There were few things that made me happier in life as a child than playing games, running around and competing with my friends. The sensation of being totally absorbed in physical activity was all-consuming. When friends weren’t available to play, I’d still engage in games with myself.
For example, I owned one of those pitchback nets that allowed you to play catch with yourself. I was a good pitcher in youth baseball and would spend hours practicing with that net. I knew the entire lineups of the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates and would very honestly engage in full nine-inning games, calling balls and strikes against my own efforts in pitching into that net.
Finding ways to focus on something that interested me was never a problem in life. I could also spend hours drawing or painting without interruption.
But in school, there were a few problems with paying attention, especially when the subject did not interest me. Yet there was something more going on in my young brain. There were times when paying attention was not just challenging, but near impossible. I’d sit there in class with my head in a fog, losing track of everything that was going on around me.
We’ve all been caught daydreaming in school. This was something more profound than that. There were times when I could not force my brain to function in the atmosphere of the classroom. Had I been a child in this day and age, there definitely would have been tests administered to diagnose possible mental health conditions such as ADD or ADHD.
This is what a website describing ADHD have to say about the condition and symptoms: “ADHD symptoms may become more subtle and less noticeable—although they are just as important to identify. For example, symptoms of hyperactivity in children, such as climbing or running excessively, may appear in teens as fidgeting with their hands or feet and feeling restless. In addition, teens’ symptoms may include trouble with staying organized, paying attention, or an inner feeling of jitteriness or impatience. Teens may also continue to struggle with impulsivity.”
Some of these symptoms were definitely present in my life. For these reasons, I yearned for recess as a vital opportunity to go out and play. This healthy bit of “self-medication” made it much more possible to sit still in class. I knew this intuitively, but teachers did not always agree. One of their favorite methods of discipline was the take away recess as punishment for some classroom transgression. Of course, this only caused resentment and made matters worse by creating even more tension within the mind.
So I didn’t just want exercise. I needed exercise. The chemicals in my brain required a physical release to remain in balance. It’s true to this day.
My brothers and I joke that the condition we actually suffer from is Artistic Attention Disorder. Our creative minds cannot stop dreaming up stuff that is fun or stimulating to think about. Every day I write or draw because ideas pop into my head out of nowhere.
Beatle Paul McCartney recalls that certain songs, such as “Yesterday,” entered his head almost fully formed. He’d wake up wondering if he’d heard the snippet of a tune somewhere else. More often than not his musical genius was just taking over his mind.
I make no claims to be creating art on the level of Paul McCartney. Yet creative people do live in a dichotomy or tension between creative thought and the mundane tasks we all do to survive. It’s a perpetual competition for attention within your mind.
The same operative held true with my love of athletics. Sometimes I’d dream all day about how to pitch or run or play basketball. I was good at all those sports and helped win games and even championships. For that I’m thankful. Those pursuits opened up opportunities to meet people and grow in ways that could never be replicated in other ways.
Yet there came a time in life when I realized that sports were a preoccupation that perhaps I had better learn to control. There were self-esteem issues wrapped up in those successes, and a habit to think well of myself only when I was fit or in deep fatigue from training. To become a more fully actualized and well-adjusted person, I realized the dependency cycle of athletic training and racing actually needed to be broken.
At the age of 28, I backed off the competitive schedule that I’d been perpetually maintaining since I was 12 years old. All through college and beyond it had been some combination of INDOOR TRACK-OUTDOOR TRACK-ROAD RACING-CROSS COUNTRY year after year after year. But nearing the age of 30 years old, I realized two things. First: my struggles with anxiety and attention deficits were parallel and Second: It was time to change. So I made the conscious decision to work on those aspects of my mental framework.
That did not mean I quit running. Instead, running worked its magic in other ways than preparing me for races. It became a central tool for processing the events of life and wicking off stress as well. Now and then, I’d ramp up my fitness and run a few races for the fun of it. But life had its demands with raising children and it was best not to force a dichotomy between time and attention for my children and a competitive schedule.
As the years went by, I learned quite a bit about controlling my thoughts and maintaining focus. There were still the occasional dropouts such as lost sets of keys and the occasional botched work assignment or appointment. Depression entered the picture at times and that was only accentuated by life events such as the onset of my late wife’s struggle with cancer. But my former high school coach called me the day he found out about my new caregiving responsibilities and said, “Your whole life has been a preparation for this.”
It was at that moment I realized the value of my own mental health struggles. I knew how to be organized in the face of stress, and to be strong when necessary. But also how to be humble in the face of real need. It is that balance that I write about in my book The Right Kind of Pride. You can hear me discuss these issues in this radio interview from September 2016.
Ultimately technology such as my iPhone has helped keep track of those spaced out tasks and responsibilities that an active mind too often neglects. More than once I’ve uttered a “Thank God” when a reminder pops up on my iPhone in time to send me to a scheduled meeting. It seems simple, but it’s also critical. We are judged in life by our abilities to meet our obligations.
Now that I’m back competing again and training to some degree, I still keep a filter in place when it comes to preoccupation with athletics. It’s a positive tradeoff. Running and cycling and swimming help me calm the ADHD side of my personality. But neither do I let training and racing distract from the focus of what needs to be accomplished each day. The sports of triathlon are good for wicking off stress and affording time to process problems that are both complex and simple. But I resist the temptation to let those sports become all-consuming again. I’ve been there. Done that.
Instead, these sports are a great way to allow creativity to flow. So many times while out running or riding, I’ll come up with copy ideas, marketing solutions or painting concepts that I can bring to life when I get home. These solutions are savored and brought back to the workplace like gifts from God.
So I do not regard my Athletic Attention Disorder as a drawback or problem in life. We all need strategies to address the manner in which our brains work. Mine is all about stimulation, balance and release. And it works for me. I hope you have your methods as well.
Listen up, people. Marsupials are not “normal” like the rest of us mammals here on earth. In fact, they’re not mentioned in the Bible, and to that makes them ungodly. They run around making that nasty grin all the time. It looks like they are channeling the devil himself.
Speaking of Un-American, the opossums we have here in the Good Old U-S of A officially don’t even belong here. They evolved on some ancient continent named Pangeea, for God’s sake, and used to live only South America. But then they come up through Mexico when they heard about all the good garbage cans here in North America. So they are illegal immigrants and have spread all over the country like vermin.
So you can see why an opossum might actuall be moved to end it all for real, and throw itself off a bridge to splat on the trail below. That also answers the question why so many possums wind up as road kill. There is a high rate of suicide among social creatures who feel cast out of society. A creature so hated and unappreciated might feel it has little reason to live.
It is threats of this nature that likely drove our possum friend to throw himself off the railroad bridge last night. These are harsh times for possums or anyone else that does not hail from White Bread America. Word has it Trump has his eye on the raccoons as well.”We sure don’t need coons in this country either!” he yelled at the same rally. “Who knows where they came from? Let’s send them back right away! And make them pay for it! Look at their ugly little masks, and how they wash their food with those tiny little paws. And that tail. It makes them look like a jailbird!”
For all its Big Box glory and global commerce, America still tries to support its local treasures. One of those local treasures sits in the little town of Kaneville, 45 miles west of Chicago. As a farming town for more than 150 years, the community sits at the intersection of several country roads. There is a brightly painted blacksmith shop and several tall church steeples in town. One local bank has a small branch in Kaneville. To the east, a massive set of fields that alternates between sod and beans and corn as the market dictates. So Kaneville is both a town of perpetual values and constant change.
The real heart of the community is a general store perched at the corner of Main Street and Harter Road. Colloquially known as the “Purple Store” for its lavender paint job, the actual name of the business is Hill’s Country Store. Here’s what one reviewer says about the place on Yelp!
The woman that runs the store is Pat Hill. She’s a lovely gal with a big smile and a wholesome figure, pure country stock and with a genuine personality to mix. As you can imagine, running a business in a small town like Kaneville is as much about relationships as it is accounting, and Pat is dearly loved by the community.
I have personal experience navigating the world of health care coverage before passage of the Affordable Care Act. I spent eight years navigating the world of health insurance offerings from HMOs to COBRA to high-risk insurance policies. I worked for small companies that lived in fear someone in their employ might come down with cancer. The spoken belief was that rates would skyrocket. At times I actually hid my late wife’s cancer from employers for those reasons.
But that brings us back to people like Pat Hill and her small business. These are the real touchpoints in all this. No matter how good your coverage may be, all insurance policies have flaws, and many have lifetime maximums. The specifics of Pat’s situation aren’t necessarily public, but suffice to say that vital contributions are helping her cope with the costs of her medical expenses, staying alive, and perhaps even gaining clearance from the cancer now vexing her body.
So I invite you cyclists and runners and swimmers out there to consider making a donation to help this woman whose life and business is at the heart of both a community and a lifestyle. The Purple Store is a true gem of American uniqueness. So is Pat. So if you’d like to make a donations, please send money to Old Second National Bank, PO Box 90, Kaneville, Illinois 60144. There is a support fund set up for Pat Hill, so please indicate on your envelope what the contribution is for, and the bank’s employees will see that it gets to its ultimate purpose.
Then I came to the high school that I attended freshman and sophomore years. It’s always fun for me to ride a loop around the service road behind the building past the football field and track. Every February and March the track team would gather out on that tarmac to run intervals around the school.
The press box these days is low-slung, horizontal and covered with school propaganda. But back when it stood thirty feet tall and had a plain white surface from bottom to top. A close friend that hated going to high school was recruited to do a senior prank by painting a massive nude up the side of the structure. I knew the artist well, and by all reports racing through the junior high rumor mill, the female he created on that wall was, by male standards some might find offensive, “Good enough to eat.”
I don’t care what gender you are or what sexual orientation you might abide. For many people in this world, that statement about sexual hunger is true. Our appetites run from end to end where sexuality is concerned and sex is like a food to some people. Hiding these things only leads to trouble. It is better to exercise than diet, as the saying goes.
Thus it was age-appropriately ironic that as I pulled out of the high school campus on my bike yesterday, a giddy group of high school girls whooped and hollered at me from their car. That’s happened more than once over all my years of cycling, and I make nothing more of it than the fact that Girls Just Like to Have Fun.
whoops and hollers back in the day. Only decades later does one hear through a funny little reunion grapevine that certain women actually liked your
Only I miscalculated the fact that there was a deep rut before the concrete curb. My front wheel jammed against that, and I was thrown completely over the handlebars landing my head and left shoulder. Thank God I wear a bike helmet. I lay there stunned for several seconds, with head throbbing, then popped up and laughed. I let loose a long and loud rendition of the F word, then climbed on the bike, straightened up the right brake hood, and rode home. Chagrined. Ooops, I did it again.
I did learn that I am no 
Now that football players have come to the realization that they are not robots run by the NFL, the nation has been grappling with what it means not to stand during the National Anthem or recite the Pledge of Allegiance by rote habit.
These are the aspects of American citizenship that men such as Colin Kaepernick find so disgusting. There’s a lot of faux patriotic shaming going on now, mostly by people throwing patriotism around as it were a weapon unto itself. But that defies the nature of true patriotism, which is a commitment to the idea that the equality guaranteed in our Constitution is not real until it is provided to all citizens. That includes minorities, women, gays and everyone who lives under this nation’s flag.
We saw Bonnie Raitt in concert a few weeks ago. She’s a truly amazing musician. I’d seen her once before, many years ago, in a double bill with Jimmy Buffett. She deferred to his raging fame at the time. But truly, she’s always been a great talent on her own.
During a cross country season my sophomore year in high school, a friend and I were paired up to do an outdoor field biology project. His name was Doug Benson, I believe, who was a teammate and friend.
The sad aspect of this story is that Frank Kaminski later took his own life. He was a hugely overweight man. Perhaps that contributed to his decision to end is days here on earth. Or perhaps like so many, he suffered from a clinical form of depression as do so many millions of people. Back then the stigmas to mental illness were much greater and medications were not so refined. His immense weight often caused him to sweat and he breathed heavily while lecturing. Physically, life had to be difficult for him. And mentally as well. For whatever reason, he checked out for good.
I was quite sad on hearing that news. I can still see the twinkle in his dark eyes as he would ask me to cite my favorite bird. I told him it was the kingfisher, and he smiled. “A lovely bird,” he replied.
