Pour Me A Story, Vol. 50
don't call it a comeback!
hello there pals! I bet you thought you’d heard the last of me on this particular platform, but that simply isn’t the case. Pour Me A Story wasn’t dead, just in stasis. I had to google that to make sure “in stasis” is an actual term and not something I’d heard in an Alien movie, so the more you know.
how have you been? very well, I hope, in this consistently strange world we find ourselves in. did you know it’s been 261 days since last you heard from me (again, via this medium)? a lot has happened in — holy shit — 70 percent of a year, and that’s honestly the catalyst for me dusting off my old MacBook, doing a password reset for Substack, and hoping like hell my typing fingers still have a little magic in them.
let’s take a little journey down memory lane, shall we?
Oh, The Places You’ll End Up!
the last time I wrote an edition of this newsletter in Colorado, it was Vol. 34, and it foreshadowed (well, openly announced) that Alex and the baby and I were packing up and moving to Cincinnati over the Fourth of July weekend in 2021.
seventeen newsletters (and an eight-month hiatus) later, we’ve found ourselves back in the Mile High City on a permanent basis. we returned in late April, a little sooner than expected but at the same time evidently not soon enough.
as I discussed in the aforementioned Vol. 34, the decision to relocate largely hinged on two factors: financial and familial. without getting too bogged down in the details, a plan looked great on paper didn’t come to fruition the way we had hoped, and we came to the decision that Denver was the place we felt happiest, and we’d do whatever it took to return and make it work.
ironically enough, I wrote this in that same newsletter:
this wasn’t a decision we came to lightly. we have a ton of friends in Denver, and Colorado’s a beautiful state and a great place to live. but when it comes down to it, the smile on the baby’s face when I watch her running through the grass at the park and inspecting leaves makes me realize one thing: I gotta get this kid a yard to play in.
our Cincinnati digs didn’t have a yard, but our new home in Denver does, and watching the baby play with her best friend earlier this evening while the grown-ups grilled out and enjoyed a cold one in the waning summer sunlight is worth every penny of the vertigo-inducing rent check.
Baby Got Back (Surgery)
ah shit. not the actual baby, she’s fine. wow that was pretty misleading.
a leisurely five days before we set out on our return journey to Denver, I got up early and got a cab to charming little accommodations at the Mayfield Surgery Center, where I was subsequently garbed in a luxurious paper robe (flapping at the back, of course), stuck with an IV line and filled to the gills with anesthesia drugs.
if that seems drastic, well I guess it was. a left far lateral discectomy was the culmination of an up-and-down back problem that had managed to survive hundreds of miles of running in Denver but fell apart approximately seven workouts into our time in Cincinnati. there’s no real way of telling what was the near-literal straw that broke this donkey’s back, but I’m assuming it’s a combination of “a missed step on a downhill section of a run” and “lifting a rolled-up rug up the apartment stairs” that put me out of commission very quickly.
I went through the whole nine yards: twice-weekly physical therapy, dry needling, MRIs, steroidal painkilling injections, muscle relaxants, the works. meanwhile I put on weight and struggled with the inability to be mobile and nimble with an increasingly active toddler to take care of, as well as the mental pressure of not feeling like I was a very effective or fun dad.
ultimately I reached the end of my rope and figured going under the knife would be the solution most likely to offer long-term relief. so after getting the surgeon’s blessing to, uh, drive 1,200 miles across the country five days after the procedure, promising to get out and stretch every 90 minutes, I agreed to the backiotomy.
the road to recovery has been frustratingly long, which is something the surgeon and his team warned me about. since back surgeries are usually reserved for folks twice my age — those who are less mobile in their daily lives — it’s difficult for us “kids” to deal with the mental hurdles of not being able to accomplish the physical things we’d like to do. put short, the body that used to be able to run for two hours at a time on a Sunday morning was now unable to get down the driveway and bring in the trash cans without discomfort or needing to lay on the couch for a half-hour afterwards.
about two months later I began to feel some improvements in the sciatic nerve pain I had been experiencing and thought maybe the end was in sight. then, of course, I did way too much to celebrate my newfound mobility (namely 12 miles of walking around New York City visiting with friends and family) and ended up throwing my body so far out of alignment I needed wheelchairs to get me through JFK and Denver airports on the return journey.
that was in mid-June, and I can finally say with something resembling confidence that I feel like I’m getting back to something resembling pain-free. mornings are still tough, and I still have to take a daily pill to tamp down the nerve discomfort, but I’m not wincing and crying between physical therapy sessions (of which there have been many.)
Ebbs and Flows
the recovery period, as well as the painful months prior to surgery, were tough as hell from a mental standpoint. some days I was barely able to pick the baby up for a hug or put her in the bath or change her clothes without exhaustion at best or physical agony at worst, and that took a huge toll. my inability to do something as simple as take the kiddo on a stroller walk, or carry a hamper down to the laundry, made me feel as though I wasn’t being a good enough father or partner. in unrelated news, “being tough on myself” is one of the things in the world that I’m best at.
those pressures were compounded by an ongoing dissatisfaction at work. I alluded to this in Vol. 40, but essentially when we left Colorado my former bosses told me I was no longer a part of the team because I wanted to continue to work remotely from Cincinnati after more than a year of working remotely in Denver. I was fortunate to find another role in the company that I could slot into, but the work went from strategic and creative to overwhelming in volume but nothing that exercised my brain.
the daily grind of the new role saw me back on LinkedIn much sooner than I expected, and our decision to move back to Denver escalated my search from “find something else to do” to “find something else to do that lets us afford Colorado rent.” I spoke with a lot of companies (like, a lot. the number is sickening) and had a lot of great prospects, but ultimately none of them materialized. the “moving forward with another candidate” emails never got any easier to swallow, and at least three times the role I was sure was the one turned out to be another crushing blow.
questioning my professional abilities at the same time as I was doubting my performance as a father and being unable to do the one physical activity that gives me mental clarity all piled up on me and made for some extremely down months. there just didn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
in a wild segue, one of the books Marley has been partial to is Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss. In the book, the protagonist leaves town and takes on life’s exciting challenges, but then the rollercoaster of existence leaves them in a slump and somewhere called The Waiting Place until they’re finally able to free themselves.
I read this passage maybe once a day and nodded to myself like that Alonzo Mourning gif we all know and love. but between surgery, seeing my girls enjoy their new Colorado surrounds and a couple of local job offers when we returned, I felt like the tides might be turning just a little.
PT gave me extra mobility after weeks of hell. Alex has done an incredible job of furnishing and decorating our new home with very little physical assistance from yours truly. and despite an absolutely and uncharacteristically silent June on the job front, something emerged from an application out of the blue and before I knew it, I was accepting a job offer.
it’s a great fit in terms of responsibilities, opportunities for growth, and flexibility, which has been a huge factor for me. it’s been two and a half years. why would I wanna go to the office five days a week and miss watching my baby girl grow up? let me be here when she gets home from school, man.
so here’s to emerging from the slump. for a while there it didn’t feel as though there was an end in sight. Saturday I walked two and a half miles pain-free, Monday I start a new job in a new industry, and our little one starts school after Labor Day. I feel as though I’m out of the tunnel, or almost there at least.
Worthy Consumables
one of my past guests, Mike Mulloy, has been a Twitter pal for a while. he’s a stand-up comedian and as long as I’ve lived in Denver I’ve pestered him about booking a show here. well he finally did — and I’d moved to Cincinnati. good news though! he booked some more shows here and we made it out to see him at Comedy Underground last night.
and in unsurprising news, it was very funny stuff. the local opening acts were great, our first drinks were free with the ticket, and there was pizza being passed around. so if you have the chance to a) see Mike when he comes to your town or b) go to a show at Comedy Underground, do it for sure. that’s the Pour Me A Story endorsement.
Parting Note
I still hate picking music for this section so I’m just putting Mike’s Comedy Central set below. it’s good stuff.
thanks for reading pals, assuming this email made it past your spam filter. I can’t make any promises, but I might just mess around and keep writing this.
until next time ✌🏻
— adrian
Glad to have you ... back?!