
My brain does not turn off. Ever. I’m quite certain I’m not the only one, but I am completely certain that the reasons why are always unique to each of us.
Another thing I am quite certain about is that the topics that saddle a restless brain and the reasons they won’t leave aren’t nearly as important as how they affect your life.
In the past week, I have thought a lot about this, because it has affected me. Why does it feel right and normal to have a brain that won’t shut off; a brain that can hover just outside of temporary contentment but never actually take its shoes off and stay awhile? Why is my brain so hyper-focused that I often can’t concentrate on the many pulls of life because I MUST get this one thing perfect, and other times my brain is a blender set to puree and not a single one of a thousand challenges is awarded that focus?
More importantly, whether it’s been given that level of focus or given barely a second thought, why does the constant fight for the answers to all those things that weigh me down seldom include joy?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an unhappy person. Quite the opposite, really. In a blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I even said I was nearing a place in my life that had always felt like a distant, unreachable dream.
I never thought I’d actually be able to look in the mirror and say I was content. Most days now, though, I’m generally content.
But I’m not finished. I’m not done seeking success. I’m not done trying to figure out why the hell I’m actually here. I’m not done trying to figure out exactly what my mission in life was supposed to be. I’m not done trying to give my family a better life. I’m not done trying to uncover the place in this world where I’ll make a real, far-reaching impact. I don’t even know why I want that, but I do. I always have.
But because I’m not done, I fight. And since I got sober nearly four years ago, I fight like hell. I didn’t even know how to fight when I was a drunk. I didn’t know what I was even fighting for even if I developed some kind of motivation to do so.
For a week now, I’ve been in my restless head trying to figure out why I’ve chosen to live a life full of personal fights when I don’t really find joy IN the fight. And I think that’s something I have to acknowledge because if contentment was my main goal in sobriety, it’ll only be about 80% discovered without finding joy in the daily grind. It’s something I clearly need to work on.
It’s also something in which I question the possibility.
This past weekend, I took a break from the fight. I took a break from the ambition. I took a break from giving everything I have to what has become an often isolated, lonely, unceasing fight. I needed that break, but all it really did was make me wonder how to find authentic joy in the battles I choose to fight. I knew writing about it would help. It always does.
Between October of 2019 and March 1st of 2020, I fought as hard as I’ve ever fought in my life. I was charged with getting over 3,000 signatures just to get on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate for the NC House of Representatives. It was a completely pointless fight because I knew I was going to lose. And I did. I’ve grown to be rather proud of myself, but it’s hard to say it was anything other than pointless.
What exactly did I change in my thirteen month fight to convince 12% of the district that my message was worth voting for? I mean, you really can’t answer that with anything other than “nothing.” But somehow it was still a worthy fight.
I was a trailblazer in this country. I have never attempted to find out how many unaffiliated candidates there were in the entire country, but there was exactly one in North Carolina: me.
And why does that make me a trailblazer? We’re seeing people flock out of each party for different reasons daily in search of political independence, we’re in a twenty year trend that has thus far seen unaffiliated voters go from 10% of the population to nearly 40%. And that has been a bipartisan flock. Somebody had to start a trend of being a voice for that flock, and it is that reason alone that I will forever smile at that pointless campaign. It was worth the fight, with joy or without. And the joy did come, but mostly it came after the fight was over.
But it was lonely. And it was the toughest fight of my life. So tough, in fact, that I had every intention of building on the momentum and continuing the fight as soon as November 4th arrived. I’m not done with the fight, but I needed a break from it. And though I KNOW people will follow me in that fight, I don’t know of anybody else that will champion it with the same fervor that I will, and so it will once again be a lonely fight.
That’s hard. It’s even harder to find joy in it, even when it’s something in which I believe so strongly. Solitary fights are hard.
But when I really sat back to think about it, solitary fights have been the only fight I’ve actually fought since I was 14 years old.
In ninth grade, I didn’t make the JV basketball or baseball team after being in the starting lineup for both in middle school. I was devastated. But I knew I was going to play some kind of sport in high school, so I took golf lessons that summer. For the next six years, my entire LIFE was golf, and a more solitary sport you will not find.
That fight led me to all-conference by senior year, it led me to become a scholarship athlete on the Division II level in college. But all along, it was a solitary fight, and one I did not enjoy the way I should have. I was too angry at not being perfect to enjoy it.
By nineteen I was drinking too much. By twenty I lived alone and quite often drank alone. I was married at 26, a father at 27, and widowed at 30. I was never the husband or father I should have been because a drunk can be in a clown car with seventeen other clowns and be alone.
I started a business at 28 and ran it into the ground all by myself, mainly because at that point, I either had no idea how to fight anymore or I just didn’t care to fight.
I was 35 before I did anything that resembled escaping solitary confinement, and I married her less than a year and a half later. And even though it was the best decision of my life, I was still alone. That’s what addiction does to you. It is the most solitary fight known to man, and it is not the kind of fight in which joy can have any part.
Not to kill that mini life story right there, as I completely understand why there is no joy in the fight to preserve an addiction, but I’m sober now. There should be joy in life’s battles now.
So why did I struggle to find joy in running for office when it was something I’d always wanted to do? Why was there little joy when I knew (and still know) it was a MUCH-needed position and platform on which to run? Why did the joy come after the fight instead of during it?
Why does the fight to discover my purpose on this Earth include no intrinsic joy? Why does the fight to start a business I know is needed in this country produce pessimism and self-doubt when it should produce joy?
I mean, seriously. How many people have the effing guts to do what I’ve done over the past year and a half? I know the answer to that. There are very, very few. But guts and ambition and desire and perseverance do NOT translate to joy. I do not know why. I hope I live long enough to know so I can tell young people the secret to life.
I have serious doubts about ever actually finding those answers. I don’t know that personal battles – by their very nature – are supposed to include joy. I think some fights and personal battles are simply necessary because the person you want to be is on the other side.
In the case of starting a side business, a battle to relevance is not fun, but the capability to see success at the end – even if it’s a long ways away – lets you know that joy exists somewhere in the battle. It ignites the fight to go after it. Or in the case of running for office, the state and the country you want to see are on the other side of the fight, but the battle is just too daunting to include joy.
But all of those battles are necessary, I think. The personal battles are simply a necessity of humanity. The worldly ones are the ones you take on because your kids deserve better than what the world is giving them without your input. Joy is – at best – only a tertiary side effect of the positive repercussions of those battles.
But I do know one thing. You can actually add a year to one of the questions I asked earlier. How many people have the guts to do what I’ve done over the past TWO and a half years? Again, not many.
My very first big decision in sobriety was to write about it and hopefully help people who might also be struggling with addiction and sobriety. Out of all the decisions I have made in the past four years, that was my best. And why is that?
Because it doesn’t feel like a fight. Writing – and hopefully making a real impact on real people suffering real personal conflict – simply brings me joy.
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