After much work, the Reboot Hockey Off-Ice Training Manual is now available for purchase.
This is my first attempt at self-publishing, so go easy on me.
For the initial run, I am asking $11 for a digital copy. After payment, I will e-mail you a copy of the book as a PDF. You will also receive a password which will unlock the file. You can then save and print the Manual as you wish. In the coming days, I will automate this process so that you can download the book immediately.
The Manual checks in right now at 241 pages, and believe it or not, this is a very condensed edition of the book. The Manual will only get longer as new information and products become available. Your purchase of the Manual entitles you to all future editions, even if I later opt to increase the price of the Manual.
If you want to purchase the book with no additional soft-selling, here are the purchase links:
If you need a little persuading, here are some of the topics that the Manual covers:
Choosing an Ideal Hockey Stick, Version 2.0
How to Optimize Your Hockey Skates
2016 Hockey Skate Buyer’s Guide
Diet, Supplement, and Training Recommendations
Considerations for Flat Feet
Technical Points on Hockey Skating
As a bonus, I am also including full Diet and Training Programs, upon request and after a liability waiver is completed. If I was including nothing more with the book, I think a personalized Diet/Training Program completed after consultation via e-mail makes the book a high-value purchase, but I’ve included plenty with the purchase.
I’ve created an e-mail specifically for those who purchase the Manual: RebootHockeyHelp@gmx.com. If you have any questions about the content within the book, or would like my help in designing a Diet/Training programs specifically suited to you, I am at your service. I will answer questions and help with Program Design as quickly and thoroughly as sales dictate and time permits.
But let’s assume you have your Diet and Training in order, and only care about the Hockey-specific content. Here is an overview of the content provided in the 1st edition of the Reboot Hockey Off-Ice Training Manual:
Choosing an Ideal Hockey Stick, Version 2.0 is a re-written guide to selecting the Hockey Stick that will help you get the most from your game. Almost anything and everything you could possibly want to know about Hockey Sticks – History, Marketing, Performance, Pricing, Technical Detail – is included within the section.
Choosing an Ideal Hockey Stick, Version 2.0 covers all the Retail Blade Patterns available as of April 2016, and can greatly help in future purchasing decisions. This section will help readers of all experience levels better understand the core principles of shooting and stick-handling, and in turn guide them toward the equipment products that will maximize their play.
The current version of Choosing an Ideal Hockey Stick checks in at 78 pages, and I will continually update the section as new products and information become available.
The 55-page section on How to Optimize Your Hockey Skates will help you get the most from your current pair of skates, and help you build some preferences for when you decide to purchase your next pair.
To that end, at the request of my editors I’ve included a 2016 Hockey Skate Buyer’s Guide, which I believe will help you make a strong purchasing decision. This section contains the most-current information available as of April 14, 2016, the first day I made the Manual available. I will also update this section as new products are released so that Reboot Hockey readers have the most up-to-date information at their disposal.
Between those three sections, I can guarantee that I will save you $11 when you opt to purchase your next stick or pair of skates. As someone who’s been through dozens of Hockey Sticks and 20 pairs of Hockey Skates in recent memory, I implore you to learn from my purchasing mistakes, almost all of which I’ve detailed within the Manual.
If that’s not enough, I’ve included sections on the Anatomy of a Hockey Skate and Technical Points on Hockey Skating that can benefit players of all experience levels. If you are new to the game and looking for an in-depth explanation on the way Hockey Skates are constructed, I believe this will suit you well. If you are an experienced player looking to learn more about the game, I believe I’ve included enough insight within these sections that they will still prove valuable to your continued development.
My Diet and Training Recommendations are exhaustive and exhausting. My education and passion is Exercise and Health Science, so if you have any interest in either topic, I assure you that the Manual will give you your money’s worth. But if for some reason you find the Manual light on Diet/Training information, a few e-mail exchanges with me will fix that in a hurry.
If you purchase the book, read it, and find that it’s not what you were looking for, again e-mail me (RebootHockeyHelp@gmx.com) to help me understand ways in which I can improve the book for future editions. Right now, I am offering a conditional full refund for people who purchase the book and don’t find it helpful, with the condition being that they help me improve future editions of the book with constructive, courteous feedback.
Because this is the first edition and because I’m only promoting the book via the blog and the Reboot Hockey Facebook page at the moment, I am not going to go overboard on a Jordan Belfort-level hard-sell. Reboot Hockey readers know the quality and type of content Mark and I produce, and you’re going to have to trust that I wrote the hell out of this thing. Again, if you buy it and hate it, I’ll probably give you a full refund as long as you aren’t a huge jerk to me.
The people who have supported Reboot Hockey have by far and large been considerate and shown great passion for the game. In response, I have tried to cram as much value as absolutely possible into the first edition of the Manual, and I am sincere in my offer to provide as much support to purchasers as I can.
I will continue to provide plenty of free content via the Reboot Hockey blog in the form of Honest Hockey Reviews and interviews with equipment manufacturers. But in order for me to continue devoting time to creating free content, I have to charge something for some of my lengthier content. I believe I have kept the price for the Manual reasonable, and I hope that after reading you find the Manual to be a great investment.
Thanks again for supporting Reboot Hockey, and best wishes in your continued progress as a Hockey Player.
This isn’t an anti-female rant, it’s a sensitive people rant. So if you looked at the picture above and felt outrage, you’re part of the problem.
American society is comically oversensitive, and that’s not news. But I’m waiting for the tipping point back to sensibility and rationality with anticipation bordering on anxiety, like a kid lying wide awake at 3AM the night before Christmas. Santa is coming, but when will he get here? I can’t take it much longer!
And I’m probably supposed to preface my use of Santa, as opposed to some alternate figure that doesn’t force my patriarchal, Anglo-Saxon, Christian-tinged belief structure on readers 🙄. But man, am I tired of apologizing for my life experiences.
I am an athletic, conventionally-handsome white guy. This was the hand I was dealt. But I try to mitigate preconceived notions and streamline life by being good to most people. I hold doors for old ladies, and ask most people how they’re doing if they look sad. I maintain a sense of humor. I pay people back if I owe them money. And I try to be respectful of everyone’s unique life experiences. I really do.
But people are angry, and a lot of them are looking for a punching bag. And I’m a smug-looking loaf of Wonder Bread in American Flag packaging. People continue to judge books by their covers, and I continue to receive more than a fair share of undue hostility.
I ask of people what my problem is, because I’m interested in ongoing personal growth. This is the typical response:
You’re too honest
You’re too harsh
You’re too direct
Or some variation thereof. I’ve been hearing this from age 5. I’ve gotten better at sanding down some of the rough edges, but this is a pretty automatic response:
Q: How do I look?
A: You look better in black.
There’s always logic attached, and objectively I’m usually right. But people want validation, not the facts, and remain apt to shoot the messenger. And I’m too proud to lie when asked such questions directly.
I have a God-given talent for deconstruction. If you give me a chessboard or a hockey defense or a woman with delicate self-esteem, I will pick it apart without thinking. It’s not necessarily charming, but it’s one of my major attributes.
Lastly, I make jokes. I’m a ball-buster. I tease people hard. The word “jocular” aptly describes me. But there are almost no forums in which I can showcase this marvelous wit that the Lord gave me without sending someone into an apoplectic tizzy.
As one would expect, all of this leads to confrontation, particularly in our current oversensitive climate. I can’t order a cup of coffee without triggering someone.
Anyone with a working brain recognizes that western society has gotten grossly oversensitive. Even if you restrict yourself to the most banal, boring conversation topics, someone listening from across the room is going to wait until you use the word “man-made” in a sentence and launch into a damaging-language tirade. A lot of people are just waiting to snap on someone like a mousetrap.
As I wrote above, the main issue is that people are mad, and most of them really don’t understand why. Common-sense reasons like money problems and lack of direction in life require someone to ask her or himself hard questions. And addressing your own shortcomings isn’t nearly as cathartic as campaigning to get someone fired or tearing someone’s reputation to tatters over an innocuous comment.
Pretty recently, I referred to Caitlyn Jenner as Bruce Jenner in front of a pair of hypersensitive women. Both women have a history of being abused, and both are basically coiled springs waiting to unfurl on anyone or anything that that they perceive to be diminishing to women.
So naturally, the appropriate response to me uttering the words “Bruce Jenner” is to go on a hysterical, pitched twenty-minute duet diatribe about what a horrible human being I am. 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏻♀️
It doesn’t matter what we were talking about. It was light, casual conversation, and I didn’t say anything derogatory. We were probably talking about the Olympics or running, because that’s the context in which I would’ve said “Bruce Jenner”.
And the fact that this person changed genders does not change the fact that Bruce Jenner kicked all sorts of international ass for the United States of America.
People who know me know that I basically drape myself in the American flag, but I guess I have to disregard how well Bruce Jenner has represented my country in athletics because gender politics take precedence.
I can be a jerk. I’m always working on it. But as the kids say, the oversensitive part of the population needs to slow their roll.
Because what’s going to happen if we keep going downhill at runaway speed on the sensitivity issue? Given the climate in 2019, what’s 2025 going to look like?
(I’m anticipating World War 3 around the time of the 2020 US Presidential election. If President Trump gets re-elected, I expect Watchmen or Purge-level anarchy and unrest. God-willing, I’ll get to see Avengers: Endgame before this dystopia inevitably comes to pass.)
As a suggestion, try being a hair less sensitive. It’s like recycling: if everyone puts two cans or bottles into the recycling bin instead of the trash every day, we have no overflowing-landfill problem.
As a sample exercise, if you hate the President, try not to assume that I’m a radical right-wing douchebag because I used his name in a sentence. It’s surprisingly liberating to not die on a hill of imagined indignity every eight minutes.
Next, try letting someone say something abrupt or curt to you without emailing HR or calling the cops. Stop complaining to restaurant managers about nonsensical shit. Grow some thicker skin.
Sure, there are times when confrontation is required – Lord knows I subscribe the idea – but maybe reconsider what an appropriate response is or isn’t. Discourse is rarely a bad idea, and while there’s definitely language that’s unacceptable in 2019, people need to stop defining themselves by how upset they get over perceived slights.
Go paint a picture or build a house. Do something worthwhile. Take that wellspring of negative energy pent up inside you and create something positive.
That’s all I’ve got for the moment. My sincere hope is that the next generation – maybe the kids who are like 10-22 right now – will be so sick of watching people snap and yelp at each other like huffy Pomeranians that composure and personal responsibility will come back into style in 5-10 years. I just wonder how out of whack the Oversensitive People Problem will have the world by then.
I am in many ways a carbon copy of my grandfather. We look, act, and think similarly. We often draw many of the same conclusions about life and people.
We were riding in his truck one day when he asked me, ever testing, “what’s the most valuable thing you can give someone?”
“Your time,” I replied instantly.
My grandfather nodded. Of course that was the right answer, though he maybe suspected I would say something different. He proceeded to carry on with whatever point he was trying to make.
I have always valued time preciously, certainly more than money. It’s not a view most people share, and that’s always baffled me.
My current job is horribly wasteful with time. I do so much pointless sitting-around that I started writing on here again if only as an alternative to scrolling through Twitter. At least in writing, I’m apt to improve with every paragraph logged, if not learn more about myself or push others to alternate or deeper thinking.
I watch my co-workers, and they are so eager to milk the clock. I have one foot out the door the minute before my shift ends, but most of my co-workers will gladly sit around and get paid pennies in exchange for ever-dwindling strands of time. Their skin withers and their hairlines recede, and they gleefully yuk it up for a few extra hours on the company clock.
For this reason, I’ll probably never be employee of the week. I’m out the door like Calvin sprinting out of school the moment my shift is over.
It almost physically pains me to have my time wasted. I’ve written this a number of times, but my number one pet peeve, with a bullet, is standing in line. If I stand in line for more than 15 seconds at a grocery store, I’ll turn around and put things back on the shelf. That’s how valuable my time is to me.
My time is so valuable to me that if it’s a choice between my time and someone else’s, I’ll often waste theirs. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve left my friends waiting for me at a restaurant so I could do one more set at the gym or sleep 15 more minutes.
I’m not horribly rude or selfish in every respect. But when it comes to Time, I protect it like a diamond.
Maybe I saw Fight Club too often, too young in life. I am very aware of my own mortality. The knowledge that I’m eventually going to die rarely leaves the forefront of my mind. It’s too morbid for some, but it’s the truth, and if anything it only makes me grateful for each additional day.
You’ve gotta go to school or work, unless you’re some lucky endowment brat. But you need to constantly weigh professional concessions and obligations against the reality that your Time is finite.
This is a basic message, but one people put aside because they don’t like thinking about their own demise. For sure, you are going to die one day. Did you do things that made you happy or proud of yourself, or did you suffer in someone’s stead? Did you debase yourself, or would you be able to look back on most of your life with satisfaction?
My personality makes a lot of people uncomfortable or upset because I live with the understanding that I’m not going to live forever. I notice it everywhere, but perhaps no more so than in Dating.
Way too many of the women I’ve dated have lacked a proper appreciation of Time. They let hours or even entire days lapse under the delusion that Time is an endless bounty. They waste Time like it’s a currency – which it is – but too many of them tend to treat Time as something frivolous, when it’s obviously precious. It’s infuriating, and a deal-breaker.
I have the opposite problem. As soon as I determine that a person is wasting my time, I cut them out of my life. This leads to what most would see as erratic behavior, but that’s how much I respect Time. I am not going to waste a solitary minute on a person that takes value from my life unless I absolutely have to. It amazes me more people don’t look at things that way.
Respect Time, and it’s value. I’ve met a lot of people at the end of their lives who would very gratefully take on your bullshit problems in exchange for a few more weeks or months.
Use your time wisely. Maybe you don’t write, but maybe your draw or photograph or make music. Maybe you develop your body. Create. Read. Educate yourself. Live. Appreciate now. And don’t let the bastards take much of your time from you.
Lastly, spend your time well. This will roll into #102, but do some digging and figure out what will make you happy with yourself. It’s probably not the same thing that society or even your friends and loved ones believe will make you happy. Give details to your dreams, and then sprint at them.
Enjoy yourself. In most cases, its later than you think.
(UPDATE: 7/19/2015 – I rarely edit my articles for content, but I’ve been a concussion-addled mess for the better part of a month. I finally noticed a decent amount of clarity last Friday the 16th, and while the first draft of #96 wasn’t embarrassing, upon review I thought it needed some tightening. This update is the post-concussion version of #96, which I hope paints a more-complete picture.)
One recent article in particular struck a chord with me. It’s a piece by Chicago Blackhawks forward Daniel Carcillo, in which he pays homage to recently-departed former NHLer Steve Montador. Steve Montador, “Monty” to his friends, suddenly died in his home in February 2015. Montador had been instrumental in helping Dan Carcillo, among others, acclimate to life as a professional hockey player and helped Carcillo cope with substance-abuse issues.
As per the Montador article, here are some of the symptoms of CTE, as explained by Steve’s father:
“…depression, memory loss, vertigo, nausea, and insomnia.
The concussions “had significant impact in terms of memory loss, thinking, decision-making — all kinds of things that were difficult for him near the end of his life,” Montador’s father said.
“He would forget things within minutes. And he knew it. He realized it. He was trying to relate it to the concussions or depression or whatever was causing those things.”
The effects of CTE and repeated concussions are just heartbreaking, but they are an inherent risk that contact-sport athletes consent to. Stories like Steve Montador’s, tragically, are not so much rarities as they are rapidly-growing concerns, or even an epidemic.
If you skipped the Carcillo article linked above, at least watch this brief video of Carcillo talking about his friend Montador:
Carcillo makes a call for a stronger “exit program” for NHL players, as many players end up leaving the League not only in damaged physical condition, but also with very limited job or practical skills. Carcillo is certainly right in calling for the sport to do a better job taking care of it’s players, and his take on the concussion-related issues that afflicted Steve Montador is harrowing.
(UPDATE: Dan Carcillo abruptly retired from the NHL to found the player-support program known as Chapter 5, named after Steve Montador. Say what you will about Dan Carcillo the hockey player, but Dan Carillo is a conscientious human being.)
Montador’s story is tragic, but is hardly the first of it’s type. Other notable athletes whose lives ended due to CTE symptoms include for NFL stars Mike Webster and Junior Seau, among others. You can read their respective tales of tragedy via the links above.
All of this information would be troubling under any circumstances, but here is why all of this is so personally-relevant to me:
Concussion #8 (?)
In mid-June 2015, I took a hard elbow in a hockey game where the lower jaw meets the ear on the back of my head. I don’t remember all of the details, but I remember that I was on a half-breakaway. I’m a left-shot player, and I was cutting across the goaltender from my left to my right on my forehand. I thought no one else was around me except for the opposing goaltender.
The last thing I remember is a player with red gloves/pants nailing me behind the right ear with either his hard-cap elbow pads or the butt-end of his stick.
My legs immediately gave out, and I laid face-down on the ice for what was probably only 15-20 seconds, but felt like an eternity. My eyes were open, but I could only see black. It was the loneliest feeling in the world. I vaguely remember thinking, “that was the hit that finally put the lights out.” I remember that it felt like dreaming.
Slowly, my vision returned, and I realized I was looking at the ice as the black gave way to white. I could now hear a player from the other team calling for the officials to blow the play dead, but as my vision returned I got to my feet and skated back into the play. A teammate of mine later said I was stumbling, and he originally thought that I had injured one of my legs. Hello, concussion walk.
As I write this, I’m getting angry remembering the game. I am not a player who goes down easily or flops to draw calls, but amazingly neither official saw a penalty on the play. I got off the ice as soon as possible because the right half of my head was killing me, but finished the game.
The player who hit me had been running around like an asshole all game long. He had taken two separate runs at one of my team’s better players, and earlier in the game had run our goaltender. He was playing an adult-league game recklessly at best, and at worst he skating around trying to hurt people.
My philosophy in hockey, particularly adult-league hockey, is Shut Up and Play. I remember yelling from the bench at my notoriously-chatty goaltender earlier in the game to “get back in the crease and shut the fuck up,” as he was crowing at the player who ran him, meaning the same player who would later run me.
I didn’t go after the kid earlier in the game, before he had the opportunity to seriously hurt someone, and that was a mistake on my part. I had failed to enforce the Spider-Man Rule, which is that you deal with or neutralize a potentially-problematic person before he or she does something that can’t be undone. Because I failed to act earlier, I ended up the victim of my own restraint, and now the proud recipient of no less than eight concussions.
Anyway, a bit later and with a little encouragement from me, this asshole was kicked out of the game early in the third period. The genius had managed to rack up five minor penalties in just over two periods of play, and that didn’t include the elbow/butt-end on me or the run on my goaltender. But it was too late. I knew I would be spending the next few days, at least, in the quiet room.
To the kid’s credit, he later came and tried to apologize, but I wasn’t having it. He was mercifully pulled away from me before I could fight him. I was livid, as the combination of my throbbing head and my disdain for dangerous beer-league players didn’t leave me in the most diplomatic mood. In fact, I often wonder if the number of knocks to the head I’ve taken have permanently altered my mood, which I’ll try to explain in the next section.
Backstory and Perspective
I need to rewind a bit in the interest of making a few points.
My first point is about who we are versus who we may have become, and I’ll use myself as the example:
I was born intellectually-gifted. I routinely got “99” on those standardized tests that are given to grade-school kids, and I was once reprimanded for bringing home a report card with a “B” on it. I got a 1390 on my SATs, finished high school with a 4.25 GPA thanks to Honors class weighting, and got a large academic scholarship to a very well-regarded private university.
All of that means nothing, as I’ve largely squandered my academic and intellectual gifts by using my head as a battering ram for the past two decades. But there was a point when my brain was an uncashed lottery ticket.
That time has seemingly come and gone, and noting that my memory is basically garbage at this point, a look at my college transcripts can pinpoint the exact time period that everything changed for me.
In January of my Senior year of college, I got my fifth or sixth concussion playing hockey. Within the same month, I got my sixth or seventh concussion playing hockey. I have only the most vague recollection of the situation in which I got each concussion, but I kind of remember getting two big hits to the head within a few weeks of each other early in my Senior year.
Back when I was playing in college – and this was circa 2007 or so, not 1974 – concussions weren’t really treated as a big deal. Are you awake? Can you stand? OK, shake it off, get back out there, and skate a little harder.
In fact, it really took an epidemic of head-shots in the NHL – most notably the shots taken to the head of NHL poster-boy Sidney Crosby – to raise awareness about concussions. As I’ve tried to explain to people, a concussion isn’t like a broken bone or even a bad bruise, because barring a CT Scan or an IMPACT test, there’s no tangible evidence. Because concussions don’t leave telltale signs, historically they have been marginalized compared to more-obvious injuries.
Anyway, after taking two concussions early in my Senior year, I proceeded to fail five of the six classes I was enrolled in. My mother was understandably beside herself, as I hadn’t gotten anything lower than a B-minus in my entire academic history, and also understandably she assumed drugs and/or the alcoholic she-devil I philandered with were destroying my life.
It was infuriating to try to explain the situation to my mother, and of greater concern, I was worried that she would try to make me stop playing hockey if I fessed up and told her the full truth. It’s almost ten years too late, but here’s the truth as I remember it:
My head killed me almost 24/7, but because I was this indestructible meathead college hockey player, I didn’t say anything about it. I basically did the worst things I could have possibly done, which included 1) no medical treatment, 2) continuing to play hockey 4-5 times per week, and 3) liberal drinking with she-devil girlfriend.
I did recognize that I was failing what should have been my final semester of college, so I would do things like put myself to sleep at 7PM on a Monday night, only to wake up at 4PM the next day. A few times, I slept well over 24 hours straight.
While rest – meaning time in the quiet room with the electronic screens dimmed-down – is highly-advisable, sleep is still a very debatable remedy for a concussion. In any event, my body’s response was to try to sleep my way though these traumatic brain injuries I had, and this desire or need for sleep forced me to repeat my Senior year. Here comes the Super-Senior!
This was the divergence event, and it brings me to the greater point within the context of the article: what kind of person would we become if not for certain events within our lives?
If I had never taken those shots to the head my senior year of college, who would I have become? Would I be a more well-adjusted member of society? Would I be less aggressive? Would I have greater impulse control? Would I be “nice”? What line of work would I have gotten into? The world will never know.
The same can be said for any number of people. Almost everyone has a few events that radically alter the course of their lives. But fewer people can pinpoint the exact moments in which their lives take a sharp turn in a different direction, and even fewer can attribute these changes in character to physical (rather than emotional) impact.
There’s a well-known story about an American railroad foreman named Phineas Gage, in which Gage survived a catastrophic injury to the frontal lobe of his brain. Per Wikipedia:
Phineas P. Gage (1823 – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable[B1]:19 survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain’s left frontal lobe, and for that injury’s reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining twelve years of his life—effects so profound that (for a time at least) friends saw him as “no longer Gage.”
Again per Wiki, these are the functions of the frontal lobe. My notes are in bold:
“…involves the ability to project future consequences resulting from current actions (need for immediate gratification versus long-term), the choice between good and bad actions (or better and best), the override and suppression of socially unacceptable responses (aggressive/anti-social behavior), and the determination of similarities and differences between things or events (sharp memories versus Vague Memories).
The frontal lobe also plays an important part in retaining longer term memories which are not task-based (the Memento Effect). These are often memories associated with emotions derived from input from the brain’s limbic system. The frontal lobe modifies those emotions to generally fit socially acceptable norms (again, antisocial/nonconformist emotions).”
The story of Phineas Gage is almost-metaphorical, but serves to illustrate the potential severity of head injuries. Educated people can no longer be ignorant to how life-altering concussions and concussion-related conditions such as CTE can be.
Adjustments
Above, I considered who I might have become had I not taken so many hits to the head, i.e. a nice, normal, well-adjusted member of society. By contrast, here are the alterations I’ve made to my life as a result of the brain injuries I’ve incurred:
Writing
I’ve mentioned this before, but I write in large part because my memories and thoughts are fleeting, at best. Sometimes driving home from hockey, I’ll have a tremendous idea or a great narrative hook, but if I’m not quick to write it down, I’ll likely lose it forever. I sometimes read things I’ve written and think, “that’s brilliant”, but have little or no memory of having written said piece.
I was writing as far back as middle-school, but I would say the way I write now is as much therapeutic as it is artistic. I literally write ideas down so that I don’t forget them, or so that I don’t forget momentous occasions in my life.
(Funny aside: I was hanging out with my old pal Billy last year. Billy went to college with me, and at one point lived with the she-devil ex-girlfriend mentioned above. We were talking last year, and he starts talking about “Chris.” I’m like, “Who the hell is Chris?”
Billy looks at me sideways and again says “Chris. You know, you dated her for three years???” And I go, “OH, KRISS! Haha, I had forgotten about her and her soul-sucking drama entirely.” See? Brain damage taketh away, but it also giveth.)
The Notebooks
I mentioned the movie “Memento” in the above section. In the film, Guy Ritchie tries to organize his life by keeping a system of notes and learning to trust his own handwriting and instincts. I’ve adopted a similar system.
Those who know me in real life will notice that I frequently carry around these little 4″ Mead notebooks at the expense of looking like a bookie. I use these notebooks for a variety of tasks, mainly to organize my thoughts but also to write out the tasks I need to complete step-by-step. The notebooks are mostly filled with chicken-scratch and strike-throughs and check-marks, reminders of tasks I’ve completed or plan to complete.
If I don’t keep lists, I’m liable to walk into a grocery store and suddenly have no idea what I’m there for. If I’m not careful, I’m capable of doing things like buying half-gallons of almond milk multiple days in a row. Nothing majorly catastrophic, as I consider the Notebook Gimmick part of the cost of my life as a hockey player, but life without these notebooks would be pretty inconvenient.
Bright lights/Noise
I’m rarely photographed without a pair of sunglasses in the frame, and I mostly hate anything extremely-bright. As an example, I live at the beach yet go no more often than once or twice per year because the glare off the water makes my temples throb. I’ll wear sunglasses indoors on occasion and draw the requisite Maverick jokes.
That goes double for noise. I just about refuse to go to concerts, and I’m known to get up and walk out of a loud bar or restaurant if the noise is loud or pervasive enough.
Again, these are concessions I gladly make for love of my sport. But I am a little curious what it would be like to actually want to go to a Rise Against concert or spend a day on a boat.
Diet/Exercise
Exercise helps clear my head in a very literal way. My theory is that the type of exercise I tend to do (strength training for hypertrophy) and the type of diet I generally follow promotes Anabolism, which spurs regeneration of damaged brain cells in a similar way to the regeneration of damaged muscle cells.
Playing hockey promotes Anabolism via a different pathway, due to the amount of growth hormone and testosterone that is released during high-intensity anaerobic activity. I almost always feel mentally-sharper after a good skate, assuming I didn’t get my head clubbed in.
Is this science bulletproof? No, but I’m both Lead Scientist and Lead Lab Rat. My experience has been that following the diet and exercise protocols of a bodybuilder/anaerobic athlete improves my cognitive function. I’ll save the rest of the science-heavy talk for a future scholarly article.
For health enthusiasts, I’ve also noticed that inflammatory foods increase my headaches and decrease my mental clarity. The most inflammatory foods for me seem to be wheat, dairy, and soy, and when I get lazy and start having pizza with any regularity, I immediately notice a recurrence of concussion symptoms. It’s almost like the brain-bruises feed off these inflammatory foods.
Caffeine
My body has a love/hate relationship with caffeine. While it’s great for jump-starting my brain in the morning and aiding cognitive function, it also seems to promote a cortisol release (which makes sense because cortisol often comes hand-in-hand with an adrenaline boost). My body runs hot (hyperthyroid) and loves to burn up muscle, and high caffeine intake seems to erode my explosiveness/strength and invite joint injuries.
So what’s a guy in my position to do? Being a hockey player, I’ll steal a quote from Gordie Howe about why he wore a protective cup but not a helmet:
I generally opt to be sluggish, stupid, and unbearable before noon rather than let caffeine intake indirectly chew up my lean body mass. But there are periods of time, such as these past two weeks post-Concussion #8, in which I’ve upped my caffeine intake to help with mental clarity.
The Biggest Frustration
Shortly after receiving Concussion #8, I attended the wedding of my best friend from high school. It took a concerted effort just to keep the nausea at bay, but this was my oldest friend and there was no way I was going to miss her wedding. So I rode shotgun while my sister drove the two of us to Boston for the wedding, with a dark pillowcase wrapped around my eyes.
At the wedding, there was a live band, and the wedding featured a lengthy cocktail hour following the ceremony. The cocktail hour was in this confined area near the band, and my head absolutely could not take that much noise in an enclosed area. So I went inside to where dinner was being served, and sat by myself for the duration of the cocktail hour.
Both the bride and the groom came in and did everything in their power to make me comfortable, but neither of them are athletes and really have no understanding what a hit to the head feels like, let alone a severe one. I sat there and nodded dumbly at them like Rain Man and quiet sipped my Absolut-and-soda while the wedding unfolded around me.
The bride and groom didn’t make a big deal about it, but the bride’s sister and several other inebriated guests kept hammering me about how anti-social I was being. I sat there and smoldered, because these drunken fat fucks, who hadn’t so much as broken a sweat since 1999, screeched at me like horny alley-cats because I wasn’t pounding shots of Cuervo or doing the Cha-Cha slide.
This is the battle Hockey Players, from mites to professionals to beer-leaguers, wage: Hockey Players live in various levels of discomfort at all times, ranging from bumps-and-bruises to broken bones and soft-tissue tears. Hockey Players become accustomed to chronic discomfort, and hold decorum while injured as a badge of honor. This is a sacrifice that the rest of society needs to have a better appreciation for.
And while like most Hockey Players I take injuries in-stride, this is the most frustrating part for me about Concussions:
If I had shown up the wedding with my foot in a cast, all parties concerned would have been falling all over themselves to fetch me drinks, dinner, and otherwise dote upon me. I would have gotten a healthy amount of sympathy, and the collective would have worked to make me as comfortable as possible.
But you can’t see a Concussion, so it doesn’t “count” as an injury. In the view of the uneducated masses, a Concussion is just something I’m making up as an excuse to be anti-social and sullen.
This frustration is not unique to me. Any athlete, and especially any contact-sports athlete, deals with very similar frustrations. It’s part of the trade: you don’t get the accolades and the glory without the pain and discomfort. But the overall lack of understanding about the severity of Concussions by the Average Joe remains a major point of frustration.
On Clarity
I’m writing this article in one sitting because for the first time in two weeks I feel reasonably “clear”. I don’t have the mental fogginess or inability to focus that is so commonly associated with concussions, and it’s important to me to get this piece out while I can think straight.
I have been angry – almost furious – for most of the past two weeks, to an irrational degree. I believe I was justified in angrily-refusing to accept an asshole’s insincere apology, but I’ve been irritable or worse for most of the past two weeks. I’m not feeling spectacular as I write this, but at least I recognize that my behavior and manner of thinking over the past few weeks has been uncharacteristic.
These little tastes I’ve taken from the concussion buffet are enough to make me very interested in increasing concussion awareness. I didn’t want to write another article in which I droned on about myself, but I believe it’s necessary that I do my part to increase concussion awareness and to discourage other players from trying to cripple each other with unnecessary head-hits.
I was talking with one of my teammates last week, and we were talking about the difference between “Hockey Players” and “people who play hockey”. Here’s one clear distinction between the two:
My view is that Hockey Players – especially humble A-leaguers such as myself – have a responsibility to protect each other on the rink. None of us are being paid, and most of us are going to work the next day. There’s no need to ever see a blindside head-hit in an adult-league game. Hockey Players need to have a baseline level of respect for each other, because at the end of the day, we’re all pretty similar and most of us share a love for the sport. It’s insane to be throwing head-hits in games that mean nothing.
As for “people who play hockey” – including those types who show up to games drunk and/or high and serve as a danger to others with their disrespectful, reckless play – this recent experience with Concussion #8 has left me far less charitable or sympathetic than I was two weeks ago, and I wasn’t all that charitable or sympathetic to begin with.
So I’m back to my zero-tolerance policy with people who deliberately endanger other players. As explained in Issue #90, I would rather have twenty hockey-fights per year than let some irresponsible clown or coward injure one of my teammates or me with blindside hits or slew-footing in an adult-league game. I’m sure that seems contradictory to embrace fighting while denouncing concussions, but I’ll save the pro-fighting/anti-headshot discussion for another time.
As Dan Carcillo wrote in his Players Tribune article, the concussion and CTE conversation needs to continue. Hockey administrators at the developmental levels need to do everything in their power to discourage head-hits. Adult league managers need to punish high-hits at a level commensurate to Fighting. Professional leagues need to continue constructing concussion awareness and exit programs for their players so that stories like Steve Montador’s have less of an opportunity to repeat themselves.
This article is written for Men, or maybe boys who want to be Men. Women are more than welcome to read it, but ladies may not find the value in it that males might. Thanks.
At Age 18, after a Spring/Summer of getting my ass beaten by vicious 21-year old Men, I decided to go to college instead of trying to latch onto a Junior Hockey team for the upcoming Fall season. Getting punched in the face repeatedly by players much bigger and stronger than you is incentive for Higher Education, if any exists.
I ended up at my beloved Duquesne University, and things ultimately worked out. But I almost didn’t make the Duquesne team, largely because I assumed I would walk-on because of my ability to put up points.
While my ability to score wasn’t an issue, the Duquesne coach had major concerns about my ability to play physically. Though I could surely take a beating, there were questions about my ability to dish one out. Duquesne was largely a Hitting/Skating team at the time, and I was told that I would not make the team unless my speed and strength rapidly improved.
Insistent upon making the team, I took a crazed approach to getting my strength/speed up to par, living at Duquesne’s modest gym and pounding enough Protein Powder and sports supplements to give Jordan Belfort pause. I probably was the last man on the roster, but damned if I didn’t work my way onto that team.
For training geeks, I took my body fat down from 12.5% to just over 9% (Bioimpedence), took my scale weight from 179 to 195 (noting that I was all volumized from the Creatine), shaved almost 1.5 seconds off my blueline-to-blueline time, added 60 pounds to my Squat, and generally transformed myself into a raging beast in 21 days. I’m living proof that love and feverish dedication can help you accomplish the seemingly-absurd.
(Note: I didn’t take steroids due to NCAA drug testing and whatnot, but at the time I probably would have considered it. That time period was a blur for me, but I remember heavy doses of ZMA, Creatine, Glutamine, and the now-banned Ephedra by the fistful. Shoot to Thrill, indeed.)
But love and dedication alone didn’t get me onto that team. To achieve my goal of making the team, I used two primary sources of information to guide my nutrition and training:
1) A then-fledgling website called Testosterone.com, or T-Nation, and
I would not have made that team without this information, so this article serves as my sincere thanks to Dr. John Berardi, Christian Thibaudeau, Chad Waterbury, Chris Shugart, Lou Schuler, Dr. Jeff Volek, Charles Staley, Tim Patterson, and anyone else who may have indirectly contributed to my efforts. Thank you all, very sincerely.
Anyway, while I was satisfied (somewhat) in achieving my goal of making the hockey team, the real treat was the change in body chemistry that I had undergone. Three straight weeks of daily high-volume leg training immediately followed by 30 minutes of Sprint Intervals, combined with John Berardi and Lou Schuler’s dietary recommendations, had my hormones gushing.
I am privileged enough to know what it’s like to walk into a 75-seat lecture hall and have every girl and woman in the room turn to gawk at you, which of course contributes to my legendary modesty. It was almost as though the girls, and even an instructor or two, could smell me before they could see me. I would get this prolonged, overtly-sexual eye contact from Women who from appearance would not seem to want anything to do with me.
Once a Man has experienced this high – having lots and lots of Women interested in him on a primal level – he will almost certainly chase the dragon for the rest of his life.
People sometimes talk about what their addictions are, as though everyone must have one. Most people say alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, etc. The tack taken by many is that everyone has a vice. While I’ve dabbled in all of the preceding to various degrees, at eighteen I found an addictive force more compelling than all of the collective indecency in Las Vegas. This of course was Testosterone.
The Good Lord is my Savior, but Testosterone is my Religion. Since my freshman year of college, I have relentlessly sought more and more natural Testosterone and Growth Hormone, even as years of this pursuit have turned me into a twisted mix of Buddy Love and a Caveman.
In the process, I’ve become a Mentor to other Men who are still finding their way. I covered a lot of this in my satirical article The Sidekick Manifesto, but what I’ve experienced is that a pronounced uptick in Testosterone levels will have both Men and Women flocking to you. Even if they claim to detest or fear you – as is regularly the case with Mad Men’s Don Draper – people are compelled to seek the approval, comfort, and counsel of High-Testosterone (or Alpha) Males on an almost-biological level.
Having said that, it’s been brought to my attention recently that some of the “Men” in Wilmington have taken to asking themselves, “What Would Jack F____ll Do?” While this is somewhat flattering, the impression I get is that the clownish and wayward are not doing what I would do in given situations. They are not heeding Jack’s Rules and they are not Doing the Right Thing. They either lack understanding as to what I would do in certain scenarios, or they are asking the wrong questions entirely.
In fact, I almost titled this article “What Jack F____ll Would Do”, but I ultimately decided that was too self-indulgent and not at all Vague. I touched upon most of the reasons that I don’t want my name all over the internet in my article on Quitting Facebook, but the short version is that I don’t like being stalked on the internet. If anything herein needs clarification, I can be found at a hockey rink in either Wilmington or Greater Pittsburgh. I’m in the #11 jersey.
Instead of a WJFWD article, I decided to compile The Testosterone Ten Eleven Commandments in the interest of both enlightening and entertaining both low-T males as well as intrigued women.
Before we begin, I will shill for both T-Nation, Coach Schuler, and Doctors Berardi and Volek. I suggest you visit both T-Nation and Precision Nutrition and consider purchasing a copy of The Testosterone Advantage, as I did when I was 18. I have no financial stake in any of the above, but I find it all to be excellent information.
In addition to citing specific examples on how to be more of a high-value male, this article will also aim to guide beaten-down and frustrated Men by providing them with more general advice on how to live successfully and the beginning steps to take on a path to long-term happiness. Enjoy.
When people start assigning personality traits to me (more on this below), they frequently acknowledge how Sexy I am, but because I’m not a clown they assume that I lack a sense of humor.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I am Hilarious with a capital H. But there is a big point of distinction revolving around my use of humor.
To be Hilarious and Sexy, a Man must let comedy flow organically, mostly by making smart-ass comments about the Women in his orbit or working as many as 12 Meows into a professional e-mail. Comedy, not variety, is the Spice of Life, and some people make the mistake of thinking more is automatically better.
What a Man should not do is dance for an audience like a puppet. That’s a critical difference between an Alpha and your standard-issue clown.
I am Hilarious, but it’s on my time and the select privilege of my family, friends, and readers. I don’t go into a car dealership and do my best schtick like Chris Rock opening a set, because that’s a business negotiation. I have a gift for comic timing, and I chose to share that gift for people I enjoy being around rather than those I actively despise.
In fact, the Dodgeball dichotomy between Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller’s characters is an excellent example on Being a Clown versus Being Hilarious … and Sexy. Find the guy who’s trying too hard in this picture:
If you are a Man, and if you are trying to be Hilarious/Sexy, my strongest recommendation is that you develop a complete infatuation with yourself. What I’ve found is that Women are fascinated when Men are preoccupied or even self-obsessed to a certain degree. I am not going to breakdown the psychology at play here, but I will link to a wide number of celebrity examples demonstrating attractive women doting on self-obsessed men.
The key is to always walk the line between being serious and bringing the hilarity. My favorite personal example is from many years ago, when I was lounging in my living room admiring my muscles. My female roommate Pickles walked in, and not really sure if I was kidding or not, I lifted my leg off the couch and barked, “Pickles, look at how ripped my calf is,” commanding her to stare at my flexed lower leg.
Was I kidding? Was I serious? It doesn’t matter, because it was Hilarious. Pickles rolled her eyes, but then came and sat down on the couch to listen to more of my outrageous, self-aggrandizing claims.
A large number of people have come to these same conclusions about comedy. Some of them have even attempted to brand my particular style of comedy, to varying degrees of success. But the key is to have a seemingly-unhealthy preoccupation with yourself, mixed with a modicum of self-awareness. Being Hilarious…and Sexy requires having the right proportions of each, used judicially and with practiced restraint.
II) Be an Original
I will always have a soft spot for Professional Wrestling, as Pro Wrestling basically saved me from full-blown alcoholism. I’ll save the complete story for another time, but the short version is that I had to start locking myself in my apartment on Friday nights because if I didn’t, I would be apt to have 10-12 vodka clubs immediately followed by a tryst with someone’s wife/girlfriend. It was a bad look.
Not sure when you last watched Friday Night television, but the pickings are slim. There’s a healthy amount of Tween porn, white-trash theater reruns such as COPS or Jerry Springer, QVC-type infomercial programs, Pawn Stars mini-marathons, etc. There’s almost nothing substantive.
(Note: Cinemax fixed this problem by putting the Best New Show on Television on Friday Nights. Meet the New Boss is exactly right.)
As far as original programming goes, I can assure you the top of the card used to be Friday Night Smackdown, one of WWE’s signature programs. So, I developed this weekly ritual where I sat myself down with a bottle of lemon-lime soda water and watched these incredibly-athletic egomaniacs scream at each other for two glorious hours and dried out a bit.
I will always be grateful to Vince McMahon of the WWE for providing me with a few hours of mindless distraction on Friday nights, which ultimately prevented me from death by alcohol poisoning or furious-husband stabbing. Maybe Vince can work a “Smackdown Saves Lives!” angle later in the year.
Anyway, one of the signature performers on Smackdown was CM Punk, who has since left the company. Like many other stars who gained mainstream appeal, Punk looked around at the abysmal corporate culture that has killed Professional Wrestling and decided that as much as he loved Pro Wrestling itself, he no longer wanted to be a part of it. Punk has since become a celebrity in his own right, and his personal popularity easily eclipses that of the current WWE product.
Though I’m disappointed CM Punk decided he could no longer reconcile the corporate oppression of the WWE Machine with his personal beliefs, I am thrilled that he was enough of a Man to leave something he loved behind for the sake of his personal well-being. See the 8th Commandment below for more on this.
Punk was willing to give almost everything he had to the WWE, but there were two ways in which he absolutely refused to compromise:
CM Punk is an Original. He took what he personally believed in and made it cool. He did not chase popularity and let it contradict what he knew in his heart to be true. The downside of Being an Original is that you are frequently misunderstood, and that people will tend to denigrate you rather than appreciate you, at least initially.
The mistake would be to copy CM Punk’s attitude and values. Punk is thoroughly counter-culture and anti-authority, and while that can be you to a certain degree, it’s likely you don’t hate authority for it’s own sake.
Instead, Be an Original. You probably don’t think like other people, and if you want to be High-T, you shouldn’t act that way. Being true to yourself and doing things your own way, sometimes to your detriment, is an essential part of being both a Man and an Original.
It’s easy to tell someone to Be an Original, and if it were easy everyone would do it. The problem is that innovators and people who act and think unconventionally are usually not well-received by society, at least not at first. People tend to distill all others in their orbit into concepts and stereotypes that they can wrap their minds around. When someone genuinely unique comes around, it’s our nature to cast stones at them.
It’s also human nature to fear and hate what we do not understand. Part of the reason I am so divisive is that, in my view, I’m fairly original. I can’t really be shoe-horned into the most of the standard categories because my personality is complex and my interests are varied. But I’m both comfortable and confident in living this way, as all Men should be.
Being an Original can and does cause some social strife, but this approach ultimately leads to greater glory. Having said that, in my case it doesn’t help that I refuse to explain myself or my actions most of the time, which leads me to my next topic:
III) Be Vague
Most people have this burning desire to be understood and to connect with other people. I am no different, but even more than being understood, I don’t want to be misunderstood. It leads to contradictions such as this, in which I will write 9,000 words about my outlook but refuse to offer some of the most basic details about my personal life.
To again cite a recent example, I quit Facebook because it was taking value from my life. While I was mainly using it to keep in contact with friends that live far away, what was happening was that people with agendas were taking some of the most off-base, trivial aspects of my personality and using them to make assaults on my character.
I covered it at length in the Quitting Facebook article, but an example was that people I dealt with professionally would take a Facebook picture of me from New Years 2007 or a profanity-laced post about the 2010 Hockey Olympic Gold-Medal Game and use it against me in any way possible.
Also as noted in the Facebook article, I can’t bring myself to take Facebook seriously, so rather than keep an account and censor myself, I chose to just eliminate the problem all together.
As noted above, people frequently misunderstand me because my appearance greatly varies and my personality traits are so contradictory. One moment I will come across as extremely intellectual, the next moment I will be involved in a fistfight. One minute I’ll be wearing a three-piece suit, and a moment later I’ll be wearing the tattered remains of a $5 t-shirt. One day I’ll have Conan-length hair, the next I’ll have a military buzzcut. There’s usually method to the madness, but to the unobservant it looks like I just do things.
But most people don’t care about your perspective or reasoning. Most people just want to stereotype each other for self-serving reasons. You don’t have to like this about people – I certainly don’t – but it’s a reality.
A high-value Man is not going to be drawn into the sorority-girl scheming and backstabbing that many people love to partake in. People are always going to talk about each other, but there are some people with nothing in their empty lives other than spreading gossip and baseless rumors. Like many Men of value, I consider people like this beneath me.
But people like this tend to create problems for me by constructing erroneous character assassinations, while I will not. As you may know, I am more of a “walk up and punch a guy in the face” type, but I obviously can’t risk going to jail every time someone spreads a rumor that I’m a drug dealer or a male escort.
My suggestion to the like-minded is to Be Vague. Limit your exposure. Your personal and professional business should not really concern other most other people. Plenty of very successful people, including the Greatest Man Alive, play their cards close to the vest. This method simply filters out potential problems, the same way a Spam folder filters junk e-mail.
People are always going to be critical, but you don’t need to give them additional ammunition. I prefer to choose my words somewhat carefully, and present my views on my own forum and in full. I’m a complex thinker with complex views, and I want these views to be fully explained before people jump to judgement.
I hate it when I’m having a conversation with someone and they take two sentences out of a 45-minute discussion and use that to form their impressions of me. But I really hate it when people take something I say or write as an obvious goof and use it to slander me. Being Vague just keeps a lot of the sorority sisters out of my personal affairs, and makes my life less complicated.
IV) Bros > Hos
I love women, to such a degree that it frequently gets me into trouble. I would say I have 80% of my private conversations with women, and surround myself with women by preference. Typically, women are a joy to be around, and I tend to prefer their company.
Meanwhile, I don’t have tons and tons of guy friends because I spend most of my time thinking about ways to beat other guys in competition or otherwise outdo them. For me and probably most other Alphas, male friendship is a rare privilege.
But I’m lucky enough to have 10-12 brothers, scattered across the globe, that I would push most other people out of a moving car for.
Let me tell you about my brother Chuck:
At the end of 2013, my housing development used a small contractual window to unilaterally terminate my lease. In English, they pulled a low-class move to evict me because I was locked in at a lower rent rate than they liked.
Anyway, I was left scrambling for a place to live. Faithful readers may recall that I got robbed at gunpoint that month. Those who know me personally also know that late 2013 was a really stressful time for me professionally. It’s like they say: when it rains, it pours.
Chuck must have seen my temples throbbing especially hard at Hockey one day, because out of the blue he says:
“No worries, bro. You can move in with me.”
It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. After I settled in, Chuck and I proceeded to have the best time two non-gay grown men can probably have. I haven’t laughed as hard in years as I did watching YouTube clips of LA Beast or Predator or Starship Troopers for the 80th time with my brother Chuck.
I’ve since moved out and Chuck has since gotten married, but at the time I needed a brother, and Chuck was a brother to me. He’s a tremendous individual, and I’ll always be extremely grateful to him.
Normally, I would dump a full drink on another guy or throw him down a small flight of stairs if he was preventing me from talking to a certain girl. So while for me it may be “Chicks Before Dicks” in most cases, like most High-T Men, my real brothers mean more to me than all the women in the world.
I actually have another very recent story that further speaks to that point, but I don’t think this is the time or place for it. I’ll probably retroactively link to it after the story is told. But the short version is that I picked the happiness of one of my brothers over a girl, because girls come and go. Brotherhood is more important than that, at least to Men of Value.
Speaking of girls coming and going…
V) Get the Girl
Everyone has “the one who got away.” Hell, by my count, I have two girls that got away, at least as of this writing.
But as a Man of Value, what you want to do most of the time is Get the Girl. Do not piss and moan and agonize about whether she likes you or not. Make your intentions known and aggressively pursue her, outside circumstances be damned.
There’s been this disappointing trend in which weak Men make excuses as to why they can’t get the Woman they want. They tiptoe around the central issues – the biggest of which is that she can probably get someone better – so they mope and wallow and ultimately chase her away with their desperation and neediness.
I’ll get into this more in the section Kill Before It Kills You, but until the time comes in which you need to totally wash your hands of a bad situation or a stiletto-wearing dumpster-fire of despair, you may need to ride things out until a certain lucky lady comes to the realization that you are in fact the Man for her.
This concept segues nicely into the 6th Commandment:
VI) Have a Set or Grow a Set
This is basically the same as Jack’s Rule #11 (Don’t Be a Coward). But if you want to take things a step beyond being unafraid, you need to Have a Set or Grow a Set.
If you’re going to Be a Man, go assert yourself. If you’re not, live the contented, quiet life of a mouse. But don’t whine about circumstances and misfortune if you’re never going to take a chance or make an ambitious play.
I don’t exactly know where it stems from, but many if not most people live entirely different lives in their head than they do out in the world. I’m a realist and I understand that for most people, family and work take precedence over their personal desires. However, it also bothers me that most people marginalize themselves so much and compromise their sense of self so easily.
In Men, this reluctance to step on toes can become paralyzing to the point of contempt. I sometimes want to shake indecisive or timid males and bark in my best Sobe Voice, “You are a Man. Grow Some Fucking Balls.”
This condition – prevalent, diluted masculinity – exists for a great number of reasons, most of which would go past the scope of this section. But the takeaway point is that in 2015, it’s harder than ever to be a High-T Man without being seen as a relic or a social outcast. The ability to navigate socially, rather than aggressively dominate, is a much-handier skill set to possess today.
For me and other High-T Men, it would be an ideal world if one could go around tuning up every amoral, disingenuous, and passive-aggressive coward that we came across. Alas, we live in an unjust, lawsuit-happy era, and it’s not socially acceptable to beat the tar out of every clown that cuts you off in traffic.
I may not act on all of my aggressive impulses – like Johnny Rico says in the award-winning film Starship Troopers, “The Mobile Infantry doesn’t make stupid Troopers” – but when I have a strong opinion about something, I certainly make it known.
The Passive-Aggressive approach, i.e. being friendly to someone’s face and disrespectful behind their back, doesn’t fly with High-T Men. If you’re a Man and you have something to say, say it to someone’s face. Don’t wait until they get up to get a Sprite and then start whispering behind their back like a catty sorority girl.
In High-T Men, this mindset endures in all areas. While discretion may in fact be the better part of valor, there is also the notion that fortune favors the bold. As Woody Harrelson’s character Tallahassee likes to say in Zombieland, “Nut Up or Shut Up.”
VII) Be Physically Dominant
Like most High-T Men, I am a Physical guy. Everything I like to do – sports, sex, working out, even the jobs I’ve taken on – is predicated on the use of my body. As such, it’s become my nature to be as Physically Dominant as possible.
Certain people are going to misread this idea and think, “Go start bullying people.” That’s not what I’m suggesting at all. But if you’re ethical and just, it almost behooves you to also be physically dominant so that you might uphold these values. It’s a cornerstone of Testosterone.
I’ve mentioned it several times, but there was an incident recently in which I was suspended from the Wilmington rink because I fought a kid. The kid threw a slew-foot on me, so I got up, and I warned him that his behavior was out of line. He not only refused to apologize or heed my warnings, but he continued to buzz around and say things that offended me. So, I fought him and roughed him up, and very honestly I could have beat him much worse.
People may rightly look at me as the bad guy in this situation, and that’s fair. But even in wailing on him a bit to try teaching him a lesson in respecting those bigger and stronger than you, I protected the kid. I’m a Hockey purist, and I don’t think there’s much honor in beating on a smaller person. But there’s even less honor in kicking out someone’s skates from behind and exposing them to severe injury.
The point is this: if you’re going to be an Alpha, i.e. Simba in the Lion King, you need to be physically dominant. If you are not, there is a good chance you will become a beta, i.e. Skar or the Jackals in The Lion King. As a craven beta, you will have to be the type that has to kick out the Alpha’s skates from behind because you can’t physically-compete with him. You will then you will have to cry out “I’m only 17!” so the Alpha doesn’t maul you. It’s a potentially bad life.
Apologies for mixing metaphors, but I’m a writer. It’s what we do.
Moving along, the more-appealing reason to be physically dominant revolves around a Man’s interactions with Women. I’m going to be as Vague as possible and not incriminate myself, but my experience has been that most Women want a powerful Man who makes them feel protected. This is hard to accomplish when your girlfriend can out-lift you at the gym and wears the same size jeans as you. Remember what you’re supposed to be bringing to the table as a Man.
Since we’re talking about being physically dominant…
VIII) You WILL Do Squats
By my estimate, Mr. Olympia/fitness icon/actor/California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most fascinating person of his era, possibly only superseded by actor/martial artist/philosopher/writer Bruce Lee. The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding remains my favorite book and an essential read in the fitness community almost 30 years after first publication.
Arnold’s most-recent book, Total Recall, tells a tale that would be roundly rejected by book publishers as an absurd work of fiction due to unbelievability. Yet the spread of photos in the middle of the book, to say nothing of Arnold’s bodies of work in Bodybuilding, Acting, Fitness, and Politics, are proof of the epic life that he’s lived.
Like many people, I sometimes get very busy, and at the end of a long day the last thing I want to do is go force myself through a workout. But I like having high Testosterone and being good at sports, so most of the time I manage to drag myself in.
On the rare occasions when I absolutely lack motivation and my usual motivational carrots – Hockey, Women, personal pride, etc. – fail to inspire me, I use a photo of The Oak such as this to shame myself into going:
If you’ve read New Encyclopedia, then you’re familiar with the very distinct manner in which Arnold writes. He has no issue making up his own Austrian/English words (such as Problematical), and uses his unique brand of motivation/humiliation to inspire others. After a few reads through the massive tome that is New Encyclopedia, you can hear Arnold’s voice as clear as day shaming you into being less of a whiner and more of a winner.
Maybe I had a dream about it, but somewhere amidst the meandering 800+ pages of New Encyclopedia is a very basic tenet: You WILL Do Squats.
Squats are non-negotiable, if you consider yourself anything other than a complete girly-man. You WILL do them, under order of the Terminator himself.
Maybe you aren’t interested in Strength Training, but if you’re interested in Testosterone there’s a good chance that you have an unhealthy obsession with the iron. If you want to make Testosterone your religion, there’s no better building block than a high-volume squat workout. You WILL Do Squats, starting immediately.
IX) Kill Before It Kills You
I’m not going to get all Darwinian on you or overburden you with scholarly articles, as I’m apt to do. The cold truth of life is that the world is not a terribly nice place most of the time. As they say, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and this is something most everyone will comes to learn as they mature.
While many are able to embrace this savage aspect of human nature, many others who are hard-wired with the instinct to protect others.
I am wired this way. I may be, as one woman famously put it, “a colossal dick”, but at the end of the day my instincts are to protect people in both physical and emotional ways. I am far from alone in this regard, as there are innumerable people who think of the good of the collective before they think of their personal desires.
A notable example from fiction is Rick Grimes, lead character of both The Walking Dead television show and The Walking Dead graphic novels. Throughout both the novels and the show, Rick is described as “a Man of Conscience”, and is frequently shown to have ethical objections to some of the horrible things he must do to ensure the safety of his family and friends.
But in the epic 4th Season finale, Rick very literally puts the 9th Commandment of Testosterone into practice:
The clip from The Walking Dead serves as a metaphor. In life, there are a great number of threats – some insidious, some obvious – that can compromise our health and livelihood. The key is to identify and eliminate these threats before they take a severe toll on you.
There are two particular areas in which I apply this commandment: Women and Work.
As I will discuss below, one of my bigger character flaws/traits is that I am a sucker for a damsel-in-distress. If a Woman appears to be in trouble or vulnerable, I am basically powerless to stop myself from trying to help her. Over the years, shrewd Women have observed this trait in me, and tooled me to various degrees.
While some people may read this and chuckle about what a chump I am, this trait – the need to intervene and help others – is also one of the strongest aspects of my character. I wouldn’t be who I am if I suddenly started turning a blind eye to others in need. I often proceed knowing that I’m being played, because that’s more palatable for me than the alternative.
Acknowledging that, the maturation process for me has been to identify when I am clearly being used, and to kill the relationship before it kills me.
I touched upon it in “On Doing the Right Thing I”, but I ended a close friendship with my former roommate because her toxicity was sucking the life out of me. In addition to being a sullen wench, not a week went by in which she didn’t manipulate me into helping her solve one of her personal problems or self-constructed dramas.
She was usually pretty personable with me, but she would surround herself with these douchebag, effete hipsters who would rightly see me as a threat and passive-aggressively provoke me into confrontation. I enjoyed her friendship a lot, but it was exhausting. One day, I took a deep breath and decided I had to remove her from my life, for the sake of my own well-being. I “killed” our relationship before it took anything more out of me.
That’s just one example, but it’s part of a larger pattern of traditional behavior for me. I’ve written in the past about what a problem quitting is for me, and for the longest time I was unable to separate quitting a relationship from “killing” one. I’ve changed in that regard, and while it may not be progress, but it’s definitely evolution.
The same goes for work. I was raised by a family of farmers, and I am fortunate enough to have a great work ethic and pride in being professional. The downside of this, as I discussed in Jack’s Rules, is that I’ll tend to let my personal pride keep me from leaving a bad job or hostile work environment.
I think everyone reading this can empathize, as they are either like me – i.e. tend to stay too long in flawed relationships because of personal integrity – or they are the sort of person who tries to exploit people like me. Regardless, the lesson is this:
To grow and thrive, a Man will sometimes need to make a hard choice and “kill” a given relationship. There could be any number of factors – money, sex, emotional investment, honor, etc. – that make the relationships seem salvageable, but a high-value Man will identify when a relationship has outlasted its usefulness, and sever it.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds, because most of the time there is a strong human component to a given relationship. Most of the time, “killing” a relationship will involve putting a weaker person out to pasture for the sake of your own well-being, and as a Man of Conscience, this will wear on you. But as a Man of Value, you will tap into your inner strength and make a hard choice that most other people cannot.
To be a strong-enough Man to accomplish this, you will need to learn the 10th Commandment well…
Let me tell you one thing I’ve learned about Women. Free tip:
For many if not most Women, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Good Man or a Bad Man. What matters to them is if you’re a Strong Man. The rest is negotiable.
This isn’t meant to paint Women in an unflattering light, and there are certainly exceptions. But my experience has been that Strength – be it emotional, physical, or otherwise – is the critical component Women seek when searching for an ideal mate.
There are some awful Men who do or have done extremely-well with Women. We also all know some great guys who can’t get anywhere with the fairer sex. Unfortunately, the misconception of many Men is that Bad Boys automatically get all of the Women, while nice guys don’t. This leads Good Men to behaving badly in the interest of doing better with Women.
But there are plenty of Good Men who do great with Women, and in fact I think if Women had their way, they would all have a Good Man. But their Man needs to be a Good, Strong Man, both emotionally/mentally as well as physically.
Strength is More than Physical. A Strong Man ideally would provide financial and psychological support when needed, and as noted above should be a pro in making his Woman feel comfortable. If he’s physically-strong to boot, the Man in question should be so busy fighting off Women with a stick that he doesn’t have time to address his other shortcomings, whatever they may be.
(My two cents? You should take care of your Woman, and she should let you. After all, she takes care of you. But I’m traditional.)
So let’s say I can sell you on the idea of being a Strong Man rather than a Good Man or a Bad Man. If you want Strength – emotional, physical, or otherwise – you’re going to have to work for it. Life is largely unfair, and you are not going be magically transformed from weak-willed to resolute. You are going to have to fight for Strength.
Not to say that a lot of people haven’t helped me through the years, because I’ve been blessed enough to have had an outstanding support network, at times. But there have been a lot of times when, like most Men, I’ve basically been on my own. It always seems like this happens when the circumstances of life are at their most overwhelming.
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!
Now if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth! But you gotta be willing to take the hits. And not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!
A Man can beg for mercy, but sometimes, there will be no mercy. A Man will need to work to find the Strength needed to Rise against whatever circumstances life has thrown at him. Testosterone will help greatly in this regard.
Lastly:
XI) Be a Hero
(Props to me for working not one but two relevant Zombieland references into the article)
If there’s an overriding theme to my work, it’s Be a Hero. There is very little in my eyes more masculine than stepping up when no one else will, especially as circumstances grow more daunting.
Anyone who reads my writing knows that I am a big fan of Heroes in all forms and shapes. But if I had to pick one, we all know it’s Batman. Here’s why:
Even the most casual fan is aware that young Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents being murdered, and rather than pout like a little girl or turn to chronic substance abuse, he dedicated himself to ensuring that such an incident would never have the opportunity to repeat itself. He went on a decade-long odyssey in which he prepared his body and mind for a forthcoming war on injustice.
Being as realistic as possible in looking at the situation, if an eight-year old saw his parents killed before his eyes, he would likely be a fucking mess. Any number of emotional or psychological disorders would have likely crippled any child in Bruce Wayne’s position, and the fact that he was a pillow-soft rich kid makes it all the more likely he would have collapsed under duress. The real-life Bruce Wayne would have turned to drugs and alcohol, and ultimately let substance abuse consume him.
But that’s why the idea of Batman is so special, and resonates with fans as it does. Bruce Wayne, even with irreparable psychological damage, chose to Be a Hero. It would make him a one-in-a-billion type of person considering the circumstances, and that’s why Batman is a work of fiction. But it’s inspirational nonetheless.
It’s interesting to me that both Bruce Wayne and Patrick Bateman of American Psycho infamy are played by actor Christian Bale, because it allows for some interesting comparisons. Both obviously come from a great deal of money. Both have obvious psychological damage. Both exhibit great intelligence and extreme control-freak tendencies. Both show an obsession with their bodies and their health.
Watching the films in succession, it’s almost impossible at times to distinguish between Bale’s Bateman and his Batman. It’s a very thin line between the Man Bruce Wayne became and the one Patrick Bateman became. But that’s the point of the 11th Commandment of Testosterone. Be a Hero, by choice, even if circumstances lead you in the opposite direction.
It’s far more-realistic that a traumatized eight-year old would become Patrick Bateman, i.e. a murdering psychopath, than he would become a Hero. Not even a Man in a Bat costume, but a cop or a doctor or a firefighter, i.e. someone who works for the good of others.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that Bruce Wayne and Patrick Bateman even think in fundamentally similar ways. Not just in terms of control and precision, but also in terms of emotional scarring from trauma during development. In most interpretations, Batman/Bruce Wayne is shown to a borderline sociopath at best and at worst a very disturbed individual.
But that’s why Batman is so revered, even 75 years after the character’s creation. Batman does something that most people are incapable of, which is that he creates something good from great tragedy. He does not let tragedy dictate the person that he is or what he aims to accomplish. Even if Batman’s brain is not a nice place to be, he still opts to make positive, tangible contributions to the world around him.
Two scenes from Batman Begins reinforce this concept:
A Man can choose to benevolent, even if he’s an aggressive or even malicious person by nature. A Man can choose to Be a Hero, because a Man in control of himself. That’s the fundamental difference between Batman and Patrick Bateman: Bateman can’t control himself because deep down, he’s a scared little boy. Batman can control himself, and focus himself in a positive direction, because he’s a Man.
Batman is also the model for those who have had to work for their success, which many Men of Value have had to do. While some Men are born with seemingly-endless gifts and have their own unique struggles – not unlike Superman – many Men have had to build themselves from nothing. They have had to overcome a lack of talent with education and work ethic, and they have had to overcome personal issues on their own. Batman is a choice role-model for Men like this.
As a Man, realize that you have a choice. You don’t have to Be a Hero, but you also don’t have to let tragedy and circumstances outside of your control define you. The one thing a Strong Man can control is himself, how he acts and reacts to the world around him. It’s a great responsibility, but it’s also a tremendous freedom that weaker Men may never get to experience. As a Strong Man, the choice is yours.
Bonus Section
These two extras aren’t Testosterone Commandments per se, but they are both helpful things to know.
This isn’t a full-on commandment, but as a Man you do want to be conscious of how your environment impacts you, and vice versa.
My friends know that “the world is my living room”. I can frequently be seen walking around Hockey rinks barefoot or plugging my iPhone charger into any power outlet within sight because I am, for whatever reason, very comfortable making myself comfortable.
As my friends also know, I am very comfortable forcing my preferences onto other people. I’m a sport and I’ll be accommodating, but if you give me the slightest bit of latitude in making a decision, we are going to end up watching Super Troopers way more often than we watch the latest Sarah Jessica Parker farce/Rom-Com.
It’s the nature of Men to take something and make it theirs, and a Man’s environment is no different. A side effect of ramping up my natural Testosterone levels has been that I have become almost territorial. If you ever want to be embarrassed, come into my Hockey team’s locker room some time without an invitation. I promise no one will belittle and berate you louder that particular day.
You don’t have to be as obnoxiously-territorial as I can be to learn an important lesson in masculinity: Dictate Your Environment.
There is definitely a line between being a bane on society and being a mindless, timid conformist. A Man will dictate his environment to a large degree, as he knows his personal worth meets or exceeds that of the people around him. But a Man will usually not make those around him deliberately uncomfortable for his own sake. The key, as with most judgement calls, is to Walk the Line and show a reasonable amount of discretion without letting anyone else step on you.
Bonus #2) Understand the Nature of Estrogen
Before you get your thong in a twist, hear me out. This is not an attack on women. In fact, it’s a defense:
I’ve written extensively about the benefits of Testosterone, which you can of course read more about elsewhere. The opposite of Testosterone (not the antagonist, obviously) is Estrogen, a hormone that prominently occurs in Women. Estrogen exists in Men as well, leading to a disturbing number of maladies if left unchecked, but offers a number of benefits to Women including:
Increasing serotonin, and the number of serotonin receptors in the brain.
Modifying the production and the effects of endorphins, the “feel-good” chemicals in the brain.
Protecting nerves from damage, and possibly stimulating nerve growth.
Estrogen is also of course critical in female sexual development and child bearing. But the downside of Estrogen is that it’s an extremely volatile hormone, and that it can cause wild fluctuations in mood irrespective of gender. You can read the entirety of this WebMD article on Estrogen and Women’s Emotions here.
A condition called Estrogen Dominance can occur in both Men and Women, in which Estrogen levels run rampant and unchecked, leading to numerous problems. Here are some of the effects of Estrogen Dominance:
I am not going to do your reading for you, but you should understand the basic positive and negative effects of both Estrogen and Testosterone. If you’re thoroughly-undereducated, you can start with this scholarly article and work your way through.
Estrogen Dominance sounds like hell on earth to me, which is why I so voraciously chase Testosterone. But I am a Man, and I have the luxury of attempting to turn on my Testosterone like a spigot with smart lifestyle choices.
Women, however, generally have about 1/10th of the Testosterone of the average Man, thus missing out on most of the benefits of Testosterone while combating the Estrogen Dominance conditions detailed above. As an example, the average Woman has to work much harder to lose a few pounds than the average Man, again due to the average Woman’s Estrogen: Testosterone ratio.
Once more, this is not to say that there are no positives to Estrogen. There are many. It’s a hormone not unlike Ghrelin or Luteinizing Hormone or Cortisol and serves a major purpose within both male and female human bodies. But Estrogen Dominance is not a desirable condition for Men, and as noted above, even Women do not want out-of-whack Progesterone: Estrogen ratios.
I included this section for two reasons:
1) I think it’s important to educate Men on how problematical Estrogen Dominance can be, and how it can be contributing to any number of mental or physical problems a Man might be experiencing. I highly recommend that as a Man, you educate yourself on ways in which you can mitigate Estrogen Dominance – if only to limit your chances of conditions like Prostate Cancer – even if you do not wish to aggressively pursue high Testosterone levels.
2) I can’t believe I’m writing these words, but … try not to give Women such a hard time. Lord knows this is a case of “doing what I say, not what I do”, but the reality is that the hormonal deck is largely stacked against Women in many instances, and that’s before contributing factors such as Birth Control are thrown in.
As a Man, you can’t reasonably be expected to know what’s going on with a Woman at any given time. But as noted under the 11th Commandment, you can choose to cut a good girl some slack if she’s acting like a maniac. Educate yourself, adjust your patience accordingly, and make your own determinations.
Final Words on Testosterone
A brief list of things NOT to be:
Don’t Be a Coward
Don’t Be a Clown
Don’t Be a Crybaby
By now, you’re seeing a consistent theme in Testosterone-based behavior. Pretty much anything that lacks basic masculine dignity is a major no-no as far as this is concerned.
I have a passion for both Strength Training and body development, so it’s hard for me not to push the benefits of both. Do you need Strength Training to be a High-T or high-value male? Absolutely not. But is a passion for Strength Training or body development going to hinder you? Absolutely not.
In closing, if Being a Man were easy, every male would do it. Most take the easy way out and elect to gleefully conform to our current passive-aggressive culture, and generally bend over every time life decides to stick them. Being a Man of Value, rather than just a male placeholder, takes dedication and a stiff spine.
If you decide to rise to the challenge of Being a Man, know that the rewards are significant. But it won’t be effortless. You will need to dig in, and ideally with some support in the form of these Ten Eleven Commandments, you can become a Man of Conscience and Value. Lord knows we could use a few more.
There’s a great episode of Mad Men in which Don Draper takes out a full-page ad in the New York Times and airs his grievances with Lucky Strike Cigarettes by writing this open letter:
I am not going to take out a full-page ad in the Times, nor even the Wilmington Star-News, but I am going to use my modest platform to air a grievance in a similar fashion. Like many others before me, I am going to attempt to quit a habit that has become even more detrimental to my overall well-being than cigarettes. This is:
Why I’m Quitting Facebook.
People talk all the time about Quitting Facebook in the same tone that they might use to talk about quitting drugs or alcohol. Facebook has become so ingrained in not only our culture but also our day-to-day lives that the thought of deleting it brings about reluctance bordering on anxiety.
After all, how do we live if there’s no electronic proof of our exploits? It doesn’t count as a trip to the gym or to Whole Foods if there isn’t a litany of photos/posts/tweets documenting the experience.
But most of us understand how narcissistic and self-indulgent Facebook and Social Media at-large tends to be. In fact, I’m not even the first person to write an article with this title:
Using Don Draper’s Lucky Strike Letter as a parody is a reasonably-clever idea, but my point in writing this article wasn’t to take credit for it. I’m writing this to serve two ends:
1) To consciously remind myself of why I’m deactivating my Facebook account
2) To encourage readers to ask themselves how much value Facebook and perhaps Social Media in general is adding or subtracting from their lives
With no further buildup, here is Why I’m Quitting Facebook.
The Main Reason
The main reason – and the story is so ridiculous I’m not going to fully repeat it – is that my relationship with a close friend has been damaged severely due to a freaking Facebook post. Adding insult to injury, it wasn’t even a post that I made.
I tried to hold down my temper as I apologized and explained that the Facebook post was taken well out of context, but it was too late. My friend’s feelings are hurt, and as I write this it has obviously damaged our relationship. To what long-term extent, that remains to be seen.
It doesn’t matter that I consider Facebook and similar Social Media a total joke, because reckless Status Updates clearly have the ability to hurt the feelings of people I care about. I apologized to my friend through gritted teeth, because the notion that a Social Media service was causing me a real-life problem was infuriating enough to make me rip my steering wheel off the column, but ultimately it didn’t matter. The damage had already been done.
Facebook claims I have around 210 Friends, but the reality is that I have four or five. I have a bunch of acquaintances that I could happily do without, but in terms of true friends – meaning people I could count on to support me when the chips were really down – at best I have a handful. Now I’m down one because of a Facebook post that I didn’t make.
Something I like to say is that Social Media is Free Marketing. My logic has always been that if you run a business or a service, you should have as many Social Media accounts as possible. If your business or service generates one lead or sale via Social Media, you’ve won, because you invested zero dollars in constructing an account.
But the converse is true as well. If I lose one actual friend because of something ridiculous that was seen or written on Facebook, Instagram, etc., then that particular service has outlasted its usefulness.
I’m Quitting Facebook mainly so that this same situation never has the opportunity to repeat itself. But there are some secondary reasons why Quitting Facebook is a good idea anyway:
Facebook Murders Productivity
I’ve written this before, but I’m retiring Jack Has Spoken at #100 because it detracts too strongly from my other projects. Aside from Reboot Hockey, I think I have a novel or two up my sleeve, and they aren’t getting written as long as I allow myself to write self-indulgent articles about Cougars or whatever.
In a very similar fashion, for me Facebook is a stop-gap activity that impedes productivity. It’s entirely too easy to go home for the night, pull up a combination of Facebook/Netflix/Whatever and call it Living (more on this in a minute).
I would challenge most people to keep track of the amount of time they spend on Facebook or similar Social Media in contrast to the amount of time they spend exercising, expressing themselves artistically, or having actual conversations with other people.
Facebook is ultimately worthless, and if you disagree, ask yourself: what happens if you have the most Facebook Friends or the coolest profile or the most-clever Status Updates? Do you get paid? Do you get an award? Does it make you healthier? Is it truly improving your relationships with other people?
I’m Quitting Facebook because it does the opposite of all of the items mentioned above. It doesn’t pay me, it doesn’t improve my health or relationships, and in the end it builds toward nothing. I would rather disconnect from it and make better use of my time.
Facebook Isn’t Living
I’m sure you’ve gone on Facebook and looked at someone’s vacation pics and thought to yourself, “it must be nice to be in Miami/San Marcos/Cozumel” or whatever. Facebook is much less about Living and much more about constant one-upping, with people demonstrating how much better or happier they are living than you through the use of strategic photography and carefully-doctored Status Updates.
Using Photos and Updates strategically isn’t a bad thing if you’re trying to market a product or even yourself. In fact, I’m keeping a ninja Facebook account just so I can continue to moderate Reboot Hockey’s Facebook page. But Facebook is not Living, and it never will be.
There’s a great quote from the movie Any Given Sunday in which Al Pacino’s character, in the midst of a Football pregame speech, refers to Living as “the six inches in front of your face“. He’s not wrong. You can look at as many pictures of the most gorgeous beach in the world as you like, but if you can’t taste the salt in the air or feel the warm sand beneath your feet, what’s the point?
Facebook is unnatural. It’s Sweet-and-Low, Equal, and Splenda, all rolled into one innocuous-looking packet. It does such a good job imitating Life that many of its users stop actively pursuing real experiences.
Real Life requires effort. Facebook offers a cop-out, because it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re interacting with other people and thus Living. But the best Facebook Messaging conversation in the history of the written word can’t compare to the kind of a fulfillment you can get from a good in-person conversation.
I am fortunate enough to know what social interaction was like before Facebook. Thinking back, my pre-Facebook life involved more time at the gym, more talking with women face-to-face, more worthwhile writing, and more actual time spent with real people. Facebook and similar Social Media services are easy and free, and what ends up at happening is that people – myself included – repeatedly forgo real experiences in lieu of electronic ones.
It has gotten to the point where Facebook is detracting from my Life, rather than enriching it. I am Quitting Facebook in the interest of focusing more on Real Living.
Facebook = SkyNet
Nerds with Calculators will know what I mean by the term “Data Mining“, but for people like me who get laid regularly and play sports, Data Mining is, “an analytic process designed to explore data (usually large amounts of data – typically business or market related – also known as “big data“) in search of consistent patterns and/or systematic relationships between variables, and then to validate the findings by applying the detected patterns..“
What this means in lay terms is that an electronic entity – let’s call it Facebook – keeps a record of the websites you view, what type of music you listen to, where you buy those fetish sex toys that you adore so much, etc. Right now, this is used primarily as a Predicative Sales tool, but I personally don’t like having something record every keyboard click I make. I’m pretty sure this is how the Machines take over in the Terminator movies.
To further my point, I would have just deactivated Facebook and been done with it, but a Facebook account is necessary for a number of other Media applications that I enjoy – notably Spotify. If I were a tech geek, I can’t imagine how many other ways I would be inconvenienced by deactivating my Facebook account.
I realize I am not going to take down this infestation by Social Media that some of the tech conglomerates are pursuing. All I am saying is that I don’t want Facebook and their associates to have my personal information via Data Mining.
While we’re talking about personal information:
Facebook Is Not Vague
People who know me know that I am a pretty reserved person. I have plenty of reasons for this, but let’s focus on the professional reasons why I am Quitting Facebook:
In every place that I have worked or done business as an adult or a near-adult, there has been some troublemaker who wants to take a Facebook picture from 2005 or an out-of-context Status Update related to my hatred of the Philadelphia Flyers and try to make my life more difficult.
My favorite example was the time I made fun of the local adult hockey league manager’s inability to conjugate a verb properly on my Facebook page. I didn’t use any coarse language and I didn’t call him any mean names, but I did point out that I’ve seen more professional-looking writing in Valentine’s Day cards from my seven-year old cousin.
My little cousin at least knows how to use “Your” and “You’re” properly, as evidenced by the “you’re my favorite cousin” she wrote in magic marker on a red construction paper Valentine card, but I digress.
At the time, my Facebook profile wasn’t set to ultra-private. Someone I probably knew but wasn’t necessarily friends with noticed my remarks, alerted the manager, and it became this huge deal where the adult league manager tried to have me banned from the local hockey rink. Again, the manager of an adult hockey league attempted to ban me from the local rink because I made fun of his misuse of “grammer” on Facebook.
Similarly, as you may or may not know, I worked for a number of years as a personal trainer. I was actually very good at this job, but one thing I couldn’t reconcile with the profession was that I did not live the Globo Gym lifestyle. I would be a complete pro at work, but after work I wanted to go out, have some drinks, and talk to some girls. Nothing out of the ordinary for a 24-year old guy.
Most of my fellow trainers despised me because I was both in better shape than them and not a money-grubbing scumbag like they were, so they dug around the internet to find anything they could use to assail my character. They never managed to find anything that could stick, but they did like to use the Facebook Tags placed by our mutual Facebook friends – Jack’s at Cabana Bar with Missy and Rachel again! – to depict me as an alcoholic.
The issue here isn’t how a fitness trainer should spend her or his free time. The issue is that in a competitive professional setting, many people are more than eager to use information they find on the internet, and Facebook in particular, against you.
I’m a grown man, albeit one who occasionally likes to make fun of people on the internet. I just don’t have a place for this brand of high-school nonsense in my life any longer. For whatever reason, I can say whatever I want on Twitter or Tinder and no one aside from Brandon Sutter cares, but if I call someone a clown on Facebook it becomes newsworthy. By Quitting Facebook, I’m cutting off the problem at the source.
Speaking personally…here, I’ll be as Vague as possible ….
All I’m suggesting is that Christian Grey, James Bond, Batman, Prince Charming, and pretty much every desirable man in the history of the human race doesn’t have a Facebook account. If women want to get in touch with me, the traditional ways still work well.
And lastly …
Facebook sends the Wrong Message
I am Quitting Facebook because it is communicating all of the wrong things about me to my family and friends, which is exactly the opposite of what I intended for it to do. Aside from the falling-out with my friend described above, here are two other recent examples:
My sister and I are far apart enough in age that we have not spent a lot of time together since I was 18 or so. When I went to college, she was starting high school, and when she was in college, I was out in the world, etc. She loves me and we have a familial closeness, but there are a lot of things about my Character that she misunderstands because of the age difference. I’m almost more like an uncle than a brother to her.
We also live far apart, so she has kept tabs on me mostly through Facebook. This has become a problem for me because again, pictures and updates posted on Social Media come without much context. What has happened is that she and other people who don’t see me every day have taken some of the least-relevant aspects of my Character and made them my defining characteristics.
Here are the facets of my Character that I consider most-relevant: I am a Hockey Player, through and through. I am intelligent and thoughtful. It’s not always obvious, but I am a good person who cares deeply about his friends. I am not a coward and I am not a quitter. I usually Do the Right Thing. I am not always easy to get along with, but I am reasonable and usually open to discussion. Once I lower my guard around people, I have a great sense of humor.
Here are the facets of my Character that my sister takes from Facebook: I am a drunk and an obnoxious prick. Also, for some reason she seems to think I really like GNC. Those aren’t really the impressions I want her to have of me.
But thanks to some indiscriminate Facebook Tagging, there were a number of pics of me looking like Lindsey Lohan clogging up my profile. Sure enough, for every flattering photo of me helping an old lady cross the street or laughing with my friends, there are five pics of me flipping someone off after having a few tequilas.
Both personally and professionally, this just isn’t the image I want to project. In recent years I’ve gone ultra-private on all things Facebook-related, but I’ve finally reached the point where the hassle outweighs the reward.
I have another close friend, a girl I grew up with, who has also developed a misunderstanding of the kind of person I am due to Facebook. She rarely logs into Facebook, but of course the one time per year that she logs in my Status is something like, “Going to Rue21 to hit on high-school girls” or something.
An out-of-context Facebook picture or Status Update becomes like a punchline without a joke. Acquaintances, or family and friends who aren’t around you on a regular basis, can get this warped impression of who you are based on this lack of context.
I write articles like this because I can give some context and depth to my actions. If you read my writing with any regularity, it becomes apparent that I have my head screwed on straight and that most of the ridiculous things I’ve said or written on Social Media are complete jokes.
In person and in real writing, I choose my words quite carefully, but I consider Social Media such a joke that I will get mad watching the Penguins play, post something like “Brandon Sutter is a no-good cocksucker” and think nothing of it. Without fail, it always becomes a major ordeal.
To wit, Sutter himself keeps an eye on my Twitter to make sure that I don’t write 10,000 words pointing out how he’s bad at his job. Social Media is a much smaller playground than we realize, and people are so hyper-sensitive that one can’t write something in-jest without potential real repercussions.
Most people don’t know me very well, because I don’t say a lot about myself. I try to offset that by writing articles like this, but most people don’t have the patience to read something longer than 160 characters. What has happened is that many of the people in my life have taken my Facebook profile – which I have not been careful with – and used it to entirely shape their impression of me.
Maybe Facebook is an insight into a person’s Id, or maybe Facebook is the greatest impediment to true understanding working today. Regardless, it has sent the wrong message on my behalf, so I’m done using it on a personal level.
I’m sure I’ll be back on at some point – after all, Facebook has it’s dirty little hooks into many aspects of my day-to-day life – but I’m looking forward to starting 2015 without it. Maybe you should consider a similar approach.
I had a version of this article ready to go about two weeks ago. I sat on it because it was … OK. It was fine. It may even have been good.
But it wasn’t Excellent. It was funny and insightful at certain spots, but at other points, it rambled. Lord knows I have a tendency to get off-topic, and while that can be entertaining, it does not always make for a congruent read.
So the article sat while the wheels turned. I picked and picked at it until I realized the problem: I was trying to write three articles at the same time. After putting this article aside for a few weeks, it eventually occurred to me that I had three interrelated-but-separate points to make. Trying to mash all of them into a single article detracted from each of the respective points, and didn’t make for outstanding work.
After that realization occurred, the knots became untangled, and the second version of the article flowed much more cohesively. This article is On Excellence:
Excellence is Out, Emo is In
I don’t know if it’s my environment or just a sign of the times, but I have seen a cultural shift in which Personal Excellence and the habits that go along with it have been continuously denigrated. Mediocrity is the new normal, and people want awards simply for showing up to work. The current generational trend is one of entitlement and narcissism.
National Basketball Association fans are well aware of this cultural shift. As recently as 20 years ago, it was commonplace in the NBA for a franchise to build their team around one superstar player: Larry Bird on the Celtics, Isiah Thomas on the Pistons, Charles Barkley on the 76ers, Hakeem Olajuwon on the Rockets, etc. This ethic of hyper-competitiveness, individual achievement, and personal-pride-bordering-on-egotism was culturally pervasive across the NBA.
The model at the time – and the cultural mentality – was for one elite player to prove he was better than all of the other elite players by winning with “his” team. Aggression, Competition, Dominance, and Rivalry were core values of the era. The values that are currently more revered – Cooperation, Equality, Passivity, and Social Acumen – were almost frowned upon, or seen as signs of weakness.
No player or team better represented this model than Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the late 1980s/1990s. Even the most casual sports fans know about the iconic Jordan, who won six NBA championships and a litany of personal awards despite taking a three-year hiatus in the middle of his prime to pursue a professional baseball career (or to accept a secret suspension for gambling). Michael Jordan is almost universally regarded as the Greatest Basketball Player of All-Time.
Meanwhile, Scottie Pippen – a Hall-of-Famer and an all-time great in the NBA – will forever be remembered by many fans as Michael Jordan’s sidekick, so much so that the phrase “the Pippen to his Jordan” is more-or-less commonplace. As great a player as Scottie Pippen was, there was never a question about who was the face of the ’90s Bulls, due to the charisma and magnetism of Michael Jordan.
The state of Western culture at the time was for an individual or small group to demonstrate their superiority by dominating all comers. Having to partner up with a true equal was seen as a sign of inferiority or weakness. This attitude was prevalent in everything from big-budget motion pictures to Professional Wrestling. Life was all about rising to the top and beating the other guy.
But times have changed. Society seems to prefer collaborations and ensembles to individual transcendence.
For example, the modern NBA is defined by “super-teams” in which multiple superstar players finagle their way onto the same roster. This is best represented by LeBron James, who in 2010 opted to join two other elite NBA players on the Miami Heat. The Heat went on to win consecutive NBA titles in 2012 and 2013. LeBron James has since returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers, but the current culture is still one of Cooperation rather than Dominance.
The criticism LeBron James will likely endure for the rest of his career, unless he somehow takes the Cleveland Cavaliers to an NBA title, will be, “You couldn’t do it without Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. You needed help.” While it’s perfectly fine to accept support, this trend – this current tendency of the Excellent to revert to the mean – concerns me quite a bit.
I am not going to go into a tangent about why Western society has gotten less dominant and more cooperative, other than to say that cooperation, getting along, and protecting everyone’s feelings all the time has become the new norm. I think this is an observation something most reasonable people can agree upon. My concern is that the current trends of coddling and collaboration are directly leading to less personal excellence and individual accomplishment.
Like my favorite basketball player Kobe Bryant, I am a remnant from the “Michael Jordan” generation. I have an unhealthy obsession with Winning. I think dunking in someone’s face is Awesome. I want to see an NFL team go 15-1, not see 12 teams finish 9-7. My view is that Parity is a direct antagonist of Excellence, and that people that put in the extra effort to excel deserve to see their efforts rewarded. I see competition as serving the greater good.
I adhere to a mentality of Dominance, often to my own detriment. It’s not enough for me so simply work hard and have a place in the hierarchy. It’s ingrained into me to beat the other guy. As you would expect, like Kobe Bryant, I step on a lot of toes as I make my way.
At this point, I can’t be reprogrammed. In fact, even if I could, I wouldn’t want to be. I hate having to go around and choose my words ultra-carefully or risk offending someone with hair-trigger sensitivity. I’ll spare you my full tirade on the current state of hyper-sensitivity in America for the moment, other than to say that I am not thrilled with how things are “progressing” socially.
Moreover, I hate – Hate – when less-ambitious types try to make people like me feel bad or uncomfortable for striving to be Excellent. It aggravates me so because all Excellence really takes is dedication, hard work, and perseverance. But it’s easier for the lazy and uninspired to tear down people trying to make the most of themselves than putting in the effort necessary to succeed.
People frequently ask me why I’m always working so hard at the gym or on my writing, or why I do so much extra conditioning and technique work for beer-league hockey. I almost never have a response for them, other than “Why are you not doing extra work?” Overreaching and striving to be better is a self-evident proof for me, yet many others need to be coached or persuaded into working to improve.
I don’t think I’m better than most other people, but I sure as hell try to be. I want to be a great person, not a mediocre one. I don’t simply want to be a good writer; I want to the Best Writer. This mentality – striving to be better than other people – is almost the verbatim definition of an Elitist:
While almost everyone lauds Excellence – which is frequently attributed to positives like hard work and sound choices – most people detest elitists. Some of this is likely due to how elitists carry themselves, but an equal measure of this disdain comes from the preconceived notions of the apathetic and mediocre.
The elitist mindset generally involves bruising the ego of someone resigned to wallowing. Meanwhile, it infuriates someone who blames her or his own lack of success on circumstances within their control to see someone else excel. This has led to our current culture in which Excellence is almost frowned-upon.
A terrific, personally-close-to-home example is the almost-irrational hatred people tend to show toward Duke University, which has done nothing but routinely excel in College Basketball for the last 30 years. Alas, Duke University is one of the country’s most-selective colleges, nestled in the middle of both a state and a region that abhors all things pretentious.
The Duke University Basketball program is a prime example of Excellence and Elitism being almost indistinguishable. The main question revolves around the general impressions of “elitist” institutions such as Duke versus actuality, as well as the impressions the “elite” have of themselves.
Is everyone who Excels an Elitist? Not necessarily. But Excellent People are certainly Elite, and a lot of traits that are mindlessly assigned to Elitists and Egotists are also commonly seen in the Exceptional. It’s worth considering the value of self-acutalization before tearing down someone who wants to make the most of her or himself.
I’ve concluded that my views are probably those of an Elitist, plain and simple. I will leave that to you to judge if I am a Good or Bad Person, but I will continue to explain my perspectives on Elitism and Excellence below.
A teammate and I were talking about how expensive it to play Amateur Hockey. He was telling me that a parent of one of his Amateur teammates kept receipts, and totaled all costs – equipment, ice fees, hotels, travel expenses, etc. – at just over $10,000 for a single year. I nodded in agreement.
“Sounds about right,” I replied, doing some rough math in my head.
My teammate referred to Hockey as an “Elitist” sport, which I initially disagreed with. I cited the roots of Hockey being played on frozen ponds by poor Canadian farm kids, though acknowledged that the cost to propel an aspiring player higher up the ranks in America was astronomical. After a bit more consideration, I came to agree with him.
While Hockey may have humble origins, this is the reality of Amateur Hockey in North America: the kids whose parents have money have a tremendous advantage. They get better equipment, better ice times, and better opportunities. If a pair of parents can afford to put their son or daughter on a AAA Elite team, such as the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite, the player is getting more exposure and likely sharing a locker room with the sons or daughters of former professional players. As with everything else, money factors prominently into predicting future success.
While in theory Hockey Players are some of the most Down-to-Earth, self-deprecating people you could hope to meet, again reality paints a different picture. Hockey Players, generally, are not a bunch of impoverished kids sharing a $15 basketball or soccer ball on some rundown court or field. The cost just to outfit a Hockey Player is often hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
There are programs in many cities such as Hockey in Harlem that encourage inner-city kids to pick up the sport, but the cost just to participate in Hockey is a major mitigating factor. Hockey is also not recession-proof, evidenced by several years of declining enrollment at the Amateur levels.
As an example, for tax purposes I recently totaled the receipts for my hockey-related purchases in 2014. This was somewhat easier than in the past because I play most of my Hockey at a single rink, allowing me to estimate costs much more accurately. I’ll spare you the details, but here I spent a total of $5435 (!!!) on league fees/ice-time purchases and an additional $1670 (!!!!!!!) on equipment-related purchases.
I am not rich, and I figured on the low-end of all expenditures just for the sake of simplicity and my own sanity. I assure you that figure is extremely conservative, and if it were up to me I would play much more frequently, which of course would drive up all of the above figures.
Now, Hockey is my Love and exclusive interest in life. I don’t ski, I don’t go to concerts, I don’t do drugs, I basically hate electronics and other expensive toys, and in most respects I am value-conscious bordering on miserly. But that does not negate the fact that I conservatively spend over $7000 per year on my chosen sport.
More over, this is not even close to being an all-time high for me. God bless my mother, who somehow found a way to outfit both my brother and me and put us both on multiple amateur teams. I’m sure there were years in which she spent $20,000 or more in total to allow the two of us to play. Soccer certainly would have been cheaper.
And honestly, I didn’t even play for the “Elite” teams. I was the pond hockey kid who skated funny and tried out for second and third-tier teams and had to play my way up to the “Elite” teams year-after-year. While the mentality of constantly having to “try-out” has helped me to build a lot of character, it does not change the fact that more money would have paved a much smoother path.
So speaking socioeconomically, Hockey is absolutely an “Elitist” sport. The larger questions are, “Does Hockey Produce Elitists?” or “Do Elitists Gravitate to Hockey?” I’ll attempt to address those questions next.
Winning Fixes Everything
Mark Messier, as with Michael Jordan in the NBA, is one of the Greatest Hockey Players of All-Time. Ignoring all of his individual accomplishments, Moose is best-remembered for two team-related accomplishments:
1) “The Guarantee“, in which Moose promised a victory in a 1994 Eastern Conference Final elimination game against the New Jersey Devils. Moose made good on his promise by scoring three goals in route to a Rangers’ win. The Rangers would of course go on to win the 1994 Stanley Cup in what is remembered as one of the greatest Cup Runs of all-time.
2) His six Stanley Cup Rings, including Captaining the depleted 1990 Edmonton Oilers (sans Wayne Gretzky) and ending 54 years of frustration in leading the Rangers to the ’94 Cup.
The lesson? Winning Fixes Everything. While poor Alex Ovechkin – despite being a three-time Hart Trophy Winner and 60-goal scorer- is hailed a me-first diva by the assembled Canadian media, Mark Messier so revered as to have the NHL Leadership Award named after him.
Most athletes, and Hockey Players for sure, are taught to believe that they are better than their competition, or capable of being better. So it may be true that Hockey Players are in fact Elitists, or at least raised with an Elitist perspective, because the Elitist view literately serves a greater good: Accomplishment as a Team.
As established above, Hockey is absolutely an Elitist sport, and to make it in the higher levels of the sport a player needs to have a certain dedication to Personal Excellence. But eventually, when a player’s Personal Excellence is given up wholly for the greater achievement of the team – as is the case with NHL Hall-of-Famers and Stanley Cup Champions such as Steve Yzerman and Mike Modano – the player is revered, or even immortalized.
Egotism, or perhaps the Elitist perspective, is simply a means to an end. While arrogance for the sake of self-satisfaction is basically worthless, Ego in the name of Excellence – and ultimately Team or Group Success – not only worthwhile, but noble.
Excellence in Writing (?)
While I write in part to air my grievances with the world, as noted previously I also write to teach and pass information along. My view is that if I am going to take the position of an Author – as an authority on a given subject – I need to not only know what the hell I’m talking about, but also present my points in such a way that they can be understood. This need of mine to put forth an outstanding product is usually just attributed to my massive ego.
But there’s an alternative view to dismissing this need of mine as egotism. It’s possible I spend so much time editing and honing these articles of mine because I want the work to be Excellent. After much thought and reflection, my view is that my pursuit of Personal Excellence has fed my self-confidence, not the other way around.
And suddenly, there’s a nobility to these self-aggrandizing articles I write. While most of these articles are about me, they aren’t really about me. The articles are about the life lessons I’ve learned, which I try to pass along to readers. I try to use my experiences and personal growth as a template – in both negative and positive ways – for others to follow or reject, but ultimately to learn from. All of this is done in the name of producing something Excellent, not putting myself on a pedestal (yet another reason I’m retiring the blog at #100).
Writing, as with all other forms of art, gains or loses value dependent on the writer’s dedication to the work versus her or his personal agenda. When the writer or the artist makes the work about the work itself, rather than the name on the bottom of the work, I think the quality of the work increases exponentially.
If you want to be an Excellent writer, make the writing about the work – as Bruce Lee did with Jeet Kune Do – and not simply a vehicle for ego fulfillment.
A Final Lesson in Excellence
As you may or may not know, most of the Jack Has Spoken articles double as therapy for me. If I am annoyed or dwelling on something, I don’t generally go and vent to my friends or family. I often spend significant time alone, and try to look at whatever is bothering or distracting me as objectively as possible.
In fact, I have always been kind of a loner. Even though I have made a team sport my religion, I have always been kind of kept to myself and more recently used writing as a means of curing what ails me.
In any event, I have taken a lot of quiet time to reflect and think. Here are two absolute truths about I know about myself:
1) I Give a Fuck
I will get into this more in a future article. But the truth is that I do care, deeply. You know those people who are always spouting about, “no fucks given” before they do something reckless or short-sighted? The people who use the phrase “You Only Live Once” as an excuse to be an obnoxious bane on society? Those are the people that are doing YOLO wrong.
The people who truly understand how fleeting and fragile Life is Do Give a Fuck. My favorite example from fiction is Rick Grimes, lead character from the best-seller novels/smash-hit TV series The Walking Dead.
Here is a great misunderstanding about Rick Grimes from the Meme crowd:
Like me, Rick Grimes Does Give a Fuck. In fact, Rick Grimes gives many, many fucks. He cares so deeply about the safety of his family that he can will himself to rip the throat out of another man with his teeth.
Some people – usually losers who secretly hate themselves – think being dedicated to your goals or the people you care about is lame or a weakness. It’s exactly the opposite of that. Caring about something or someone provides you with inner reserves of strengths that you did not realize existed.
Rick Grimes gives a fuck, and so do I. One of my biggest character flaws is that I will go through extended periods of time when I pretend not to care. I even lie to myself about it, and in the past I’ve tried to drown that truth in binge-drinking. But the truth is that I do care.
People frequently point out that I am a dick, a snob, arrogant, cocky, SMOFO, (Smug Mother Fucker) or some variation therein. Half the time these people have never even exchanged words with me, but that’s another story altogether.
I fully admit I was a raging prick throughout college and a few years afterward. Many men go through a maturation period in which they realize they have greater responsibilities than themselves, and I am one of them. I have spent recent years atoning for mistakes I made as a younger man.
But here’s something I learned: without that extra edge and that drive to compete that I’ve traditionally had, I’m an inferior person.
My father had me playing baseball before I could put one foot in front of the other, and I’ve played Team Sports nonstop since. Without realizing, I was raised to adopt the traditional values of an Athlete – Aggression, Cooperation, Dominance, Fair Play, Work Ethic, Refusal to Quit, and ultimately Excellence – as my Core Values. I can lie to myself about it, but the fact is that I want to beat the other guy, not get along with him.
As I’ve explained, my Core Values have become a limiting factor as I’ve gone out into the world. As an example, I recently described myself to a friend’s wife as having “an aggressive personality”, and she replied sincerely, “oh, that’s too bad.” The point is that while I see Aggression not only as something to aspire to, but as a Survival Necessity, most people view Aggression as a highly-undesirable trait.
My mistake in all of this has been attempting to apologize for who I am and what I believe in. It’s fine that I am aggressive and cocky and competitive, because the world takes all types to revolve. Moreover, being surrounded in recent times by mostly-complacent people led me to forget why I was raised to be this way:
Sports are ultimately about defeating competition and/or reaching new peaks in performance, in a controlled environment. Sports are thoroughly noble. Sports have a beauty and a purity surely unseen in War and Politics. If I were King of the World, I would use the Olympic Games to settle disputes between countries. But I digress.
Without competition, without the possibility of someone taking your job or getting a better opportunity than you, a person will atrophy. Having the drive to outdo someone – not all the time, but when needed – is what has protected our race since the dawn of time. It’s simply Darwinism: the better hunter gets the antelope, and the weaker hunter starves.
My view is that getting too far away from the competitive mentality ultimately damages a person’s ability to survive, which I covered at-length in #87: Challenge Yourself. Cooperation has immense value, but so does having the ability to excel.
I am a Hockey Player. To my core, I believe that Collectivism and Unity achieves much more than Individualism. But I also believe, in my core, that my family/friends/teammates and I are the ones that deserve to achieve, and like Rick Grimes I will go to extreme lengths to see the people I care about prosperous and/or victorious.
There is room to strive for Excellence and the Elitist approach, just as there is room for Compassion and Cooperation. All of these ideals are best achieved while conducting yourself with both Character and Class. The trick, as usual, is using a measure of discretion as you navigate the minefield.
My closing piece of advice is to refuse to let the dissatisfied and the mediocre drag you down. If like me you instincts are to Rise and to aspire to greater things than yourself, do not let the bitter and the vindictive sway you.
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to play in a local Fire vs. Police Charity Hockey Game. At the time, I was in the process of becoming a Firefighter with the local department, and the veterans were kind enough to include me. Being asked to play was a big personal thrill.
While I’m extremely grateful that I was asked to play, months later I am still too salty to fully appreciate the experience. Predictably, the Cops cheated and brought a line full of ringers, and Law beat Fire 8-5. Not that I am at all biased.
You need to understand that Fire and Law have a mostly-antagonistic, Dogs vs. Cats-type relationship. Last February, I had a New Hanover County cop pull me over and hand me a $160 ticket for “No Seatbelt” as I was leaving the Fire Station. My experience has been that Fire and Law cooperate when absolutely necessary – such as legitimate crises or life-and-death situations – but otherwise squabble like siblings.
Fire won last year’s game 10-0, and really it shouldn’t have been shocking if I saw Alex Ovechkin deputized for the day and skating for Law. Understandably not wanting to be drubbed again, the cops enlisted a few overqualified players with loose connections to the local departments. Fire got manhandled on a number of shifts by this unit of players, the three of whom appeared to be a regular line on an upper-tier amateur team.
It would probably be much more sound politically for me to not publish this portion of the article, but as you know my ethics as a Hockey Player supersede everything else about me. As a Hockey Player, I don’t think what Law pulled was particularly classy. Fire beat Law badly in the 2013 game, but all of the guys skating for Fire in the 2013 game were Firefighters or EMS personnel. I am ruthlessly competitive, but I don’t play D-League to sate my ego because there’s no honor to it. As the iconic Arnold Schwarzenegger says in the epic film Predator, “No Sport.”
I know for a fact that Fire could have had a much stronger roster for the 2014 game, but the Captain of the Fire team rightly pointed out that the game was “so people could watch the firefighters in their community.” He very respectably stayed within the spirit of the game, even though he could have beefed up the roster with players loosely connected to Fire/EMS. This entire scenario seems to play into my view on how some people look to break rules in order to Do the Right Thing while others do whatever they want as long as it’s within “the rules”. I’ll let you figure out which groups most cops and most firefighters respectively fall into.
While I’m salty, admittedly irrationally so, that Law brought in a group of 18-year old Junior players to win a Charity Hockey Game, that’s not the issue at hand nor the point of this article.
Months later, I am angry about how I played. I played…OK. I had a Goal and an Assist, won 90% of my Face-Offs (as I am wont to do), and competed hard. But outside of the Face-Off dots, I was not dominant, at least not in the way I am accustomed to being. Fire lost, so in my view, I did not Rise to the occasion. My view is that it doesn’t matter if Law brought half of the Carolina Hurricanes in to play for them, I should have made a better account of myself. I did not play to my ability at an opportune time, and that clearly continues to bother me.
(Jack’s Note #1: I am may not have been “Tiger Mode” dominant, but I’m still Jack Farrell. See Alan in the red jersey cutting behind me? I also see him, even though I’m looking at the net. He’s about to get a pass under Blue’s stick as soon as Blue bites and tries to knock the puck off me, which he won’t because I’m teasing him with it as Mario, Jagr, and Kovy taught me. God, do I love Hockey.)
(Jack’s Note #2: Not to further detract from the point, but I am able to sleep at night knowing that I had blown rivets on my skates for the Fire/Police game. Notice the glorious USA Hockey soakers on the Modano Tacks. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, but holders coming off the boots will knock any Hockey Player down a peg or two. Here’s a picture because I don’t lie about this sort of thing. Keep reading though, there’s a lot of helpful stuff later in the article.)
As with most aspects of my life, it takes failure in Hockey to force me into personal or psychological growth. I did not elevate my level of play in a situation that really mattered to me because I had become too accustomed to playing at half-speed. The root of this problem, like many of the other problems that plagued me in 2013 and early 2014, was not my lack of effort or Will, but the fact that in several ways I had become complacent, or worse, resigned.
I am not entirely sure how it happened, but at some point I began to routinely accept mediocrity in my life. If you know anything about me, you know how completely out of character that is for me. I am an Elitist that borders on being snobby. Like MLB Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn, I hate to suck. My disdain for personal incompetence trumps my desire for Excellence, a trait you commonly see in those of us with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It’s almost more important to not be bad than it is to be good.
Also, if you consistently read my blog, you know some of my core tenets are Rising and using Willpower to get through almost any conceivable scenario. But there is an underlying concept that enables Rising and Will, the same way spark plugs enable engine ignition, and that concept is Challenging Yourself.
Challenging Yourself is the road that leads to Rising. You cannot be expected to swim the English Channel if you can’t do fifty laps in the community swimming pool. Continually overreaching and exceeding your limits is what allows you to Rise to a given occasion, when needed.
A Simple Lesson Lost
At some point, like so many other people, in a number of ways I stopped Challenging Myself. It becomes frighteningly easy to stop striving and to embrace the relative comfort of complacency. When there are a cacophony of external stresses – Financial, Mental, Physical, Psychological, Sexual, Social – it becomes very easy to cut corners, or worse, put particular areas of your life on Cruise Control.
The problem is that at times Life is like pushing a boulder uphill: it gets more and more difficult, especially if you lose momentum.
If you are familiar with Greek Mythology, you will know the tale of Sisyphus, King of Thebes. An arrogant, clever cat if ever one existed (my kind of guy), Sisyphus continually mocked the Greek Gods, at one point cheating death by tricking Thanatos, Death Himself, into releasing him from bonds in Tartarus.
Anyway, as punishment for his gall and hubris, Zeus eventually condemned Sisyphus to an eternity of pushing a boulder uphill, only to watch the boulder roll back down as soon as Sisyphus neared the top. Wikipedia sums it up very nicely:
“…an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration. Thus it came to pass that pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as Sisyphean…”
Going back the Boulder analogy, this is what happens when you cease to Challenge Yourself on a consistent basis: useless efforts and unending frustration. There becomes a recurring pattern of falling a day late and a dollar short. Sisyphean activities. How much you care and how hard you try become irrelevant if you have not properly conditioned yourself for adversity. Almost all of us can identify with this.
I’ve given a lot of thought to why 2013/early 2014 was such a rotten time in my life personally, and I think I have traced the problem to the source:
A few years ago, I was doing very well in all of the areas mentioned above – Financial, Mental, Physical, Psychological, Sexual, Social – and like Sisyphus, I had perhaps grown a bit too arrogant for the gods’ liking. Shortly after college, I decided that I had enough of my bar manager at the time stealing from my register to fund his on-the-clock cocaine habit, so I became a Personal Trainer. Obtaining the PT Certification was a Challenge, but my work habits were strong enough that I was able to accomplish it with a reasonable amount of dedication and effort.
I took a job at the first place I applied, the endlessly-greedy and corrupt LA Fitness, despite the fact they were offering me slave wages and nonexistent benefits. I made more in an hour fondling the waitstaff and letting drunk girls flash me than I would make in a day at the vaguely-French LaFitness, but for whatever reason I decided to…settle. It was easier to let LA pay me pennies than to continue searching for a job that compensated me properly.
As they say, Fortune Favors the Bold. The inverse is true as well. Because I settled for the first employer that said ‘yes’ rather than continue to beat the bushes for a better opportunity, I set myself up for failure, and in the process managed to take a very bad perspective: Good is Good Enough. I’ll explain why this mindset is not only flawed, but potentially self-destructive.
Unlearning Bad Habits
Regrettably, one of the things most of us learn is how to stop striving. We encounter professional situations in which nothing in our power can compel an employer to increase our pay grades or in some way show greater appreciation. Rather than continuing to press or finding a new employer, we most often yield and accept that things are the way they are. We don’t just accept, but embrace, mediocrity.
This leads to a litany of undesirable effects, not the least of which is a cloud of negativity that not only follows you around, but permeates to everyone in your vicinity. Resignation is a slow, painful death by atrophy, and the emotional erosion is in many ways worse than the mental and physical tolls extracted.
I have always been a worker, and as an adult my confidence has usually bordered on arrogance. As such, traditionally I have never needed motivation to strive for accomplishment. For most of my Life, I have wanted to be excellent at everything simply for the sake of being so. Challenging Myself was something that came naturally and thoughtlessly.
Unfortunately, the decision to take the LA Fitness job taught me an awful habit: to accept mediocrity, from others and eventually myself. A heavy toll was taken on all of those areas – Financial, Mental, Physical, Psychological, Sexual, Social – in which I had previously expected accomplishment and progress.
One thing that will always stick with me about the LA Fitness experience was how thoroughly unprofessional most of my coworkers were. I would sit for hours at night coming up with innovative training programs for my clients, and treat all of my clients – even the absolute train wrecks – like they belonged to the President’s Cabinet. Meanwhile, my coworkers couldn’t be bothered to stop playing on their phones long enough to ensure that their clients weren’t dropping weights on themselves, or to look at their clients while they were speaking. The contrast was jarring.
At first, this didn’t change anything in my approach, because I was dedicated to excelling. But the combination of the atrocious employee treatment, nonexistent pay, and catty glares and whispers from my indifferent, lazy, resigned coworkers began to grind me down, again in all of the areas of competence mentioned above. A poisonous professional situation such as this is one most anyone reading can identify with.
The first thing to give was my body. Because my employer was more than happy to drive me into the ground without compensating me properly, my ability to Challenge Myself physically went by the wayside. If I managed to force myself through a workout at the end of a 12-hour day, it was almost certainly a half-assed one. I gradually lost the ability to stave off the daily physical stress I was putting on myself.
One of my major character flaws is that almost everything I like to do is Physical. I have tried to round myself out to a certain degree, mainly through writing, but my favorite activities, in no order, are fighting, working out, having sex, and playing hockey. I actually like farming and doing chores around the house (ladies, take note). Every job I’ve ever sought – bartending, landscaping, house-painting, stripping, training, construction, Fire/EMS – has involved the use of my body rather than my mind, and not by accident. My version of Eternal Torture is being forced to sit still.
So, it was a catastrophic blow to all areas of my well-being when I severely injured my knee about four months after taking the LA Fitness job. I was playing a hockey game at Bethel Park in Pittsburgh, made a routine turn, and something just snapped in my knee.
I did not have Health Insurance at the time – thanks again for the employee benefits, LA Fitness! – so I never had an MRI nor the surgery that those results likely would have recommended. I still haven’t had an MRI, so Lord knows what’s happening down in my right knee. All I know is that I walked with a noticeable limp for nearly a year, and had disability and intense pain for nearly two. The knee still flares up if I am not diligent with my training and nutrition.
I might have still injured my knee if I had not taken the job with LA Fitness. However, I have a hard time envisioning a scenario in which I would be more employer-raped and physically run down for less money. As I detailed in Jack’s Rules, I made a major miscalculation by putting pride and the wants of people who did not care about me above my own needs. Had I made the more Challenging decision to put my own well-being above that of a ridiculous, underpaying job, I likely would have saved myself a lot of future turmoil.
Because I did nothing, I not only embraced but endorsed a culture of mediocrity. My advice for you is to refuse to do the same, both now and in the future. If you have learned how to underachieve and how to do the bare minimum, Now would be an excellent time to reverse that line of behavior.
Challenging Yourself vs. The Challenge of Others
As I wrote above about my experience with LA Fitness, an insidious Challenge becomes when you have to differentiate between Challenging Yourself and the Challenges others present to you.
Let’s say you are a talented, goal-scoring soccer player. You work your tail off, you’re gifted physically, and you have a great mind for the game. Yet, you are failing to reach your potential on your current team because the moron playing Center Midfield refuses to pass you the ball.
When you have controlled all of your personal factors – your commitment, your conditioning, your work habits, and so forth – and external factors begin limiting your personal success, the Challenge of Others comes into play.
This is an experience I personally understand very well, because I have spent my life playing Team Sports. While many athletes are naturally cooperative and team-oriented, quite a few thrive despite being relentlessly selfish. A unique frustration sets in when the selfishness of someone else undermines your personal success, and this idea is never more prevalent than with Team Sports. One indifferent or lazy player can often derail the efforts of 10 or 20 committed, hard-working ones.
The Challenge of Others is one area in which I have to admit writing is superior to Sports: in writing, the Writer becomes the only true impediment to his or her success. All of the brainless editors and bureaucracy in the world cannot stop you if you properly hone your writing ability.
Anyone who has spent considerable time in the Dating Scene will also know what I mean by The Challenge of Others. The ongoing Battle of the Sexes, and the continued unwillingness of most Men and Women to admit that they need each other, is a Biblical-era classic. Men and Women present continual and never-ending frustrations for each other because their genetic goals are diametrically-opposed. It’s the oldest rib in the history of the human race, and it’s hysterical.
One thing that most of us will agree is that you cannot force other people to be attracted to you. There are ways in which you can influence others and enhance your own attractiveness, but I’m sure all of us have that “one that got away” who we seemingly couldn’t seduce under any circumstances.
The Challenge of Others in this case is that there is only so much we can do to make another person attracted to us. If you Challenge Yourself properly, it’s possible to climb Mount Everest or lift 500 pounds, but most of us have yet to unearth the secret to making someone special fall in love with us. It’s like trying to use a net to catch a mist.
The only thing you can really to combat the Challenge of Others is to stack the deck in your favor as much as possible. You may not be able to make anyone fall in love with you, but it certainly helps if you’re a handsome, talented, wealthy actor. The freedom comes in knowing that there are external factors that you can control, if you Challenge Yourself appropriately. Focus on yourself, and do not let the Challenge of Others frustrate you to a debilitating degree.
Grow or Die: the Atrophy Principle
In Exercise Science, there are a number of terms that refer to the state of Muscle Tissue. Muscles, like all tissues, can grow (Hypertrophy) or they can wilt (Atrophy). Homeostasis, a state defined by little or no change, is possible in Muscle Tissue, but many factors make it uncommon.
Meatheads like myself are obsessed with Hypertrophy, not because we are obsessed with growing to the size of gorillas (most of us), but because of how unpalatable the alternative, Atrophy, happens to be.
“Muscle Loss” will make a fitness enthusiast break out in a cold sweat. There are many fitness-minded people, myself included, who would rather lose a job than consistently lose muscle. Atrophy, or the idea of erosion and wasting away, is powerful enough to compel people to go to the gym at 5:30 AM or to eat Protein Powder by the spoonful.
Speaking of fitness-minded people, as noted above one of my all-time favorite people is Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s safe to say that he played a heavy influence in my decision to pursue a degree in Exercise Science. In my estimate, Arnold Schwarzengger is the real Most Interesting Man in the World, having had such a variety of experiences that encapsulating them would go beyond the scope of this article.
If you want to talk about someone who never stopped Challenging Himself, take Arnold. All of the details are in his outstanding book Total Recall, but here are some of his accomplishments:
* Went from being poor as a boy in Austria to being a five-time Mr. Olympia, champion bodybuilder, and fitness icon
* Parlayed his bodybuilding career into an acting career, in which he was one of the highest-grossing box-office stars in the history of entertainment
* Parlayed his acting career into a political career in which he was elected and re-elected as the Governor of his adopted state, California
More recently, Arnold has returned to his roots and become an Action Movie and Fitness icon. He is absolutely revered, and rightly so. If you were to ask Arnold the key to personal success, I strongly suspect he would cite the fact that he never grew complacent, and never stopped Challenging Himself, a concept he largely drew from his experiences as a bodybuilder.
One of Arnold’s first films was called “Stay Hungry“, an idea he frequently acknowledges in interviews. I think most would agree that a big reason for Arnold’s success is that he has continued to evolve and grow as a human being, if only because the alternative – Atrophy – was completely unacceptable. Again, I think Arnold would agree that this was a lesson he learned moving heavy weights and subsequently applied to other arenas.
This lesson applies to you and I, as well. Grow or Die. If you fail to Challenge Yourself, you will assuredly regress. Embrace competition and reach beyond your comfort zone, in all areas of your life, and always pursue growth.
Areas of Challenge
I could describe specific examples, but I believe those of you still reading will know how to Challenge Yourself in all of the following Areas of Challenge:
Challenge Yourself Intellectually
Challenge Yourself Mentally
Challenge Yourself Psychologically
Challenge Yourself Physically
Challenge Yourself Sexually
Challenge Yourself Socially
What you may or may not have articulated or considered are specific methods of Challenging Yourself, or that you have become complacent or worse, resigned, in certain areas of your life. My suggestion to you would be to consider the Areas of Challenge I listed above, and to seek balance, as in my view they are all interconnected.
As a fitness trainer, I came to know many people who would endlessly Challenge Themselves physically, but would not pick up a book or strike up a conversation with an attractive stranger. Like bad bodybuilders, some people overdevelop certain areas of competence while completely ignoring others. As written above, failure to regularly Challenge Yourself in all areas will lead to Atrophy, compromising the Areas of Challenge you are striving to hard to enrich.
The Final Lesson
Writing is not a major challenge for me, at least under most circumstances. I have a clear voice, and I love the sound of it, so I am almost never short for ideas or material. My Challenge becomes making my writing more and more worthwhile.
Any idiot with Microsoft Word and a stolen WiFi Connection can compose an article that looks and reads adequately, but fewer writers can consistently entertain, invigorate, or motivate their readers. At this point, simply putting words to paper is not an adequate Challenge for me. My Challenge as a writer is to write exceptionally, rather than just passably, because I’m capable of doing so.
However, obtaining my EMT-Basic certification was a major, major Challenge for me, for reasons I’ve written about. There were people in my class who I was pretty positive could not read the nutrition label on a box of Ritz Crackers or operate a can opener, but were excelling while I was floundering. But as I wrote in the EMT article, I was extremely proud of myself for leaving my comfort zone of Barbells, Hockey, and MILF Porn long enough to complete something that I do not have a natural aptitude for.
The Final Lesson is to keep ChallengingYourself.I separately and deliberately underlined those words so they sear into your brain. What Challenges me may or may not Challenge you, and vice-versa. Do what Challenges You. If you are lacking for inspiration, consider and evaluate the Areas of Challenge I’ve suggested. Look for Challenges every where and in everything. Upcycle. Do whatever it takes to continue evolving and growing, for the alternative (Atrophy) is not just undesirable, but unacceptable. Grow or Die.
I was speaking with my mother on the phone one day, and she was telling me about one of her auditors at work. The guy is about my age, and like me a Yankee who had spent a good deal of time in the South. He apparently went to college in South Carolina before moving back to Pennsylvania.
The auditor then said something to my mother than I had said word-for-word on a number of occasions: “The weather is great and I made a lot of great friends, but there is no urgency whatsoever from most of the people down there.”
I am certainly not a Type-A personality, but one of Jack’s Rules is TCB/ABC, meaning Take Care of Business and Always Be Closing. The mentality is to attack your menial tasks and problems rather than putting them off and allowing them to fester. This rule was made in college, with the rationale being that you need to Take Care of Business – i.e. class or tests or whatever – so you can go back to doing what you consider truly important, i.e. Hockey and the Women’s Lacrosse team.
In my experience, this is not a pervasive attitude in the South. If I had to summarize the overall attitude by comparison, it would be, “I’ll get to it later.” There is no Urgency to accomplish almost anything, let alone a accomplish a given set of tasks. This obviously does not include everyone living below the Mason-Dixon, but I can safely say that the pace of Southern Living is considerably lax, especially coming from the high-tempo Northeast.
Admittedly, since moving to the South, I have become much more lackadaisical. Part of this has been a function of self-preservation: I probably would have had a heart attack by now if I hadn’t learned to accept the slow-paced approach of most of the people around me. During my first several months living in the South, at times I thought my head was going to explode because people would take days or even weeks to return e-mails or text messages. I had to condition myself to accept that the people I chose to surround myself with do not live as ferociously or feverishly as I do.
This is doubly-true in the professional sector. Here is a story about the contrast in Urgency between where I presently live (the South) and where I used to live (the North):
I was driving through Wilmington on a sunny Saturday in May 2012. It was about 4 PM, two days before Memorial Day. Out of nowhere, my car came grinding to a sudden halt, dying in the middle of a four-lane highway. I turned the ignition, and while the car had electric power, there was nothing coming from the engine. As it would turn out, the timing belt on the car had blown.
I pushed the car off the highway into a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. One thing I have learned about myself is that when legitimate problems arise – such as your car destructing 15 miles from your home in a place where you don’t have any close friends or family – I have a striking ability to remain calm. I walked into the Dunkin’ Donuts and got an iced coffee, then began calling every mechanic in the area.
45 minutes of phone calls later, I still couldn’t find a mechanic who works on Saturdays. Eventually, I had my car towed to a more-tenable location (AAA’s service center), but was told that no one could look at it because AAA was closing in 45 minutes and no one would be available before Tuesday due to the holiday.
This was incredibly frustrating. Three days without a car, when you rely primarily on yourself, is a major inconvenience. I don’t remember how I got home or how I eventually got the car to the auto shop I had chosen to use, but I do remember my conversation with one of the proprietors the auto shop. This was the gist of it:
“…Well, with the holiday weekend and then (blah blah blah), and then (excuses excuses excuses), I can probably have the car back to you in 10 days or so.”
10 days or so? Really?
Most alarmingly, I could not find anyone in the area who would trump this estimate, at least without paying less than the purchase cost of a used car. I realize how crazy that sentence reads, but I was there and I assure you it happened.
It ended up taking over three weeks for the work on my car to be completed. Every time I called the mechanic to get an update or to try to get the work expedited, it was always the same scenario: “Well, I didn’t know you had authorized the work, excuses excuses, we got really busy, excuses, this really good episode of Seinfeld was on, excuses.”
At the time, I was working as a self-employed Personal Trainer. Understandably, about half of my clients decided to work with other trainers due to my extended lack of availability. At some point after the time I learned I would be without a vehicle for three weeks, to keep myself from having a stroke, I said screw it. Life Happens. I adjusted my mentality. It suddenly wasn’t the end of the world if I lost a client or if I missed a session at the gym.
I also became much more grateful for what I had. Many of us take having a vehicle, and the ease of access to goods and services, for granted. I finally internalized a critical lesson, which is that there are not one but two very valuable forms of currency: Time and Money.
I took the three weeks without a vehicle to my get my life in order. I invented and adopted The Walking Dead Diet, which I used to get down below 10% body fat. I wrote a ton. I learned to make better use of my environment and learned to appreciate things I had traditionally taken for granted, such as a lengthy, uninterrupted conversation with someone. Life slowed down for me.
I had been given an opportunity to see how the other side lives. It was very educational. However, as I tend to do, I did not moderate properly. I became so enthralled with this new way of living – as though there is always more time to do things – that I lost some of the edge that defines my character. This more easy-going version of Jack was a refreshing change of pace for the people that know me well, but it was not conducive to the behaviors that have brought me success in Life.
I am here today to sell you on The Value of Urgency. It’s great to be laid-back – to a point. However, like it or not, the rest of the world continues to swirl around us. With the way technology has advanced, the world is moves with a never-before-seen fervor. People everywhere are living not just fast but frenetic, and there are major reasons for this. I will explain these reasons below, as well as why Urgency is a High-Value Behavior.
We’re All on the Clock
Not to be morbid, but I’ll quote Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden from one of my favorite films, Fight Club:
I first saw Fight Club in high school, and most of the lessons of the film have permanently stuck with me. One of those lessons is the constant reminder that Life is finite, and that all of our respective clocks are constantly ticking.
This leads to some of my most distinct patterns of behavior. For example, anyone who spends time with me knows that I absolutely refuse to wait in line for any period of time. If I go grocery shopping and find that there is an excessively-long line at checkout, I will literally put my items back on the shelves and leave the store. Standing in line is the one time in Life that I can acutely feel the seconds ticking away.
This respect for my own mortality carries over into most other areas. I am one of the more polarizing people you will meet because I have no discomfort telling anyone exactly what I am feeling or thinking at any given moment. Many people aren’t comfortable dealing with me because I am completely direct. I keep emotional and social foreplay to an absolute minimum.
While a lot of people love me because they come to understand that I am one of the most honest people they could hope to meet, many people strongly dislike me because I am so callous. As they say, the truth hurts, and many people do not like it when I hit them with it. But I cannot change the way I am for any length of time because I am constantly reminded that Life is a limited-time offer. I frequently say and do things that most people consider crazy.
To cite a memory, I was playing poker with some friends in college, and I bet all of my stack on a single hand. Predictably, I lost, and was out $20 or so. I sat there and watched them finish the game, during which my friend Adam remarked to me, “You’re dangerous to play against because you will play every hand like it’s your last.”
That’s an analogy for how I live. Without the Rope. The most notable example of this is that I packed up all of my belongings and moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, a town in which I did not know a single soul, with the only line of reasoning being that I wanted a change from Pittsburgh. Most people simply don’t do things like this, yet my instinct is to live like this every day.
I would never recommend living this way, because my fearlessness puts me into a ton of bad situations. Moving to a town in which you don’t know anyone becomes very inconvenient when you blow the engine on your car and need a ride to the grocery store. As multiple people have pointed out, I have “a hard time playing well with others”. But try as I might, permanently reverting to the methodical, risk-averse approach to Life is something that simply is not within me.
It’s frustrating at times because many of the people in my orbit don’t like being reminded of their own mortality, and thus live in constant states of fear and indecision, or even worse, apathy. At times, I want to shake the unhappy people who know what they want and refuse to aggressively pursue it. Unless I say something like, “You are rapidly aging, and you’re going to die one day,” I often can’t muster words powerful enough to force other people to make major and necessary changes to their lives.
We all have to co-exist, and we should strive to balance our desires with those of other people. After all, if you constantly put your own desires in front of others, you’re just an asshole. But to many people refuse to make needed changes to their lives because of the first rule of inertia, i.e. an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an external force. Homeostasis and inaction is much more comfortable than being forced out of your comfort zone.
Many people, nobly, have families that they put in front of themselves. I have tremendous respect for people who are able to sacrifice their own needs for those of their spouses or children. I am not writing this for people who have and uphold responsibilities to their family. I am writing this for people waste time, the most valuable commodity we have, for no greater reason than indifference.
This awareness of mortality is also is one of the reasons that I write, and that I feel little remorse for any of the inflammatory things I may type. After I die, thanks to the boundless nature of the internet, the writing may endure. This only encourages me to write something memorable and thought-provoking, rather than filler.
My model in this respect is actor/philosopher Bruce Lee, who as I have pointed out multiple times in the past was largely a pariah during his time but is widely regarded as a genius in retrospect. Bruce Lee was simply before his time. By contrast, I think I was born a bit too late. Most of my personal values – Courage, Honor, Integrity, Will – seem outdated compared to those of many of my contemporaries. But my hope is that these Values with come back in vogue in the future, and that my writing will have greater value, as Bruce Lee’s writing has.
As I have written before, I write with Urgency because I have been hit in the head repeatedly, and some days I wake up with debilitating post-concussion symptoms. Sometimes, I re-read my blog, and don’t remember having written something specific. But I am usually pleased with the things I have written, as I believe many of them may have lasting value.
But the attitude is Urgency, because as any writer will tell you, coherently collecting thoughts into writing can be like trying to catch butterflies in a dream. Impressive thoughts come and go like the flickering of lightning bugs. Both in Life and in writing, it’s valuable to try to go after the good things with Urgency – if for no other reason than they will be gone before you know it.
At some point, I became extremely business-minded. Part of this is probably due to the fact that I opened a service-sector business at the nadir of a weakened economy, but since it’s just us girls talking: the truth is that the NHL’s decision to go to a Salary Cap system in 2005 piqued a deep and immediate interest in Economics, because my entire existence revolves around Hockey.
Both consciously and unconsciously, I began to run Value Assessments on everything, and mean everything. Cups of coffee, friendships, gym memberships, Time, you name it. Again, embracing the NHL’s Cap System – in which a premium is placed on cost-effective assets and efficiency is critical – like a new religion readjusted my perspective in all areas. If something or someone was an inefficient drain on my resources or time, I cut ties with him, her, or it immediately.
This explains my…erratic behavior to a large degree. For example, if I get the sense that someone is lying to my face – as is common in sales situations such as negotiating a gym membership or a monthly car payment – I will walk out of the room in the middle of a liar’s sentence. For people with more tact and less-rigid spines than myself, this can make things extremely awkward or uncomfortable for everyone else involved.
I don’t care, at all. My Time is valuable, and I will not have it wasted by humoring someone disrespectful enough to believe they can work me. In my view, social pretense has extremely-limited value, and manners are best saved for people who deserve them.
Having said all of this, something that has a surprising amount of Value is Urgency.
Because everything comes back to Hockey with me: a common cliche among Hockey Coaches is to preach Urgency in play. By this, coaches mean that players need to take aggressive, decisive action rather than allow the opposition to dictate play. Hockey Coaches like the word Urgency because of the negative connotations associated with the word “Desperation”.
This should make sense to most people. Acting with Urgency – having an inherent understanding that almost everything is a limited-time offer – has a great amount of value, for reasons I have explained and explain below. By contrast, acting with desperation does not just lead to poor decision-making; it’s also an incredibly-poor negotiating position.
Real life example: I recently took my car to the shop for routine work. I came to learn that both my radiator and catalytic converter needed replaced at a sum cost of $1200. Even though the auto shop I happened to choose has an oppressive Labor Rate, the fact remained that my options were do the work at 200% Labor Cost or have the car towed to another shop.
Either way, I certainly was in no position to work down the sum cost, and better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Factoring in the relative necessity of having a vehicle plus the cost of missing additional work while the car was being repaired, it was most cost-effective to just have the work done at Gestapo Auto at the 200% Labor Rate. That does not mean that it was an ideal scenario, or one that I would look to repeat.
By comparison, Urgency opens up a bevy of options for you. Again using the example of my car, had I made it a point to shop around for a price-effective mechanic before the car started rumbling like a volcano, I could have probably saved myself $200-$400 against the sum total of $1200. Because I was lackadaisical about the car – as I have regrettably become about a lot of things – I backed myself into a corner and ended up paying for it.
You obviously cannot be Urgent about everything all the time. For example, as I write this, I need to take my phone to Verizon to fix a glitch. My car could stand to be washed and vacuumed. I should have gone to the gym an hour ago. There are a half-dozen chores or errands that could stand to be completed. But the Urgency to get this article out – while I am on a roll and the ideas are fresh in mind – takes precedence, as almost any writer will tell you.
Urgency in business is simply being proactive. It’s a High-Value behavior because it frequently leads to you setting the terms and conditions of an arrangement. By being too Urgent – meaning desperate – you can certainly cost yourself at times, but that cost needs to be calculated against the cost of indecisive or lackadaisical behavior. The tricky part is that very few people take these costs into consideration, and the cost of apathy or indecision is extremely-hard to quantify.
What Do You Want Out of Life?
It’s an easy question, but very few people have an answer for it. I answered it for myself by working backward: what do I want out of death?
I was able to answer this question relatively easily:
1) I want to be cremated, for a number of reasons. I would like my urn to say, “He Lived Hockey”. I don’t care where my ashes are spread, but near a hockey rink or a ladies locker room would be fitting.
2) I want an upbeat, even comical, memorial service. For example, I would like the main speaker to incorporate no less than 25 “Meows” into a three-minute speech ala Super Troopers. I made light of most things in Life, and I would want the same tack taken in death. Ideally, the Laff Riot at my memorial service would be followed by an Irish Wake-type reception.
3) I would like to have left something worthwhile behind, whether it’s a body of work or a business or a beer-league dynasty. This is pretty normal.
4) I would like to be remembered as having done it My Way. I am well on my way to accomplishing this.
So, I’m not looking for an elaborate sarcophagus or a parade. If I meant something to enough people to fill a small room, I would be very content.
Reverse-engineering what I’ve written above, I was able to come up with a list of things I want to Urgently pursue in Life. Here is the PG version:
1) I want be awesome at Hockey for as long as I can. Then, I want to be the Old Guy that nobody messes with because my 50% is better than most people’s 100%. I basically want to do this until I drop dead, ideally at a hockey rink with my gear on.
2) I would like enough monetary success so that I can live this way in peace and take care of the important people in my Life.
3) I would like to be employed as Firefighter because it’s something I’ve wanted since I was five, which I detailed in my article “On Quitting“. I would like to help people as long as I am physically capable of doing so, at which point I want to be able to help people via financial or social avenues.
There are a few material things I would like – for example, at some point I will re-buy my first car/Love of my Life, Serra, the Eagle Talon Turbo – but all in all, I don’t think I am asking anything outrageous. If anything, listing exactly What I Want Out of Life motivates me to more-actively pursue these things. After all, like everyone else, I have no idea when my number is going to be called. It behooves one to get the lead out, and to go after the things that make your heart beat.
Back to the original question: What Do You Want Out of Life?
This is the part where you fill in your own answers. It’s cheating if you fill in things you have achieved or acquired already; for example, if you wanted a loving family and have one, that’s great but defeats the point of the exercise. A better question might be, “What Do You Want Out of Life Today?”
I am not presenting an original idea, just selling you on it. Plenty of people much more talented than me have touched upon the idea of aggressively pursuing the things you want in Life, especially considering Life’s finite nature. Kevin Spacey masters the concept in the critically-acclaimed film American Beauty:
Spacey achieves what I am suggesting you seek in the film. He recognizes his mortality, and with this recognition he decides to Urgently pursue the things that will satisfy him. He does this without completely ruining the lives of all those around him. Most of all, he comes off as incredibly enlightened and novel, when in reality most of us should be living this way. Living with Urgency should be the standard, not the exception.
Once more, ask yourself “What Do You Want Out of Life?”, and go after it. Urgently.
Conclusion
For the reasons written above, Urgency is simply a high-value attitude. By definition, Urgency means being proactive, which again opens up all sorts of opportunities. While it is crucial to differentiate between Urgency and Desperation, it is extremely-beneficial to elect for an Urgent approach over an apathetic one.
There were a number of business-school buzzwords used throughout the article. This article is, in my view, more of an article on Economics than a self-help article. I aim to practice urgency because it’s more beneficial to my bottom line, for reasons explained above. You do not need to be enrolled in Econ 305 to integrate the principles explained above, but ideally those with sharp business minds will understand why Urgency has High-Value.
My final advice to you is this: go after the job or the girl or the opportunity that you want, and go after it aggressively. I would rather make mistakes of ambition over mistakes of sloth any day of the week. If you see something good and let it go past you, I assure you someone else is going to reach out and grab it. Take the Urgent approach, and recognize that everything has an expiration date.
(UPDATE 7/9/16: The Penguins have since won the 2016 Stanley Cup and as I write this, Sid Crosby is celebrating – by which I mean working on his Backhand One-Timer or something – with his 2016 Conn Smythe trophy.
I am leaving the article up with two comments, one directed to Dejan/Sports Writers and one about the article itself:
1) The point I took 2000 words to make is that it’s freaking irritating as a Hockey Player, particularly one as proud as Sid Crosby, to have someone in the media question your effort and by proxy your integrity as a Hockey Player.
Sid is too dignified to respond to criticisms from the media most of the time, so I thought the least I could do was point out what I saw as obvious, which is that Sid was playing injured (broken hand/wrist) on a team with no scoring depth under a coach that has shown little ability to adapt at the NHL level. The results weren’t there, but his effort wasn’t in question.
Journalists have a job to do, but I think that in this instance that Dejan either let his emotions get the better or him, or sought to deliberately provoke people rather than report.
2) In retrospect, Dejan’s entire take is hilarious and indicative of the entire fanbase’s mindset at the time. His comments/shots at Sid tapped into the psyche of the Yinzer, in that the Crosby-era Penguins were seeing their tremendous potential squandered under the Shero/Bylsma regime and fans were furious about it.
He will tell you otherwise, but I’ve been reading Dejan Kovacevic since 2002, and I know this: he’s a fan. He loves the Penguins in a way that he does not love the Pirates or the Steelers.Dejan was as frustrated as most other Penguins’ fans in Spring 2014 that the team was again sputtering in the early rounds of the playoffs.
The 2016 Cup Run has basically washed this bitterness from the collective mouth of the Pens’ fanbase, but I’m not going to pretend 2010-2015 didn’t happen. Spring 2014 was possibly the nadir of the Crosby era, and of course the end of the Shero/Bylsma era. I thought this piece was worth leaving up for historical perspective.)
I incited a minor Twitter war when I made a comment in response to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review/TribLive columnist Dejan Kovacevic’s article, “Embarassed? Not Penguins”. I was less-than-thrilled with a few of the opinions Dejan submitted, and I felt something needed to be said in defense of Sid Crosby in-particular.
My view is that the Penguins, like anyone else, are subject to due criticism. But being a huge Penguins’ homer, I view undue criticism of the team, and a few players in particular, very unfavorably.
I have no problem with the majority of the article. The Penguins have played inconsistent and often uninspired hockey for most of the 2014 Playoffs. But I take issue with Dejan singling-out Sid Crosby, who in my view is playing through a mid-body or soft-tissue injury, for poor performance. I consider it undue criticism to cite a player for underwhelming play when he’s clearly struggling through an injury.
I think it’s irresponsible for @Dejan_Kovacevic to call out Sid when he is obviously injured
Casual or ignorant fans can easily latch onto the idea that Sid is simply “not trying hard enough”. It’s the classic situation of blaming the best player when a team fails to meet expectations. When a respected columnist such as Dejan suggests that the team’s captain might be giving less than his best, it fuels the wrong kind of fire.
This is the main excerpt from Dejan’s column that tweaks me:
Crosby has to be better, even if he’s playing through some kind of injury. He’s out there getting star minutes. He has to be a star.
That’s very easy to say or write. Play better, dummy. Dejan admits that Sid is injured, but the tone of his article is that Sid, like the rest of the team, has this untapped reservoir that they aren’t reaching due to lack of desire. That may or may not be true in the case of some players, but in my opinion, Sid is giving absolutely everything he has. My view is that lying on the goal line trying to block a Benoit Pouliot wrister ala Doug Glatt is about as much as a player can reasonably be expected to give.
I am not going to pick apart Dejan’s column point-by-point. For the most part, I enjoy his columns and agree with much of his insight. I agree with the overall theme of his most-recent column, which is that the Penguins need to find an emotional charge from somewhere if they hope to advance past the Rangers. But I think it’s poor form when a columnist with Dejan’s access cites Sid’s recent play without throwing up a huge asterisk.
Dejan is right in this regard: for the Penguins to get to where they want to be, Sid has to be better. The 2014 Penguins are not a deep team, and Sid is clearly the engine that makes the team go on-ice. The team and the coach all know this. Rolling out a column that suggests the team’s captain is satisfied with his below-standard play is inappropriate, in my view.
As I wrote on Twitter:
Because a stat line of minus-3, 30% face offs, and 25-second shifts is obviously normal for the Best Player in Hockey
That’s not Sid’s standard. It’s not even close. Believe me, he knows it. The tack that Dejan took in his column – that Sid could simply turn it up a few notches, and that he was opting to give less than his best in the NHL playoffs – offends me because of the disrespectful subtext: that a dignified hockey player such as Sid Crosby would dog it under any circumstances, particularly these.
Almost all hockey players, especially those at the NHL level, do not know how to give less than their absolute best. They routinely play through pain that would cower lesser men. Sid is no exception, but I apparently need to remind some people that Sid ate through a straw for two months last year before returning to play the 2013 Playoffs in the Hannibal Lecter bite-collar:
Let’s agree based on recent precedent that Sid is willing to play through pain and injury. Is criticizing him in various local media for not playingbetter while clearly injured really the most appropriate stance to take?
It must be incredibly frustrating to be Sid Crosby and to know that you are playing well-below your personal standard during the most-critical part of the season. But it must be doubly frustrating to have a local writer imply that your mediocre play stems from lack of will.
Can the team play better? Certainly. Can the team give more? Maybe or maybe not, at least not without deviating from the game-plan that Dan Bylsma and his staff have constructed. But Sid is out there giving everything his body will allow. I think in this scenario, praise and support would be much more appropriate than swipes at his integrity as a hockey player.
Maybe I should have a better sense of humor about this, but questioning an NHL player’s commitment at this time of year, particularly Sid’s, is really offensive to me. Sid Crosby is far too classy to dignify any assaults by the media, so I’ll take the role I usually take against unwiped Flyers and Bruins’ fans and defend his character.
He’s playing hurt, and he’s refusing to complain about it. That’s extremely noble.
As for getting “Star Minutes”, anyone watching can see that Sid is bailing out early on shifts. As per Eliotte Friedman, Sid’s shift average was down nearly 10 seconds per shift in Game 4 of the Columbus series. He played 19:36 in Game 1 versus the Rangers, and 19:48 in Game 6 against Columbus. Right now his body, for whatever reason, is simply not allowing him to sustain pressure in the Offensive Zone as he has in the past. He’s taking brief swings at the opposition and heading quickly to the bench, because right now, he has to.
Sid’s playing 1st-line minutes, yes, but who would you rather give those minutes to in a must-win environment: Sid Crosby at 50%, or some combination of the Penguins’ bottom-six? Dan Bylsma must have thrown up in his mouth when he saw Brandon Sutter hobble off in Game 6 against Columbus.
Sid also lacks his trademark explosiveness. He’s practically slogging through the Neutral Zone as he’s receiving outlet passes. Anyone watching can also see this. Again, this screams “back/sciatic injury” to me. Most impressive to me is that despite the loss of his acceleration, he’s continuing to impact games with his hockey IQ and his passing, which Mike Colligan of the Hockey Writers noted in his article, “What’s Wrong with Sidney Crosby?”
My sudden ally Don Cherry of Hockey Night in Canada also mused that Sid has a back injury of some sort. Based on personal experience, I would have to agree. The only thing worse for a hockey player than debilitating pain in the knee, hand, or hip is when a problem with your back steals your ability to separate from opposing players. If you ever have the chance, ask Mario Lemieux about that.
It’s easy to feel sympathetic for an injured player when the injury is highly visible. We all wince when a player takes a puck off the face, and most of us feel pangs of compassion when we see bags of ice or soft casts on a wrist or knee. But when a player has a less-obvious injury – such as a concussion, or as I believe Sid currently has, a moderate spinal injury or sciatic nerve impingement – some people raise eyebrows. It’s as though some people need to see the blood or the bone poking through to take an injured player at his word.
(Update: despite his insistence to the contrary, it was confirmed that Sid had a hand/wrist injury. He might have also had a mid-body injury or nerve impingement. Only Sid and the Pens’ training staff could say for sure.)
I have recently read and heard much more-pointed attacks on Sid than those opined in Dejan’s recent column. But unfortunately, Dejan’s suggestion that Sid has another gear that he’s simply refusing to hit was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The notion that Sid isn’t giving his all offends me as both a hockey player and a Pittsburgh Penguins fan.
I am highly biased. I love the Pittsburgh Penguins, and have since I was young. I am prone to defend the Penguins’ superstars, as you can read elsewhere on this blog. I take issue with Dejan’s assessment that Sid is half-assing it. Sid Crosby is one of the most competitive people in sports. Even if Sid were inclined to take shifts off, the Eyeball Test verifies that he has a hitch in his giddy-up.
Most of you reading this are also highly-biased. The Penguins, and Sid Crosby in particular, are lightning rods. Most NHL Hockey fans have an extremely-strong opinion one way or the other about both Sid and the team he plays for, and these opinions cloud tend to cloud the truth. Just for a moment, put your own biases aside and consider the rough data:
Does Sidney Crosby look like himself?
Does he have a reason to suddenly play at half of his ability?
Have his many of his raw statistics – Goals, Plus/Minus, Faceoff Win Percentage, Shots – drastically and suddenly fallen off since, oh, I don’t know, April 3rd versus Winnipeg?
Sid has thick skin. He’s been picked apart since he was 14. But having a local writer question his level of play while most evidence points to a significant injury is something he shouldn’t have to endure. Since neither the Penguins nor Sid, admirably, will not own up to his injury, I defended him. I am sure it will not be the last time.
Jack
Most informed observers will agree that the Penguins took a downturn following the Olympic break in mid-February. This makes a good deal of sense because a number of Penguins represented their respective countries at the Sochi Games. This idea is well-covered by Mike Colligan of the Hockey Writers in his article, “What’s Wrong with Sidney Crosby?”
This isn’t an anti-female rant, it’s a sensitive people rant. So if you looked at the picture above and felt outrage, you’re part of the problem.
“Rule #76: No Excuses, Play Like a Champion!”
Jack_Has_Spoken 
