42

Today is my 42nd birthday. I joke that I'm now the answer to life, the universe and everything, at least for the next year, but so often do I realize I'm not. My other mantra for today has been, "It's just another day." Which when it is your birthday, sounds kind of depressing. I took my car in for service, baked my own birthday cake (thank you very much) and since my wife is teaching tonight, I don't get to see her until probably late this evening, close to 9 or 10.

It was just under a year ago I had the feeling that turned me around and decided to seek help for my depression. So, you would think I'd be pretty down about being all alone most of the day today. When, in fact, it is the mantra 'Just another day' that has gotten me through. You see, I may be alone today, but tomorrow I get to go to the city that I love, with two of my favorite women on this planet. Then, if we can time it right, I will get to meet the CEO of the Brandon Marshall Foundation, (who had his own birthday not too long ago). Then, I get to spend the weekend with those same 2 awesome women, and hang around in the best city in the United States. So, even today, just another day, leads to an awesome tomorrow, and I think there's something to that. Thanks everybody for enjoying this day with me.

Uh...Loser!

This is what the sun looks like when it is embarrassed by a human:

I know it isn't nice to call names, but the Sun lost. Ya lost! Beaten by a puny mortal. Though the E-class had a lot to do with that. A lot. And my copilot/navigator Kirsten (ShamRock). But not least of all, all my supporters and friends around the country. I was doing this for myself, and everyone out there that suffers from a mental illness either in themselves or adjacently like my wife. Just know that you can do it, it does get better. I thought it was curtains for us in the mountains and bridges since it was so dark and the roads were so aggressively against us. I'm completely sold on an E-class though. That thing powered through, took the punishment of the turns, and gave us a little fun going through the tunnels and such. All in all a good time.

Eight

Those of you that know me and my wife will know that the number 8 is important to both of us. We were married on 08/08/08 after all, plus the number pops up in our lives in other ways too. Suffice it to say it is a good number. Now it is another milestone, 8 days left until my event. This week I went with my sister-in-law to an event where they shared a piece on cyber-bullying through the Stand for the Silent-Central Iowa  for a group of Upward Bound kids at Simpson College. I was lucky enough to get a few minutes to talk about what I was doing and why. With all the trip planning anxiety, I'd forgotten the core reason I was doing it, other than raising awareness and money for mental health and the Brandon Marshall Foundation, I'd forgotten about the symbolism/approximation part of driving the most beautiful road at night to symbolize what it is like to have a mental illness, like depression or any other. So, it really isn't about doing the fundraising, I have to do this for myself and others like me. Depression lies, but the sun will come up in the east on Sunday, June 21st. And I'm going to beat it to San Francisco. Then I'll probably have a nap or a beer, or both. Anybody know any good bars that open at 6 am or so? I suppose that would mean they technically don't close. Maybe a celebratory one purchased beforehand. Yeah that's it.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

Eight days before the event, and we're still 85% of the goal. Granted, that is still 100% more than I thought I'd be when I started, but as you can tell, I'm a number nerd so 100% sounds so much better. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart, I still can't really believe this. And now, another thing that happened on the 8th of August. A picture of a rainstorm.

Photo from LaPayne Photography, 

We Interrupt This Program...

To remind me why I started all of this and to clear it up for everybody else.

I went back and read some of my first posts about all of this back in September of 2013. Those posts are here and here. They are very rough, and when taken out of context, don't make a lot of sense. So, let's start over, from the beginning.

Let's go way way back.

Back in junior high, which is when it really started now that I think about it, which makes sense given all the chemical and physical changes going on in a person at that point in their lives, I earned the somewhat junior high-school-ish name of "Adrenaline Dude". It started with an incident that I remember me getting angry at something, that I don't even remember now, but it made me angry enough to lift my bicycle (this was before carbon fiber or aluminum was a thing for bikes) and throw it a good distance in the air. I'd estimate it to be 10 yards or so, but it was probably more like 5 feet. Scales change with age, kids. That was in front of Lenihan Junior High at the bike rack, near the parking lot, in front of god knows how many kids and parents. Nobody that had any authority, as it turns out because I wasn't punished for anything or questioned. Then there is the whole awkward time of being in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade, being nerdy enough to win the school spelling bee not once but twice, (first time it had been done, thank you very much) and well, you know, being one of those kids. Awkward around girls, making mix tapes, giving candy to girls I thought were pretty to gain their favor, but not actually having the guts to talk to them or really to know what to say. You know, just like in those movies. This was back before nerdiness was 'popular' so to speak, so it was just a little bit harder to connect with people.

I did have a great group of friends though, and we pretty much hung out from elementary school through high school. A few of them I still talk to to this day, the smart and funny ones anyway. So it was good to have a small group of friends that I could be myself with, learn, play and joke around with. Yet, I still felt out of place because I didn't know about all the things they knew about, I wasn't as 'at ease' with myself then, or even up until a year ago. I'm still, not really, but it is getting better.

So, all of this continued for the decades following, flash through several girlfriends, that I'd self destruct and push away because deep down I thought I was unworthy, etc. Finally, having given up on finding companionship, and delving in to a little zen meditation, though I think that was much later, I finally just decided to stop working so hard on finding somebody and focus inward. Which sounds like a good idea, unless you're in a place where you think of yourself as disposable, worthless and pointless, like I did. Then, well, I met her, or rather she met me, because she's the one that reached out first, the woman that would eventually become my wife.

I'm getting ahead of myself though possibly. It wasn't all roses and candy for me and my wife though. We'd have the same fights over and over again, and it usually started or resulted in me feeling sorry for myself, and harming myself. We keep a baseball bat near our bed in case of emergencies, and since for some reason most of our arguments started when we were going to bed, it was close by. So on more than one occasion, I'd hit myself with that bat. I don't remember threatening my wife with it, but in the fog and haze of those emotions I couldn't tell you for sure. She always did say that if I hit her she'd leave. Deep down I knew that she was the best thing to ever happen to me so I didn't want her to leave, but at the same time I couldn't understand why she wanted to stay or was with such a worthless person in the first place.

Flash forward about 8 years to August, 2012. We'd just purchased a house, and it was my 40th birthday, and well the Mayan calendar was ending, as well as the world. Remember that? So, we had a combination birthday/anniversary/housewarming/end of the world party. I invited people from work, all of our friends, my wife did the same, as well as family and everything. There was grilling, delicious beer from Granite City, and from about noon until midnight that night I spent time reminiscing and just talking with my friends. Some I hadn't seen in a long time, and some I haven't seen since. All in all, it was a great day. It made me feel good, even my brother showed up. I felt loved and appreciated for the first time in a long time. It was weird.

For the next year, I struggled again, off and on. I'd been working with Zen meditation, and it helped a little with getting my mind in the right space, but it wasn't a complete solution. I'd also tried counseling before this, and well it didn't take hold either. I should probably go back now, but frankly I like working things out by myself, which was probably why I was so resistant to medication for so long. It feels like cheating. However, I take tylenol, and drugs for allergies and such, so apparently I was just resistant to 'that' kind of medication. You see, I'm still of the opinion that the brain is a mysterious and unknown part of our body so poking medicines in there seems akin to trying to split the atom, though slightly less of a danger from radiation. I still feel that way with kids, because their bodies and stuff are all in flux. I mean have you ever talked to a kid to get their favorite something and then a week later it is something completely different? Anyway, it was around this time that the one true Wil Wheaton of internet fame was answering questions about his bout with depression and anxiety and such on the tweeties. I'd read his book , "Just A Geek" because I knew him to be from Star Trek, and he'd started this blog thing and stuff. Then when I read the book, it hit me in a lot of the right places, about voices of self-doubt, not fitting in, and something called The Balance. Then this happened:

@wilw thank you sir! If medication works .001% as well as getting a tweet from your hero, then I will look in to it!
— AirGordon (@1TrueDAS) September 11, 2012

And until now, I'd forgotten that was on September 11th. I'm thinking that was relevant somehow, like helping people with PTSD, especially soldiers coming back from war and such.

So, with that impetus, I became more open to the idea of medication. I was still resistant, but was getting more open. My wife and I continued to have the same fights, and then things seemed to get better. Then, almost a year later after my 41st birthday, my wife threw me a surprise party. She's good at throwing those, and they are always a surprise, though I should start to expect them. She'd invited my friends, (some of the same ones from that elementary school group) my family, my Aunt drove almost 3 hours to come to it, more friends, my wonderful nieces who are close to my favorite kids in the world, and just a great bunch of people, and a great time. A local restaurateur even opened up a special part of his new restaurant especially for us. I should have felt so loved, so happy, like I did just barely a year before. Except I felt nothing. I appeared happy, but my closest friends could tell something was up, something was not right. I felt nothing. I pretended to be happy, but it was superficial. For some, that is enough. The whole 'fake it till you make it' strategy. I realized that I'd been faking it for over 30 years, and wasn't making it. I needed help. Within the next couple of weeks, I talked with my doctor, and got on some medication. That was nine short months ago, and I'm doing and feeling much better, and feeling more like a real person every day. There are still days when the Voice of Self Doubt tries to butt in and take over, but it is a little easier to fight back these days, and I'm learning to recognize it as well, which is a huge leap forward.

So, that's the background of my mental illness issues, now let's get to why I'm doing this drive and fundraising and such.

When we moved in to our new house, we got DirecTV. A few months after moving in, during winter in the Midwest when you don't want to go outside, I started watching the BBC America show, 'Top Gear'. It had been suggested to me on Netflix, and when I saw it in passing on the TV, I decided to give it a chance.
It was wonderful. It had cars, comedy, silliness, and oh yeah cars. Then they would travel to different places, and have stars like Stephen Fry and Brian Johnson drive around their track with timed laps. Oh, then there is the Stig. My wife didn't originally want to watch it because she didn't want to pick up another show to watch. Yeah, we're both hooked now. Then one particular episode caught my imagination. One of the presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, was asked to race the Sun from the westernmost point of England to the easternmost point. Which is pretty normal for their show, putting cars up against ridiculous things that aren't cars; they had a Bugatti Veyron race a fighter jet for crying out loud.

So, yeah. It's cool. Anyway, the racing the Sun. The challenge was to start at sunset in the west, and reach the eastern point before sunrise the next morning. The challenging part was that they meant Jeremy to do it on the Summer Solstice, the 'shortest' night of the year. This is the part that fascinated me. Last June I wanted to make the drive on the Solstice, but the planning just wasn't there, I'd come up with the idea about 3 days before the Solstice and rearranging my sleep schedule and finding a destination and such was just too hard. So, I shelved it for a while, but vowed to do it the next year, in 2014. Then, in October, during the pro football season, I learned about another person that I look up to that struggled with mental illness. Brandon Marshall had announced that he suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder, and had started a foundation in his name to help fight stigma with getting help for a mental illness and just to raise awareness in general. You've probably heard about a player getting fined by the NFL for violating the uniform policy because he wore green shoes for one game. Now, it was during October, when the NFL teams play at least one game with pink added to their uniforms to support/bring awareness to breast cancer, which as controversial as the Komen foundation is, it is still a good cause. But I liked Brandon's story, if you look in to his story, it sort of parallels mine, it is just a little more extreme, probably because I don't make millions of dollars as a professional athlete, and the access to bigger problems that that allows. But there's similarities as far as issues with his wife, his job, and other things. So, it kinda hit home also. So, when winter rolled around again, I started planning my trip, but I also wanted to make it about something, and not just a vacation. So, then I had the idea to make it about mental health awareness, and to raise funds for the Brandon Marshall Foundation. So, that's how this whole thing started. During my whole phase of discovery and learning about my own mental illness, my wife and I decided to refer to it as being 'solar powered'. So, that is why the whole thing with racing the sun struck me. Then, to drive on one of the most beautiful roads at night, in the dark, thus negating most of the beauty of the drive, as well as denying me any 'solar power' made it a challenge, and an opportunity to show people that they don't have to do it alone, it is okay to ask for help. What is it that Red Green always says at the end of the show? "Remember, we're in this thing together. I'm pullin' for ya". 

So, yeah let's have a little fun with this. During the drive, I'll be available via Google Hangouts, aka video chat or text chat, just hit me up on my event's Google+ page, or a link HERE. Check out the foundation page here, and if you'd be so kind, check out my fundraiser for the Foundation here and consider a donation or getting someone else to donate. Either way, just pass the word, that's all I really ask. If you've made it this far, well also thank you for reading all this.

Ten

I was going to make a Monty Python reference here, but I think I'll keep that for when there are five days left. (Three sir!). So, instead a little reminder that there are 10 days before my event, and 9 days before I leave. As of this posting, we've managed 85% of our goal, so we're so very close. It is well, I'll let the Tenth Doctor say it for me: 

Then there is the original impetus for this trip, the 3 boys themselves, in front of 10 Downing Street. I know, I'm stretching it a bit there, especially since you can only see the '0' in '10' but hey it is one of the more famous doors...in the world.

Again, thank you everybody so much for helping me and the Brandon Marshall Foundation spread awareness for mental health issues, and to help #ReduceStigma!

Eleven

More number references for everybody, and how could you not go to eleven? Eleven days left before my event, and well let's turn up the volume on the fundraising. You guessed it, up to 11. Please share, retweet, reblog, poke with a stick, get the volume up on helping people with mental illness, or just get the word out there. Thank you so much!

The Spirit of Iowa

Over the weekend, I found myself watching 'cheesy' movies, as my wife put it. It was a mostly rainy weekend, and other than getting some much needed yard work done on Saturday, the rest of the weekend was much better suited indoors or as a duck. The first movie I caught the latter part of was the classic 'The Spirit of St. Louis' starring James Stewart in another one of his iconic roles. I hadn't seen the movie since my early teens when it was on cable a lot, when there were just a few 'classic' movies. I decided to watch it, because I have a weakness for Jimmy Stewart movies for some reason. OK, for those that don't know how to use IMdB or a search engine, the movie is about the life and times of Charles Lindbergh leading up to and including his historic first Trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. As I watched, I couldn't help but draw some similarities and of course vast differences between my trip and Lindbergh's. He was pretty much doing his trip to prove it could be done, and to win a cash prize, similar to what the 'X-prize' is today. He flew alone, reckoned by the stars at some point, and used a periscope to see out of the front of the airplane. There was a lot of thought when they built the plane to lightness to save fuel and such. The entire flight took 33.5 hours, of Lindbergh already having not slept several days before the flight take off.
I, however will be going on a road many have gone on before, with my friend Kirsten, in a car complete with GPS, cell phones, and a big wide windshield to look out of. I'm doing it because I can, not because nobody told me I couldn't. Well, other than that old voice inside my head that always tells me I can't do things. However, with time and treatments, that voice has become a lot smaller and less believable because of the support of my friends and family, and especially my wife. The thing I am most concerned about is of course staying awake the entire time at night, but hey I'll have a lot of stuff to do, as well as someone to talk to. Thanks again, and remember to get your nail polish on Thursday!

57 Days!

57 Days until the Sun is going down! No, that's not right, well, sort of. 57 days and I'll be racing the sun in California. Over the last few days it has come to hit me that I'm actually doing it, and it is going to be work. Up until this point I'd been thinking it will be just fun, and I felt guilty because I was sort of treating it like a vacation, but not. I haven't planned doing much else out there but the drive, but I'm staying 6 days, though most of those will be spent between San Francisco and Los Angeles. In other words, it is getting real.
I've contacted a couple media outlets to help get out the word, but haven't heard anything back yet, and got turned away from one. So, it's up to me to get things done, and I have to come up with a plan. Some things are jiggling through my brain, but nothing concrete yet.
I want to thank everyone that's donated so far, and thank anyone that has spread the word of what I'm doing. Every little bit helps, even if you just tell one person that already knew about it. Because now they now you know about it. You know?

#RemoveStigma