Finding Gratitude - Finally

And forgive us our sins. As we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us when we hate what you love. Forgive us when we would rather anesthetize ourselves than feel anything. Forgive us for how much we resent in others the same things we hate in ourselves. Forgive us for the terrible things we think about our own bodies, bodies you have made in your image. And this one is hard, but please forgive us for thinking we know the hearts of our enemies.  From Nadia Bolz-Weber’s version of the Lord’s Prayer

Toward the end of 2021, I went to a nutritionist to help me with my issues surrounding Crohn’s Disease.  I had tried virtually everything, short of going on more aggressive medication that could potentially have side effects.  I don’t like taking any medication, but I’m most likely stuck with Mesalamine for the rest of my life, unless I can help it, and I didn’t want to expand further.  I decided to try a nutritionist that could help me at least deal with my issues as best as possible.

I introduced her to my current diet.  I was eating 2-3 breakfast bars a day to get through the day, and then I’d eat a light meal at night.  When I showed her the breakfast bars, her reaction was, “Why in the world are you eating those, they’re the worst thing you could be eating.  They’re full of preservatives that are terrible for you.”  Shockingly, I had missed the mark completely on my self care.

She put me on a 12-week diet to start with to try to essentially clean out my body.  Each day I was allowed to eat:

• Two eggs – plain, only salt and pepper
• One apple
• Two bananas
• One piece of white meat chicken – plain, I could have some olive oil for flavor
• One potato – plain, again, only salt and pepper
• Two organic shakes for calories

Every single day….  The humor in all of this was the apple was the one thing I just couldn’t do.  Felix Brockmeyer even sent a video of his daughter Finley teaching me how to eat an apple.  I still couldn’t do it.  

I was lucky enough to start this diet right before Thanksgiving and of course Christmas and New Year’s.  I had a very exciting holiday season for meals, and, unfortunately, Laurel got to experience the same, even though I encouraged her not to follow my diet.

Partway through the diet, in a moment of frustration or anger, Laurel asked me what I wanted to do, to which I replied, “If this is all I can eat, I might as well drive my car into the lake.”

Wah, wah, wah

If I can take a brief moment to defend myself before I go back to berating myself, I have spent my entire life completely healthy.  Until about 3-4 years ago, I can honestly say I’ve had virtually nothing ever wrong with me, and I’m coming up on 62 years old.  I had tears in my retina a few years ago, I got a blood clot in my calf a couple years ago, and of course, I got Crohn’s Disease a few years ago.  But, other than that, I’ve been completely healthy.

That can be a dual-edged sword.  On one hand, I’m incredibly thankful and grateful for all of those years of impeccable health.  On the other, this has been an adjustment for me, I’m not used to having to manage my daily life and having no idea what I can eat, and what it might do to me when I eat it.  

As I’ve gradually worked out of the incredibly strict diet to a bit of a less strict one, I’ve started discovering a new problem.  As I like to put it, my issue is probably 60-80 percent physical at the moment, and 20-40 percent mental.  I’ve become scared to eat.  My diet now isn’t really a whole lot better than the diet noted above.  I’ve expanded a bit, I eat some other meats, some other potatoes, some other food groups, but not much else.

When I’m on the road, I gravitate back to the strict diet.  I go to Whole Foods in each city and find various fruits for my hotel room.  I take my organic shakes with me.  I find the restaurants that have grilled chicken, and I get it served plain.  I can tell you who has the best plain, grilled chicken in any city I’ve been to.  

The side effects?  Over the last couple of years, I’ve lost 30 pounds.  I can assure you this hasn’t been a fun way to lose 30 pounds, if there is one.  The reality is, I don’t have the same energy that I used to have, and I probably struggle a bit mentally due to a lack of food feeding my brain.  On the latter point, some of you may be wondering, is there really much difference?

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but for the first 61 years of my life, I really didn’t like my body.  I really worry that I’m not alone, I think there are many of us who don’t love our bodies.  There is always something that we see in the mirror, that we perceive inside of us that makes us not find ourselves attractive.  I’ve spent my entire life not liking it for whatever reason at the time, in no order:

• I was fat in grade school (wait, no, my Mom said I was husky)
• I have incredibly tight hamstrings
• I’m losing my hair and look more and more like Doc from “Back to the Future” everyday
  
• I’m bow-legged
• I have a bump on my face that appears to be getting bigger and bigger because my face keeps getting thinner and thinner
• To say I’m as slow as a tortoise may not be fair to the tortoise
• I had allergies to virtually everything that grew when I was growing up and we lived in the country
• I’m blind as a bat (again, may not be fair to the bat)

OK, I’m sure I could come up with many more, but the point is well taken, I didn’t like my body for really no “good” reason, it was all fairly superficial.  As I’ve reflected on this, I’ve come to the conclusion for the first time in my life, which is sad really, that I love my body.  Now that I have something to maybe not like my body for, I’ve actually come to like and appreciate it.  So, what happened?

I guess I’ve finally gained some perspective.  I have two very dear people near me with cancer, and of course, like many of us, I/we’ve lost many people to cancer.  I don’t have cancer, at least not yet, and I’m thankful for that.

And really, to be honest, I have crohn’s disease.  A dear friend, Alyssa Firestone, has CROHN’S DISEASE.  I’ve had to deal with this for a few years, she has spent most of her life dealing with it.  And her issues are by far greater than mine.  I really have nothing to complain about compared to her.  And still, she has been an amazing friend to me throughout this.  She’s called me, counseled me, coached me, listened to me, sent me links to medical information, she has been incredible to me and for me throughout this situation.  I couldn’t have imagined going through this without her.  And her husband Drew threatened to punch me in the head the next time he sees me if I don’t get my shit together.  While it may not sound like it, this was a very well-deserved instance of tough love that I needed.

Laurel has been wonderful through all of this also.  While I’ve had the brunt of the diet experience, she’s had to be the one to make it work.  And she had to put up with a great deal of it also, or at least chose to.  I’m thankful for that.  And similar to the Drew situation, we’ve had some sessions of tough love, she didn’t threaten to punch me in the head, but there was a lot of raised voices as she tried to talk some sense into me.  We are still working on that as I continue to deal with the mental issues of being afraid to eat.

So I’m thankful.  I posted a portion of Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Lord’s Prayer above, if anyone wants a full

version, I’ll send it to you.  She does a beautiful job of this, but I love how she reminds us that our bodies were made in God’s image.  I was given this beautiful body, and no one ever said it would be perfect.  But I also have an obligation to take care of it the best way that I can.  If that means no more milk, cheese, tacos, pizza, bread, cookies, cake, pie, ice cream, peanut butter or God forbid, chocolate, so be it.  I will happily take this body that’s been given to me, I will embrace it, and I will be grateful for what I have, and I will do my best to take care of it.

“If you don’t take care of your body where are you going to live.” Amber Miskovich

Finding My Drishti - I'm A Slow Learner

Editor’s Note: As I often like to say, so much of life is a metaphor.  In yoga, drishti is a focused gaze, concentration, it’s essential for stability in postures.  I like to take it a step further and incorporate it into my life and use a further definition of a perfect presence of peace and oneness.  

As I’ve reflected on my life, it’s hard not to put everything into stages, particularly when it comes to my work life.  And as many of us know, we spend so much time at work, it’s hard to say that my work life isn’t a huge part, or even a dominant part, of my life.  In my case, too dominant…

As I look back, I can essentially break it down into three stages, but if it were only that simple, so much of what we experience and who we are is wrapped up so tightly in our DNA and upbringing.  As I unravel it all, and look back, I would view the first stage as:

Me, Me, Me, It’s All About Me!

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

The early part of my career was all about hard work and climbing that ladder.  You know, the ladder that will take you to the top, whatever the top is.  As I’ve shared before, I came by so much of this honestly.  My Dad at one point worked 18 straight years without a single day off, no vacation, no sick day.  I remember my brother worked three jobs early in life, he only took off Sundays, and that was the day he’d take care of whatever needed taken care of around the house.  So I had it instilled in me, you work hard, your company pays you to work hard, you give them everything you have.  And ultimately, all that hard work will pay off, they will notice you for all the hard work you put in, and you will get rewarded.

I have to say, this was all true.  I never really felt I was the smartest guy in the room, I didn’t have that smooth personality that many of my colleagues had, but I could work.  As I recently remarked to my boss Felix Brockmeyer, “I can outwork anyone”.  He quickly said, “I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of”.  More to that later.  But that hard work took me higher and higher.  This really came together when I was at Barco, I kept moving up, getting to higher positions, more responsibility, more challenges, more money.  I kept getting rewarded for all the work I was putting in.  I read all the leadership books, management books, I worked outside of work to be the best I could possibly be.

I remember traveling, flying to Europe probably 10-12 times a year, getting off a plane in Paris, taking the fast train to Lille, taking the slow train to Kortrijk, going into the office after an all-night flight, brushing my teeth and going straight to work.  A week away from home, working 12 hour days, eating late at night alone, going to bed, and getting up and doing it all over again.  I was living the dream!

In the meantime, I abandoned my family, I gave up child-raising to Laurel.  I used to say, I bleed Barco red, I gave everything I had to Barco, and I didn’t regret it one bit.  I figured someday I would retire from Barco, I wanted to give the company everything I had.  And then, Barco got a new CFO in Belgium.  And he took an instant disliking to me.  He made my life miserable until I knew he would either figure out a way to fire me or force me to quit, or I would have to make that decision myself.  

So I left.  Looking back, as big of a flaming asshole as he was, this was an incredible favor that he did for me.  I had missed so much of my life, all because of me.  Me, me, me, me, me!  I had found the price of success.  It was a life lived, it was raising my children, it was time spent with the person I love more than anyone, it was all of the important parts of life.  I don’t blame him, I don’t blame Barco, in fact I still love Barco, I blame me, the only person to blame in all of this.  I then moved into the second stage:

You Take Care of Your Family!

“Success Is My Only Mother Fucking Option, Failure’s Not”

This beautiful line from Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” belies the reality of what success meant to me at the time.  I had finally come to discover what success was for me at the time, and it was my family, and my children.  When I started interviewing to move on from Barco, I carried a folder with me with my resume, various work products, information about the company I was interviewing at, but I put this line on the inside of the folder with a picture of my children.  I wanted to always focus on what was driving me, what was success for me.  Taking care of my family.  Again, as we unravel who we are, this one was always driven into me from an early age, you always take care of your family.  And I was going to do that.

As a side note, for some humor.  When I went to interview at WIKA, I got a text right before going into the interview.  I looked at it, and it said, “We’re praying for you”.  Now, the funny part is that back then, Sean and Patrick would change Laurel’s text messaging, and she didn’t know how to change it back.  They had changed her text message signature to be from Michael Jackson.  So right before I went into my interview with WIKA, I got a text from Michael Jackson saying, “We’re praying for you”.  How could I possibly go wrong?  But I digress as usual…

I had improved, but I still had my moments.  I remember when Kelly was graduating from Kennesaw State, and I had my moments of hesitation, where I wasn’t sure if I could break away from work to go to the graduation ceremony, and then to dinner with Kelly.  Nancy Cox-Lupori, who had a wonderful gift for smacking me in the head with a 2x4 when I needed it, laid into me and said, “Steve McCullough, you need to go to the graduation, you need to be there for your daughter”.  Thankfully, I went, and I had a great time.  I’m also thankful that Nancy didn’t use my full name, Stephen John McCullough, like my Mom always did, but again, I digress…

Eventually of course, my children grew, and they left the house.  I found that I needed something else to be working for.  For about seven years, I taught in the evenings at Georgia Gwinnett College, and it probably represented the best time of my working life.  I felt like I was giving back something of myself to the students, I loved teaching.  Unfortunately, my travel schedule didn’t allow me to continue, so I had to give that up.

That travel schedule was taking me to Latin America quite a bit, I was going to the five subsidiaries that I was responsible for within WIKA Americas.  When I first started traveling to Latin America, I’ll admit, I was a bit scared, this was a brand new world for me.  I quickly found that I got to meet some of the nicest, kindest people in the world.  I’m so thankful I had the opportunity to experience this and meet and work with so many great people.  These experiences, teaching at GGC, spending time in Latin America, helped me move on to the last stage:

Finding My Drishti - Finally

Throughout my career, I worked in positions at subsidiaries, for the most part, until I became CFO at Barco and then WIKA.  I remember I used to hate corporate, OK, I exaggerate, I didn’t hate them, but I wasn’t a big fan.  Then I spent the last 14 years or so of my career being one of those guys.

I started realizing that I only had so many years left, and I wanted to do something that I enjoyed, and that I found more meaningful.  That led me to take the position of General Manager at WIKA Sensor Technology, I wanted to be somewhere where I felt like I could make a difference.

“Do What Is Yours To Do; Don’t Do What Is Not Yours To Do”

When I’m focused, I’m able to let things flow, I stay in my lane, and I let everyone do their jobs.  Quite frankly, we have a really good team here, they know their jobs, they’re very good at what they do.  But old habits die hard.  When things go off the tracks, my inner voices tell me, “work harder, take everything on, do it all”.  

Which goes back to the discussion I had with Felix a few weeks ago.  I had digressed, I had lost my drishti, and I was attempting to do everything because, well, no one can work as hard as me.  And it worked so well before….

Recently I had a call with Jim Zielinski, he works at WIKA Canada, but Jim and I worked together for many years at WIKA in Georgia.  As we talked, Jim started laughing and said, “I’m so glad to see you haven’t lost your passion.  Don’t ever lose that”.  It felt good hearing that from Jim, but I think it’s critical for me to remember, having passion doesn’t mean doing everything myself.  As I’ve found over and over again, I have a great group here that has a lot of passion, and we’ll be just fine if I stay out of their way, and let them do their jobs.  The reality is I’ve always had great teams surrounding me, that’s one of the things I’m good at, surrounding myself with good people, I just didn’t always realize or understand that I didn’t have to do everything.

 “As the ego surrenders, the heart expands.  As the ego stops working so hard to get its own way, life begins to take on an ease and rhythm.”  From “The Yamas and Niyamas”

As I was talking to a friend the other night, she talked about being in her 40’s and just starting to “get” things.  I told her I’m 61, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally started getting it.  It took therapy, yoga, reading so many meaningful books, really experiencing life, and who knows what else, but I really started getting it.  And occasionally, as noted, I fall back, and I lose it again.  But then, I breathe, and I find my drishti.  And I start repeating some of the little sayings that help me regain focus:

“Thank you for bringing me here”

“Mind the Gap”

“Trust in the Magic That Flows Through Your Heart”

And I remember why I’m here.

Finding My Drishti

 “On a very practical level, a focused drishti is essential for stability in postures… If your gaze is steady and focused, your mind will be too, and you can effectively maintain your equanimity… When you feel stuck or frustrated, it’s a sign that you are caught in a clouded vision of observer….the path through enlightened vision is through drishti.”

A few months ago, Laurel suggested I read “Perfectly Imperfect” by Baron Baptiste.  She knew how much I loved reading Rolf Gates’ books, so she thought this one would also be good for me.  Truth be told, I wasn’t thrilled to do this, I’m not a big fan of Baptiste Yoga, but I decided to read it anyway.  And then I read it again.  I loved the book, there were so many incredible sections to it, in some ways about yoga, but in many ways, about life itself.  I still go back and reference it, it has been so meaningful  for me.

One area that is yoga related that really struck me was the chapter “Steady Your Gaze” that talked about your drishti.  Your drishti becomes your focal point, where you steady your gaze to help you balance in a posture or in a transition from one posture to the next.  As I too often do, I tend to become obsessed with something, and I became obsessed with finding my drishti at the beginning of every class, and as I flow through class I “mind the gap” between one posture to the next by steadying my gaze.  I have found that if I’m really focused on being present in yoga, I find my drishti naturally, and easily, and I can keep the distractions to a minimum. 

In the past couple weeks, I haven’t been able to find my drishti.  I said the one day at the beginning of class to Laurel, “I’m trying to find my drishti”.  Her response was, “You keep looking too far out, you need to have your drishti right in front of you, it’s not supposed to be so far away.”  I got frustrated with her, and said, “It’s my drishti, not yours!”

And while this could all be as simple as that, I tend to believe that many aspects of our life have a metaphorical meaning.  My spidey senses were telling me that there was something much deeper going on, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I had lost my drishti, and I needed to figure out how to find it again.

As the year ended at work, I sent an e-mail to our managers and supervisors, reviewing the year, reviewing all that had happened, the difficulties, and ultimately the successes we had had.  I laid out the various goals we have for 2022, and as I noted, they are pretty daunting.  I believe we can achieve them, but I noted, most likely, along the way, we will have setbacks, and we will have to figure out how to overcome them.  Little did I know how quickly that would all happen….

When everything went to shit in the first week of the year, I thought to myself, well, that happened sooner than I imagined, but I thought, we can overcome this.  Over the past few years, I’ve grown in my ability to not allow work issues like this beat me down, and I figured I had these ones handled too, even though they were pretty significant.

Last week I went to Boulder to visit our facility there.  Each day, I had early morning meetings with our parent company in Germany, so I was getting up somewhere between 3 and 4 am every day.  On Thursday, I had back to back to back to back meetings starting at 6 am, so I set out a plan to accomplish everything I needed to that day.

As I’ve started to do over the last few years, I wanted to start the day with my physical and mental health.  I’ve developed a good morning routine to take care of me each day.  I wake up, and I read and I plank.  When I’m home, I walk with Laurel, and when I’m on the road, I usually run on the treadmill.  I’ve come to finally realize that I need to take care of myself before I can take care of anyone, or anything, else.

On Thursday, I set the plan to get up at 4:30, go to the treadmill, go down and get coffee, come back and call Laurel, read, do my planking and then shower before the 6 am call.  In between the first and second call, I would go to the office and take the rest of the calls.

The first thing that went wrong was when I went down to get my coffee, I forgot my room key in the room, so I had to get a new one made.  The next thing that went wrong was I forgot my power cord for my computer in my hotel room, and had to borrow one before I lost power.  And the final, and most embarrassing, was that I realized about two hours into my day that I had never zippered my pants in the morning.

If those three things didn’t tell me that I had a problem, my readings that morning were pretty prophetic.  I’ve recently started reading “The Yamas and Niyamas” and the section that day was about Creating Balance.  As the one section notes:

“Like the body, the mind and soul need time to digest and assimilate.  Like the body, the mind and soul need time to rest.  We create this rest by allowing space that we can breathe in.  Not more clutter, but more space, space to reflect, space to journal, space for closure, space for imagination, and space to feel the calling of the life force within us.”

And then from Rolf Gates:

“How do you know you are confronting a classic ‘hindrance’ on your spiritual path?  Just ask yourself: am I losing my sense of balance, my sense of priorities, and my sense of what’s really important?”

What probably struck me the most though, was a little comment Laurel made in the margin in “The Yamas and Niyamas”.  It said “just space”.  I had confused doing stuff for myself with creating time and space for myself.  While I was still doing my morning routine to take care of myself, really, it was just creating more stress for me, because I wasn’t really doing it, I was going through the motions.  I was reading, running or walking, and planking so I could check the box to say I took care of myself that day.

I’ve found, in my life at least, human nature tends to kick in and leads us back to what we are comfortable with in times of stress.  As I noted, I had grown in my ability to balance my well-being, my family with work demands.  I’m still not anywhere near perfect, but I’ve grown and gotten better.  But once the stress levels hit too high a point, I reverted back to my true nature.

I never realized how much the shitstorm of the beginning of the year impacted me.   My mode of operation always in the past had been when the stress levels get high, I use brute force to deal with everything.  I take on everything, and I work my ass off to make it happen.  I had reverted back again.  I was back in beast mode, take on everything, do everything, check the boxes, get it done, work until you drop.

And it worked so well in the past….

Yes, I had lost my drishti, and I’ve lost my balance.  I couldn’t find my focus.  And maybe, yet again, Laurel was right, I had set my drishti much too far in the distance.  I wasn’t patiently dealing with life one day, one moment at a time, I was miles down the road and missing all of the important details along the way.  Like fully dressing in the morning…

“I excite myself with my incompetencies” Yogiraj Achala

The good news is this is simply a part of the journey.  I spent the vast majority of my adult life believing that working myself into exhaustion was the way to “success”, whatever the measure of success really is.  It’s only been a few years now since I’ve figured out I really missed a lot along the way, and there are much better ways to be successful and the definition for success can be pretty broad.  Luckily, it didn’t take me too long these last few weeks to figure out I was out of balance, and I needed to reset. 

Am I being too hard on myself?  Well of course, that’s what I’m best at.  But I do accept that I’m simply disappointingly human.  I can recover, adapt, adjust, and I will find my drishti and balance again. 

Editor’s Note: The next blog post will continue on this journey, and yes, it will be fun.

Curse You Brene Brown!

Editor's Note: I debated sharing this post, I actually had a semi-sleepless night about it.  Ironically, Brene Brown covers this topic in her book "Daring Greatly" about perfectionism being the enemy of good.  But, my goal when I write a blog is that one person gets something out of it, so I'm hoping it does some good.  And I'm hopeful that Sheila, Ariel, Marlene, Bonnie and Abbe realize I'm joking.  But then again, I put you all in the same company as Brene Brown and Mr. Rogers, so that's not so bad.

And while we’re at it, curse you Sheila Ewers.  And Ariel Jaillett.  And Marlene Topping.  And Bonnie Pugh and Abbe Straw for that matter.  And practically any yoga teacher, inspirational writer, theologian, or therapist I know.  Curse you all….

OK, now that I have that out of my system, let’s get to the heart of the matter.

As I’ve grown older, and much, much wiser, I’ve discovered that certain of the “truths” I’ve been taught all my life, weren’t necessarily the truth. 

“Your greatest investment is your house”

“The highest compliment you can pay me is to say I work hard every day”

“You must find a church home”

Over time, I’ve found that on a certain level, these aren’t necessarily true, maybe at one point in time they were, but at various points, they’ve failed the litmus test of being the basic tenets of life to live by.

As I’ve come to discover the truth or untruth about these premises of life, I got excited to realize that there was another one that I could shoot a hole in, and I had planned to write a blog post about how it may be cited universally, but it’s really not true either.  It is:

“You can’t really love someone else unless you really love yourself first”

There are many variations to this quote, this happens to be one from one of my heroes, Mr. Rogers, so I guess I have to say curse you Mr. Rogers too.  At this point, I may be going to Hell.

“It’s a sad man my friend who’s living in his own skin, and can’t stand the company”

This one became vitally important to me because, like the line above I quote so often from Bruce Springsteen, I really don’t love myself, and I truly believe I love others.  But, so many really smart people seem to be saying that’s not possible, and I became excited when I started realizing so many of the hard and fast rules I lived my life by were not really correct, this could be one too!  I can love others without loving myself, all the smart people I read and know and respect are wrong.

Yeah, you can imagine how this went….

It all started innocently enough, we were on a yoga retreat that Sheila led and organized, and at one point, Sheila talked about this, and that’s when it first hit me, maybe this is all wrong.  Now, if you know Sheila, and if you know how much I respect her, you’d know this was quite the leap for me.  But that’s when it first hit me to challenge this and tell everyone why we don’t have to love ourselves to love others.

Then, I saw a post from Ariel Jaillett, who is so wise beyond her years, and it looked like this:

I commented to Ariel that I planned a blog post disputing this, I didn’t agree with it, I didn’t agree with Brene Brown, Sheila, anyone, I can love others and not love myself. 

“I’m with Sheila and Brene Brown.  You may think you love others but when you discover self love it’s like adding color to black and white pictures”

Ouch.  That one came from Marlene Topping.  I have no idea if this is an original quote from Marlene, or one she repeated, but it really hit home, there was something about the imagery, and it made me take a step back.

And then it continued to get worse.  Bonnie Pugh and Abbe Straw were leading a course at our yoga studio on Brene Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection”.  I love Brene Brown, I had already read “Daring Greatly”, which moved me a great deal, and Laurel had already read “The Gifts of Imperfection” and spoke highly of it.  (Side note: anytime I read a book after Laurel reads it, she highlights, underlines, puts comments in the margin, so I know where all the important parts are).

Early in “The Gifts of Imperfection”, Brene Brown discusses the whole concept of loving oneself to be able to truly love others.  It was a sobering moment for me as she beautifully shot holes into everything I was trying to prove.  There were many great comments, but the one I found most compelling came from a woman she quoted, Renae Cobb, who said:

“Certainly, the people we love inspire us to heights of love and compassion that we might have never achieved otherwise, but to really scale those heights, we often have to go to the depths of who we are, light/shadow, good/evil, loving/destructive, and figure out our own stuff in order to love them better.”

Check and mate. 

I decided to give it one last shot, as Princess Leia once said, “Help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope!” I spoke to Hailey, and while I anticipated the answer she would give me, I had to at least take one last shot at vindicating myself.  Hailey is my Obi-wan, she can always seem to say the right things to me.  But, yes, she confirmed what all the other smart people were saying.

We talked, and she gave me some of the old tools she had given me to try, with some new variations, and she gave me new tools to work on.  As usual, she was able to help me figure out how to move forward rather than spinning in circles.  She may not have given me the answer I wanted, but she gave me new-found hope to work through this struggle.

As I described to her, the funny thing is I think I’m frustrated the most because I feel like I’m so close to breaking the chains and moving to a whole new level.  I’m pulling on them, I’m stretching them, I can hear them weakening, but I just can’t break them, and that’s what’s so frustrating.  I feel like I’m so close, but I can’t figure out how to get there, and that makes it all the more irritating, it’s almost in my grasp, but it could still be a million miles away, it doesn’t matter, and as noted, makes it all the more demoralizing.

I took some time and went back through my blog posts to gain some perspective, and it’s amazing to me the pattern of what I’ve written, in some senses, what little real change there’s been over the years, and a recurring theme that pervades so much of what I’ve written, and simply doesn't change.

“I’m dying alive”

“I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter…I think it’s about forgiveness”

“I abandoned my family.  I didn’t take care of my family”

I’ve spent my life, judging myself, beating myself up, not loving myself, and I’m really getting tired.  As I’ve said to Laurel, if I’m not going to truly live, I should just drive my car into Alum Creek Lake.  I’ve just been reading “The Little Prince” (thanks to Sheila), and there’s the one person the Little Prince meets on his journey, a drunkard, and he drinks to forget, he wants to forget he’s ashamed, and he’s ashamed because he drinks.  In a sense, that’s the way I feel, it’s an endless recurring nightmare, a hamster wheel that I can’t seem to get off of. 

As noted though, my frustration lies in the fact that I’m so close to breaking these chains.  I have grown to use so many valuable resources to help me navigate this, Hailey, yoga, yoga teachers, great writers, theologians, unbelievable friends and family in my life, and of course Laurel, who has been the one to encourage me and inspire me to get me to do the activities that I’m doing.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention God, God put these people in my life, He gave me the tools to figure it out. 

I believe though, it’s up to me now.  Just like the story of the drowning man who shoos away people trying to save him, waiting for God to answer his prayers, and ultimately drowns, I can’t wait for God to swoop down and intervene, He’s given me everything I need to overcome this, I’m the one who has

to turn inward, take it inward and find that inner light that is so desperately trying to come out.

So as I vacillate on the continuum between driving my car into Alum Creek Lake and breaking the chains that hold me back, I keep wondering, what will get me off of this endless hamster wheel?  Self love will never come until I find forgiveness.  One has to come before the other, and that has to come from me.

As I’ve shared in the past, Dave Carr has inspired me to choose a word for the new year rather than New Year’s resolutions.  My word for 2021 was faith, and that one really led me to greater heights in my spiritual journey.  My word for 2022 is going to be forgiveness.  I need to make this intentional, to put in the time, and the work, to take the final steps needed.  I need to really invest in some of the tools and ideas Hailey has given me to break through, to reach a new level.  It’s time to break the chains.

Oh, and by the way, no need to worry, I won’t drive my car into Alum Creek Lake.  As Laurel has told me, Little Bit would miss me too much.

Faith

 “Tell me all your thoughts on God
'Cause I'd really like to meet her
And ask her why we're who we are” Dishwalla

I recently went back and re-read one of Dave Carr’s latest blog posts, “To The Next Person Who Sits At This Desk….” As I’ve often said, Dave is who I’d like to be when I grow up, and as I read his blog, I realized that many of the actions I intentionally do are what I’ve consciously or unconsciously learned from him.  Being fully present, face to face meetings rather than e-mails, handwritten notes, I practice these, and I learned them from Dave.  Plagiarism is the greatest form of flattery.

Another that I’ve learned and practice is not doing New Year’s Resolutions, but choosing a word to focus on for the year.  This year I chose “Faith”.  The reason was simple.  With the pandemic, it became harder to practice faith in a community in 2020.  Through 2020, I experienced a great deal of disappointment from a couple of the religious institutions I had grown to love.  I grew disenchanted with what Christianity had become as we continue to move further away from Jesus Christ and what He taught.  And I read the Bible.

OK, you may find the last sentence a little odd, and I did too.  With the pandemic, I expanded my morning readings with the intent of reading the entire Bible in a year’s time.  I’ve read various parts over the years, but I hadn’t read the entire book before.  I started with and finished the New Testament, and then worked my way through the Old Testament.  I popcorned around to various books, starting with ones I was most interested in.  

I eventually had to stop before I got too depressed.  I had always believed that the Bible was “God-breathed”, written by man, but inspired by God.  While I know I’m probably in the minority, I found many sections of the Old Testament to be at best, filled with meaningless minutiae and at worst, very disturbing and hate-filled.  For the life of me, if this is inspired by God, I have no earthly idea why.  While there are many parts of the Bible that are filled with beauty and words to live our lives by, and I do my best to do that, there are some parts that leave me completely dumbfounded.

As we moved from Georgia to Ohio, as I embarked on a new year, with my core foundations rocked, the Church, the Bible, where does that leave my faith?  

Have you found a church home?

Each time we moved throughout our married lives, Laurel and I always set out to find a church home very quickly once we settled in.  Maybe it was because we weren’t moving with children this time, but we saw no such need to rush.  As time wore on, we saw no need at all.  Through my entire adult life, I had lived with the hard and fast rule that you have to have a church home.  I saw something recently where someone said, “You need the church and the church needs you”.  Why?

I had started reading Rolf Gates’ “Meditations on Intention and Being” in 2020.  Rolf is a yoga teacher, but no offense to yoga teachers, that falls far short of describing him.  His writing and wisdom is astounding.  After I finished “Meditations on Intention and Being”, I moved on to “Meditations from the Mat”, and my feelings continued.  I mixed in Nadia Bolz-Weber’s “Accidental Saints”, Rachel Held Evans’ “Inspired”, Glennon Doyle’s “Love Warrior”, Brene Brown’s “Daring Greatly” and I felt myself growing more and more.  Very respectfully speaking, I was gaining as much insight and inspiration as I did reading the New Testament or some of the prophets from the Old Testament.

I had started doing yoga about four years ago with Laurel, but I was spotty, I traveled a lot, so I only went maybe one or two days a week.  Since we’ve moved, and I travel a great deal less, I’m able to go to yoga usually four times a week.  It’s hard to describe, and I think you really have to experience it, but you can get such a sense of community and belonging in a yoga studio.  Just like with anything in life, I’m sure there are some exceptions, but for the most part, you have unconditional acceptance in a yoga studio, no matter who you are or what you look like.  

“Each one of us is merely a small instrument.  When you look at the inner workings of electrical things, often you see small and big wires, new and old, cheap and expensive, lined up.  Until the current passes through them, there will be no light.  That wire is you and me.  The current is God.  We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, produce the light of the world.  Or we can refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread.”  Mother Teresa

As the year progressed, I was inspired to get two new tattoos of Scripture.  A few years ago, I got Micah 6:8 and Joshua 24:15.  I had thought at the time, this day would come, and it finally did.  In this case, I moved to the New Testament, I think my Bible reading inspired me, but to a greater extent, the world we live in inspired me.  I find that when I tattoo these verses on my arms, I also tattoo them on my heart, and I try to live by them each day.  I chose:

Matthew 22:39 – “And the second greatest commandment is love your neighbor as yourself”

I chose this one for a few reasons.  I remember years ago watching a sermon by Andy Stanley, and he spoke of the greatest commandment, which is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”.  He said, “You know what, don’t worry about this one, God is God, and He’s OK if you don’t follow this one, but you need to love your neighbor.  But that’s not so easy, because your neighbor is everybody, not just the neighbors that you like.”  He then went on to point out all of the people you may really not like, but you need to love them.  It was compelling to me, and really highlights where we are going horribly wrong.  We have lost our ability or desire to love our neighbor, we would prefer to build up our walls, and keep our neighbors out.  I need to change that in myself.

1 John 3:18 – “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth”

I think too many of us are allowing darkness to spread and aren’t willing to take action because of the consequences.  As noted, we like our walls, we want to separate from those who are different from us without realizing we are all so similar.  I need to be more willing to stand up, speak up, take action to produce light rather than darkness.  This became more evident to me these last few years as we faced the rebounding of racism in this country.  It never really went away, but it came back with a vengeance.

"Many religious folks insist on answers that are always true.  We love closure, resolution and clarity while thinking that we are people of “faith”.  How strange that the very word “faith” has come to mean its exact opposite." Richard Rohr

More and more, I’ve found that people need certainty, they need proof of God’s existence, proof of Jesus Christ being the Son of God.  They need proof that Noah really built an ark.  That Jonah really was in the belly of a whale.

I’ve grown less inclined to need that proof.  To be honest, I believe that a lot of the stories in the Bible are just that, stories.  I believe there are a lot of strange things in the Bible.  But that’s OK, I don’t necessarily have to have an answer for why the Bible is what it is.  

I believe in many ways the Church has lost its way, I believe we have lost our way, and the teachings of Jesus have been lost to us.  I also believe there are many really good people serving the church and attending churches, and it’s not my place to determine which ones of them are right or wrong, good or bad.  I just know, at least for the moment, the church isn’t the right place for me, and that’s not the church’s fault, it’s not my fault, it just is.

Have I lost my faith?  Oh my God, no.  Actually, I would tend to believe that over the past year, my faith, and particularly my spirituality, have grown immensely.  I fully believe in God, I am a devoted follower of Jesus Christ, and I feel the Holy Spirit in my life all the time.  

I also believe there is more to the story.  I remember one of my favorite quotes from another of my dear friends, Jim Dyer, “If that’s the way you believe God is, then we don’t worship the same God”.  OK, I probably butchered it, but his point is that if we are worshiping a God of exclusion, we aren’t worshiping the same God.  If I really read and believe in what Jesus said and did, I have a hard time believing that those who we choose to be on the other side of the wall, take your pick, homosexuals, Muslims, people who are pro-choice, are excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven.

And, to take it a step further, I’m growing more and more to believe what Laurel often says, the Kingdom of Heaven is here right now, it’s up to us to create it here on earth.  That gets back to the light.  We can choose to be an instrument of light, or we can let the darkness overtake everything.  I can find Jesus each day as I go to work, go to yoga, walk the neighborhood.  I can feel the Holy Spirit surround me and talk to me when I go on my morning runs.  I can allow the current to pass through me to spread the light of God.  I have faith.

Practicing Gratitude

 “It seems that gratitude without practice may be a little like faith without works – it’s not alive” Brene Brown from “The Gifts of Imperfection”

I shared in a blog post almost a year ago about our very difficult move from Georgia to Ohio and the various obstacles we encountered.  The move went for the most part about as badly as it could have gone.  We suffered a great deal of mishaps along the way.  Sadly, even once we got into our new house, it didn’t get much better.  We faced so many delays and problems getting furniture, as everyone is dealing with these days, and it made it impossible to make our house into a home.  It took 6-9 months to finally get everything we wanted or needed, and over the last few months, we’re finally settling in.

While I wish I could say that the business or work side of the move went much better, sadly, it didn’t.  We had a great business plan to develop our Columbus facility, moving into a new building, moving a production line from Georgia, winning a major customer in the aerospace industry, gaining our AS9100 certification, growing the business, making this facility into the hub for Aerospace business, the Americas hub for Force measurement, we had grand plans for development and growth.

So I set off as I often do, as Don Quixote to conquer my windmills with my trusted partner Sancho by my side.   It didn’t take long for me to morph into Bilbo Baggins, and unfortunately it became “An Unexpected Journey”.  Yes, I love to mix my metaphors…

We set out to find a new, bigger, better building to rent.  As many know, the real estate industry is painful these days, and we couldn’t find adequate space to rent.  We decided we would buy a building.  We found two different buildings to buy, and in each case, even though we were assured the owner wanted to sell, when we made an offer, we were told, “these buildings aren’t for sale”.  Well, how about we build a new building?  As you can imagine, land is hard to come by, building costs are astronomical, nothing seemed to be coming together.

As we struggled through the building process, the pandemic wasn’t very kind to us either.  Business just didn’t bounce back the way we hoped or needed it to.  The large Aerospace customer delayed us yet again, we couldn’t move the production line from Georgia because we obviously didn’t have a building to move it to.

While I’m sure this wasn’t the truth, nothing seemed to be going right.  Each day was a new adventure into Murphy’s Law. 

But then, it all began to turn.  We found some property, and even though it was more than we needed, we bought it, we signed a contract to have a building built, and we will have a new home, finally, midway through 2022.

We achieved AS9100 within eight months or so, which is unheard of.  We had anticipated a minimum of 18 months, but through some very strong leadership from our team (not me), we made it happen. 

And that large Aerospace customer?  They are back, and wanting to sign a contract before the end of the year.  OK, I’ll believe that one when I see it, but I will not give up on this one, we’ve put too much time and effort into it.

The picture above is from the Groundbreaking for the new building.  While one could look at this as the end of a journey, in reality, it’s the beginning of a new journey.  While I could now portray Laurel and me as Sam Gamgee and Frodo, I think I’d better stop while I’m ahead, not sure she would like being Sam, although I’m not so sure she would like being Sancho either.  But, as usual, I digress.

After a very long introduction, the point of all of this rambling.  It’s easy to lose sight of gratitude when things aren’t going quite how we would like them.  And it’s easy to bitch about your work, your company, the people you work for.  I know I’ve done it at times in my close to 40 years of work, and I know plenty of people have bitched about me over the years.  It’s easy to do.  It’s much harder to practice gratitude, and though it’s hard, it’s so worth it.  As that day happened, November 2, when we broke ground, I thought about:

An owner who has a vision and also cares about his people – There is no doubt Mr. Wiegand is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he also seems to have a vision for where the world is going, and where our company needs to be based on where the world is going.  But he has also done many incredibly kind acts for his employees.  I can’t imagine ever finding this type of leadership in a publicly traded company, and I also have to believe it’s rare in a privately held company.  He is truly unique.

Leadership that has a vision and a plan – Between the leadership in Germany and the leadership in Georgia, they developed a plan, a vision, and they stuck with the plan, and expanded the plan when it was necessary.  While it didn’t always seem like the right decision based on short term problems or issues, they stuck with it and carried it through even with all of the adversity.  They were very supportive and I really appreciate all of the support they gave me, even when I was questioning it myself.  I’m not ashamed to admit, when I talked to Todd Gardner before the groundbreaking, I got teary-eyed thanking him for all the support he and the leadership team had given us.

A great support system – I worked with the group in Georgia for 12 years.  I knew how good they were, I really believe we have a great team there.  Sure, we have our bumps and bruises along the way, but on the whole, it’s a very good, hard-working team.  You can really find that out when you need help.  And there were plenty of times I needed help.  I like to joke that if everyone woke up each morning and asked themselves, what can I do to make Steve McCullough’s life better today, the world would be a much better place.  I asked a lot, I received a lot, and in many cases, they did make my life better that day.

The people in Columbus – This group.  The dream of fighting a new windmill came to me on a visit to Columbus in early 2020.  I was there for a Kaizen event, and there was just something about the people there.  They are such an eclectic group, such a menagerie of personalities, I just really took to them quickly.  The picture below is of the team standing in front of Lake WIKA.

While the transition hasn’t been easy, nothing had seemed to go right, my feelings for this small band of people never changed, other than my feelings probably grew stronger.  There’s only a bit more than 30 of us, but it’s such a good group of people, a kind group, an incredibly hard-working team.  Just like with your children, no group you ever work with is your favorite, and they are all your favorite.  For the most part, particularly with the pandemic, many of us can work remotely at least a couple days a week.  Unless I’m going to be on virtual meetings all day, I always go to work.  I just love to be around them, they are just so much fun, they make my day.

A wife who will chase windmills with me and more – As noted, Laurel is always willing to accompany me when I am looking for the next windmill.  But it’s much more than that.  As noted, the search for windmills became an Unexpected Journey, and I’ll be honest, I was losing a bit of energy at times.  During a low period (not the low period, since there were so many), she laid into me, and gave me the ass-kicking she apparently thought I needed, and said, “You need to fight for this!  These people deserve this.  You need to do this for them!” 

Now, truth be told, I’ve never quit in my life, and I don’t imagine I ever will.  The picture here is what

is hanging in my office, I’ll never give up.  But, apparently, she felt or saw my energy waning, and I probably did need that reminder of why we were here.

“Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Brene Brown

Practicing gratitude.  No, it’s not easy.  It’s so much easier to bitch and complain.  Sometimes, it feels so good to do it too.  Practicing gratitude is hard work.  But when you do it, you feel so good, and so much better than when you complain.  You begin to realize all that you can be grateful for, and all that has been done for you.  November 2 was a great day because of the ceremony and what it meant.  But it was a greater day for me because I took the time to remember all the people who made it possible and why we were doing this.  Yes, it made me come alive.

Taste and See

"Instead of standing on the shore and proving to ourselves that the ocean cannot carry us, let us venture on its waters just to see" Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Laurel and I are coming up on our 39^th year of marriage, and I’m embarrassed to say that we’ve taken very few vacations together.  Over the years, we took our four children on many visits to grandparents, we did do a Disney trip once with them, but as a couple, we’ve gone on very few.

There was the first one, Virginia Beach, when the girls were little, we went to France when the boys were little, and about five years ago, we went to Niagara Falls.  We had planned to go to France on a yoga retreat last year, and then, well, COVID hit, and that didn’t happen. 

As we were gearing up for the rescheduled trip to France, we started running into some barriers along the way.  We attempted to renew Laurel’s passport, in plenty of time for the trip, and then the State Department greatly extended their wait times after we sent the renewal in.  As many times as we tried to contact them, by phone, e-mail, whatever means, we couldn’t get an answer from anyone.  Eventually, even with the website saying Laurel’s passport was in unknown status, it miraculously arrived. 

As we prepared for the trip, Laurel and I both had trepidation that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, or maybe something was telling us we shouldn’t go on this trip.  With the COVID numbers rising again, we didn’t know if it was a good idea or not.  To make matters worse, our one son Patrick is getting married the weekend after we are supposed to get back, and if we test positive, we may miss the wedding.  That would be a disaster.

What gnawed at me was the memory from our 25^th anniversary, when I had booked a trip to England and Ireland, only to cancel the trip right before we were supposed to go because of some important work meetings.  I was having those same feelings since this is budget season at work, but I couldn’t bear doing this again to Laurel.  I really wanted to make this work.

The day finally arrived, and we were off.  After a few flights, a long drive, we arrived at just an incredible chateau in the Bourgogne region of France.  We were greeted by our hosts, Sheila Ewers, our yoga teacher, and Mike Ewers.  As we settled in, I started having a mini-panic attack, we shouldn’t have done this.  I shouldn’t be taking a vacation.  I should be working.

You see, I’ve been raised to work.  At one point, my Dad worked 17 years without a single day off, no vacation, no sick day.  While I’ve improved over the years, I don’t vacation well.  I struggle separating from those things that I’m “supposed to do”.  Those rules to live by were coming back to the surface. 

I came for the yoga….

While I wanted to provide a great vacation for Laurel, I came for yoga.  Since Laurel introduced me to  yoga four years ago, my love for the total experience of yoga has grown and grown.  I love the combination of the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental growth I get from my yoga practice.

Before we moved from Georgia, Laurel and I practiced at John’s Creek Yoga.  I have a special appreciation for anyone who teaches, I taught for seven years as an adjunct professor at Georgia Gwinnett College, and while I always appreciated teachers for what they do, my respect grew even larger after that experience.  I am truly amazed at what yoga teachers do, to me, there has to be so much that goes into teaching yoga, the preparation, the theming, planning the movements, adjusting for the size or demographics of the class, I have to believe it’s very difficult. 

And then, there’s Sheila Ewers.  I guess one of the biggest reasons I have such respect for Sheila is that she uses and quotes literature so often.  I was an English major in college, and I tend to always gravitate to those who study and quote literature.  But it’s way more than that.  Sheila never “phones it in”.  Her classes are very creative.  The movement is fluid, you travel to new places, in some cases, you’ve never been to where you are going, you don’t anticipate where you are going, and it’s a beautiful journey.  More importantly, she themes extremely well, and she sets the stage at the beginning of class, continues the theme throughout, and pulls  it all together in the end. 

At our yoga retreat, Sheila didn’t disappoint.  Sheila weaved a beautiful tapestry of metaphors into our yoga practice.  In many classes, Sheila pulled in some of the greats of French literature, she used “The Little Prince”, Victor Hugo, Pierre Chardin.  She also used some of our adventures during the week, and themed off of those experiences.  Each yoga class was incredible, completely different each time, and a new journey to savor. 

And there was so much more…. 

I experienced such a sensory overload during the week, each day brought a new experience, a new adventure, so much to take in, it was overwhelming.  The countryside was magical, there were vineyards everywhere, there were castles, churches, fields, hills, valleys, it was truly a magical setting. 

At one point, in yoga, Sheila raised an awareness of the senses we were experiencing.  As I look back, I taste and see:

• The breathtaking balloon ride, the sound of the flame filling our balloon, the silence shortly afterward, followed by listening to the dogs, cows and other farm animals far below.  The sight of the group of cows, lined up together, curious to see who in the hell was in their pasture with that big balloon? 
• The wine tastings, the smell of the different wines, the tastes, the wine cellars that had been in existence for hundreds of years, still providing a sanctuary for the various vintages.  I have never tasted wines this amazing in my life, and really, I probably never will again. 
• The flowers, the colors, the smells, there was such an array of vibrant and beautiful plants that we saw in the country and at the markets. 
• The cold, crisp, clear air first on the balloon ride and then on the bike trip.  On the bike ride, I actually got a splitting headache from breathing in that cold, crisp air, it felt so good, and then it felt so bad. 
• The taste of real food.  Since I got diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease about two years ago, I’ve eaten very sparsely, blandly, safely.  Sheila arranged for our chefs to cook “special” meals for me, no  butter, no creams.  For the first time in two years, I was eating real food.  The mixture of joy and thankfulness was wonderful. 
• The markets, seeing people shop for fresh fruits, vegetables, bread, meats, it was such an experience to see the vibrancy, the hustle and bustle of a Sunday morning marketplace. 
• The song of the local people speaking their melodic language.  I’ve traveled to somewhere between 10-15 countries around the world, and I’m not sure anyone can make words sound so lovely. 

TTFN 

As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh (hence the name of my blog post).  Just like in the Hundred Acre Wood, we had our cast of characters on the yoga retreat.  I, of course, am Eeyore, and will always be Eeyore.  The misconception is and can be that I’m not having a good time because I’m Eeyore.  The truth be known, I love to be able to just be me, and be accepted for just being me. 

 On our yoga retreat, we had our share of  various other characters from the Hundred Acre Wood.  I’ll only reveal one thing about any of them, I found someone who had been born the same day, same year, as me, in the general vicinity, we were both born in western Pennsylvania.  That was truly amazing.  The only other thing I’ll reveal is that we did have some Tiggers, and I’m not so sure about the real Eeyore, but this Eeyore loves to be around Tiggers, they give me so much joy to watch and listen to. 

Thank you for bringing me here…. 

As some of you know, I’m a huge fan of Rolf Gates and read him every morning.  One of my favorite Rolf Gates days of reading talked about gratitude and being thankful.  So I start and end every yoga practice by saying to myself as Rolf suggests, “thank you for bringing me here”.  In those moments, I’m speaking to God, and I’m speaking to Laurel.  Without them, I would have never found yoga, and I wouldn’t be who I’ve become over the last few years.  Of course, I’m still a work in progress, but I’ve come a long way. 

But this thank you is broader.  There are so many people I want to thank.  As noted, vacations aren’t easy for me, and I could have fallen back, easily, into my normal routine of spending more time working than vacationing.  In fact, that was part of my plan going in.  But I didn’t, and that has less to do with me, than the place, the people, the experiences.  I truly enjoyed myself this week, and I’m so thankful for that.  I also stepped way out of my comfort zone.  I ate real food, which was huge for me, I went up in a hot air balloon, and I’m scared to death of heights, and I rode a bike for the first time in over forty years.  I stepped way out of my comfort zone, and miraculously, I didn’t die.  Yes, I’m kidding.  

In so many ways, I didn’t want this, I wanted it for Laurel, but I didn’t want it for myself, I didn’t deserve this.  But I needed it, and I loved it.  Thank you for bringing me here.

Ta-ta for now