Recovered to Rock Star
Rediscovering your dreams and living them.
What is your purpose in life, your career goals? What lifestyle do you want to lead, what kind of friends do you want to develop? Who do you want in your inner circle? What part will a healthy lifestyle play? Starting over is a unique gift of possibilities where your untethered and unfettered by many of your past commitments and have an opportunity to reengineer your future.
What is your purpose in life? What would you love to be doing? Most people I asked this question say they have no idea what it is, how to find out if they have an idea they don’t have any idea how to go about getting there. But when I dig a little deeper I usually find most of the time, there is a keen awareness of what their dream career is coupled with a well developed narrative of why that dream is unattainable and just a dream. Some of these narratives might include; you don’t have the money, special training, college, connections, can’t find the time, don’t live in the right place, you’re too old now or have too many commitments. These may be the reasons we tell ourselves, but the real story is often times, stretched out between us and that future goal, is a field of barbed wire and landmines that represent the numerous steps that we would have to take. We may not know what all the steps will be, but we have all heard enough success stories to know something about them. We know those steps represent change. They can be complicated, scary, difficult and are most likely out of our comfort zone. Many will require help from others and that is certainly out of our comfort zone. Or to be more general it will require a bunch of steps that you either don’t understand, may not be able to do or contain steps you didn’t even know about.
Myself, I always wanted to be a cruise ship captain since childhood. Unfortunately my eyesight not good enough and at 18 years old I failed to pass the Coast Guard vision requirement. Though I had applied and been accepted to California Maritime Academy at Vallejo California, my dream was dead and I was able to attend.
Many years later and some minor eye surgery later and WHAM! BAM! My eyes were fixed. But I now had the landmine of excuses of why I couldn’t pursue my dream. Now I was too old to be in the maritime academy, tuition was too expensive, I had children now kids and going to sea would not be fair to them, I couldn’t afford the training, I did not have the experience. I had an endless list of why it was an impossible goal for me now and I’ve kept those excuses alive for the past 20 years. Now that I’m 57 years old I can add being too old to be working to my list, along with out of shape and having too many medical conditions. My other desire was to be a writer and speaker but I have come to realize what I really want to do is use writing and speaking to help other people as a teacher.
After becoming a middle school teacher for 13 years and obtaining a limited captain’s license to allow me to sail small ships in the summer for a number of years, I have come to the realization that my greatest success at helping people achieve in the professional and personal lives has been with children who were not in my class but rather in extracurricular activities like tall ship sailing in marathon running.
After going through my divorce, so many friends and acquaintances had questions for me and were hungry for the information I was learning to restart my life. I knew I had hit upon something that would allow me to write, teach, speak and help a great many people make a difference in their lives. I was also surprised and shocked to find how many men are stuck and frustrated and hungry for salvation from being fat, trapped and lonely. Some had even taken the first step and replaced food and other addictions with people and activities…only to languish for years in a relationship that had no intimacy.
Looking at accomplishing these two dreams, becoming a big ship captain and a writer, way off into the future, and at the first steps required to move toward them, I saw nothing but things I didn’t want to do. It was going to be hard work! I mean hell, the first step of writing a book is writing a book! That is quite a first step. The first step of becoming a captain on cruise ship other large ship would be to convince the Coast Guard medical group to reissue my medical certificate despite a number of conditions.
I have decided to move forward on both of these. Last few sentences on this page represent the end of step one in writing the book. Regarding becoming a sea captain I have got the Coast Guard to accept an issue my medical certificate and I am working on the next step to find a job aboard a ship to build sea time to upgrade my license.
I hope that sharing my journey of escape from being fat, trapped and lonely has been of some use to you on your journey to do the same. If you know someone who can benefit from the information in this book please share it with them. They’re all around you!
Cappy