Moving forward.

You know, I’ll be the first one to admit when I’m wrong.

About a month ago, I had a heart attack. Even as I write the words out and see them on the screen, it still takes a minute for that to sink in. For the last couple of years, I had worked really hard to change my lifestyle, all the while thinking that the things I was doing were somehow making me “immune” to heart disease. I lost 70 pounds. I rode upwards of 5-6,000 miles a year on my bike. I ate obsessively healthy. I was doing everything “right”.

But in the end, it didn’t matter. A combination of genetics and a previously disastrous lifestyle was enough to get my ticket punched.

So it happened. It was an “event”. One of those supposed life changing things that shifts your perception and changes your outlook. I told myself, however, that wasn’t going to happen to me. I spent the last couple of years developing a lifestyle, habits, and an attitude that wasn’t going to change. I was on the right path, and I wasn’t going to let this “bump in the road” dramatically change me.

And there I was. Wrong.

I admit, I haven’t blogged a lot lately. Oh, I’ve started to write things. I’ve probably started and abandoned at least two dozen posts in the last 30 days. I sit here, jot down a title that gels with what I’m thinking, and I proceed to spill my guts…. but then something happens. I just can’t seem to pull the trigger. I can’t put into words exactly how I feel, and the words on the screen just don’t seem… I dunno… adequate. Like, they don’t capture it in just the right way. In fact, I think this is the furthest I’ve gotten in a month.

I was wrong. It did change me. More profoundly than I ever would’ve thought. But in ways much deeper than I ever would’ve imagined.

Things that mattered before. Well. They just don’t matter. Likewise, things that I wasn’t paying too much attention to, or taking for granted, suddenly mean the world to me. It was as if everything that seemed important before was suddenly classified as, “some real stupid shit”. It was all replaced by the most important thing in the world, my family.

So bear with me. I think getting past this mental block will be helpful. I do want to write more about what I’m feeling, but it’s a real struggle to put it into proper context without it coming across as whiney or “borderline wallowing in self pity”, because I fucking hate that shit. I know I’m not the first person with a family. I’m not the first person to ever have a heart attack, and I won’t be the last. I realize, I’m not special. I’m just a human being in a world populated by other human beings who desperately want to be unique snowflakes. My problems are my own, my struggles aren’t anyone else’s struggles, and maybe with a little cathartic exercising, I’ll share it in a way that won’t bore the shit out of you.

I will say that one thing that’s changed is that I no longer have a sense of “comfort”, which I’m discovering is a very exciting thing. Life isn’t comfortable. Sometimes we get lulled into that false sense of comfort, only to be harshly awakened to reality. Life just happens. You’re just along for the ride. Like the cliché says, only two things in life are guaranteed, death and taxes. The only thing that comes close to a third is the love of family. Once you come to terms with the fact that the only people who really matter are the ones closest to you, your family, suddenly a world of possibilities opens up for you. Fear is good. Fear is healthy. Fear is motivating. Fear gets people who sat on their asses thinking this was the best life had to offer, up out of their seats and looking for ways to grab more from life. Not content to just sit around and take what “life gives you”. I think that’s the most dramatic change in the world around me that I can precisely pinpoint. Nobody’s going to make my life better but me. Nobody’s just going to give me a future, I’m going to have to take one.

I find myself looking at my daughters more and asking myself, “am I the man/father/husband that I want them to see?”. When they look back on their life with their father, I want them to say, “our dad was fearless”. I want them to think that anything is possible because the example I set, not because I told them countless times that they could be President of the United States. If I’m going to leave this world, I’d feel a lot better about it knowing I left it on my terms, and not someone else’s.

So I was wrong. It did change my life. Profoundly. Initially I was a little scared about things. I wasn’t on proper footing. The ground was shifting beneath my feet a little too much for comfort. But you know, I think now that I’ve got the rhythm of how all this works, I can really get into it. I think I can dance to this tune.