The only impotence is not seeking help

I turned to golf at the first signs of the pandemic thaw - which was also right around when I was likely to pick up a midlife crisis activity, so it's impossible to identify which was more attributable to the decision.

Golf is something I had been around as a kid and made furtive stabs at picking up in my mid-30s, but this time I attacked it with gusto. While my political sensibilities have issues with the amount of real estate given to this sport for the privileged, its horrifying racial and gender gatekeeping past, and the traditionalism of males bailing on parenting every Sunday for 5+ hours on the course, I cannot but help but love it: it is a tailor-made pursuit for someone who wants to whiplash between pain (physical and mental) and incremental gains in acumen.

So I attacked it with gusto, finding a simulator that I could visit whenever I had free time and slowly went from painfully hacking the ball 10 yards down the field (and often going net zero yards by shanking or toe-shanking) - racking up a 130* in total score (for reference, an average score for a professional is around 70) to routinely shooting under 90. I still have so far to go.

* BTW that number is much lower than reality: the computer mercy quit any hole where you hit double the amount of par strokes.

Like life, golf builds you and breaks you down. And, like life, you can figure out a way to get on the course and successfully get the ball into the hole without proper form or any formal training - just swinging, swinging, swinging.

But when you do things alone and without training, you eventually plateau. That's what happened to me and golf. I bit the bullet and hired a golf instructor. Technically two. And they both agreed; I was doing almost everything wrong, in spite of my ability to drive the ball 240 and occasionally hit my irons exactly where they wanted to go. That I got to the ideal destination despite using absolutely incorrect form is the same reason why teachers ask you to show your math. You might luck into the right answer, but if you don't know the mechanics, you'll eventually get it wrong.

The thing about golf is there are hundreds of different mechanical things that happen on every swing. All, in coordination, determine how straight and far a ball travels. But they all should rely on kinetic movement where your body contorts to produce maximum velocity on your swing. Put another way, it's not how hard you hit, but how correctly you manipulate your body. I was not manipulating anything; I was using my arms to swing as hard as possible.

The likely greater golf in history, Tiger Woods, reinvented his swing at least four times. Here's what happens when you change anything to your swing. You start at zero again. My golf game is in a transitory mess. I couldn't be happier.

Here's why...

In 2023, I have made some significant changes to my life.

I have worked with a therapist, a career coach (hello T-Keaton Woods, hire her), and the aforementioned golf instructor. I have used the support structures that have always been there, unbidden, instead of driving myself crazy trying to solve my problems alone. The autodidact life only gets you so far.

I'm also close to pulling the trigger on hiring someone to help me manage my workflows and personal knowledge management. I'm gonna finally hire someone to fix my website(s). I may hire my company's first employee. I have turned to more people for advice than ever before in my life. In short, I have opened myself and my heart to the idea that help is good.

Given my job as (among other things) a ghostwriter, it's odd it took me so long. Everyone who hires me to write on their behalf knows how to do it themselves. They either want to prioritize other things, don't have the time, or, hopefully, believe I will distill their thoughts into copy better than they can.

And while this post is mostly about asking for and receiving help; I have doubled down on my commitment to help others. Maybe I've reached out to some of you on this distro to see if I can help. It's wonderful and self-affirming.

We are all hurtling toward our own finish line; how we serve each other makes it all worthwhile. I always suspected that, but I know it now. So, if I can help you, let me know. If you can help me, you might receive a message from me someday. Let's all commit to helping each other. You could help me today by sending this to someone who might want to read something like this. I am also working on something big that I may ask your help for - until then, I hope you always open your heart to help and always find an opportunity to help those in need.

Above all, hope to see you on the course someday with my new swing.