My Eras Tour

First, there was karate. From the first time I saw a ninja in a movie, I knew I wanted to study martial arts. It was a desire that had 6-year-old me running around the living room in my pajamas doing spin kicks with more enthusiasm than skill until my parents relented and agreed to harness that energy towards the fighting arts. Before long, I was enrolled in karate at the nearest school. I treasured my white belt, and dedicated myself. Gis and breaking boards; soft rubber sparring gear and road trips all over Florida for tournaments. I gathered a forest of ludicrously tall trophies and eventually earned my black belt at age 13.

Next came the rebel years. Those early teenage years were a time of experimentation. I was aiming for something like a punk-rock Keruouac, with my Doc Martens and a stack of weird, counter-cultural novels. I could never fully commit to the bit. While introverted and a bit of a loner, I was way too much of a rule follower to blossom as a true punk. I was also really scared of drugs, and various flavors of chemical enhancement seemed like a big part of that subculture. I was also a little too much of a geek at heart and as much as I wanted to be seen reading Dharma Bums, I was just as likely to have a copy of Vampire: The Masquerade or the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons core book in my backpack. I also wanted to be a writer, or at least be seen as a writer. But writing, it turns out, is hard.

In high school, I got really into football, weightlifting, and wrestling. These were the jock years, more or less. Sporting events. Dedicated training in the off-season. Brotherhood and esprit de corps set in and I bonded with men I remain friends with 30 years later. This was never a completely comfortable look for me. Elements of the geek and the punk remained. I was often either the nerdiest guy at the keg party or the coolest guy at the gaming table, a positioning I have never fully shaken off.

The jock era passed into the college party boy era almost imperceptively. The sports went away and suddenly drinking took center stage as the organizing principle of my life. Party school. Good grades, but poor decisions. Started working at a bar in Tallahassee, creating a gravity well that I just barely escaped after graduation.

That kicked off the world traveler phase. Studies abroad and grad school in South Africa, a semester of law school in Sydney. Trains and boats and museums and pubs. Pints with the locals and hikes up distant mountains. I had a treasured vest of many pockets that I wore everywhere. I had some vague idea of writing travel books. This was before newsletters, or instagram, or even blogs. I have a few good stories of my adventures overseas, but they are better suited to rambling anecdotes over drinks than being memorialized in prose.

Sometime after this, I finished law school and went to work. Not as a lawyer; not at first. I worked in tech! I wore sweater vests and lived in San Francisco, starting the transition to the tech bro era that has more or less persisted until today, bolstered by the wife guy identity and the mantle of fatherhood.

In recent years, it has started assuming the midlife crisis flavor, which has involved a rededication to self-improvement and exercise, including jiu-jitsu. So I am once again rolling around my living room practicing martial arts with more enthusiasm than skill.

I wonder what comes next.