The Detour and the Way Back

What's on my mind?

I moved those first two 5-gallon buckets into my office storage room and started experimenting—figuring out how much food waste each bucket could handle without causing harm to the worms or creating a smell in my office.

And slowly, without me noticing it at first, the worms became something bigger than a gardening experiment.

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The detour

I grew up on a farm. I left simply because I could see there was no room for me on the farm.

No one fired me. No one told me there wasn’t a job. I just looked around and had a sense that there were more people than were needed. My friends had gone to college and I wanted a change.

So I stopped working on the farm and got a job in town at a body shop. My love of cars pulled me from a body shop to a dealership, and eventually into my insurance career.

I love to work—and I can take it too far.

At the dealership, I would do my best to arrive before everyone and leave after everyone. Others might have had more experience or education, but they wouldn’t outwork me.

At one point I limited myself to five hours of sleep. When I wasn’t working at the dealership, I was working on a house I bought to fix up and sell. I worked 19 hours a day and loved it.

That kind of pace “works” when you’re in your 20’s.

Then, in my 30’s, it caught up to me.

High blood pressure. Mysterious vertigo spells. Two years of doctors with no diagnosis—just treating symptoms with medication. I didn’t want to start taking pills for the rest of my life. I felt too young for that.

By then I was married, had a small insurance agency that was starting to grow, and my wife and I decided to start a family.

Enter Jett.

When he came into my life, something changed in me. I wanted to be the best father I could be. I wanted to show him what was possible.

But my internal negative voice had grown. I was really struggling.

Shortly after he was born, I went to a dark place. Darker than I ever admitted out loud. I didn’t know how to carry what was happening inside me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep being here.

No one who knew me at the time knew any of this was going on.

From the outside, it looked like I had it all—wife, son, business, new house, new cars.

Inside, I was terribly unhappy. I woke up every day feeling terrible about myself, and I didn’t want Jett to grow up in a world where his dad lived like that.

At some point I recognized how much pain and suffering I would cause if I left. It would have been the easy way for me, but it would have created a huge hole for my wife and son to try to sort out without me.

So I started trying to figure it out.

A saying I’ve repeated to people around me for years is:

“If you can’t get out of it, you just as well get into it.”

I got busy living. The way I do.

Reading. Researching. Rabbit holes.

My physical health improved. I was able to stop taking prescriptions. I lost weight. I found some joy.

But the real shift came later.

After Leo was born, I became terrified of how much I hated myself inside.

I started therapy again—but I changed therapists. Carmen.

She is amazing. If she were reading this, she would remind me that I did the work.

And I agree. I did the work.

Her guidance has helped tremendously.

She helped me start meditating. She helped me build a morning ritual of gratitude with the Five Minute Journal. And she helped me start working directly on my internal negative dialogue—training myself to see the good, to look for a kinder interpretation, to celebrate mistakes as information instead of proof.

It’s been really hard.

I still have my moments.

But today… I want to live.

I wake up and want to live.

Field Notes - Part 2 of 3.