Living an Optimal Life

A travel job serves some useful functions. It's a path to new places, a way to avoid the confines of a cubicle and a home life social filter. It's amazed me how quickly loyal friends forget you exist once you give up your local gym membership for a franchised one with multi-city access. It's amazing how quickly friends assume you won't be coming to events, so they fail to try to invite you. Soon, your personal cell phone is as silent as a hotel room (with three stars or above). Then, a remarkable thing happened. Out of the dozen phone calls I made to "friends" following my last week long excursion east announcing my return to local society, only one person answered... my son. And we chatted for nearly an hour. And to be honest, he and his two brothers really were the friends I missed most. They always greet my return with wide arms waiting for hugs, eager to hear my stories and enthusiastic about sharing theirs. There is never judgement nor concern projected ...

The theory that life favors entropy was one of the lessons from high school biology that stuck with me. Entropy's definition is: gradual decline into disorder. All cellular life follows this pattern. We can't be blamed for perpetually orchestrating chaos in our lives, because we're wired for it. Every story has a conflict, an antagonist, or a challenge that must be overcome. We're consumed with growth and progress, consciously or not. I believe this is the underlying reason that nothing sticks in my life: jobs, relationships, foundational moral and religious beliefs. I'm designed to favor the dissolution of all I build. Right? Can we rewire these tendencies to desire peace and stability, a consistently predictable and solid set of life circumstances? Biology would disagree. We're to be torn down and rebuilt, time and time again, until we are left a malleable lump of insecurity. True to this theory, my life has been a continuous cycle of start a sales job, build...

I’m on a plane again. Then, the enormous, red rabbit greets me, looming menacingly from the ceiling as I descend the escalators to the baggage claim again, as I have countless times these past two years. Much of the travel the first year could have been avoided, but subconsciously, I was escaping my world then, convincing myself it was for financial necessity. Thus, I successfully removed myself from it, in my constant absence, and now, the travel has become habit, and a necessity perceived or real. As home life friendships begin to blossom and relationships bud, my next trip hits the reset button, and I return beneath the rabbit to start over again. As I do so, my boys get older. Every trip Ryan is a little taller, and I can only imagine what I’ve missed. Life in between is a whirlwind of overcompensating quality time with the kids, detoxing travel food and booze, frantically stocking the house with groceries, clean clothes and a routine. Just when I’m organized and ready to re-conn...

Do you ask yourself this question? I do, on average, twice a year, as that is how often my life changes in nearly every way. It's been this way since my divorce four years ago, and to be fair, most of my ten years of marriage as well. In fact, if babies could talk, that would have likely been the first sentence I uttered after exiting the birth canal. Yes, it's a theme. There are theories, the first being the results of combining a naively and spontaneously enthusiastic personality with the inability to say "no." Another could be drawing the short stick in heaven when "luck" was being distributed or checking the box labeled "painfully challenging and tumultuously character building" on the Level of Difficulty Order Form for life before descending the birth canal. Or maybe I told God, "Do what you want to me, just make it a good story." If I had a dollar for every time a therapist told me, "You should write a book," I could aff...