Still walking. Still writing. Still restless.
A new year's life update: Very grateful. Not finished.
At least I can walk now.
Didn’t want to bury the lede, so let’s start there.
Back in August, I explained how I couldn’t, at least in the mornings. But that was before a first and second shot directly into my back which, along with physical therapy, the homework that’s come with it and the 300 to 600 mg of gabapentin I take each day, means I can really walk again.
So that’s cool.
The first three hours I’m awake aren’t the greatest, but they’re miles and miles better than before, when I couldn’t get around without grabbing furniture and whatnot. And though I’ve not yet tried playing back-to-back or three times in a week, I’m back on the golf course, too, reasonably confident I can still flirt with par, still from the back tees, at least on occasion, though summer will be the test.
It’s crazy, but I used to take my stance, feet not so wide, stationary but not anchored. Now I’m anchored, planted, and it’s a feeling I’ve never had on the course, even on my best days. Perhaps you’ve had the same discovery after your own therapy and exercise.
Sometimes I think the back issue I’ve had for 20 years, different than the one affecting my legs, has just gone away, the feeling in my glutes, abs and lower back no longer a single piece of granite but different sets of working muscles instead.
Imagine.
And when my legs are good, most days after lunch, it’s like a whole new world.
Surgery’s likely still in front of me, but it’s been pushed back and when it finally comes I should be in better shape to endure it than when I previously thought it was imminent.
Grateful.
Perhaps I actually did bury the lede, because …
The Great Gwenda remains just that.
What an amazing thing to have love in your life. So much better than the opposite, which I’ve experienced, too. So yes, I could have led with that, or that my daughter, Harper, remains terrific, believes in the right things and wants to affect them into being.
Professionally, a dentist, she’s all about her patients, many in dire need of her services because life demanded the needs she provides be put on back burners until now. In a related matter, why, oh why, does the richest nation on earth not provide health care for all its citizens like all the other rich nations do?
Anyway, Harper helps people and I’m proud.
Not to mention my mom, born on the actual D-Day, who remains healthy with all faculties intact.
So here we are at the end of the year and all that’s great.
Professionally, though, I must admit, I’m restless.
What can I say?
I miss the press box, the high school gyms, the writing on real deadlines and being the explainer-in-chief to a, let’s call it, semi-wide audience.
Of course, I am so thankful to all of you, my 1,213 subscribers (109 paid), as well as the thousands more who find me when something I’ve written catches fire.
Thanks, Ryan Walters.
Where sports are concerned, I believe I still have vital things to say, point out, remind and chart because a strength of mine has always been seeing the larger picture and I’m convinced I can still do it, which ought to be valuable at a time others aren’t even trying.
Likewise, on the government, policy and left-of-center politics I also write about, I believe my wide eye for detail extends there, too, allowing me to see not only the corruption and malfeasance of one side but the follies of my own, a side that’s long meant well, yet badly needs a crash course in knowing why it believes what it believes and then saying so with force, contrast and volume enough to get good people in a red state to listen, because we mostly share the same values and their leaders have failed them.
Like, are regular Oklahoma Republicans really all right with their health care being stolen to pay for millionaires’ and billionaires’ tax cuts, all while public money is sent to private schools and private school parents by the hundreds of millions?
Are they really?
I digress.
While thankful for this Substack and you, my readers, I certainly wouldn’t mind a few more paid subscribers or a client or two in need of my sports writing or communication skills.
Consider my shingle out.
That’s it, I guess.
I can walk and swing a golf club again. Love rocks. Family is good. And perhaps the time is ripe for the left-right pendulum in this state to finally enter correction mode. Certainly Walters, Stitt and Trump are good for something, right?
I’d love to help.
All of that said, what would you like from me here?
Sooner hoops reports?
Diamond reports when the time comes?
Swinging beyond Sooner sports? Swinging beyond the politics?
I feel trapped between the general and the specific.
Nor do I like being tied down.
Mostly, I want to connect.
Let me know.
Happy New Year.