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mrtroy · 4 years ago

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Consistent Themes

Yesterday, I stumbled upon something I had written on that same day ten years ago. I found it in the old ‘Notes’ section on Facebook.

It was a retrospective up to that point in my life about what sports meant to me. If you’d like to read it, I re-posted it here.

As I was looking back through the archives of this blog, I also realized that completely forgotten by me, I also posted the same piece in 2011 as one of the first blog posts I ever wrote. I now remember starting this blog in January 2011 after wanting a place outside of Facebook that I could share my thoughts with family and friends that weren’t on Facebook.

In 2015, I wrote something similar. In July of 2017, the same theme comes out of another post... For Christmas of 2018, I wrote my mom a note with a lot of the same meanings as well.

It’s super interesting to realize that as I have looked back on these writings, I didn’t consciously try to write about the same topics. In fact, as I went back through my blog archives today, I was shocked to find out how many times I revisited the same thought process in different forms.

Upon deeper reflection, it probably shouldn’t be that surprising.

So much of what these posts are about is looking back fondly about my childhood memories and realizing how much they meant to me. As I continue to grow older, things that happen in my life today continue to remind me of these things, and they continue to move me in an emotional way.

Sitting down to write this reflection this morning, I also realize that I think part of the reason I keep going back to the same theme is because it represents the best of my past. I’ve dealt with some ‘heavy’ topics in my life over the years (as we all have) and sports, my relationships with my parents and the intersection of those ideas has been a ‘go-to’ for me as I have tried to understand changes going on in my life.

Change brings unknowns, and with it, I seem to go back to the familiar comfort zone of sports, my childhood, and how my parents played a role in keeping me safe, keeping my mind engaged, and giving me ways to connect with the broader world around me.

I was excited to find that my words from ten years ago (the original post I linked at the top of this page) still resonate with me today. I often go back to old writing and critique it more than I’d like. I often find I don’t love what I have written years later. While I think that’s natural as a writer to always be critiquing one’s work, I have tried hard over the years to accept what I have written in the past, not over-analyze it, and try to appreciate that it represents my thoughts (and writing abilities) from the moment in time that I first wrote whatever it is that I’m going back to read.

In some cases I’ve been more successful than others in my acceptance of those facts...

In this case, I still love what I wrote ten years ago. I’ve seen my writing style mature a little bit since then. (I now try to write in a way that can be more easily enjoyed for folks who don’t know as much about the topics I’m writing about - or maybe don’t know the obscure sports references that are often at the heart of my writing) There are some tidbits I’d change, but for the most part, this is a piece of writing that I am proud of.

And you know what, it feels good to be able to say that.

I shared the writing with my dad last night, and he loved it - perhaps not having realized he’d read it before.

Time is interesting like that.

We experience things with people - he’s been central to many of the things I’ve written about throughout my time writing - and yet, those experiences are still evolving.

My appreciation for my childhood, and sports is still evolving too.

I think I keep coming back to it because I haven’t yet found something to ‘replace it.’ I use replace here not because it needs to be replaced, but maybe to mean ‘is more significant than.’

I believe the following passage is the best I have ever written:

“Sure, there are always new players, and there will always be guys to make assaults on the record books, but unfortunately for me, for every new young star that comes along, I’m no longer going to be that little boy who doesn’t know any better than to worship the ground on which he stands. The innocence it takes to one day envision yourself running the bases at Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium, these thoughts can only be conjured up by the mind of a pre-pubescent teen. I’m sure a new young star will enter the game in the coming years, and there’s a good chance I’ll admire the level at which he’s honed his skills, but there’s no way he’ll turn me into a major leaguer, the way I thought Ken Griffey Jr. could.”

Perhaps I will ‘replace’ or build further upon these memories when I have kids of my own and can experience the connection of sports the way my dad and I have with a son or daughter of my own. Or, maybe those experiences were so unique and so rich that I’ll never quite replicate them. I don’t know.

Either way, it’s fun to look back - through writing - and be able to learn more about my own journey as a person. I’m thankful that archives and old posts allow us to do that.

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mrtroy · 4 years ago

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The Scores Have Changed, My Childhood Is Over, and I Think I Might Understand How Other People Look At Sports

Originally from December 5th, 2010

To say that the last twenty plus years of my life have been completely and hopelessly consumed by sports may be the grossest understatement I have ever put into print, yet until just recently, I don't think I had a grasp on what a more "normal" sports following could be like. I'm still not sure I am willing to accept this concept of "social sports fan-dom" as I'll call it, but it might be worth a prolonged look.

Let me explain.

I suppose that to best understand where I'm at now, it might be best to understand where I am coming from. I think I need to blame my mom for setting me off on this crazed obsession, or maybe the blame should go the Oakland A's for the utterly disappointing display they put on in the 1990 World Series. As I had really started to get into baseball in the Summer of '90, Mom had the great idea of taping the World Series. While other 5 year-olds were perfectly content watching Mr. Rogers zip up his cardigan every morning, Mom knew that if she was lucky a good World Series could provide my baseball fiending mind with seven games of pure VHS-driven bliss. At roughly 3 hours a game, played back ten times each, Mom would have 200 hours of fodder to answer the question, "Mom, when are they going to start playing new games again."

And then, Jose Rijo, Barry Larkin, Chris Sabo and the Don't Stand A Chance Reds had to ruin everything. It wasn't so much the fact that they won the series as it was that they did it in such decisive fashion that added insult to injury. Four games, and it was over. The minimum. The very least. And worse, Game 1 was a 7-0 blanking, and Game 3 was a convincing 8-3 rout in which the Reds put up 7 in the third, and the rest of the game was a mere formality. Translation: My to-be friends of 18 years later, Nathan Clinkenbeard, and Nate Kohrs, rejoiced as their Reds won it all, but more relevant to the situation at the time, I was left without much good winter baseball to tide me over until April.

I watched the tape, and all I wanted to do was to be able to break a bat on my back the way I had seen Reds journeymen outfielder Glenn Braggs do it. I emulated the overly pronounced batting crouch of Rickey Henderson, and began to wonder how Harold Baines could hit a ball so far, despite never looking like he was even swinging hard enough to hit the ball as far as I did in T-Ball.

In '91 things worsened. For some reason I got the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup in my head, and every day in the back yard I would throw the ball up to myself, hit the ball, run around imaginary bases, take a break to become an imaginary outfielder to retrieve the ball, and then switch back to being the base runner to continue running. Every day, it was Cubs and Pirates. I can remember getting mad at myself, and actually sitting down and pouting for extended periods of time because when it came time for Sid Bream's at-bat I ran too fast. Sid was a notoriously slow runner in real life, and I wanted to maintain a certain level of realism in my one-man re-enactments. Apparently in my excitement I had forgotten who I was supposed to be impersonating, and run too fast. In my six-year old world, this was enough to ruin my day.

The Fall came, and with it a Fall Classic for the ages. Why Mom didn't tape this one, I'll never know. Although, if she had, I may still be watching it. The Braves and Twins treated me to seven games of pure ecstasy. Although, all I cared about was the sweet headstand that Greg Olsen went into after a collision at the plate. Sports Illustrated put Olsen on the cover, and I spent all winter trying to duplicate the feat in my basement. Here's a look at the photo; it's a miracle I didn't break my neck. ( http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/featured/9301/index.htm )

It was also in '91 that I first realized there were other sports other than baseball, as the Bulls were on their way to capturing their first title. I don't remember much of the season, other than laying on the floor with a basketball in my hand trying to mimic the Michael Jordan poster in my room.

History seemed to repeat itself over the next few years. The Bulls won another title and the Braves were in the World Series again in '92. I was incredulous to the fact that Otis Nixon would try and bunt his way on while representing the Atlanta's last shot to extend the series. I was mad about that until about March of '93 until Mom and Dad packed my brother and I into a conversion van and we set our sites on Mesa, Arizona for Cubs spring training. We ran into Cubs' pitcher Mike Morgan in the parking lot, he gave my mom his hat, and sent me into a swoon of idol-worshiping that would last even longer than Morgan managed to bounce around the big leagues.

**Side Tangent** I remember being in a bar in the Phoenix area eating dinner, and everyone was going crazy about the Phoenix Suns as they were on their way to meeting the Bulls in the Finals. And yet, all I cared about was that Steve

Buechele, Cubs third baseman was sitting a few tables away. I remember my French fries getting cold because I was too mesmerized to eat.

Later in '93 the Toronto Blue Jays won another World Series, and I began to understand for the first time what it was like to feel compassion. Mitch Williams gave up the famous home run to Joe Carter that sent Canada into a a frenzy, and while everyone was celebrating, all I could think about was how mad people were going to be at Mitch Williams for blowing it.

1994, my life almost came to a screeching halt. The day before I turned 9, the Major League Baseball Players strike started, and eventually culminated with the cancellation of the World Series. You may as well have cancelled my birthday, Christmas, New Years, Easter and any other meaningful holiday. We're talking total devastation.

Luckily in '95 baseball came back with a new playoff system, and I had spent the entire off season reading. It was about this time in school that we had to do free reading every day, and we had to write about it. Our school library had a seven or eight book series highlighting the different aspects of baseball that someone could be good at. The books were entitled, "Speed," "Power," "Pitching" etc. I read these books over and over. They were large format books that I think I would consider to be rotating coffee table material if I came across them today. Little matter, I read them cover to cover, and they had these charts that listed the all-time leaders in many of baseball's statistical categories. After a while, I'd just read the charts. Time, and time again. For some reason, knowing who was the best at certain things excited me. Even if this person had been dead for 60 years. The pages came alive in my mind, and even though I had never seen Ty Cobb play, never known anyone who had, or had any rooting interest for his team, the Detroit Tigers, I was fascinated by what the numerical data next to his name could teach me about him. I would later go on to read that Tyrus Raymond Cobb (I developed a penchant for knowing players full names) was not so much of a good guy, but actually was a mean spirited bigot. It was at this time that I remember being glad that many of his most hallowed records had been broken.

Around this time I also discovered that each morning the glorious, glorious sports editors at The Chicago Tribune published box scores for all the major sports action from the night before. It was an unbelievable development. Now I had happened upon a way to read new and evolving history, every morning. League leaders in all the statistical categories, short recaps of what had happened, and overall numbers galore; every day was better than the last. Ken Griffey Jr. was tearing up the American League with home runs on what seemed to be a daily basis. On the other side of the page in the paper, Greg Maddux was shutting down the National League, and further cementing himself as the best pitcher of his generation, (in my mind at least) and elevating himself to Greek God-like status in the mind of my father.

It was at this time that the foundation for my current sports revelation first planted its seeds. Although, I didn't know it at the time. I was too busy counting home runs to realize what was going on, but inside there was also this great love of Maddux developing as well. This really had nothing to do with Maddux himself, as he had moved on from the Cubs to the Braves a few years earlier, and I could no longer watch him on a day to day basis. This had all to do with Pops. Seeing my father get such enjoyment out of simply reading that Maddux shutout another opponent was very cool to me. And, as is the case with many father-son duos, I loved Maddux because Pops loved Maddux.

These trends continued. I read as much baseball statistical data as I could get my hands on, and I looked to Pops to find new interests to follow in the paper each morning.

Lots of guys rose to prominence at this time. But it wasn't necessarily the guys that were established that caught my eye. It was the young guys. Despite the fact that Maddux would go on to play for more than twenty years, he was old news by the time I really got into following this sort of thing. He was Pops' guy. Pops didn't much care for the new-age stars like a Ken Griffey Jr., but we could agree on a guy like Chipper Jones, the all-American can't miss kid, or Derek Jeter the emerging star of the Yankees. We weren't fans of their teams, but they were in the post season every year, and it was easy to watch them progress.

Then came the star of stars for Pops and I. Tiger Woods. Pops had been reading up on him for years, and by the time he burst onto the scene in '96, Pops had already drank about six quarts of the Tiger Koolaid. Every week our love grew, with every major championship, it wasn't just that Tiger had won, it was as if Pops and I had won. We won because we had followed him, we had read about him, and along with millions of others, we knew he was going to be good. And, every time he won, he elevated himself further into this land of unthinkable admiration. Never before had there been an athlete of whom I had come to expect so much from that had actually been able to deliver. Not only had he been able to deliver, but each time he delivered, he seemed to do it in such a way that I couldn't help but just think, man, I love this guy.

Time continued on, and my enthrallment with the games that these men played continued to grow. '96 marked the beginning of the Yankees run of dominance, and with it much reading of Yankee lore. Also I remember teaching Mom how to keep a proper score book for a baseball game. We'd watch the World Series, and while she didn't know Mariano Duncan from Duncan Hines, she came to learn that if there was a ground ball to Mariano at second, she would enter a 4-3 in the score book as soon as he recorded the out at first base.

As the numerical world inside my head expanded further, It may not shock you to learn that my abilities on the field experienced an inverse reaction. Once in possession of an above average fastball and an hefty appetite for shagging fly balls, by the time freshmen year of high school rolled around, my role on the high school baseball team had been reduced to pencil pushing scorekeeper, infield practice facilitator, and blowout mop-up inning specialist. This didn't so much bother me, as I recall an instance where I rushed out of an early season practice so my mom could drop me off at a fantasy baseball draft where I was the youngest guy in the room by about 30 years. (I picked up Mike Sweeney late in that draft, and was smiling cheek to cheek all season as he hit well over .300) My uncle Tony was nice enough to let me tag along in his fantasy league for years, and I remember the best day of the week being when the old stat packets would show up in the mail, and I'd spend all afternoon breaking down what the other team owners were doing, and what we could do to improve on our perpetual 7th place standing. This was before all of the fantasy sports had moved to the Internet, and while I have come to appreciate the ease in which I can stay connected to fantasy sports nowadays, there was something magical about tearing open that envelope to find out that we'd moved up a half a point, and were now only a point and a half out of 6th place!!

Eventually the Internet won out for statistical tracking, and while I was sad, this transition gave me access to entire portals of data that were completely dedicated to my passions. Living with my buddy Ed Liss my freshmen year of college, he must have thought I owned a partial stake in www.basketball-reference.com. While I wasn't much of an NBA fan at this point, the historical standings, all-time leader boards, and player searching capabilities kept me occupied for hours on end. In fact, my choice of the University of Illinois to go to college in the first place was a choice that I made in large part due to the Big Ten sporting atmosphere that I knew I'd experience while I was there.

Jeff Renfro and I lived and died along with every play of the Illini's historic run to the Final Four in 2004-05, and I'll never forget going to games in the years following with Melissa Colgan, Suzan Balch, Gregg Conn, and countless others. I wore my Luther Head # 4 shirt to every game, and for something like 41 times in a row, if I wore the shirt, the team didn't lose. It was unbelievable.

In 2008, the Illini football team made a rare appearance in the Rose Bowl, and took on the heavily favored Trojans of USC. The family made the trek out to Pasadena for the game, only to watch our team get thoroughly trounced. Walking out of the stadium, if I would have had a tail, it would have been tightly tucked away between my legs as if I were a puppy who had just ruined a garden full of freshly planted petunias. The Illini had been humiliated, and so too had I.

I'm not sure if my transformation really started because the teams I rooted for never won, or if it was just gaining a new perspective that can only come with growing up, but I started to realize, maybe the keys to the games didn't so much lie in the encrypted world of statistics.

Time passed and one by one, the sports heroes of my childhood faded away. Maddux retired after the '08 season, and watching Ken Griffey Jr. limp through his final days in Seattle early in the 2010 season really put the nail in the coffin of my childhood. Sure, I was 25 years old at this point, and far from actually being a child, but here was the guy whose jersey I had, baseball cleats I had, video games I played, baseball cards I collected, and the guy who I had simply first known as "The Kid." And here he was, 40 years old and unable to keep his legs healthy enough to play every day. I may not have been a kid anymore, but Ken Griffey Jr. was my childhood.

And so I thought, "This is what it was like for Yankee fans as they watched Mickey Mantle hobble around the bases in 1968? This was the anguish of watching Johnny Unitas try and hang on with the Chargers, or Willie Mays with the Mets?" The unmistakable ending of an era, right before your eyes.

It was awful.

No amount of statistical data could save me, either. On the stat sheet, Griffey Jr. may have hit 630 career home runs, but that was just it, at this point, those were just stats. They were history. The guy who could never get old, got old. And just like that, he was gone. Next thing I knew, Chipper Jones tore his ACL, and there is a good chance his career could be coming to an end shortly. Somehow Derek Jeter is 36 now and has just negotiated the final contract of his career. All of these guys that I associated with my childhood, they're old. Sure, there are always new players, and there will always be guys to make assaults on the record books, but unfortunately for me, for every new young star that comes along, I'm no longer going to be that little boy who doesn't know any better than to worship the ground on which he stands. The innocence it takes to one day envision yourself running the bases at Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium, these thoughts can only be conjured up by the mind of a pre-pubescent teen. I'm sure a new young star will enter the game in the coming years, and there's a good chance I'll admire the level at which he's honed his skills, but there's no way he'll turn me into a major leaguer, the way I thought Ken Griffey Jr. could.

Maybe that's why golf, despite being what most would call a boring game, has endured over time and remained relevant. In no other sport can a guy like Jack Nicklaus win major championships 24 years apart, or a guy like Tom Watson compete a few months shy of his 60th birthday for an Open Championship. For any average 50 year-old watching Watson toil at Turnberry, an opportunity arose for them to remember back to when the same guy did they same thing at the same course- when they were in high school. Just think of that.

All of this leads me back to Tiger Woods. My sports equivalent to a Lord and Savior. Mine and Pops guy. The same guy who prompted Pops to call me in June of 2008 when I was at the College Baseball World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, just so Pops could channel his inner Dan Hicks and give me the play by play of Tiger's famous putt.

"He's lining it up. Now he's walking around it. You know, looking at it from every angle, like he always does. He really seems to be taking longer than he usually does on this one..."

At this point, the baseball game I'm watching is in between innings, and not much was going on, but Pops continued.

"Alright, I think he's finally ready. I think it's about 18 feet or so. He putts it. And....Ohhh my gosh Matt, HE MADE IT. HE MADE IT. I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. HE MADE IT!!"

At this point, I let out a loud cheer 450 miles away in Omaha. I'm sure the people around me were looking at me like I was crazy, but at this point, I didn't care. Tiger had done it! The guy was playing with a torn ACL, and a broken leg, and the next day he would go on to with the U.S. Open. This is the kind of legend that Mark Twain couldn't write, and Steven Spielberg couldn't make any more sensational.

A year and a half later when the world came to find out that Tiger wasn't exactly the guy everyone thought he was, I was crushed. While his feats on the golf course should not be diminished in light of the details that came out of his personal life, the mystique and the aura that he carried with him could never be the same. Steroids rocked baseball, the NBA after Michael Jordan lacked the luster that it once had, the NFL, while great, had never had quite standing in my sports universe, but this was more than those combined. This was fifteen years of bonding between my father and I that all the sudden seemed hollow. Sure, those events that we cheered about still happened, but the big part of what made it so special was the fact that it was Tiger, and up to that point, he had represented all of the things that my parents had tried to teach me to be. A hard worker, a fierce competitor, and a well-rounded individual away from sports. I should be clear in emphasizing that my parents never told me to emulate Tiger, or any athlete for that matter, yet his case just so happened to be one was easily relate-able. With the deeper meaning of what Tiger meant to my father and I now in question, I was sent searching.

This all helped me realize that being a sports fan is not about the people who play them, or the stats they accumulate.

You can say that I'm going "soft," or that in this moment in time I must be feeling overly sentimental, but, I think I'm ready to come to grips with the fact that being a sports fan is about sharing your rooting interest with those around you.

Really? You had to spend thousands of words to figure that out, genius?

I never thought I'd say it, but being able to share these moments with others means more than a box score ever could. Sure winning helps, but the jubilation I watched my friends experience when the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, or the way people partied when the Bears advanced to the Super Bowl after the 2006 season, none of that would have existed in a vacuum. Sure, you'd be excited if a team you'd rooted for your whole life finally achieved their goal and won something, but being able to call up your dad, or party with your buddies, or text your uncle, those are the things you remember.

I look back fondly on that U.S. Open, not for how it turned out, but for the memories I have with my father. I think back to the Final Four with Renfro reduced to tears as we watched players from North Carolina cut down the nets. I remember an Illini basketball game where it appeared as though Rich McBride had hit a last second shot to beat Penn State. The shot was later overturned, but my memory of clutching the arm of my friend Jessica Young, hoping against hope that somehow they'd overrule the call can't be taken from me. The Rose Bowl from '08, my most indelible memories are of my friends Tim and Meghan Michaels having a comical battle with their GPS as we drove around LA. To this day I don't watch an Illini fooball game without thinking of Steve Contorno and his detest for my old E.B. Halsey Illini football jersey. Halsey has moved on, and the jersey is gathering dust in my closet, but that one little morsel of a fact has been enough for Steve and I to remain friends five years after the fact.

The fantasy sports I play today, I no longer have rabid tendencies to devour stats, or prove to anyone that I'm smarter than they are. In fact, the playful ribbing of a Steve Hild, or the incessant banter of Jeff Lizzo, Kevin Barry and Drew Stiling mean more to me than winning a fantasy league title ever could.

I often wondered as people sat in the stands at games, or watched on TV, how they could fully enjoy the experience without knowing that the last time there had been a statistical oddity like this or that was in 1974, and before that 1921, and so on and so on. Rather, I've moved on. Beyond all the statistics, and all the analysis lies the significance of human emotion. And while I may never be able to quantify it, and it may have taken me longer than most to come to this conclusion, it really is what sports are all about.

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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Golf with Pops

Pops and I are hitting the golf course tomorrow. I’m really excited.

There’s something about playing golf together with him that makes me so, so excited. Even after 30 years of nearly similar repetitions. I always look forward to something new. Even if I don’t know what that something might be.

Tomorrow we’re playing a course he’s never played and I’m excited to show him around. I really like the course, and I hope he will too. Other times, one of us will have gotten a new club since the last time we played, and we’ll be excited to see how that works out. Even other times, something will come up mid-round that becomes something unexpectedly cool. Last time we played, our tee time was late in the afternoon, and the big question in our minds was whether or not we’d finish all 18 holes before dark.

I don’t remember our scores from that round. I don’t particularly remember any specific shot either of us hit. But, I do remember hurrying off the 17th green and rushing to the 18th tee box to tee off just before the sun set behind the clubhouse in the distance. (We made it off the 18th green in almost total darkness, but we did get all 18 in!)

I’m about as competitive as it gets on a golf course, yet, when I play with Pops, the scores never matter.

Yes, I want to beat him every single time.

But more than that, I just love getting a chance to play together.

Do you have someone in your life like that? Someone who, no matter how well you’re performing, you just love being out there with?

I feel that way about a few people on golf courses, but especially my old man.

We don’t talk a whole lot out there. What club do you think you might hit on a certain hole, maybe. How’s work? For a minute, tops. How’s Mom? For maybe a few minutes more than that.

But in four hours, we don’t say a whole lot. We don’t need to.

He hits his shots. I hit mine. We root for each other. We want each other to do well.

Each round is a chance to add to a carousel of memories that we’ve built over a lifetime together.

People play golf for a lot of reasons and when I play with my buddies, it’s to shoot a better score than they do. If it’s by myself, it’s to work on certain aspects of my game and enjoy nature. If it’s for work, it’s to find a common ground with a colleague or partner and grow a relationship.

When I play with Pops, it can be either of the three, or none of them at all.

It’s a walk down memory lane of the things he taught me through golf as a kid. It’s a tie to his grandmother – my great grandmother – who we both played with earlier in our lives. It’s a smile knowing that he caddied as a teenager, and I did a similar thing 25 years later.

Pops told me to watch out for a young guy named Tiger Woods as he was an emerging young player in 1996.

Pops told me to remember that I don’t play golf for a living and to not be too hard on myself when things don’t go my way.

He told me that the integrity of how I conduct myself on the golf course will mirror the integrity in other parts of my life – so I better learn good habits when I tee it up…

So many things in those few minutes each round in between the ‘good shot,’ or ‘what club was that?’ or, ‘do you think I could hit a wedge that far?’

We’re still not good golfers. We don’t hold any course records. Neither of us has ever had a hole-in-one. We don’t play for money. We don’t keep track of who has one more head-to-head matches.

I just like playing golf with my dad.

And I am really excited to do it tomorrow.

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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You are Perfect

Hi _______ –

The circumstances behind me writing this letter to you are highly unexpected. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. And, based on what’s going on right now in your life, the idea of getting a letter with this title probably seems like a mistake.

It’s not.

And I’ll get to that.

A friend of yours is a friend of mine, and she reached out asking for prayers on your behalf. She gave me a few details about what you’ve been going through. She asked me to pray for ________, and here’s what happened from there:

My heart ached for you and your babies. For _____’s family. For people I don’t even know who are hurting.

But after that, I thought about who God is, and I thought about how He’s reacting to your situation. Here’s what I believe:

I believe He’s dismayed at the sin in the world. But He knows the journey you’re on. And, get this, He thinks you are perfect. And despite the sin in the world, despite any sin you may or may not have been a part of recently, or in the past, He loves you with every fiber of His being.

Why is this important?

I believe this is important because right now, when things seem dark, when you’re scared, heartbroken, feeling like you have no idea how you’re supposed to go on with your life – He is loving you. And He thinks you’re perfect.

You may not have always done all the perfect things. But you are perfect.

What does that mean for you now? How are you supposed to think about things going forward based on all the things that have happened in your life?

What if it started with the belief that somebody thinks you’re perfect. That you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. That you don’t have to act perfectly to receive anyone’s love, or acceptance. That you don’t have to be ‘good’ for 30 days, or 30 years in order to be loved or respected.

What if that was true? How would you feel?

______, that is true. And it’s as true today as any day of your life.

Let yourself be loved if you can. At first, that will probably seem hard. Who’s going to want to love me, you might think? I’ve made too many mistakes. I’m too flawed… I don’t deserve to be loved right now… Maybe when ‘I’m a better person’ someone will love me…

And that’s the best thing you can do right now – while everything is scary and dark – is to let yourself be loved.

Know in your heart ________ that God loves you. You don’t have to do a single thing to earn His love. You haven’t squandered His love. You haven’t blown any chances to receive His love.

The next time you can get a chance to get in front of a mirror, try to smile at yourself. Try to think of the most love you’ve ever felt in your life - And realize that feeling is what God feels when He sees you. Today. Right now. He is feeling that.

When you wake up tomorrow, if you can get to a mirror, smile at yourself again. You don’t have to love what you look like. You don’t have to love your hair. Or what you’re wearing.

But every morning if you can, try to get to that mirror and smile so that you can remind yourself that no matter what you look like, no matter where you are, no matter what you’re wearing, no matter what you’ve done in the past, God loves you and thinks you’re perfect.

People often ask people to pray for them. Or they ask people to pray for people they know. For a long time, I never knew what prayer really was, or how it worked. But I heard something once that stuck with me and here’s what it is:

Prayer is simply asking God to come in and be a part of your life. Relinquishing some of our own control and saying, you know what, I think You’ll do better with this than I will God.

And so, based on what you’re dealing with now, I think this is a perfect time for you to say, okay, God, I don’t really know how to do this. Can You help me?

And you know what ________? He will help you. Today that help may only come in the form of confidence to know that you’re loved. For a while, you may only have you, the mirror and God. But He won’t give up on you. Ever. No matter what.

Try to hold that thought in your arms when you go to bed at night.

I’ll be praying for you, too. Asking God to help you feel loved. To help you accept being loved. And to help you ask God to come meet you where you are and to let you let Him come alongside you.

_________, you are loved. And you are perfect. Let that sink in. Now, and forever.

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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Happy to be Here

This post is about more of my personal journey as a person over the last year. As I sat down to write it, a twinge of thought came into my head about whether write something about myself in the midst of a pandemic.

There are so many things going on in the world with grand significance, and the overarching theme of my upcoming words is: Things are pretty good for me right now…

But, I will continue with these words in the hopes that they can help someone who is still in the wilderness so to speak, and could use some encouragement that things can and probably will improve if you keep pressing onward.

So, here we go.

-- If you’ve read my blog over the years, you’ve heard me talk about some of my struggles with relationships, maturity and personal growth. I usually try to find lessons in what’s happening to me, and I try to put positive spins on things before I stop writing.

Right now, it seems like a lot of the mental work that I’ve done over the last few years is paying off.

I’m in a relationship I love with a girl I love. I am adjusting to the new job I got last year and things are better there than they have ever been. Covid, while awful, has allowed for life to simplify in some ways – less travel, fewer activities – and has allowed me to prioritize family a bit more than in the past. I’m healthy. My loved ones are healthy.

Yesterday was my birthday, and birthdays have a way of making reflection easier. It’s somewhat easy to think about what’s happened in your life since your last birthday.

Meeting Ashley in the last year has been the most significant thing to happen to me – maybe ever. It’s amazing to think about how good things have a way of compounding with other good things to help get us to better places in our lives.

After meeting Ashley last August, I definitely got a big boost of confidence. Here was this caring, successful, grounded, faith-focused, attractive person who enjoyed my company. After two years of unsuccessful attempts at dating, simply having someone like Ashley express interest in me made me feel a lot better about myself. Before we met, things were looking up – I had just recently decided to look for a new job, and the prospects of finding one had me in good spirits. I had also recently lost 40 lbs. and that was also helping to boost my confidence as well.

In the end though, she was definitely the push over the hump in confidence that I needed to finally take a new job. To move into the city. And in some respects, to continue to chase after a lot of the good things I was striving for in my life.

This past year has been the healthiest year of my life from a relationship standpoint, and I’ve spent some time thinking about why I think that is. I always find it helpful to try to understand why something is going well, rather than just figuring it was ‘meant to be,’ or that ‘I deserved it.’

I do think there is a bit of ‘meant to be’ in what Ashley and I have found together, but at the same time, I think I needed to do a lot of work in between my past failed relationships and this one. I think I needed to take responsibility for the outcomes I hoped would come in a relationship and be disciplined to try to make sure I did all I could to ensure that the results came to fruition.

As a younger man, I often lacked confidence when bumps in the road surfaced in my relationships. When those bumps showed up, I assumed the worst. I often was very hard on myself when things didn’t go according to plan and sometimes acted in self-sabotaging ways to confirm that the bumps were real and insurmountable.

Looking back now at many things from the past, I see patterns of self-sabotage that were likely a product of a person with low self-esteem. Rather than working through hardships that are often quite common in relationships, I often intentionally made things worse as a way to confirm to myself that a challenge was too big, or that I wasn’t mentally strong enough to overcome it.

Rereading those words now – and also knowing the pain I caused myself and my former significant others – it makes my heart ache.

The biggest blessing of the failed relationships in my past was the fact that as I met Ashley, I felt good enough about myself as a person at the beginning of our time dating to say, ‘Okay, this time, from the bottom of my heart, I’m going to give this everything I have. When I feel insecure, when I’m scared, when I want to just do something to take something from bad to worse just really confirm how challenging something really is, I’m going to try to remember what I really want to come from our relationship.’

Somehow, in the midst of past struggles, I tended to forget what I was hoping for. What I had been praying for. Did I want to find joy? Or did I want to wallow in pain, sadness, or trial?

I sometimes see people post things on social media with the sentiment, ‘Choose joy.’ And, in some cases it seems a bit hokey. Like, when you have the option to respond to something challenging, or you’re faced with struggle, how do you react?

In a vacuum, it’s easy to say, well, of course I want to choose the more joyful option, or the more joyful solution.

But in reality, that hadn’t been what I had done when faced with challenging circumstances in past relationships.

And so, as I think back on a year with more joy relationship wise than I can ever remember, I can’t help but credit a better attitude towards choosing joy.

Finally this year, I have been able to catch myself in the face of certain challenges before I lose my grip and before I go down the road of self-sabotage or sulking. I haven’t been perfect, and there have still be a few times where I have recognized myself letting certain circumstances get the best of me. But by and large, this has been a good year.

Ashley deserves a lot of credit for helping to create an environment in our relationship that allows for uncertainty and imperfection to be celebrated and not frowned upon. But also, I think a lot of it comes from constantly asking myself, ‘Do you want this to end well? Do you want a favorable outcome? Do you want joy? Or, do you want pain? Do you actually want the negative outcome that you’re mulling over in your head and considering self-sabotaging yourself towards?’

Sometimes life throws tough circumstances at us. Sometimes the natural course of change brings uncertainty. And a lot of those things can’t be mitigated either way.

But for the things that I can control – especially as I try to get a better handle on my emotions – I have found so much strength just in reminding myself that I do want good outcomes. That together, we can figure things out, and I don’t gain anything by meeting tough circumstances with self-sabotaging behavior.

At the root of being able to do that is the reminder that I am loved. That I am enough. That I don’t have to be perfect to enjoy positive outcomes in life. And, that when the positive outcomes don’t come, in the overwhelming majority of cases, things will still be okay. When I fail, my ego or my pride may get hurt, but, that doesn’t have to be the beginning of a roller coaster towards self-loathing or self-sabotage.

I share this today, as we come to the close of one of the better years I’ve ever had, as encouragement. If you’ve struggled in the past with how to respond to challenges, or if you’ve struggled with self-confidence and because of it have not acted how you may have wanted in the face of hardship, it’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. But, however you feel, and wherever you are in that process, you are enough. You are loved, and you are loveable. The dreams you have in your head aren’t too big. You’re not too flawed to achieve them.

Those are the lies we tell ourselves when we’re scared. Those are the lies we allow to run free when we’re not sure if something is too hard, or whether we have the ability to overcome whatever we’re facing.

Find comfort, my friend. The road may be long, and certain patches may seem dark. But, continue to dream. Continue to envision the positive outcomes you want, and go for them!

My life has been so much better since I started doing this, and I would love it if this approach helped you on your journey as well.

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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America Needs Both

I've been reading a lot of opinions of my friends, pundits and others over the last few weeks. Corona virus. Racial injustice. Police brutality. The coming presidential election.

I feel like with each passing issue, the divide gets deeper. The differing sides seemingly getting further apart. Some of these opinions I agree with. Some I don't. But the more I think about it, the more I realize as a nation, we need both sides of most of our issues. No, we don't need racism. We don't need looting. Or police brutality. But we do need the ability for people with different opinions and viewpoints to be able to have those viewpoints without vilifying them. We need a nation where we understand that black lives matter. But we also need a nation where our public servants (police, teachers, government officials) matter too. You may be angered by one side of that paradigm right now, but in order for our nation to truly live up to its ideal, we need both. We need a nation where people in cities feel represented. And we also need to provide opportunities to those who live in rural America. We need corporations. And small businesses. We need non-profits. And agencies that watch out for at risk portions of the community. Right now, there's a good chance that the idea of voting for the candidate opposite your preferred political party seems like an outrageous thought, but lest not forget that whoever our next president is will again be governing our entire nation. Forget who wins, how beneficial will it be to our nation to have roughly half of our citizens enraged? Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he realized in 2016 that a large subsection of our population felt like the policies that Barack Obama's administration had enacted didn't appeal to them. Pause. Whatever you think about that statement above, it is true. Now, fast forward to 2020, whoever wins this election will signal to our nation that we either want to go the same direction, or back the other way. Joe Biden is currently running campaign messaging that is asking potential voters to condemn the acts of Donald Trump and pledge their allegiance to Biden's campaign. Let's just say this works. I have no idea who will win this election, but just for the sake of this piece, let's say it's Biden. Come January of 2021, we'll have the opposite half of our nation that can't wait to vote a president out of office. Not only that, but if Biden were to follow suit with Obama and Trump, and if balances of power stay split in the House and Senate, we're going to spend the next four years seeing different pieces of legislation that previous administrations enacted be reversed. Or, we'll see the opposing party block things in the Senate to the point where very little will change in Washington. At this point as you read, you might be thinking, okay, you're a moderate, or, you're arguing for party reform, or maybe the abolition of the electoral college. And while some of those things may be the answer (I'm not educated enough on those topics to know for sure) what I'm actually arguing for is something that isn't political at all. It comes back to the examples I gave at the beginning of this piece. America needs both of its major points of view. As people, are we better off accepting our neighbor with a different point of view, or turning them into a sworn enemy until they see things exactly how we do? Before you fire off a retort to a school of thought where you just can't possibly accept Point X of someone's viewpoint, realize that person may be reading this same piece and thinking the same thing about not accepting your point of view. If we continue in these cycles of behavior, where do we end up? Do we just keep browbeating each other until one school of thought dies out? Or, do we end up having the public conversations where we say one thing to avoid drawing a reaction, but actually believe something else in private? To be clear, I don't know how to fix every issue. I don't know how to find a common middle ground for some of society's most inflammatory issues. But what I do think would be a good start would be to stop trying to make every issue one-sided. 'If you don't believe this, you must be a raving lunatic.' Or, 'If you believe this, you can't possibly call yourself a good person.' And yes, I have been guilty of reacting in the above manners in discussions I've had. But, bringing these kinds of attitudes to any conversation / debate / issue rarely leads to change and it rarely helps anything. So, rather than jumping all over your neighbor - or silently writing them off in your brain - the next time you disagree with them, I think we all need to do a better job finding a middle ground. And again, this isn't to say that we should tolerate terrible things in our country because we're doing the neighborly thing and accepting people's vile viewpoints. But it is to say that we should be able to find a way to find a middle ground on things that are worth finding a middle ground on. Because I think many of us can agree that the status quo we've got going on isn't working. For the rest of this year, we can find some solace in saying, 'Vote in November.' But come December, all of us have to live with the officials we elect - and it doesn't do us much good if roughly half of the population is ready to lose their mind if their candidate happens to be the one who loses. -- I have always thought American ingenuity was our greatest virtue as a country. Throughout our history, we've had groundbreaking inventors and innovators that have figured out new and better ways to do things in more effective ways. We need to muster up some more ingenuity as a nation. To modify how we think and how we react to opposing thought. We have to empower the things that make us different to also make us great. We cannot simply agree to disagree. Or, stop trying to address topics in our world because the opposing sides on certain issues are simply too far apart. We also cannot simply take politics, or matters of social / racial justice off the table when things get too touchy to deal with. We must not run to the safety of only those who think like we do and attempt to isolate ourselves from anyone who thinks differently. We must ask ourselves, in 2020, do we want to attempt to solve the issues plaguing our nation, or do we want to continue to point out how stupid, or wrong, or morally bankrupt our neighbors are? Let's say you were brought into a situation as a third-party mediator in a fight between two neighbors in the town next to yours. Let's say you agreed with one of the neighbors, but after talking to the second neighbor, you could see that he or she was 100% convicted on where they stood - and weren't trying to be a jerk about anything in any apparent way... If it was your goal to help these neighbors, would you start your engagement with a ruthless insult of the second neighbor? Would you tell your neighbor that if he didn't come around to seeing things the way the first neighbor did, he may as well be an idiot? Would you tell your neighbor that his family - and anyone that thinks like him - is a worthless pile of garbage for thinking the way he does? Unfortunately, it seems as though these kinds of tactics are often resorted to in response to things happening that we don't agree with. What about trying to find solutions? What about trying to listen? What about trying to work towards mutually beneficial outcomes? These are the things we need to be doing. Not arguing. -- In closing, as discussions, debates and conversations happen over these next few months, try to be empathetic to your fellow humans. Yes, there are some terrible people in the world who have thoughts that are not worth considering a second side of. However, there are also millions of our neighbors that think differently than we do that are fantastic human beings who deserve to be heard and respected.

America is better when the right and left find common ground. America is better when opposing viewpoints are met with intrigue not detest. America is better when we try to find solutions, rather than simply attacking our neighbors. In a fantasy world, it might be nice to envision a way where one opinion or one side of an issue worked for everyone, but because that’s never been true at any point in history, America needs to embrace the fact that there are two sides to every issue, and we’re better off if we can consider both.

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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The Front Line & Our Backbone

I have to admit, prior to the pandemic caused by Covid-19, I hadn’t spent much time considering the daily lives and sacrifices made by doctors and nurses. On a surface level, I suppose I realized that when people are sick or contagious, caretakers tending to them are susceptible to whatever viral maladies their patients are facing. But the magnitude to which that impacts the life of a doctor or nurse didn’t really register with me until we entered these current times of emergency.

I’ve especially been blown away by the lengths that health care professionals are going to be able to continue to serve patients and those who need them. Doctors moving to live in their garages – away from their families – so that they don’t expose their older live-in parents to the virus. Nurses who have petitioned strangers to borrow RVs to park in their driveways so they don’t put their children with auto-immune deficiencies at risk. Young, single hospital workers adjusting their roommate situations in ways that still allow them to go to work, and also minimize the risks of spending too much time around those who need not be exposed unnecessarily to the virus. Stories like this continue to be written day after day as we get further into the ‘thick’ of trying to deal with the ongoing toll of subduing the virus.

In these last few weeks at home as I have continued to read these harrowing accounts, it is my sincerest hope that when we’re all able to reflect back on this uncertain time, the example that our front-line workers are providing right now stays with us. I would never wish these circumstances on the world, or anyone in it, but as the virus has tried to knock us down, our resilience as people has been inspiring.

Larger-scale examples of ‘great humanity’ have been displayed over and over. Companies shifting to produce masks and other PPE. Individuals donating food and other essentials to those most in need. Local or community organizations re-doubling efforts to live out benevolent missions in the face of hardship. Even simple things down to the level of younger citizens going to the grocery store so their older parents or neighbors don’t have to.

Every one of those examples of ‘humanity at its best’ has moved me or touched me in some way. In a strange way, there’s comfort that comes in knowing that we’re all in this together. I don’t like being in this battle, but since that’s the reality we’re in, it is comforting to know that we’re all in it together.

Whenever this pandemic breaks, and we can all get back to ‘normal’ life – whatever that may be – I hope that as a people we remember a key lesson that we learned during this time. For me, that lesson is that those on the ‘front-line’ truly are the backbone of our society.

The doctors and nurses who didn’t think twice about the crazy hours, the lack of sleep, the perilous danger – or any other personal sacrifice they had to make. I hope that we don’t forget their efforts, but even more than that, I hope that we realize that it is mindsets and attitudes like these that are what make us great as a nation.

As I get older, and coincidentally, as we go into another election cycle, I’ve asked myself the question numerous times, ‘what is the American dream?’ Subsequently, ‘what is it that really makes America great?’ In asking these questions, I’ve thought about the answers that are often portrayed in popular culture, or even in commonly accepted thinking: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes to mind. Home ownership is another way we’ve ‘defined’ realizing the American dream over the years. For some, it’s marriage and the ability to build a family. For others, it’s prosperity and professional success. Opportunity is another big one that can mean so many different things to different people.

And yet, for me, this pandemic is helping to clarify something greater than that that I hope can become something we can all recognize as something to strive for – and that is compassion.

The great thing about compassion is that it doesn’t have to come at the expense of any of those other definitions of the American Dream that I listed above. Compassion still plays well with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage and family, home ownership, even prosperity and professional success – all of those can be enhanced greatly by layering in compassion first.

The reason compassion is so important is because when all of those other factors are challenged (as they are now during the pandemic) and key components of our daily lives are put in jeopardy, compassion is always needed.

And as we have all tried our best to make it through these challenging times, our front-line workers have continued to display unending amounts of commitment and compassion throughout it all. Each day when they wake up to answer the call, not only are they working to physically protect our vulnerable populations, they are also providing inspiration for our entire country.

As many of our events have been cancelled, postponed, or shifted during the pandemic, I’ve noticed a lot of TV networks doing special broadcasts of in-home concerts, tributes, etc. It has been especially interesting because while it has been nice to have our favorite entertainers to create diversions, it has never been so evident that diversions is all they are. The celebrities themselves seem to know this. They seem to recognize that while during normal times, people may obsess over coming to one of their concerts, they may build their entire schedules around saving money to fly to a far away location to see them live, maybe even with an expensive backstage pass to meet and greet them after the show – none of those things are more important now than staying safe and protecting our people.

While those types of experiences are – and still will be cool after the pandemic, this time is putting in to perspective that for as much as we look up to and idolize many things in this country, the value of our health, the value of knowing our loved ones are safe, the value of being able to be healthy individually and as a society is far more important than backstage passes to a concert, front-row tickets at a sporting event, or a VIP trip to (pick a fancy destination).

I hope we can get back to a lot of those things soon. People’s livelihoods have been in question, and we need those to come back. But, when we do come back, I hope we remember that while compassion may never be the American Dream, it is our backbone. It is what has kept us afloat during all of this, and it is what will continue to sustain us while things are hard. I look forward to a time in the future when, after our whole world has endured this together, we can realize as a society that we’re all better with more compassion. That for as strong as the American Dream is, it’s not really that much different than the Italian Dream, or the dreams of the people in Mozambique. At all of our cores, we need compassion. When all else is stripped away, it’s still there, and its power is strong.

To all of our front-line workers who are putting their lives on the line each day to help get us through this pandemic, thank you. Our country, our society and our world are better for it.

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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Awe, Wonder and Harry Potter

If I were to propose that I had figured out any sort of 'secret to happiness,' a big part of my equation would be equal parts awe and wonder. I don't nearly have the whole equation figured out - and doubt I ever will - but I think there's a lot to be said for remaining pliable in the way we think, react and respond to things we learn and are exposed to. I believe when we are able to be awed and feel wonder, our hearts stay soft. We don't harden. We don't become as bitter. Our minds stay open to the possibility of new and amazing things. These types of things are sometimes awe-filled and amazing occurrences that come and visit us unexpectedly - think of natural phenomena that we may never seek on our own (a meteor shower outside our window, or an amazing species of animal your friend sends you a lopping video of). But more times than not, the awe-filled and amazing are things we have to go seek on our own. Some people travel to the furthest-reaching corners of the Earth. Some people like to try foods they've never before tasted. Some people are awed by feats of sporting genius, or technological marvel. I too enjoy all of those things. However, there's something else I especially love that brings me a great deal of awe and wonder, and that is the power and magic of storytelling. Whether in the form of written words, movies, or TV, I love the way stories have the ability to captivate our imaginations and inspire us to a greater appreciation for what is possible in life. Surprisingly - and especially so considering what I just wrote above - I realized last was ending, and I was going to fall short of achieving one of my 2019 goals. That goal was to read the Harry Potter series. Most of my family had read and raved above it. It's been called some of the best literary work of the last half century. It has created a multi-billion dollar business in books, movies, theme parks and merchandise. It's a part of common knowledge in many parts of society. Why I hadn't read it was hard to explain. When the first book came out in the 90s, I remember getting it from the library after my brother had gotten into it. I read the first fifty or so pages, but couldn't get into it. I watched one of the movies a few years later, but it was the fourth movie in the series, and without understanding what was going on in the series up to that point, I didn't get a lot out of the flick.. A handful of years ago, I vowed that I SHOULD read the books, but never really committed to it. Last year, I told myself it would finally be the year. It wasn't until late December that I finally pulled the trigger and began reading J.K. Rowling's epic masterpieces. Within the first chapter of the first book, I was already in awe of the writing style Rowling was developing. The way she set up background information around characters and storylines was amazing to me. Teenage me never would have appreciated that level of detail when the stories first came out. As I progressed deeper into the series, I was struck by how ideas and concepts that Rowling first introduced in books #1 or #2 would come back around in installments #4 or #5. The way she developed all the detail around the students' class schedules, magical curriculum and potential career progressions… It blew my mind. The made-up language and vernacular around spell-casting, charm-breaking and potion-making captivated me. The story was rich. The plot twists were intricate and at the same time both far fetched and magically believable. I fell in love with Harry and Hermione; Ginny and Luna; Dumbledore and even Snape. In the time it took me to finish the series, I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that made me enjoy the books so much. In addition to what I've just listed, I think it was the sheer mind-bending imagination. The concepts that Rowling was introducing me to were completely never-before-thought of to me. And yet, she had so many details already figured out that after reading through the stories, it all made sense. I realized it had been years - if not decades - since I had learned so much about something (albeit a made up something) that I had previously known so little about. It was as if I stepped into this made up world that had been populated with families, traditions, rituals, a sport, school, romantic interests, family strife... The stories have everything. And, they have magic. They have things that I myself cannot do. Things I myself cannot imagine, or relate to. I think these are some of the same reasons that the Marvel and DC Comic universes are so popular as well. As adults, so much of what we encounter every day borders around concepts about which we're already familiar. In our careers, we often work on things we've spent years working towards. Things we've studied. Things we've worked hard to understand. In our personal lives, we strive to keep friendships that we've often had for decades, or to improve upon constructs that our parents or other family members have modeled most of our lives. For a lot of people my age, starting families and having kids represents an opportunity to experience new kinds of awe and wonder because as parents, people are forced to take on challenges that are all together foreign and challenging. People often start businesses out of a wonder as to whether or not they're capable of building something, or improving on something they may have experienced in the workplace in the past. But even in those instances, much of what's being created is very much a close variation of something someone has already experienced. At least for me, Harry Potter represents something all new. I had never before been interested in the fantasy genre. I knew nothing of wizards, or made up worlds. I had never been much of a Star Wars guy. Never got into Lord of the Rings, or until very recently any of the comic book universes. As I read Rowling's work, I could not get over the level of detail she used to make the characters and their predicaments so very real - even if that 'real-ness' pertained to demon-possessed snakes and flying broomsticks. I believe everyone should ready the Harry Potter stories. Wizards and magic may not be your thing, but for the sake of your soul, I hope stretching your imagination and re-defining what's possible in your mind might be. In a safe, fun way to boot. It's not often as adults we get exposed to such rich stories that can take us back to being school-aged kids facing homework, and trying to understand parents and crushes... and fire-breathing dragons to boot. Harry, it's been a wild ride these last handful of weeks. Thanks for coming into my world and jumpstarting my imagination. It may have taken me twenty years to finally get on board with what a lot of the world already knew, but man, the awe and wonder inspired by J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter were worth the wait! Now, it's time for the HP movies! :)

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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I Lost 30 Pounds This Year - Here Are Some Tips If You’re Looking To Do Something Similar

I stepped onto the scale on Christmas Eve 2018 (a little over a year ago) at my Aunt's house. My family goes there every other year to celebrate Christmas and my aunt has always had this cool digital scale that I'd use anytime I'd use her bathroom. I had never owned a scale, and any time I'd go to her house, it was always a good opportunity to check my weight. For much of my life, my weight never fluctuated too much. I was never that guy who was in great shape, but as a kid my weight was always pretty steady, and for the first decade or so out of college, my weight hovered around 170 to 175 pounds.

Last Christmas Eve when I got on the scale, I knew I felt heavier. I knew I had been eating worse than normal, and I could tell I was heavier than I was used to being. But when I saw a 205 number register on the scale I was shocked. Roughly 30 pounds more than I was used to. I vowed right then that in 2019, I would lose that weight. I wanted to be no heavier than 175 by the end of 2019.

This morning as I write this note on January 1st of 2020 - a year after I made my vow - I weigh 173.8.

I'm about to share with you how I did it, with the intent being that if you're about to embark on a similar journey, you may be able to benefit from what I have learned about weight loss, healthy eating and exercise over the last year.

First off, have a really good 'why' for your goal. If you don't like how you look / feel and you just 'want to lose some weight' in the next year, chances are that may not be enough motivation to keep you going on your goal all the way through the year. Define what it is that you expect to gain from losing the weight, and really think about how valuable those benefits are to you. Make it personal. Not achieving your goal should matter to you, and it should hurt. If it doesn't, chances are you're not prioritizing it enough to the point where it'll stay important enough to you through the process to make sure you meet your goal.

Put a timeline on reaching your goal. As we're at the beginning of a new year, and it's 'resolution time' it's easy to choose the end of the year as a goal, but that might be too far off. If you do decide to make it a year-long goal, make sure to break the year into months, or quarter, or at least halves to give yourself check points between day 1 and day 365. For me, I had a wedding at the end of September that was the major driver for which I wanted to be at my goal weight. I worked backwards from there.

Realize that you're going to have to make significant changes if you want to see significant results. Too often, I hear people who are looking for drastic results but they don't expect to have to do anything significant to make it happen. That doesn't necessarily mean that a new diet you adhere to has to be extreme, but it is very likely that the discipline required to achieve that goal is going to have to be extreme if the other tactical measures are not. Think about it this way, if you have to lose 30 pounds, that's not going to happen by having dessert one less time per month, or going on one Sunday afternoon walk every week.

That being said, little things add up, and every calorie matters. Consider this: one generally accepted measure of how to lose weight is to create a deficit of 3,500 calories burned for every pound you want to lose. Broken down over a week, that's 500 calories per day that will get you to 3,500 calories in a week needed to lose weight at a healthy clip. So, if you think about your week, and you think about needing to cut 3,500 calories out of it, think about little ways you can burn a few calories, or save a few calories here and there to create that deficit. Keep this in mind, a minute of brisk walking burns roughly 5 calories. Let's say you live on the third floor of a building, and it might take you 3 minutes to walk up the stairs each day, and 3 minutes to walk down. Instead of taking the elevator, build those six minutes of walking into your day each day. Those six minutes represent 30 calories per day you're burning. If you were to do that every day of the year, you'd burn more than 10,000 calories doing that alone. Three minutes here, and three minutes there, it adds up.

You'll notice that I'm into point 5 on my list before I've mentioned food. I've mentioned calories, and calories come from food and drink, but more so than what food you eat, I believe it's more about your lifestyle that will help you lose weight. Weight loss is about creating a calorie deficit More burned than consumed. There are a lot of ways to get there, and that doesn't have to mean starving yourself. If you're able to commit to an exercise regiment that creates a lot of that deficit for you, you might not have to change your diet that severely to get the results you're looking for

However, if you have a lot of weight to lose, chances are, you're eating too much, and part of the deficit you need to lose the weight you want can simply come from eating LESS and not necessarily from forcing yourself to eat foods you don't like. I believe that one of the main reasons that people weigh more than they would like is because the simply eat too much and have no idea that how much they're eating is more than they should be consuming. When I started trying to lose weight, the first thing I did was download an app that helped me count calories. I told the app how much weight I wanted to lose, and it came up with a calorie allotment plan that would help me manage that. The first week with the app, I didn't change anything about my eating or exercise habits. I simply did what I had been doing, and used that as a baseline against the behavior the app was suggesting. The first thing I realized after a few days was that I was eating way too much. The foods themselves weren't all that 'unhealthy' on the surface, I was just eating way too much of everything. My diet called for roughly 2,000 net calories per day, and in those first few days, I was consuming nearly 1,000 for breakfast. One of the biggest things I did to help myself succeed was to reign in breakfast to the point where I still ate it every day, but it was much smaller than it had been in the past

After finding an initial baseline, I did some simple math on what I was going to have to do - between how much I ate and how much exercise I did - to create the calorie deficit I was looking for. For me, I had the opportunity with my commute and my lunch hour to do a lot of walking, so a big part of my weight loss came from consistent exercise in addition to what I was eating. I created a schedule for myself that included more than 8 hours a week of new exercise. All just by walking to various train stops and to & from my office each day. Those activities alone (roughly 2,200 calories burned walking each week) accounted for about 64% of the calorie deficit I needed for the week. That left roughly 36% of the deficit to be made up for with my diet

Most of the remaining 36% of the deficit I was able to cover simply by knowing how much I was eating, and consciously choosing portion sizes that fit with what my plan said I needed to hit. If you have a plan that says you have 700 calories left for the day to hit your goal, it then comes down the the discipline at dinner time to say, okay, I've got 700 calories I can eat, I need to find something to eat for 700 calories or less. And on top of that, once you know you have 700 calories to work with, that means 700. Not 800, or 850. Every time you cheat like that, you set yourself back. So, rather than 'cheating' and eating 800 calories when you only have 700 calories to work with, instead be aware of what you need, and if 700 is your number, eat 600 for dinner, and let yourself have 100 calories for dessert - tons of desserts now have 100 calorie packs.

If as you're reading this, you're reading things that I have done in the past and you're already having doubts creep in about your ability to follow a plan like mine, that's okay. There are a lot of different ways to create calorie deficits. I don't like super intense workouts, but had the time and the ability at my stage in life to walk a ton. You might not. It might be more feasible for you to burn 1,000 calories in a cycling workout and do intermittent fasting on Tuesdays and Thursdays in order to hit your goal. I don't know what will work for you, but the bigger idea is to find something that works, and then commit to doing something that you can maintain over the course of your 'real life,' day in and day out.

Realize too that you're going to have days where you are going to go against your plans. There were multiple days where things came up in my schedule that made it very difficult for me to stick to my calorie count, and I went over. When that happens, don't let one day off of plan get you down. Client dinners, birthday parties, and other special occasions are going to come up where you're going to eat more than you normally would, or may not allow you to do the requisite amount of exercise necessary to hit your calorie number. That's fine. Enjoy those days. The key is to have your normal, 'in-routine' days be as good as they can be. Remember too that your 'normal' calorie goal days are there as a number that will help you lose weight. If you miss your daily goal by 500 calories or less, you're still within that buffer where you won't gain or lose weight on a given day, you'll just stay put. So, try to have as many days as you can where you hit the deficit, or at least stay within 500 calories when you're forced to go out of routine. And, when you do have to go off routine and go outside of that 500 calorie buffer, try not to do it more than one day in a row. Multiple days off of routine has an easy way of becoming a new routine that you don't want to be getting into...

Buy a scale early on in your journey, and use it. One of the reasons I am certain I gained as much weight as I did in 2018 was because I didn't know what I weighed. I felt myself gaining some, but if I had been aware of where I was and how much I had been gaining, I never would have let myself get to 205. But, because I didn't know for sure where I was at, it became a lot easier to just figure I'd gained 5 or 10 without ever really getting a handle on where I was. If you've had issues in the past getting on the scale and seeing a number and having that number create certain negative emotions, fears or anxieties, that's okay. In your new journey, try to think of the number only as a piece of data. If you're at 295 today, try not to think about that as anything more than an indicator that you'd like to be at 294 by the end of the week, and trust that you've got a plan in place that, if followed, will get you there. Whatever your number is on the scale, there is no shame in it. It's a number. Use the power of the information in that number to drive to the goal you want.

It can be hard at first to count calories, and in general to 'care so much' about what you're eating and how much you're exercising. That is normal if it's not something you've focused on a lot in the past. But, the more you do it, and the more success you have at it, the more you'll start to enjoy the process. If you continue to resist it, consider this: It's very hard to change any behavior if you're not willing to focus on it. So, embrace that in order to lose the weight you want, you're probably going to have to care more about it, emphasize it more in your life, and make it a greater point of focus. When your goal - and the why behind that goal - matters enough to you, you'll find that focusing on it becomes easier than it may have been in the past

My last point - and I'm going to end on lucky thirteen instead of thinking of it as unlucky thirteen - is to stress the importance of self belief in this process. You can do this. Weight loss is science. Put in less than is coming out. With commitment to a plan that gets you to your needed deficit, you will lose weight. Some people may lose faster than others based on metabolism, but even if you have a slower metabolism than some, find solace in the fact that if you stick to your plan long enough, consistently, it'll happen. As that process is taking place, let yourself think about the results. Get excited about them. Think about the benefits you hope to gain. For yourself and your physical well being. For yourself and your mental well being to know that you set a goal, you stuck with it, and you conquered it. For your family, and all the benefits that come with better health, and better routines. And for your future. Once you achieve something like this, it has a way of empowering you to set more goals that are bigger, and have even better results.

Believe in yourself, enjoy the process, and look forward to reaching your goal. And when you do, use what you have learned and the discipline you've built in your routines to keep it going.

My weight goal is to be at 168 by the end of 2020. Where I am now minus 5 more pounds.

Whatever your goal is, let's get it! You can do it!

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mrtroy · 5 years ago

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It Only Gets Better

I watched as he tore into his birthday package – shoddily wrapped; my gift-wrapping skills having only improved slightly between December 27th, 2009 and the same time ten years later in 2019. My father was in the process of opening a preposterous gift that contained sixty-six single servings of pudding to commemorate his sixty sixth birthday. The man has most of what he needs in life – except of course, more pudding.

I thought of where we all were – Mom, Patch, Kaitlin and I – when Pops had turned 56 ten years ago. I couldn’t remember exactly, but as I saw his tired hands rip through the striped wrapping paper, there was a lot more for my mind to process than there was for my eyes to see. I saw older hands, slowed by arthritis, and showing new sags in aging skin. I saw a squinting eye, plagued by an annoying dryness. And I also saw a lot more wrinkles around his eyes. But, these were the best kind of wrinkles. Wrinkles caused by a persistent smile and augmented with deep belly laughs. As he stood up so that Patch could get a picture of all the pudding, he let loose one of those body-rumbling chuckles that I hold to so dearly. In that moment, all was right in the world, and with the year and decade coming to an end, it seemed a fitting scene to use it as a backdrop for reflection. -- So much has changed for me these last ten years. I’m not sure if the span from 4 to 14, 14 to 24 or 24 to 34 is more drastic, but the latter has definitely presented a lot of new challenges and new learning opportunities as my life has progressed. This last ten years has seen me move eight times, live in three states, have five jobs, write a book, buy two houses, two cars and more plane tickets than I can count. As we turned the last decade, my career hadn’t really started yet. I was 24 and in my second year out of college. I had a lot of ideas, but so many of the things I have learned since were not even part of my subconscious yet. I was living at home with my parents, still yet to venture too far out into the world. I liked to fancy myself as worldly at the time, but in truth, I still hadn’t seen much of the world yet at all. By now, I’ve been a few places, and seen a few things. And, I’m thankful to have learned so much between the end of 2009 and now. I’ve spent the last few days trying to think of what my favorite learning has been, or what I am most grateful to now know… And actually, that’s a pretty easy one. It comes back to my old man. -- Amidst all the change of the last decade has come a lot of heartache as well. I’ve seen four romantic relationships end. One of those involved a woman with four kids and separating from the kids was gut-wrenching. I was engaged once, but never got married. I left a job I loved, relocated across the country for a new one – only to be fired seven months later. Throughout all of those different processes, my father has been reminding me at each opportunity that ‘it only gets better.’ If you know my dad, you know he’s an optimist, but you also know he’s not unrealistic. What he means by ‘it only gets better’ is that with each experience, if we’re attentive, and if we put in the effort to learn from what has happened to us, it is inevitable that things only improve with time. This isn’t to say that it happens overnight, or without further trial, but, if we work at it, things always get better. As humans, we don’t usually settle to go backwards. We don’t usually settle for things to get worse, or stay worse. I’m most grateful to have learned this lesson because life is hard. I struggle at times, and I see others out there struggling as well. When I do, I like to remind us, et. al that for each struggle there is something to be learned, and if we’re attentive and honest with the things that happen to us, things do improve. We learn about ourselves. We learn the things that are more important to us than we first realized. We learn which mistakes we don’t want to make again. We learn about the things in relationships we won’t tolerate the next time around, or the things we know we can do better for our part. In our jobs, we add to our experience banks. We steal pearls of wisdom from coworkers and colleagues. We set new goals, prioritize new objectives, focus on new visions. As a new decade dawns, I am excited for the future. I am in what I believe is my healthiest relationship to date. I have a woman by my side who both loves and likes me. We both respect and admire each other, and with her, life is a lot more fun. I have recently switched jobs, with a slight change in industry / career path. It’s exciting and at the same time nerve-wracking to leave a job where I felt comfortable for one where I often wonder if I know what I’m doing. As I think about the next ten years, it’s hard to imagine what they will bring. Hopefully I will become a husband, a father and an uncle. I hope that I will become more skilled in the ways that I lead. I hope that I will gain further perspective on issues related to race, gender identity and equality. I hope to be a more informed citizen of the world and a better friend. More than that, I hope to continue to learn from my experiences. I’m sure there will be plenty of ups and downs in the next ten years, and while I’d like to maximize the ups and limit the downs, I think it’s most important to learn from whatever happens. And to never stop learning in general. -- As I play back in my mind the scene from my father opening up his package of pudding a few days ago, the smile that comes to my face is so satisfying. Looking around in my younger brother’s living room, with his wonderful wife, my parents, and a lifetime full of memories dancing around in my head. Ten years ago, I never could have envisioned any of that. I really hope we can all do it with 76 puddings in ten years. And if we do, that will indeed be so much better!

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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Someday He Will

I don’t do a ton on social media these days. I read some things on Twitter, and use it as a source to find news I care about. Other than that, I don’t do a whole lot.

The other day I was taking a cursory glance through Facebook and Instagram and as you may have also experienced, these forms of social media have become breeding grounds for parents to laud – and lament – certain achievements in their children’s lives.

Oh look, baby Rutherford turned 3 months old! I can’t believe he’s enjoying tummy time so much!! I can’t believe Millard is already 5! He goes to Kindergarten in the fall. Where has the time gone… Chester got his first paycheck, would you look at that Your dad and I are so proud of you, Grover, we wish you and Frances nothing but the best for a happy and healthy marriage!

If you’ll look past my obvious use of presidential pseudonyms, I’m sure you’ve seen all of these types of posts. And, if you have kids, I’m sure the sense of pride, or anxiety, or a mix of the two is very familiar to you depending on how old your kids are.

Many times as I see this type of content, I quickly glance past it. I may make note of what little Millard is up to, on the off chance that I run into his mom at an event and need to do a quick catch up.

In most cases, though, I keep moving past the potty-training milestones, the birthday height measurements and science fair projects. Not because they aren’t impressive, but simply because that type of content has never really done much for me. I don’t have kids, and I’m not a mom… Every once in a blue moon, I’ll see a dad post about something their kid did, but, from my experience, 95% of the time, it’s moms posting this type of thing.

However, recently something happened in my life, and I want to share it for the sake of all the moms out there – especially the boy moms out there.

As my friends’ boys have grown older, I have seen the general sentiments in their posts change from excited when they walk, to proud when they go to kindergarten, to anxious about how fast they are growing by the time they reach later elementary school age, to a bit of eye rolling over how ‘boyish’ they are in middle and high school, back to proud again after that once they get through the gauntlet that is the teenage years.

Moms, I know you worry. I know you wonder your babies may turn out. What happens when your relationship with your son changes?

I hate to break it to ya, but he won’t always be so cooperative when you want to take his picture, or let you drop him off at school. There will be times in college where he won’t pick up the phone, or answer your text. He’ll very likely try to go on some sort of trip without telling you; there may be a few significant others he hopes you’ll never find out about, and there will undoubtedly be 1,000 times where you’ll ask yourself who is this child now? That can’t be the same kid who used to rest his head so contently on my shoulder after a bottle…

Will he ever appreciate you, Mom? Will he ever truly understand how much you care for him? Will he ever stop and notice all the ways you have tried to prepare him for the life ahead of him?

The answer, I can assure you, is yes, someday, he will.

For me, that someday came barreling at me completely out of the blue last week.

My mom was on vacation with my dad. They were touring a few National Parks in Utah. This is the kind of trip that my mom lives for. Nature. Hiking. Exploring. Free entry into the national parks via her lifetime pass, and reciprocity to visit other gardens along the way due to her membership benefits with the Morton Arboretum …

If you know my mom at all, that’s like a Mount Rushmore of benefits.

Anyway, on Monday morning, June 17, my mom sat down at breakfast to write me a letter. This letter, that you’ll see below, embodies everything that is great about my mom’s and my relationship.

She included so many little details in this note that were not only important to her – but she also knew that I would appreciate them. And, for the first time in my life, I think I was able to fully appreciate them.

First of all, she sent the letter on stationary from the (potentially) world-famous Bumbleberry Inn and Motel. How do I know this? Because she went through the trouble to get her hands on Bumbleberry stationary. I picture this process, where you have an extremely zealous traveler coming up to a Bumbleberry employee and asking if they have stationary, or something in which she can use to send a note to her son. There’s a chance the paper could have been left for guests in each of their rooms, but this is full-size stationary, not a sheet off of a tear pad. So, at least in my version of how the events went down, my mom had to ask for this. And, knowing her, she would most definitely do that!

The top of the note not only has the date, but it specifies that it was Monday morning, and that it was written during breakfast. Not only is this thoughtful letter-writing technique commonly practiced in eras gone by, but, as I have learned, this is how my mom’s brain works. Every time I go on a trip, be it for work, or pleasure, she asks, okay, Monday, what did you do Monday? And after we’ve gone through Monday, and gotten sidetracked a few dozen times, she’ll always come back to it in her mind, and say, okay, Tuesday, what was Tuesday?

For years, I have had to bite my tongue and not say, Mom, okay, do we have to go through every day of the trip as if it’s being used in a legal deposition? And yet, somehow, to read ‘Monday… Breakfast’ at the top of this note, it finally clicked. This is her. This is how her mind works. This is what she wants to tell me, and this is how she structured it in her mind. The realization that she was getting great joy out of this changed everything for me.

She started the letter with reference to her favorite writing utensil – the trusty Ticonderoga #2 pencil. It’s a long running joke in our family that Mom always has a Ticonderoga #2 behind one – and sometimes both – of her ears. As soon as I saw that the letter was written in pencil, I knew it was a Ticonderoga #2, but reading her reminder made me smile.

I won’t break down for you every part of this note that touched me so personally, because there is so much layered into the way she wrote it – from using certain exclamation points in places where I knew she would use them – to the way she used parentheses. They mean more to me than they could ever mean to you.

That’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to be a reminder of how uniquely special a mother’s relationship can be with her son.

It takes time, and for a long time, my mom was putting in effort to connect with me that went without being fully realized on my end.

She sent me notes like this in college that I opened, read, and glanced at the articles she’d cut out of the newspaper thinking I would like to read them, and I didn’t read them, or at least not all of them.

She put together a photo scrapbook of a class trip I took in middle school, and I probably looked at it for five seconds back then. As I was cleaning out my house to move about two years ago now, I found that little scrapbook and I marveled at the effort and the care she put into making it and preserving those memories.

The common theme may sound like it’s just a factor of building a foundation, and waiting 30 years, but I think there’s also more to it than that.

I’ve written more about that here, but the short version is this:

Invest in what your son(s) likes now. That’ll no doubt change, but the thing he’ll come to appreciate most when he’s in his 30s and beyond is that you took the time to know him. That while you may not have been super interested in baseball (the thing I liked most throughout most of my formative years) or trucks, or toy cars, or video games, or Marvel movies, purely the fact that you wanted to take part in his life with him matters. A lot.

He’ll brush you off at first. And probably for the entire span of when he’s like 11 through 25…

But it’s worth it.

I look at the relationship I have with my mom now and it brings tears to my eyes.

Her methods may not work for you. They may not feel authentic, and your kids may not respond to them the same way that I did. Heck, the way my mom and I connect is not the same way she connects with my brother. But, she has her own connection with him, and they bond in ways that are equally unique to his personality. But they do connect. And it is special.

As I close, I will end with a call to enjoy the journey.

I laugh a little that I’m giving advice to moms – me?

But for many of you that will read this, I know you. I know your moms, and I know the amazing connections you have with them.

I also know how hard it can be to know how to navigate all that goes into raising a son. I certainly wouldn’t want to have been fully responsible for raising me…

Many of you have husbands who will play their own role in helping you raise your boys, and they will do their part, no doubt. And your boys – if they’re anything like me – will gravitate heavily to their dad at certain times. And thankfully so. That’s obviously normal. Enjoy the connection that’s built there, too.

But, as most any boy would tell ya, there’s just something special about the relationship we have with our mom.

If you wonder in the back of your mind if your little guy will ever fully appreciate you for all that you are, and how much you care about him.

Someday, he will.

Okay, enough out of me. I hope my words made your hearts smile a little bit. Go moms!

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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Baseball & My Momma...

Christmas, 2018

Hi Mom –

With retirement on your mind, and knowing that you and Pops are more so in ‘purge mode’ than you are in the market for acquiring big bulky things, this year, I got you a gift that is small in size. However, it has a lot of meaning to me and I want to share that meaning with you in this short story.

Any time I take a moment to reflect, my thoughts often subconsciously jump to my childhood. Often, I’ll think of Bethany or Lake Geneva. Depending on who I may have just seen in person, sometimes my thoughts jump back to a memory I have with that individual. Basketball in the driveway with Justin. Playing golf at Boughton Ridge or Naperbrook with the Lisses. Touch football with KB, the Wioras and Klupchaks. I’m sure the common sporting theme is not shocking to you…

I’ve mentioned three sports so far, but a fourth hasn’t come up yet. What sport could that be, you ask?

Of course you already know…

When I think of baseball – which is probably my favorite thing to think about– there are three things that specifically come to mind.

I think of pitching to Pops on the front sidewalk when he used to sit in that old wooden chair. I think of playing fantasy baseball with Uncle Tony. But most of all, and more so than anything else, when I think about baseball, I think about you.

I’m not sure if there’s a more succinct old adage that describes what I’m about to say, but I think it says a lot about someone when they are the strongest, or most common link you have to your favorite thing in the world.

But, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. If someone asked, I could very easily say, baseball and my mom, why yes, these are a few of my favorite things!

You know most of the common stops on our Baseball Memory Lane – • Taping the 1990 World Series – and shaking a ‘why I oughta’ fist at the Reds for sweeping the series in four games • The never-ending quest to provide dry baseball pants before Little League games • The hapless job of trying to buy tickets to out-of-town stadiums with seat locations that could pass without major bellyaching from your favorite peanut gallery • Driving Justin and I to All-Star tournament games and listening to the Peanuts soundtrack in the car • Playing catch in the backyard in the dark every Mother’s Day under the spotlight • Listening to Pat and Ron on WGN in the Summers on the screen porch • Learning how to keep a scorebook during all those Yankees World Series in the 90s

There are a few others – getting heckled as we walked out of Busch Stadium in ’98 after the Cards swept the Cubs. Remember how surreal it was to have all of those Cardinal fans yelling at us? And I’m sure you haven’t forgotten sitting out in the cold at those early Spring games at Naperville Central my freshman year with Mrs. Buoy and Jon Elwardt’s mom…

There are a lot of these examples, but the bullet points are definitely my favorite.

One of the best qualities about baseball throughout the course of time has always been that it is in fact, timeless. In the literal sense, nine innings is only nine innings when nine innings are complete. The clock doesn’t run like it does in most other sports. In a more figurative and historical sense, baseball has withstood the test of time, whether it was being played by Babe Ruth in 20s, DiMaggio in the 30s, Jackie Robinson in the 40s and on into today.

Beautifully, that has remained true for us throughout the years, too. Thankfully for you, I presume, you don’t have to worry about getting those baseball pants into the dryer anymore, but as the years have ticked by, our memories have aged quite well, I do believe. • There’s a new Pat & Ron on the radio, and while a certain someone may not enjoy all the ‘heaters’ from the new Ron, they still sound pretty good on the screen porch • The location of our Mother’s Day catch has shifted about 250 miles west, but I know we all still look forward breaking out the old Lou Whitaker mitt just as much now as we ever did • The not-so-old Busch Stadium that we were heckled at in ’98 couldn’t withstand the test of time, but going to the new one in 2015 with Patch and Kaitlin was pretty special. I still laugh thinking of you bemoaning St. Louis – ‘What do you mean they got a new stadium already? Their last one was built when?? (1966) (In a similar tone to ‘why I oughta’) ‘Amateurs!!!’ • Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones and Derek Jeter may have retired and officially ended my childhood, but that Javy Baez guy has been pretty fun to watch. Especially ‘Javy tags’ • And instead of keeping score for those Yankees World Series, how about the Cubs actually winning one? I’m not sure I ever thought I’d write those words. But how much fun was that to go to John Troy’s house and watch the game on his rooftop and hear the cheers or groans from Wrigley before the time delay on TV could even show us what the fans at the park were reacting to? I could go on. Lord knows there are a lot of memories to rehash on this subject. But, none of them come close to meaning as much as what I want to talk about next. What I want to talk about next is one of the greatest things you’ve ever done for me as a mom. It has helped shape who I am as a person and it is an example that I am confident is as timeless as the game of baseball itself.

What I’m referring to here is the way you’ve taken an interest in my favorite game and taken it from something you didn’t know much about, to something now that you genuinely love. I don’t know if it was going to Fenway when you were pregnant with me that began my love affair with this great game, but whatever it was, I always felt like you were right beside me as I grew, and learned, and played and watched.

It has meant the world to me to be able to share this love with you. And, I have tried to emulate the way you have invested in me – and invested in learning the game as a way to connect with me – in other areas of my life. Your example has been my gold standard for what it means to truly take an interest in something not only for your own personal enjoyment, but because you know how important something is to someone else. I know as a parent, there are thousands of examples of things you do for your kids – things you don’t love – because you have to. Or because you believe they are the right things to do. Or because you want to help teach a lesson, or model good behavior.

But it never felt like any of those when I was growing up, or even to this day. It just felt like you were interested in what I was interested in and that you wanted to enjoy what I was enjoying with me. I was incredibly lucky at the time, but I was also naïve. I didn’t realize that this wasn’t something that all moms did. As I have gotten older and talked to more and more of my friends, I have come to realize that what we have in this regard is very, very special.

I know I don’t have to do this, but for the first time ever, I want to thank you for coming alongside me and loving me, and the game of baseball the way you have. It has helped burn a tangible set of examples into my mind about what it means love something and someone in a uniquely all-encompassing way that I can only hope to model at some point later in my life.

As I close this note, I want to look forward.

While I am greatly looking forward to you and Pops being able to retire, there is a part of retirement that I have heard can be a bit of an adjustment. Well, there are many adjustments, I am sure, but one of them that I have heard about is redefining your identity. I have read certain things about how it can be difficult to go from identifying as a long-time resident in your community to all the sudden moving somewhere and feeling like you don’t know anyone and don’t feel like you fit in. I have read that it can be hard sometimes to adjust to not working and in turn not feeling like you contribute in the same way to society. I haven’t worried much about these things for you and Pops. I feel like you do a good job making friends and I’m sure you’ll get involved in your new community to the point where you’ll find purpose in a volunteer opportunity, social club, or societal cause.

On a deeper level, I’m sure it’ll be interesting to see how many parts of your identity change when you go from being all the things you are now to putting a ‘former’ in front of many of them. A former teacher. Someone who used to live one place, or formerly did X, Y or Z. Again, I’m sure you’ll adjust as you go, as you always seem to.

Our relationship has changed, too, and it will continue to do so. Hopefully you’ll go from being a parent to also being a grandparent. Who knows what might be in store on that front…

Normally, I don’t like to tack on a lot of descriptors to the things that define our identities. If we’re too tied up in defining ourselves a certain way, it’s hard to adapt to change. This has been a consistent theme in my work life – trying to learn how not to let too much of my self-worth be defined by how well I am able to meet others’ expectations, or to not let how much money I make define how successful I am. Things like that…

As things change for you and Pops over the next year or so, if you move out of your house, and become a former teacher, a former Naperville resident, someone who used to go to a certain health club for almost 30 years, and on and on, I hope you will cling to the parts of your identity that can’t change.

Daughter. Sister. Mom.

There’s a reason there’s such strong emotions that go along with those parts of your identity. Because no matter what life throws at you, no matter what happens, once you are those things, they are always true about you.

So, please take this small token as a reminder of what a great mom you’ve been, and what a great mom you are.

With a little nod from our friend, Baseball.

Merry Christmas.

Love,

Matt

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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The Quiet Satisfaction of Cutting Grass

When I was a kid, it always boggled my mind how my old man could cut the grass on a warm mid-summer’s evening while wearing long pants. Every once in a while Pops would wear shorts, but often times, I’d watch him go back and forth across the back yard in his Levis. My ten-year old self couldn’t fathom how anyone could wear long pants in 80-degree weather. And yet, every Sunday and every Thursday, my dear old dad trudged his way through the 1/3rd acre lot of the only home he’d ever owned. Mowing.

The cross-cut was always his specialty. One direction for a first pass, and then the opposite perpendicular just after. Not only would he wear long pants, but he’d also do twice the work For the life of me, it never made sense.

Into our early teenage years, my brother and I were taught very carefully the artisan craft of mowing the yard at 724 Potomac Avenue. My dad wasn’t a member of the grounds crew at Wrigley Field, but apparently, no one told him.

After cutting the yard, he’d edge, trim, and weed-wack until his ankles were a dull light green. Then he’d sweep – and in later years enlisted a leaf blower to clear any stray grass clippings from within 25 yards of a paved surface on our property.

And so, this is how my brother and I learned to take care of a lawn.

As teenagers, we’d mow the lawn from time to time, but mostly, our yard was used as a temporary training ground to learn how to cut the lawn with the ultimate goal of being able to cut other people’s lawns as a weekly summer job.

I had two weekly customers, and the spending money was just enough to pay for trips to Dairy Queen, or to buy baseball cards with my friends.

A few times in the Spring of 1998, I was trusted to mow our lawn as Pops was recovering from a knee replacement surgery. At first, in his truest of forms, the old man got out behind the mower and was determined to soldier on after his surgery. After proving to himself that he was indeed capable of doing it, I think my mom convinced him to have me do it every so often as a way of giving him some rest as he was healing.

I can vividly remember trying so hard to mow in straight lines during those weeks. Pops absolutely loved being able to stand on our back patio after finishing up the yard and admire the lines created as the direction of the grain of the grass alternated up and back. Dark green going one direction, and a lighter – almost white – going the other.

His lines looked something like Rembrandt. At first, mine were a bit more Jackson Pollack, but, as time passed, they got a little more orderly. I learned how to maneuver the mower – always one of Sears’ Craftsman – deftly around the numerous flowerbeds in the back yard. I got the hang of putting a little more pressure on the left side of the handle in order to get the front right side of the mower deck to pop up to avoid hitting the exposed root protruding from the earth under the large silver maple tree at the back of our lot.

As I grew older, and had more activities, I wasn’t expected to mow our lawn with any regularity, however, there were always times where I’d be asked to pinch hit for a week here or there. Many of my friends had to cut their family’s lawn every week, and they hated it. They thought I was the luckiest kid around to weasel my way out of lawn duty more times than not.

My dad likes doing it I always told them.

As I would say those words, I would shake my head a little bit. Who actually liked mowing grass? Sure, I had gotten better at it over the last few years, but I definitely wouldn’t classify it as something I liked…

But, if I ever asked him about it, my dad always emphatically reaffirmed the fact that he did indeed love cutting the lawn.

It’s relaxing, he would always say. I enjoy how it looks when I finish. I love when the yard looks good. It makes me feel good about the entire house.

I don’t think I’d ever seen him happier than the time one of our neighbors up the street put their house up for sale, and their realtor took a picture from their yard looking into ours with the caption, ‘majestic back-yard view with garden-like neighboring yard.’ I’m somewhat shocked he didn’t frame the real estate listing…

I mowed the yard on and off into and through college, and even a few times in my early twenties as I was living at home after college saving for the first house of my own.

Despite everything he tried to impart on me, I never quite developed Pops’ love of lawn care. When I learned that all the yardwork at my first townhouse was going to be covered by the homeowner’s association, I counted this as a win. My dad joked that I could probably mow the common area between shared driveways if I wanted. Everyone in the family knew he wasn’t kidding, although he got a pretty funny look from my realtor after the agent realized this wasn’t actually a joke.

A few moves later, I worked my way into a house with a yard of its own, and, you guessed it, mowing duties to match. Pops and I stopped in at the local Home Depot where we picked me out a shiny new Toro lawn mower.

He beamed with pride as we rolled it out of the store, and he couldn’t help himself but to fire it up for the first spin around my new yard. Never mind it was my house, he was going to christen the new machine, so help him God.

I laughed as he went. With each pass, he’d yell out some feature of the mower as I stood in the driveway trying to conceal my laughter. I couldn’t hear a word he said, but I know every word oozed with the type of enthusiasm I hoped I one day had for any topic – let alone cutting grass.

It’s coming up on two years since I’ve lived in a house with a yard, so I don’t do any mowing these days.

I’ve never missed it. When it rains, or I have to be out of town for days or weeks at a time, I never worry if my neighbors are silently critiquing my lack of lawn manicuring skill as they look at my unruly lawn from their living room windows.

As I was prepping that house for rent this last rent cycle, I did a little maintenance on my Toro mower. She was still in pretty good shape, and I have to admit, I did get a little satisfaction flipping her over and scraping the dried grass out from the underbody of the red machine. Those sentiments came and went quickly though as I gassed her up and got her ready for the renters who would now be responsible for cutting the lawn. Silently, I wondered when I might mow a yard again. Soon? Not soon? Either way, I didn’t figure to miss it.

And I didn’t

However, that next time mowing came today, and it was quietly satisfying.

My parents are out of town putting their National Parks Pass to good use and asked if I wouldn’t mind coming over to their house to take care of the yard while they are gone.

Sure, I said. What else would I say? I agreed that I would come over on the weekend after they’d been gone five days and take care of it.

Part of me figured that by mid week, I’d be dreading my assignment. Lawn mowing isn’t hard, but it does take time, and it’s not exactly the most exciting weekend activity a person can do.

But strangely, I didn’t begin to dread the looming task by mid week. The forecast was calling for rain on Saturday, so I decided to come straight from work on Friday night and knock the task out before the rains came.

As I punched the entry code into the keypad on the side of my parents’ garage door, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had mowed this yard. My boyhood yard.

As the garage opened, I saw that Pops had acquired a new mower since the last time I had noticed. No longer a Craftsman model, he was now the proud owner of a Troy-Bilt machine. How fitting that a Troy – especially a proud one – would buy himself a Troy-Bilt mower. I smiled. He was so predictable…

As I wheeled the mower out of the garage and pulled the cord to start the engine, unexpected emotions came over me. The Troy-Bilt roared to life after two pulls on the cord. When was the last time I had mowed THIS yard?

And wouldn’t you know it, coming right from work on a Friday now, I was wearing jeans as I began. I stopped in my tracks thinking about how many times I’d given my old man a hard time in my head for wearing jeans to mow the lawn… And yet, here I was…

I looked around at how much more lush the trees and shrubs were that surrounded the yard. The basic foundational elements were the same as they had been when I had first mowed the yard in the late 90s, but a lot had also changed.

As I always had, I started to the north side of the driveway and completed this section of grass first. Immediately, I noticed how smoothly this new mower ran. A few seconds later I started to go down that path of, ‘back when I first started mowing this yard, the mowers weren’t nearly this nice…’ – but I stopped short. I’m not even 35 yet, I can’t be starting that kind of things…

I moved to the south side of the driveway a few minutes later and began navigating some of the newer features the lawn now featured. I’d mown around them before – later in life – but I remembered back to when the birch tree didn’t have as much foliage surrounding its base. I could picture our family bulldog waddling around near it, his tongue nearly hitting the ground as he did.

The front yard isn’t big, and it only took me a few minutes to level the south section…

Moving to the back yard, I pushed the mower down the brick sidewalk that connects my parents front yard to its back. The surrounding flora had grown so much since I’d last done this, I was barely able to maneuver the 23-inch wheelbase around a bevy of ferns, spruce trees and other assorted plants I couldn’t name.

The trees in the back yard were so much bigger and fuller than I last remembered. I’d been in this yard regularly over the last few years – even in the last few months – but there was something different about mowing it. I noticed more. It felt more significant.

Again, I began mowing in a familiar fashion. One complete ring around the outer edges of the yard. Along the contours of the flower beds and up against the limestone the bordered the patio. The back yard hadn’t changed as much as the front had, and I was immediately struck by how much smaller it seemed. Teenage me always dreaded the backyard because it seemed so big, and ‘took a long time.’ In actuality, it took 22 minutes and minimal effort.

I surmised somewhere during the middle portion of those 22 minutes that it had probably been about twelve years since I’d mowed this grass. It was probably during my last summer of college that I’d done it.

I thought about the things in my life that had changed since then. The things I had learned. I thought a lot about my parents. They had been in their 40s and 50s then. Both are in their 60s now. They’re in the process of planning to retire and move away from this house they’ve occupied for 35 years.

I came to the raised root near the silver maple tree – the same one where I had learned how to raise one side of the mower to avoid clipping the root. Instinctively, I pushed down on the left side of the mower’s handle. The right front wheel popped up. The root was avoided. Not bad, I thought. I’ve still got it…

As I finished the yard, I felt a sense of pride in being able to come over and mow it for my parents. For hundreds of weeks in my youth, I’d had baseball games and camping trips. I’d gone away to school, and had at one point even spent 42 consecutive days on a road trip across the west cost of the U.S.

That fact brought a nice little piece of symmetry as I thought of my parents roaming around Colorado and Utah for the next few weeks.

As a kid, I didn’t always have the capacity to realize all that my parents did for me, and it’s been a nice little bonus of growing up – coming to the realization that adult responsibilities are hard, and the value in their consistency and commitment to just keeping the house running, or keeping my brother and I on track with school and other activities.

One thing I always struggled with as a kid was emptying the grass clippings from the bag on the back of the mower into a yard waste bag. As I went to do it this evening, I discovered something amazing: a little handle on the back of the mower’s bag that allowed you to easily grip the bottom of the bag as you emptied the cut grass into the refuse bag. Whoa. This was big. The angle it created to empty the clippings was immaculate, and they easily slid into the brown paper yard waste bag with no issues and no mess.

I can only hope some neighbor somewhere could have seen the smile on my face as I was doing this. Ha! Talk about a goofy thing to witness.

As I swept the driveway, I was extra careful to get every stray clipping off the concrete and into a flowerbed somewhere. If there’s anything my old man takes pride in, it’s the presentation of the lawn after the mowing has been done. The old blue-handled broom seemed a little shorter now, but it still did a number on the stray blades of grass as it brushed them out of sight.

I wheeled the mower back into the garage, put it in its spot and looked forward to being able to do this again next week. By then, Mom and Dad would likely be in Missouri on their way back home. I’d be happy to see them, and happy to relinquish my mowing duties.

I don’t miss mowing, and I am at peace with the fact that over the next year or so, my parents will move out of their house and bid farewell to their yard after 35 years.

But, boy, for these few times while they’re gone, it sure felt great to cut their grass.

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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A Small Glow in the Night

“Did you ever think our Saturday nights would come to this?”

My best buddy posed this question as he and I stood shoulder to shoulder about 150 yards from the finish line of Naperville, Illinois’ annual Glow Run 5K.

As we stood there, huffing and puffing from the run, a million thoughts ran through my head. On one hand, I never thought – at 33 years old – that I would be spending a Saturday night in the town where I grew up running a charity 5K with 1,200 other folks with varying degrees of running ambition.

Also at that moment, though, I realized how glad I was that everything that was unfolding that night was unfolding just the way it was.

Our running group of five – a rag-tag bunch if there ever was one – had signed up for the race as a way to continue to meet our goal of doing one run per month. We’re not hardcore runners, per se. But, we enjoy getting out and sweating from time to time.

One of us is in his 60s. Sometimes one of his friends runs with us, too. My buddy and I are 33. His girlfriend also runs with us most races. As does his younger sister.

We have run a half marathon together, however, most of the races we do are 5 and 8K in distance.

It’s a nice distance because you do need to train for the event in order to do well, but at the same time, you don’t necessarily have to commit major effort to a regimented training program. For our level of skill and commitment, it works perfectly.

The Chicago area – and many other areas for that matter – are chock full of races like this, and in my view at least, it’s a great way to stay active as an adult; to have some fun with friends, and challenge yourself both physically and mentally.

The last few months have been an interesting mental challenge for me. I’ve been feeling like I’m ‘stuck’ a bit in between seasons of life. On one hand, I love where I live, I’m healthier physically than I have been in ages, I’m established enough at work to the point where I feel confident in my abilities to be able to do what I need to do there…

But on the other hand, I wonder a lot about the future. Am I doing things now that are going to produce outcomes I find desirable in the future? I would love a family at some point. Is that in the cards? How do I settle in to the point where I don’t have to move every year or so as I have been for the last decade? Is my job / career path something that is compatible with a family? And maybe most mentally taxing, how do I go about living out my faith on an everyday basis? What does that look like? How do I want that to look like?

If you’ve read much of this blog, you may be clenching a fist at this point. Man, why so heavy? Why so much introspection? Why so much contemplation about all of this? Over and over you’ve written about these same things… just live, man. Just live.

Yes. Yes, I know.

I’m trying.

And the Glow Run 5K helped.

As I stepped to the starting line for the race, a sea of florescent yellow shirts surrounded me on every side. Since the run was a fundraiser that supported an education fund, many of the runners were school-aged kids. Chiefly elementary and middle schoolers, to be more exact.

I watched them closely.

Their mannerisms and actions were so different than the behavior I normally observed at races where the participants’ average age was twenty years older.

These kids were full of energy. The race started at 8:15 PM, so for many of the younger ones, this was a special treat even to be able to stay up so late. And boy, did the energy levels reflect it. Kids were milling about with their friends as we waiting in the starting corrals for the signal to blast off.

I smiled in anticipation, knowing that a lot of these kids were going to run as fast as they could right out of the starting gate, and run out of gas nearly immediately. Pacing isn’t exactly something 3rd graders are great at…

Sure enough, the race got underway, and within moments, hundreds of four-foot tall bottle rockets shot out of the starting gate. When I was about 10 years old, my family won a trip to Disney World, and while there, I remember going to the Typhoon Lagoon water park. It had this big wave pool, and I’ll never forget my father – genuinely intrigued by the spectacle going wading into the pool. Soon after, a new artificial wave generated, and hundreds of kids ran past him towards the front of the pool. Seconds later, the huge wave came and knocked him off his feet. He had such a shocked look on his face, like, whoooooa, I’m too old for this, I’m gonna get killed out here…

Well, that’s pretty much how I felt as a hundred little pip-squeaks bolted past me out of the starting gates of this race. Their shoulders hit my arms and hands as they ran by. Some brushed along my legs. I officially felt old as if I was swatting away bugs as they ran by. I was that middle-aged person who, in his head, was thinking, ‘these meddling kids….’

But then, a cool thing happened.

They kept running. They kept smiling.

Some kids ran very fast, and then turned around to look for their friends. Some called back to their friends as their sides began to hurt and urged them to keep going. Some parents ran with their kids in support. Some kids zoomed past their parents and shot them looks like, ‘you’ll never catch me, Mom!’

As we ran through the night, the sky got a little darker, and the neon-colored shirts stood out a little more.

Inevitably, many of the eager rabbits couldn’t quite keep up their early pace, and in my very measured way, I started to methodically pass a lot of runners. My own pace was a bit faster than usual – no doubt buoyed by the fact that I subconsciously wanted to keep up with 9-year old contemporaries.

We ran through a few neighborhoods with families out in their driveways cheering us on. Neighbors played music, and hung some decorations over the street to create a festive atmosphere at about the halfway point of the race.

As I hit the 2-mile point, I kicked into a higher gear. At the 2.5 mile mark, I caught and passed my buddy. I didn’t hate that…

Soon after, I noticed a young girl. She looked to be 10 or 11, and I realized I had seen her earlier in the race too.

She was still moving at a very impressive clip and was just out ahead of me with about a half mile to go in the race. I was pacing at about eight minutes per mile – not a breakneck speed for competitive runners – and I kept waiting for the young girl to fade.

I saw a small uphill stretch coming up, and figured I would lean into the hill, dig deep for some energy and pass her as we came out of it…

And so, I tried that.

We hit the hill with her about two steps ahead.

I focused on using my arms, breathing evenly. I felt my legs burn as the hill intensified ever so slightly. I was a step behind her now.

I didn’t notice anything different about her gait. She just kept running.

And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw me. She saw me gain a little ground, and that forced her to turn things up a notch. She dug down, and lengthened the gap to another three steps.

As we came out of the hill, I could feel the lactic acid building throughout my body. But, there was no way an 11-year old would be able to keep this up. None whatsoever.

So, I kept digging. I knew eventually she would fade.

Ahead, I got my first view of the inflatable blue finish-line marker. Probably about a quarter mile to go…

I dug deeper to gain on my pre-tween foe. Two strides behind. One. A half.

I was right behind her now.

And then, she saw me again. Gah.

As soon as she saw me again, she glanced back, and then forward again. She put her head down, presumably bit her lip, dug real deep for the last bit of energy from her bowl of Lucky Charms that morning… and preceded to just dust me over the last few hundred yards of the course.

I came flying across the finish line, but she was still a full two steps ahead.

I could not believe it. Every bit of what I thought I knew about pacing, and strategy and everything I thought I knew about her capability.. I was flat wrong.

She didn’t run out of gas. She wasn’t foolish in her approach. Just because something seemed a certain way in my head didn’t mean it would play out that way on the race course.

As I made my way through the mob of finishers, I tried to catch a glimpse of the girl who defeated me, but she had blended into the crowd, and I was never able to get another glimpse of her.

I looped back around to go watch the end of the race and look for the other members of our running group.

A minute later, my buddy joined me and made the comment I shared at the beginning of this post.

No, I never could imagine this being what we would do on Saturday nights. Chasing down little kids in a glow-themed race. Never in a million years.

But, then again, so much of what has happened in my life has been so different than I ever would have thought. Truthfully, I don’t know if you can ever prepare yourself for ‘random Saturday nights when you’re in your mid-30s.

When I first met my buddy, we were 14 years old – not much older than many of the kids we had just run with.

We didn’t know about pacing ourselves in races. Heck, we’d never run a 5K race in the first place. We went to college together and had no idea what we were doing there, either. We got jobs where we were initially clueless. We each bought houses and were generally uninformed about how to best do that. We’ve navigated relationships, careers, re-locations, the health of our parents, our siblings and how they all get along…

For all of the planning, and pacing and strategizing, we’ve never known exactly the best way to go about things.

And yet, here we are.

On random Saturday nights, running around halfway in the dark, and we’re finding our way.

I’m overly guilty of over thinking, but as I saw each of the runners finish that night, I realized that each of us runs our own race. Whether the 11-year old beat me or not, I clenched my teeth, I dug deep, and in the grand scheme of things, I did what I needed to do. I got out. I ran with my friends, and I had fun.

It was an unexpectedly good night.

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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On Second Thought – 5 / 2 / 19 - A Bo(w)l of Joy

This month’s ‘On Second Thought’ is a bit late, and it’s a bit different than I’ve structured them in months’ past, however, as it relates to mental health – as my ‘OST’ posts are intended to be – the correlation this month has much to do with patience. I think so much of mental health often correlates to our ability to be patient and allow our lives to unfold. *Now, let me be clear, this is not a statement to say that mental illness is a result of lack of patience, or that if someone is mentally ill in some way, that patience will in some way ‘cure’ them. However, in our on-going quests to stay in a good mental frame of mind, I’m of a strong belief that patience is key.

And, today’s story is an unexpected illustration of just how long something can take to begin to play out. The example I’m going to write about today is a long and winding journey for me to become aware of – and enjoy a smoothie bowl of all things. But, I think it’s pretty representative of how life often plays out – and is a good reminder for me to articulate in this season of life.

So, let’s sit back, relax and learn a few things together…

Memorial Day of 2016, a group of friends and I headed to Hermosa Beach, California to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Two of the members of our traveling group had formerly lived in Hermosa, and served as our tour guides for the weekend. All in all, the entire experience was fantastic. Air BnB. Home-cooked meals. Plenty of beach time, fantastic views, morning runs along the ocean… near perfection.

After the rounds of morning runs, the group would often congregate at a favorite breakfast spot of our former Hermosa residents, called Paradise Bowl. Our friends had lived there a few years earlier and had fallen in love with the concept of smoothie bowls. Grains, nuts, seeds, fruit and even peanut butter could be mixed together to create a tasty, filling and nutritious breakfast. After eating one of these bowls, I found myself well satiated, full of energy, and not feeling gross – the way I might of after eating something heavily processed from a fast-food breakfast menu.

Apparently the bowl craze had been going strong for a few years in Cali, and soon after enjoying them that week on vacation, I saw a few places start to pop up in Chicago that featured similar items on their menus.

A little later, Jamba Juice added them to their menu. (A natural extension, if you ask me)

After that, I began to see in more and more mainstream places.

Let’s fast forward to two weeks ago.

I ran a 5k and after the 5k, I received a free sample of something called a Joy Bol smoothie. It came packaged in a 2-oz. plastic container with a plastic lid that had a foldable spoon included.

For two weeks, it sat in my cupboard as I waited for a day where I could not only eat it, but also investigate a little more about it as I did so.

Today was that day, and man, was it fascinating to make the connection between when I first was introduced to bowls nearly three years ago, to having one in packaged form this morning.

As I Googled Joy Bol smoothie after planning to eat my sample this AM, I came across an article from 2018 that chronicled Joy Bol coming to the UK. The main premise of the article was that the product was targeted at millennials and their busy lifestyle. Hmm. Apparently, at the time of development, there had been 1.5 million posts on Instagram that tagged #SmoothieBowl.

In addition, the product packaging and design had been inspired to capitalize on the trend of younger people doing something called ‘deskfasting.’ Or, eating breakfast at their desks.

As an elderly millennial, but a millennial nonetheless, I could definitely relate to the practice of getting on the train early in the AM and waiting to eat breakfast until I got to my desk. (I do it every day)

In this light, the product made perfect sense.

The spoon is included.

The dry ingredients came in a pre-packaged, pre-measured bowl. To make the smoothie, all you had to do was add water up to a pre-drawn line. And mix it all up with the spoon they already gave you.

You could make this thing with nothing more than a drinking fountain. All the contents of the packaging are recyclable. They had flavors like strawberry almond quinoa crunch. Perfect for millennials who are into ‘interesting and sophisticated’ flavors. They made note that you could also mix with ‘your milk of choice.’ Great wording for those who may drink soy, oat, or almond milks.

Nutritionally, for 260 calories, you’re right in the neighborhood of a Cliff Bar (250-270) or Belvita breakfast biscuits (230). Eleven grams of protein is a formidable amount for the protein-conscious crowd.

Everything about this product makes a ton of sense.

Going back to the article from 2018, it mentioned how this product had been in development for about eighteen months.

Which, after I did some math, took me back to right around Memorial Day of 2016.Fascinating.

This was right around the time I was first becoming familiar with this concept of bowls. Not surprisingly, it happened in California - a place that tends to be on the front-end of the curve of innovation and trend-setting in the US.

Buried deeper in my research about Joy Bols, was the fact that they are owned by / brought to market by Kellogg’s. This fact isn’t publicized on their packaging, or on their website, however it was mentioned in the article I read about the product, and it is mentioned when you try to buy them from an online retailer.

Kellogg’s took careful steps not to upset their millennial targets by associating their new product with Big Cereal – yes, this is a term that angry dissenters use to chastise Kellogg’s and General Mills over the use of high sugar content and unhealthy ingredients when marketing to kids.

Anyway, it was fascinating to see how Kellogg’s went about this, and how long it took for a trend I had been exposed to, to actually make its way back to me.

Mid 2016, identifying the idea based on behavior in the marketplace. Eighteen months of R&D. Testing in the UK. At some point, someone at Kellogg’s / Joybol identified 5k races as a great place to give out samples.

And, in April of 2019 in Chicago, I got my hands on one.

This fascinated me because I’ve been doing races and other events like the one I did a few weeks ago for years. I’ve gotten scores of free samples, and over time have even gotten samples from the same companies handfuls of times. I’ve ran races in the same location along the lakefront, in the same part of the year, and yet, it took until now to find Joy Bol.

Back to mental health awareness here, now.

The example I’ve been trying to build here is just how long it can take for things in our lives to come to fruition.

One way of looking at this is that after eating a smoothie bowl – and loving it – in May of 2016, it may have seemed like it was poised to become a staple in my life.

However, due to other factors – where I live, ‘deskfasting’ and commercialization timing – it took almost three years for the market to produce a product that I could find and begin to enjoy.

Three years isn’t that long when it comes to product development lifecycles. However, in our lives, three years can seem like an eternity.

Think about how much a child can grow in three years… Think about where you may have been three years ago in your relationship, or your career? Where you might have lived? What our political landscaped looked like…

Heck, the Cubs still hadn’t won the World Series in 108 years as of May of 2016. The Rio Olympics hadn’t happened yet…

I could go on and on down that path.

The grander point is that things take time. Especially, good, well-thought out things. Even if they are seemingly right on the precipice.

Finding and enjoying Joy Bols over the last few weeks was a timely reminder of these lessons. One that no doubt was appreciated, and was very non-coincidentally named with the word Joy in the title

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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The Joy Thief Detox

I have long prescribed to the idea that comparison is the thief of joy. This school of thought argues that when we compare ourselves to others, we ultimately rob ourselves of some of the intrinsic joy that we would enjoy on our own if not for engaging in the practice of comparison.

Before I get too far into the greater point I’m going to make in this post, I do think that some amount of comparison can be healthy, and some of it is unavoidable. I think healthy forms of comparison can be used positively for motivational purposes.

However, what I’m going to write about today is what I believe is an unhealthy, and avoidable form of comparison. And maybe, for some people, it’s not as big a deal. But, for me, it has become a bigger deal than I’d like to have present in my life.

And so, I’m going to take some steps not to have it impact and thieve me of any more joy.

The source of the thievery of which I speak is social media. And so, as of today, I’m going to take a break from social media.

I feel like social media has become a joy thief in the way I compare myself to others based on the content I see, and the way it projects about the lives other people are living in comparison to mine.

I’m going to be somewhat self-deprecating in this post. I’m not super ‘down’ at this moment, but many of the thoughts I’ll share here represent a composite of ways I have felt, or feelings that I have had on this topic at different points over the last few months.

For many, what they share on social media becomes the online representation of who they are, where they’re at, and what they stand for.

At any given time, if you participate in social media as an observer, you’re likely to see a lot of pictures and posts about many spectacular things. Vacations, wedding announcements, birth announcements, birthday celebrations, people buying houses, cars, stereo systems and many more.

I found myself flipping through photos on Facebook the other day, and I saw Bob was in the Bahamas, Pat bought a Porsche, Abby and Andy’s kid, Addie, was adding a sister at the end of April, and Karl had just PR’ed in a 5K.

As I saw these alliterative examples play out, I felt myself comparing my life to those of my online friends.

No trip I had ever been on looked as bougie as Bob’s Bahamian beach-capades. The likelihood of me ever purchasing a Porsche like Pat barely seemed precipitous. How would I ever add a sister for Addie, if my Andy could never even find an Abby? And maybe it was Karl’s 5k that really pushed me over the edge, but as I looked at the medal hanging over his neck, all I could think about was what a vein act it was for someone in their mid-thirties to flaunt their success in an event that was over in roughly the same amount of time as a short-block sitcom.

I could feel bitterness and jealousy just emanating from my being as I closed a browser window on my phone.

Why did my friends and acquaintances have things in their lives that made them seem like they were doing ‘better’ than I was?

What had I done wrong in my life that I hadn’t been able to enjoy rewards with a similar level of richness as I was witnessing in the lives portrayed by my friends’ online profiles? Obviously, they were smarter, more well-adjusted, better able to ‘play the game’ to build lives that were pleasing to them.

Meanwhile, I was taking a train to a sleepy town, to plod my way through another day in a sleepy office, working for a company nobody’s heard of, doing things that most people would never see. Twelve hours later, I would return home to my one bedroom apartment, do laundry, make my 15th trip of the month to the grocery store, eat a frozen dinner that was exorbitantly high in sodium, and go to sleep. Tomorrow, I’d get up, and aside from doing the dishes instead of laundry, and paying bills instead of going to the grocery store, the day would have a very high likelihood of being nearly identical to many before it.

At the same time, it was also highly likely that the next time I opened Twitter, or Instagram, I would be barraged with 100s more examples of people doing more and more cool stuff that made my life seem more and more below average with every further example.

Two Sundays ago, it finally smacked me upside the head what I needed to do. My phone sends me ‘screen time’ reports that summarize how often, and on which applications, I spend time on my phone over the course of the previous week. It adds up all the screen time and breaks it down into a daily average. Then, it allows me to see which programs comprise the total time spent on my device. My total for the previous week had averaged out to more than six hours per day looking at my screen.

Six hours.

I was usually only awake for sixteen hours per day. Eight of those hours were spent working where my screen time is limited. That only leaves another eight hours to be awake each day. And so, of those eight hours, I was spending 75% of my free time staring at my phone. Of that time, Instagram was a huge percentage. Then Twitter, and Facebook.

Good grief.

I reflected.

What was it that was happening on these platforms that was so interesting? I barely ever post on Instagram. I never post on Facebook. And while I read a lot on Twitter, a lot of the content I see on it just aggravates me.

Instagram and Facebook breed jealousy in me. Twitter seems to have turned into a cesspool of recycling different forms of hate from different points of view to make yourself feel smart, and make others look dumb.

I looked further down my most commonly used apps in my screen time report.

My Bible app only accounted for 2% of my screen time. My Audible app – the audiobook service I love – was only 1% My baseball app was only 3%. Golf was only 3% as well.

The things I love, I was spending less than 10% of my time on them.

What a terrible balance.

This past Sunday, after a week of trying to make a conscious effort to re-direct my screen time, I again looked at my weekly report. This past week, my average daily screen time was up over eight hours per day. It was Masters week, and well, the Masters App was just too good not to get lost in.

But as I thought about it, eight hours of screen time represented nearly every waking hour I wasn’t working during the week.

Sigh.

And despite having witnessed a great golf tournament, as I thought back through my week, none of the highlights happened on my phone. Last Saturday, I drove two hours to play golf with friends I hadn’t seen in ages. Saturday night, I made bread to take to a breakfast party my friends put together to watch the final round of the Masters. I walked at lunch with two of my co-workers and we enjoyed two days that felt like Spring.

Nothing on those walks was really ‘social media worthy.’ It was me and two old guys walking around town commenting on the construction progress of the new library.

My own golf game was so unspectacular, I posted my worst score since middle school. And yet, it will forever go down in my mind as one of the funniest time I’ve ever spent with this group of guys because of the unsalted peanuts that one of the guys brought to snack on during the round.

The Masters breakfast was amazing, but the bread I made never really leavened correctly, so any picture I may have posted would have just looked like a gross attempt at fulfilling my social obligations of attending an event.

As I spent Sunday afternoon thinking about the week, I realized it had been a great week.

I like taking the train every morning. I like the walks with my older co-workers. I love walking to the grocery store in the evenings. I feel accomplished when I get my laundry folded and my dishes washed. My blueberry bread may not have been IG worthy, but I was happy that I tried to make it.

The larger issues with jealousy and malcontent with some of the larger things that are either happening or not happening in my life are still issues I need to work through. No doubt. But it has become pretty obvious that comparing my life to the lives of others on social media isn’t helping at all.

And so, I’m going to leave the space.

I realize that in almost every instance of something that’s happening in life, you can’t always just leave, or run, or avoid your way out of a situation.

At some point, there are bigger things going on for which social media is an outlet to try to explain them. And those things need to be met head on.

If I wanted to dive down a few levels, I could probably surmise that my jealousy and longing that I’m feeling from social media are the result of other needs that aren’t being met in my life, but at least in this post, that’s as far as I’m going to go on that part of the topic.

What I will say, is that I want to try to stop comparing.

By every measurable, and immeasurable metric, I live a life that is blessed beyond compare. I’m healthy. My brain works, my family loves me. Anything you could possibly ask for on a macro level, I have it in spades.

As I look at a lot of the things that the world deems as being valuable – and a lot of the things I see on social media that I either don’t have, or am not partaking in – a lot of those things aren’t really my style.

Truthfully, if I were to go lay on a beach in the Bahamas for a week, I’d get bored. The sensible (and cheap) side of me would never want a Porsche. I have at least three options of where I could live, and I love Oak Park. I love my apartment. If and when I have kids, I don’t foresee being that person who will post everything they do for the world to see.

The more I look at it, the things that are getting me bent out of shape, they really aren’t even things I want in the first place. I just think I do because I have exposed myself to such a high saturation of other people who do like those things.

And so, I’m signing off. For a bit at least.

Here we are, it’s the day after Easter. Lent just finished. For 40 days, people observe Lent as a way to prepare their hearts for Easter. I’m going to do things in reverse. I’m going to stay off of social media for at least 40 days in recognition of all that I have, and as a way to recognize that life is going on all around me, and that my joy need not be impacted by comparisons to others.

I will miss certain parts of what social media does have to offer – updates from far away family, significant happenings from friends I don’t talk to on a regular basis, etc.

But, for now, those benefits don’t outweigh the overarching benefit I hope to gain from taking a step back.

Until then, I’m working on another book, Gramps’ birthday is soon, Mother’s Day in STL, hopefully some good golf, and lots of prayers.

And undoubtedly, a lot of joy.

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