A Link To The Past: Rodger’s Awakening
I just turned 32, and it has turned into a time to reflect and as I have spent more time discovering myself this past year than ever. I am currently weigh in around 200 pounds, lower than any weight I was in high school, reading at a steady clip (maybe not as much as elementary/middle school), and thinking a lot about how everything seems to come back around.
I use to read a lot. Like a lot, a lot. I remember Accelerated Reader in elementary school where every year it was me and a few other kids racing for some new ridiculously high amount of points. I did a book review on the book The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill and Ronni Solbert on the school TV show when it was my class’s turn to make the show, and Ms. Graham the librarian was already ready to suggest a good book and encourage a students crazy love of reading. My mom would take me and my siblings to the public library during the summer and let us pick out a few books and sometimes even check out a movie. Reading did not stop in Middle School or High School, really, I spent most of my formative years reading fantasy novels, web comics, and even trash fan fiction my friends would show me.
After graduating high school, I stopped. There are vague memories where a friend convinced me to read Wheel of Time series, but not much of anything else. When I eventually went back to college, I was too focused on work, school, and League of Legends to read. Till about 30 I only Brandon Sanderson books and mostly when I thought about it, never actively hunting. Maybe just 2–3 books a year.
During those years I also struggled a lot, with work, with life, and with balance. With graduating and a job now achieved, I felt like I was going mad. I had nothing left to work for, so I lost focus. One thing after another was allowed to slip as I never finished anything I set out to accomplish, I missed completing something and so I made a pact with myself. One book and one video game a month, I would read the book cover to cover and smash through the story of a game just to see it through, end to end. A way to get a win in regularly and celebrate progress, using Goodreads to keep track of my reading progress. When looking for what to read next, I noticed my friend Matthew Noe had finished reading a book titled, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. At this point in my life, I was over 312 pounds, never had a girlfriend, and severely depressed so the prospect of a book having the key to changing how I saw the world was enticing. I was in the mindset for change and open to what it would take to change my situation, I’ll never forget it honestly. Michael Pollan started talking about the Default Mode Network (DMN) and how our brain has this network to act as rails for when we are making decisions, giving two methods of quieting the DMN. Psychedelics and meditation.
I’m not the type to experiment with drugs, so that left me finishing the book and looking at the idea of meditation seriously. At the time I was vulnerable, a bit depressed, but strangely energetic from my new process of just putting one small thing in front of the other. One book, one game, one workout. Rinse and repeat every month. Mindless Youtube browsing one night brought me a video about Jocko Willink and his idea of discipline bringing freedom to people’s lives, this led me to watching Peter Attia and Joe Rogan discussing Jocko which then lead to watching the Joe Rogan podcast for people like Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, discussing about bringing yourself out of these areas one small action at a time or focusing on honing mindfulness.This all lead to me pushing discipline, practicing intermittent fasting and eventually for Thanksgiving 2018, I fasted from communication and food the entire week before meeting my family for the holidays. Discipline Equals Freedom is Jocko’s book of what I label “Warrior Poetry” and ended up being the next book I would read after this transformation.
Writing that last paragraph, and every time I discuss this seemingly non-sequitur events I get chills and I smile, I also think how preposterous it is. Just like when I consider getting laid off from a job in 2010 as the greatest thing that happened to me. I read a book about doing drugs, discovered meditation, and started watching Joe Rogan which eventually started a series of small changes till I lost over a second person worth of weight from my body, and today I ran my personal best mile at 7:12. I shaved off all my hair, started caring about how I look, cook a majority of my own food, shop at local farmer’s markets, planning to read over 50 books this year and just stay present in making every moment the best moment I can.
Reading led to meditating, meditating and opening my mind led to discipline, discipline lead to me cooking, me finally moving on from my first job after college to Big Ass Fans, which then lead to moving to Amazon in Seattle in the same year! Openness in Seattle led me to yoga, and meeting a great group of friends and reflecting on how far I’ve come since graduating high school. All this to realize that I did not actually land that far from where I was as a kid, searching for joy in words on a page, but I am not done and I will never be done. It use to be about having goals, but now I realize that when it becomes about the destination you get there, have a moment of glory, and then it is all gone again. Life isn’t about rushing to some endgame, rushing towards a destination, it is about enjoying the slow, plodding hike on the mountain, taking in the scenery, or enjoying those moments of peace you take reading with the sunlight filtering through the window. With that in mind, I think I’ll close my thoughts with a quote from my favorite author Brandon Sanderson — “To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.”