Keep Adding Hyphens
My life story, or, the hypermaximalist manifesto.
A decade ago, I had a working-class office job making $12 per hour doing lead generation at a call center. I lived in Buffalo, New York, and I had some friends I’d go to happy hour with on Fridays. I had a cat. That was my life at 25. It was fine. That’s where our story begins; today I want to talk to you about what’s happened since.
I left that job to begin a telecommuting position at a boutique creative agency. I was a traffic manager. Some of you will know what that is, the rest of you will likely need to know that I spent my days sending emails and managing MS Excel spreadsheets. It was fine, but I needed an outlet.
I’d been messing around on guitar for a while (they’re more portable than my first instrument, drums), and I knew I could sing, so I started playing open mic nights in and around town. Through those, I got a gig playing weekly at a dive bar on the Elmwood Strip, where I’d mix in original songs I’d written with covers and acoustic mashups. And that was fun, too.
I also had been commenting on Deadspin for a while, and decided I, too, could blog about sports. So I started doing that. That was how I started writing. I’d move on to launch a blog where I’d review beer, too.
I decided since I could work from anywhere, I had no real reason to stay in Buffalo, so I scoured the country looking for a new home. I settled upon Austin and moved there on January 1, 2011. I knew no one. I brought almost nothing. Now I have more, and I still live there, and still have that cat.
Living in Austin was lonely for the first year, so in year two I started playing open mics again, which led to me meeting a lot of wild and wonderful people, and also led me to start playing shows 3–4 nights per week in the Live Music Capital of the World (TM). Through sheer repetition, I got decent at it. By continuing to show up, I got connected with people who could help me grow my career. I wrote even more original music. I recorded an album. I toured a little bit. I even got myself on TV a couple of times.
My telecommuting job had run its course, and I was still blogging about sports, so I decided to get a job that was a bit more creative. I briefly did some freelance web copy, then I landed a position as a marketing director at a publishing company. This was a disaster. Within six months, I’d been fired, but I did, however, accumulate a treasure chest of websites I’d written, which would prove to be useful when I applied to a very large technology company to write their banner ads. It took seven weeks, but I got that job.
Additionally, I was in pretty rough physical shape at the time. I was sitting in a doctor’s office and saw in a fitness magazine that the fastest half-marathon was in Austin (the 3M Half Marathon, in case you’re wondering which). The next day, I decided to start running — something I hadn’t really done with any degree of regularity since high school. I finished by first half marathon in January 2014. I’ve run 10 more since, and in January 2017, I ran my first full marathon. Hell, I even bought myself a bike and did a couple races on wheels for good measure.
But exercise is only part of the equation when it comes to overall health, so I decided to put down the takeout and start cooking my own meals. I started experimenting in the kitchen, without recipes, creating twists on my favorite dishes: I make a helluva pasta sauce using only fresh ingredients. The wings I make are pretty dope. My ex taught me how to make perfect queso. And my pad thai game is on point. I occasionally cook for people and post foodgasm-type pictures on my Instagram, which I also picked up in 2014.
But to really kick ass at Instagram (which I most certainly do not, yet), I needed a nicer camera, and needed to learn how to take and edit better photos. So in late 2015, I treated myself to a Nikon D7100 and a photography course. I’m pretty big into skylines and landscapes. In 2016, I was able to create my first triptych, and I’ve been making more of those as time goes on. Here is one of my favorite photos:
Taking pictures necessitates finding new places to go, and so, last year, I started traveling quite a bit. I went to Orlando, New York, Chicago, Phoenix, Seattle, New Orleans, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Memphis and Alabama. I went to Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field. I saw both a Kings game and a Lakers game at the Staples Center. I’m pretty big into sports. So are my friends. And I wrote about these voyages, too.
Speaking of, I never really stopped writing about sports, and when I joined Medium in 2014, I pitched writing about them to The Cauldron. They were gracious enough to let me. I did well enough that I was offered an SI Byline. Someone even found this story and turned it into part of a documentary film. It worked out until one very disastrous social media day that cost me that opportunity and nearly cost me my day job.
Speaking of that day job, I still have it. In fact, I got a few raises and got promoted a couple of times. Now I do things like write all the words you see here. And I get to pour my soul into all kinds of writing endeavors for them. Eight hours a day. 9–5. With health insurance included. It makes me very happy and is often very fulfilling.
Speaking of fulfilling, after my sportswriting career became radioactive, I started writing about music for the guy who founded Source Magazine and, mostly, life. It’s going pretty well. For whatever reason, I’ve accumulated a reader base. Now people are reaching out to me to write for them — and they’re paying me. Some are websites. Some are publishers. Some are restaurants who also know I do branding.
Speaking of, I do branding work on the side for companies. Consulting or writing or social media or messaging architecture. And that’s going pretty well. I’ve given talks at conferences, too.
Speaking of giving talks, people who know me seem to think I am a natural at MCing things like weddings and roasts and conferences and whatnot. So now I do that, too. It’s fun. I get paid to make people laugh. I’m not even all that good at it, but I’m into it.
Speaking of hosting things, remember those friends who are into sports? Yeah, well, I started a podcast with them. They’re far funnier and more informative than I. I’m just mostly there to change topics and make sure we hit everything in under an hour. We’re on Episode 15. You should listen and subscribe to it.
Or follow our Instagram and know when new episodes drop.
But I can’t only be self-indulgent. (Someone is going to highlight that last post and be like “this entire piece is self-indulgent” which is fine, I deserve that.) It’s important to give back to the community. So I became a member for a local non-profit that subsidizes local musicians — a cause near and dear to my heart.
Also, I was voted onto the board of a local non-profit school that helps kids below the poverty line get the quality early-start education they need to shine on later in life.
I couple this with quiet pro-bono work canvassing and aiding political campaigns (in case you’re wondering: I skew more blue than red) and being an unofficial (and, again, importantly, quiet, no one needs another straight white dude drowning out the voices we should really be listening to, but I understand I have a platform now, and I should use it for good) cheerleader for things like Black Lives Matter, Women’s March, March for Our Lives and that one time a local bar owner was a racist douchebag. I threw a multi-day, multi-stage benefit concert for Nepal Earthquake relief, and threw multiple benefit concerts for the ALS Association.
This year, I’ll hit a bunch of cities in Europe. To prepare, I’ve been immersing myself in both Spanish and Portuguese. And I’ve gotten pretty good at both. And I’ll visit friends out there … friends I made through writing here.
Marketer. Transplant. Singer. Songwriter. Guitarist. Drummer. Sports blogger. Beer reviewer. Copywriter. Cook. Traveler. Essayist. Marathon runner. Cyclist. Photographer. Brand consultant. Music critic. Speaker. MC. Podcast host. Philanthropist. School board member. Activist. Polyglot. Also, a rock climber. And, as of last week, someone who can shoot 74 over 18 holes at his local municipal golf course. All of these things are me to some degree, and it’s kinda crazy to finally see them all typed out like that. But, why do I tell you this?
A friend of mine recently called me “The Human Hyphen.” That’s a hella dope nickname and one I’m fully here for, and I suppose she has a point. If you replace all the periods in that paragraph above with hyphens, it starts to get more dash than Stacey. And I can’t seem to stop adding them. But why? Am I some kind of polymath multi-hyphenate genius of a renaissance man?
Sadly, no.
I am, in actuality, just extraordinarily lonely, anxious and depressed when I am not doing anything. And so I do all these things to fill the irrepressible void that appears when I remember I’m just an average-looking 35 year-old single asthmatic, who spent most of his life flat broke, left his first — and longest — love for no discernible, decipherable reason, drank too much, smoked too much, ended up on the wrong side of the law more often than preferable, and isn’t even on speaking terms with half his immediate family. I learn new skills and accomplish new things to distract myself and distance myself from these two irrefutable facts:
- I have an abusive inner monologue that dishes out a fire-hose of negative self-talk morning, noon and night. I’ve been to therapy, and have gotten marginally better at this, but really only better enough that I feel empowered to keep trying new stuff.
- I am, truly, very ordinary. Average build. Medium-dark-brown hair and eyes. Not terribly tall, attractive or athletic. Not all that funny or charming. Came from a working-class family in a medium-sized Rust Belt city. No true gifts that I didn’t acquire through total immersion, sweat equity and repetition until quasi-mastery. I am your standard American dude-bro. In fact, my only superpower is self-sabotage.
I’m addicted to making things. And so I’ve spent the entirety of the past decade wandering this Earth trying to silence my unflinchingly harsh inner critic, beat back inescapable loneliness, and strive to be anything other than milquetoast. I don’t want to be famous, or even recognized on the street (though that’s beginning to happen and it’s weirder and more uncomfortable than I want it to be), but I would like to know that I accumulated as many hyphens as possible, saw as much of the world as I could, and saw less of the world suffer in my lifetime. Not that there’s some kind of prize at the end.
No, one day I’ll die, and I’ll have collected a war-chest of incredibly diverse, extraordinary stories in many languages involving people from around the world. I’ll have made a decent amount of money. I’ll probably have my own Wikipedia page. And that’ll be its own kind of odd reward for just being someone who couldn’t stop diversifying his portfolio, or pouring his entire being into getting better at making things that make people happy. That’s the way life is trending barring getting hit by a bus in an hour when I go out for my daily jog. But before then, I guess, it’s just hypermaximalism masquerading as something more dignified.
As long as we’re all sharing this spaceship, we’re all weighted the same: One human. One speck of space-dust in the vast expanse of the cosmos. Pretty insignificant when you think about it … I think about it often. That’s why I’m here, I suppose, to remind you that when our lives are tallied, that’s all we’ll ever be: Simple, ordinary humans with 24 hours in a day, and an indefinite amount of days remaining — nowhere near enough time to understand, experience or master everything, but just enough time to make the same mistakes over and over again.
But don’t let that stop you from trying, unless, of course, you’re satisfied with your life. In which case, big ups. I’m cheering for you from parts unknown, and I’ll gladly take the hyphens you’re not using.
