Moleskin First, The Thang Later
A summary of the Popcorn-led COT from this morning…
My wife, 4 young kids, and I moved all the way across the country from Santa Ana, CA to Huntersville, NC in the last days of August 2019. Just 4-1/2 months later, after over a decade of slow but steady descent into mental and physical depths, I finally faced the very ugly truth that I had a severe, life-threatening problem with alcohol. About two months after that, a pandemic turned the country upside down.
Question: How the hell does a 33 yr old California dude make friends in the South without drinking during a pandemic?
My growth in many capacities…as a leader, as a friend, as a husband and father, as a man…had been severely stunted for just about all of my 20s. As those with an addiction, any addiction, will understand, the thing to which one is addicted is all-consuming. Although fairly well hidden, my entire life, mindset, and identity revolved in some way or another around drinking. I was the saddest of sad clowns, and now I didn't even have the one thing (alcohol) that tricked me into thinking I wasn't such a sad clown after all. Who the hell would want to hang with a wretch like me? What now?
Finally, on August 10th, 2020, I relented to my neighbor's months long EH-ing efforts. Soprano was pretty light on the details, but I looked it up online. This group of guys wake up way too early, seem to enjoy pain, use weird language, and call each other by goofy-ass nicknames. This sounds like Fight Club meets Little Rascals. My initial "Hell no" became an "I'll give it a try" and off to Man Maker Monday I went. I went to 4 workouts that week and never looked back.
The richness, fullness, and freeness of this new life I've been granted can be attributed to several things. Among them are sobriety and my F3 brothers! There are too many to thank individually, so I'll just leave it at this: my gratitude to ALL my F3 brothers and to F3 Nation cannot be adequately put into words.
A Note on Struggle
Every one of us has struggle. Alcohol was mine, but it could be any number of any things for the men we see in the gloom. ALL men struggle…and we are open to ALL men for a reason! I encourage my brothers to continue to show a tremendous amount of empathy and understanding as part of F3 and in our daily lives.
On a personal note, I'll say that even though my brothers didn't know about my particular struggles, never once did I feel excluded because I didn't drink. I've also never felt pressured to drink by my F3 brothers. (While drinking isn't right for me, I have no moral objection to those who do partake.) Good on you, men!
The Thang
Dude, I don't know. The Thang doesn't seem as important compared to what's up top. We did block work, sprints, a bunch of burpees, wall walks, and mary. It was hard. The lactic acid and sweat was profuse. I'm not at all bitter about not being mentioned in F3 Nation's recent informal Twitter poll about who in your region Qs the hardest workouts. There will be hell to pay 😉