On June 5 the surgeon removed a mass from my neck the size of an orange. They split me open from ear to mid-neck to remove all of it and cut down one of my neck muscles to a sliver. I had trouble supporting my neck muscularly but I was in surprisingly little pain. I was out of the hospital in two days and spent the next week recovering.
It was not lost on me that my scar resembled a noose around my neck marking the halfway point of my life.
A student recently asked me how I felt about being nearly 40. I answered that I'm completely fine with it. Approaching 40 is good, I'm happier than 20 and more centered than 30. I haven't ruined my life with poor choices and I have a lot to be thankful for.
If I have one regret, it's that it took me until half of my life to figure out how to orient myself properly. To read, practice, exercise, do what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Do these things daily and don't allow yourself to fall off the path because "I deserve it". I don't deserve a damn thing. Let me earn what I have through hard work and discipline. Better late than never, I suppose.
I've stopped poisoning myself this past month. Although I have slipped a few days, my goal of 10g of sugar during the week has been fairly consistent. I've reacquainted myself with my Olympic rings and have begun running and cycling more often.
I haven't given up bread, but that is next to go in February. I rode up to Mt. Baldy with some friends this month. It's a drag to have to pull so much weight up a mountain but that's motivation to get lighter.
Happy New Year. 2017 did a real number on me. Many positive things happened like the birth of my son, Ethan James. At the same time, I lost sight of my personal goals due to stress and the changes that occurred in my life. I started to become someone whose values didn't align with the best version of myself. It happens, but it ends now.
From October 20 to November 10 our son Ethan James Romo was in the NICU at Glendale Adventist Hospital. It was the most trying time our family had ever experienced. Julian expressed to me very frequently how frustrated he was that he didn't get to see his baby brother. This is the moment that Julian got to meet Ethan for the first time.
When I met you I knew I would need to make room for you.
There was no place for excess baggage or things frivolous in nature.
When I met you I knew I would have to be better than I was to match you.
For you were no small thing, no brief encounter, and no short-term affair.
I would have to elevate myself to have you in my life. To have you be mine I would need to be better than what I was before you. I would need to sort myself out to be the person you needed in your life.
An instinct kicked in the moment Stephen replied. This is going to take me to the edge of my ability. This wasn't going to be easy, Mt. Wilson never is. I wasn't in good climbing condition so I couldn't rely on strong physical ability. I had to go deep to make it, my mind would have to push me when my body failed me. I was going to venture far outside of my comfort zone. I was going outside the walls.
It was a huge gamble for the Alt-Right in America. It wasn't a stretch at all to assume that the Antifa protesters and SJW's would cross the line first. For months now on college campuses the left has been shouting down and physically attacking right-leaning speakers who they didn't agree with. The right wing commentators had plenty of ammo. Google had just fired an employee who circulated a memo which discussed gender differences, the contents of which the higher ups at Google didn't see eye to eye with. The left was crumbling under the weight of their own hypocrisy.
What was going to send them over the edge? Nazis of course.
Iconic movies and stories deeply ingrained in the narrative of society can often lose their substantive impact with time. Disney released perhaps their greatest animated film "Pinocchio" in 1940 while the second world war was well under way and America was not yet directly involved in Europe's most bloody crisis of moral identity.
Being a skeptic is healthy. Believing in every conspiracy theory that you come across is not. In the 4th century B.C. greek philosopher Pyrrho established the school of Pyrrhonian skepticism. The purveying belief was that it was impossible to know anything for certain. This is called acatalespia, the belief that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, only to to probability.
Pyrrhonians can be subdivided into those who are ephectic (a "suspension of judgment"), zetetic ("engaged in seeking"), or aporetic ("engaged in refutation").
We are swimming in a aporetic Pyrrhonians right now.
4:30 AM- Monday May 22, 2017
I'm up. The easy decision is to lay back down and try to get more sleep. Not happening. My approach to Monday sets the tone for the entire week. Last week was a wash. Commitments, rehearsals and a late night gig left me off my preferred course. It's time to attack this week.
I go out onto my designated warm up area and do a ten minute meditation. Centered, I start my bodyweight fitness routine. It's still dark outside, it seems the world is still asleep as I grunt out another set of push ups. All I'm missing is a pull up bar and parallel bars for dips and so I ride my bike to the nearest fitness park. There's hardly anyone out on the streets. By 6 AM the workout is complete. I'm home and able to get JP ready for school. I have the rest of the morning to write and to practice.
I am free.
I was vacationing in Mexico when I got the text from Caleb in late November 2016. He asked if I would be available to play both the Daytime Emmy awards and the Creative Arts Emmy shows just like I did last year. I told him that I would be ecstatic to do the show again and that he could count me in.
My name is Phil Romo and I have just finished six weeks of radiation therapy. Each session lasted for about five minutes and were done five days a week, Monday through Friday. This is what my neck looked like during the final week.
The technician clips my mask onto the table I'm laying on. The mask is tight. There isn't room to wiggle around or squirm. I fall into a calm mental state and relax my arms to my sides. The EBRT (external beam radiation therapy) machine above my face whirs and slowly rotates to my left side. The machine is shooting radiation into the side of my neck. From my peripheral I see the glow of a red light. I feel the sting of a light heat against my neck and in a minute it's over. One more session down.
I have the weirdest freaking life.
In the 8th grade I ran an 8 minute mile during PE class one time. That was my highlight as a runner up until my 30's. Running has long been a graceless exercise in frustration for me. I looked like a mythical Orc headed into battle when I ran. All I was missing was an axe. I never really enjoyed it and my weight and my frame did not lend itself to endurance running.
Birthdays and New Years are good markers to reflect upon what you have learned. To assess what works and what doesn't work and adjust accordingly.
I don't subscribe to the belief that "age is just a number". I also don't feel like someone's age is the be all end all of who a person is and how they should behave. I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. At the same time I have become wiser I have also become more positive and vibrant, dare I say youthful?
There was something about Bernard Sumner's guitar tone that transcended the mere trappings of audio and set off resonance that cut it's way deep into your soul, to the places that you yourself were afraid to go.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
2014 changed my life. 2015 nearly ended it. 2016 was the year I was going to change other people's lives as well.
I insisted that it was going to be free. Free with donation if people were so inclined. I was tired of people getting scammed, I was tired of the weight loss industry taking advantage of people. I was going to include only the information that people needed to stop the endless cycle of crash dieting and systemic illness due to excess insulin production.
