The Book
Above Excuses
This is the full account — the drift, Lompoc, the repair, and the 36 years since. Written first for my kids and grandchildren, and for anyone else who needs to hear that the bill doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
It’s for people who think they’re past the point of fixing something. And for people who love them.
Currently in progress. The manuscript is in the final stretch — most chapters are drafted, with a few still being written. Sign up below and you’ll be the first to know when it’s ready.
From Chapter One — Above Excuses
Not transformation. Not a dramatic before-and-after. Not the story of a man who hit rock bottom and came back as someone unrecognizable. I’m still me. I still have the instincts I’ve always had, the restlessness, the appetite for life, the occasional impulse to push things further than is probably wise. I don’t think those things ever fully go away.
But I learned something — slowly, painfully, through experiences I wouldn’t wish on anyone and wouldn’t trade for anything — and that something is this: the only way through the things you fear is straight through them. You can’t go around. You can’t wait them out. You must face them, own them, and then make a decision about what you’re going to do next.
Above excuses. That’s the whole idea. Not above mistakes — I made plenty of those, and you’ll read about them here, honestly and without decoration. But above the reflex to blame something outside yourself for what happened. Above the story that lets you off the hook. Above the comfortable lie that says: “I am who I am because of what was done to me.”