Getting Started...
One thing I like about the so-called self-improvement space are the stories of victory over impossible odds. Men, primarily, who found themselves at what seemed like the end of the road - unemployed or underemployed, wives left, children estranged, debt piling up… And then, through grit and determination and a little bit of Hail Mary craziness, overcame and got it all back.
I love that stuff.
However, we usually encounter these men after they’ve slain the dragons. By the time they appear in our feeds, they’re dispensing endless automated advice for men a few years behind them in the rags-to-riches story arc. Maybe this is some kind of sick voyeuristic impulse, but I’d like to catch up with these guys who are still in the midst of struggle. Guys whose fates aren’t yet known and who could, maybe even likely will, considering the stats and the odds, utterly fail.
There’s the real drama.
I’m sure those guys are out there. After all, all the guru advice seems to be, “Document your journey.” Maybe I don’t “consume” enough social media to really know who’s at the bottom. All I ever seem to catch are the guys who’ve reached the “flex” stage of their arc. (And who, I’d guess, are in just as much danger, if not more, of losing it all again because of pride.)
At any rate, I’m definitely at the bottom of my story arc, but maybe, just maybe, I’ve reached the bottom and am now heading back “up.”
And so, here I am, documenting my journey.
Here’s an abbreviated introduction to my story…
I floated through the first 30 years or so of life. I actually did know what I wanted to do with my life, but since it was impractical and success was statistically grim, I pursued a number of “shadow careers,” as Steven Pressfield calls them.
After I’d gotten married and the first kid was on the way, I thought I’d found my calling. I basically fell into small business ownership, but thanks to the pressure of the recession and my sense of duty as the provider for the family, I ran with the opportunity. The small business I’d founded as a side hustle grew and eventually made more than a million-and-a-half dollars per year (at least for a couple of years.)
It was grueling work, both on the service-delivery side as well as the administrative side, but there was nobility in it. It was a “sweaty job;” the farthest thing from sexy inside-the-DC-Beltway, but it paid the bills. With a growing family, I was happy to have it. I considered it a blessing, actually, because my chosen field and reason for moving to DC in the first place would never have generated enough revenue to support a family of 6.
Eventually, however, the stresses of running that business, the growing rift between my wife and I, and my own self-sabotaging attitude brought it all down. I went from making six figures to less than half that, to less than a quarter of it.
As I was going through bankruptcy, I frantically tried to get other businesses up and running, and I did have a little bit of success, but before too long it was clear that something major had to change or we were going to lose what little we had left.
Around this time, my wife put her resume out there. This very practical act wasn’t like one of the million paper cuts flaying me alive day-to-day back then. This was a knife in the heart. It cut right through my sense of self as a provider. Even worse, she got a bite on her resume, and then an interview. On the upside, the employer wanted to interview me, too, because they tended to “hire families” and not just individuals.
They flew us out to Tulsa, Oklahoma for additional interviews. The founder of the organization gave generously of his time, showed us around, and did his best to try to give us a picture of what it would be like to live out there. Let’s just say it was very different than living in the DC suburbs. But since I had no other prospects on the horizon, it seemed like our only play.
My wife would get back into the workforce and I’d be a stay-at-home dad. In my “spare time,” I’d work on small projects for the new job and work on building a new business.
If time travel ever becomes a thing, this is one of the points I want to travel to so I can kick my own ass for being such a moron. (One of the many.) I had no idea how hard managing a household was going to be, and how utterly unsuited to it I was (and still am, really).
So, we used every last dollar we had preparing our home for renters and moving 2500 miles or so to Tulsa. And then the hardest year of our life began.
Short story: We were both living in contradiction to our natures, calling, and quite possibly, nature itself.
My wife is the homemaker, the educator, the nurturer. But she was working a 9-5 for less than what the family needed.
I was the provider, the entrepreneur, the creator, but I was “stuck” making meals nobody liked and folding laundry.
It was the perfect environment to grow resentment, and it did. Our problems began long before this year, but every hostile suspicion, every dark thought came to the surface. Every wound from the past reopened. We were in constant fight-or-flight mode. Love languages? You’ve got to be kidding me.
It came to a head very recently when, even after we’d “restored order” by switching our roles back, and even after I’d landed a solid, respectable job, she told me she had no faith in me, and I said, “Fine, then we’re done.”
A couple of days later we had a heart-to-heart that at least temporarily paused hostilities, but it still left a larger-than-usual crater in our marriage.
So, here’s where we are: Financially unstable, but there’s opportunity on the horizon. Maritally unstable, but if nothing else, the exhaustion of a decade+ of strife has allowed us to see each other anew. Spiritually, we’re in a place we never expected, that is somewhere just off-center of our ideal, but still life-sustaining and healing.
That’s why I say that I think we are on the upswing now. But I say that knowing it’s one of the most dangerous places to be - it doesn’t take much to blow out a small flicker of hope. Many of the red alert lights on the dash have at least switched to amber, and maybe one or two are green.
I’m telling this story now for a couple of reasons. For one, I think I can see the story arc. It’s not, at least not obviously, a story of failure, but one of hope for others.
And that’s my second reason for starting this thing: Our story is unique to us, but it’s hardly a novel situation. There’s a lot of hurt out there - so much that sometimes, when I’m exposed to it, I simply can’t bear to hear it. Nonetheless, I’ve been told by more than a few guys that this story is somehow (inexplicably, I’d say) inspiring. I’m treading very close to the kind of arrogance and pride that has brought me down many times before, but if there’s a chance that my experience can be beneficial to someone else, particularly the men, I’m happy to help.
One last note about that last point. I’m mainly writing for the men out there. Particularly men of traditional-leaning Christian faith who take that faith seriously. I suppose I might have more to say to entrepreneurial men of faith because the so-called work/life balance is particularly difficult for husbands and fathers who have to hunt and kill their own food. Maybe it’s just a shade of difference, though. I certainly don’t disparage any man who drags his butt to a job he hates, or is at least extremely challenging, in order to fulfill his obligations.
There is one class of men I have in mind as I imagine how this will go: I don’t really have a term for it, but I guess the “Lost Boys” might be the closest. These are the men who are out in the world, doing their best, but had little or no preparation for it. Their souls are like cork boards of random Post-It Notes containing little scraps of wisdom they’ve picked up along the way. They didn’t have fathers in their lives, or if they did, their fathers were detached and even cold. Their fathers were fighting the same fights at least a generation before ours. We, the children of ill-formed men, are even less formed.
And, maybe predictably, this has given rise to a movement often called “The Manosphere” that seeks to reclaim what was never given in the first place, with varying results. For me, every outpost Manosphere offers just a piece of the puzzle. As good as some of these outposts are, they feel incomplete.
So that’s that. Feel free to drop a comment or reach out. Let’s see what happens.