent of the Sacrament.

Lessons learned:
Always have an escape plan.
Catholics look an awful lot like alcoholics.

The science of silver linings

At some point in your life, I whole-heartedly recommend being jobless.

I’m 100 percent sober and about 30 percent serious. Hardly a glowing endorsement, but there are plenty of upsides. When I get out of my fretful head, I’m a kid on summer vacation, taking myself to ball games, amusement parks, free concerts and museums. We’re blessed with too many cheap-to-free things to do, some are just at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday.

Still we complain summer’s gone in a blink, faster and faster ’till we all fall down. Time doesn’t accelerate as much as we accelerate it – nothing to do with child vs. adult – everything to do with that quintessential American belief that hustling is a virtue. “Work hard, play hard,” one of those cultural artifacts that alien archaeologists will dust off, next to the fossilized remains of multi-tasking as effective workflow.

“Nobody on their deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office,'” said the Rabbi Harold Kushner.

Slowing down, regrouping, rethinking “what I want to be when I grow up,” these are a few of my favorite things. Something else unemployment does is test you. I’m the comeback kid and knowing how well I handle adversity is good information. Call it a bounce-back-ability rating – more important even than knowing your credit score.

The right things are always the hardest to do

Have you ever loved something more than you love yourself? I have. I’m a recovering alcoholic.

It’s September 24, 2013 and I’ve been sober for 100 days – just not consecutively. I relapsed three times. I decided to subtract three because 100 of the last 103 were hard-won and count for something … sucky math … had I drank every other day I wouldn’t say I’m 50 days sober, but considering how hard it was for me to string together two without a drink, I’m proud of 100 with a few slips.

I guess I’m supposed to be embarrassed about it, but I’m not. I’m not a pedophile, I just can’t control my drinking. “But what if your boss finds out?” Well, my boss is cool, and he already knows. Likewise, the folks who run my company have put up with my snark for seven years and I’m sure would applaud a little optimism. This is that hard look in the mirror moment that’s just too big for me not to share.

Hi … I’m Jesse and I’m an alcoholic.

What I’m not is your cautionary tale, the story you tell your teenager who comes home drunk, the one about the nice guy who drank himself to death, leaving his long-suffering wife to pick up the pieces.

Guys like that are easy to find – spend enough time in the same bar and they’ll start to disappear, one by one, empty barstool by empty barstool. I’ve been a serious drinker for about 15 years, “serious” as if I was just messing around when I was 21: “Eight beers, you call yourself an alcoholic? Don’t be such a pussy.” I drank hard in college but so did everyone else. That distinction came later – while most of my classmates’ drinking tapered off after graduating, mine was ramping up.

In case you think this is a writing exercise and I’m not really an alcoholic, I have about 20 faint lines across my left arm from cutting myself, with a pronounced scar midway down my left forearm. I got that during a long night of drinking about 10 years ago. In the middle of an argument I took a steak knife into the bathroom and sliced my arm wide open. The attention-getting gesture served its purpose.

Olivia took pity on me and drove me to the emergency room. Other than the “oh shit” moment, I remember two things from that night. The first is walking out of the bathroom with my arm wrapped in a bloody towel, saying, “Olivia? I did something stupid.” The second is the ER tech stitching me up. He asked, “So would you say you have a drinking problem?”

Physicians have a rule: If you answer “five or more” to the question, “How many drinks do you usually have in a night?” they’re obligated to follow up with more questions and treatment options. It’s a “risky drinker” screening thing. I figured out later that the optimum number is two, which is what I’d say when I didn’t want to be bothered, but that night I left it at, “I know I drank too much but I’m fine.”