Lou Costa Shares his take on Motivation and Mindset
I’m Bleeding Me.
I’m sprinting, full bore down a local sidewalk on this fog cloaked Saturday morning while thick steam pushes off my head and out from under my drawn hood. The potent mix of this chilly day break and sweat soaked knit cap is causing blinding condensation on my coke bottle thick prescription Persol sunglasses.
The streaked lenses are rendering me damn near as useless with them, as without.
One stem of my jet black shades is held together with a caked glob of “Krazy” branded super glue. I imagine the factory adhesive that used to hold this frame together has slowly been worn away from the constant bombardment of my own workout “shmelting.” Toxically eroding the once finely crafted plastic, the lubricated slickness of my skin is now causing me to relentlessly adjust these damned scratched spectacles on my wind beaten face.
Granted It is I, who has insisted completion of this torture, but that doesn’t make this last speed interval any less maddening as I claw at these damned glasses.
The Cold Gear sweatshirt I am wearing was bought from an UnderArmour Factory outlet for 29.99 – 7 years ago. Smeared snot from my sick 3 year old’s very curious and wipe-y hands sticks off the Camo Logo. I look down and notice a large crusty, rock hard boog swath across my chest. I am oddly proud and slightly disgusted at the same time.
The pungent smelling neck of this battle tested garment has long been stretched and cut appropriately to allow the trapped heat of my un-showered body to rise directly into my flared nostrils.
I cannot say I am opposed to my own personal brand of executive man musk.
This, my favorite hoodie comes adorned with sodium stained watermarks that have successfully tracked the output from my previous week’s training sessions simultaneously outing my lacking laundry habit as well. The faded and stained white analysis of these left over effort rings are as telling as any FitBit or popular workout device could possibly report back post workout.
ALWAYS … WORK HARDER!
is the message I take from the ripe sweat rings clinging to this stank and mucus stained garb. That same analysis is what ALL the hi-tech algorithm of today’s fitness trackers’ SHOULD have suggested to you in the first place.
Sadly, they haven’t.
A couple walking their medium sized wiener dog just casually switched to the other side of the track. After watching me barrel around the corner they must have deduced that my laboring frame beating down this frozen course rather asthmatically gasping for each stinging breath is NOT something they REALLY wanted to deal with this early in the morning.
I get their point.
Metallica’s “Bleeding Me” is blaring into my slightly deaf left ear while barely buzzing out of the the recently broken right ear piece. Some sort of blue, itchy plastic is now exposed where the sleek contoured covering used to sit comfortably inside of my inner ear canal. The constant irritating scraping from this strange material is annoying but the broken bud still succeeds in muting the outside world from James Hetfield’s soulful growls.
So how can I REALLY complain?
I won’t replace the broken product because I am a serial DESTROYER of all listening devices. The now yellowish apple cord of this particular pair caught on the corner of my beaten red Cardillo belt last week while I was deadlifting in my damp water soaked basement. The right bud ripped harshly to the floor as I felt the accumulation of blood start to pool inside, muddying the sound of my smooth streaming #LouLife Spotify playlist and bothering me for the rest of the training session.
These things happen from time to time.
So, I suspect a new perfectly white pair of headphones would befall a similar fate as the last 3 have anyway. F— it, until they are completely destroyed I ORDER them to soldier on dutifully.
I am bent over, hands on knees and body laboring post sprint work. Waiting for my temples to stop pounding and my equilibrium to recalibrate, I sometimes wonder if this will be the time I actually just slump over in a large taco-loving mass and things simply fade to black. Could this be the day?
Sometimes I wonder If that permanent scenario would actually be worse than the feeling of this physical pain.
Shuddering. Dripping. Freezing. Blinded. I stand and start to slowly walk forward. Eh, I guess we shall live on today, I think. Too bad 🙂
My heartbeat POUNDS out of my chest but I am controlling its slowed rate recovery by a few deeply forced breaths of January air. Inside my body, these breaths pierce every piece of tissue they come into contact with. The expended CO2 I bellow out deep from my lungs heaves clouds of warmed exhale back into the frigid atmosphere.
The natural sinew emitting from my mouth resembles a locomotive’s timed puff-clouds fading back into the morning’s moisture. These almost embarrassingly but beautifully plumed smoke signals reveal the actual effort it has taken to move this large vessel of mine at such mediocre speeds.
My heart stops wrenching in my chest after a few seconds of paced walking and the metronome control I’ve mastered over it through years of strength training kicks in.
The realization that my feet are becoming numb from the snow and ice mixture that have accumulated from nature’s obstacles along this route has crept into my conscious from the break in action. I think for a second I should’ve worn thicker socks but decide quickly that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
I pull my 2009 iPod out of my pocket with cracked and dried hands, thickened from the continued abuse I insist they suffer through. Today it is the elements I wish for them to endure. Tomorrow it will be repeatedly picking up a moldy soaked 200lb sandbag and flinging it over a pre-set bar until my back screams to stop. The day after tomorrow they will be made to grip a freezing steel 2-inch-handled sledgehammer as I smash it into a beaten old tractor tire until I am satisfied.
For now, these achy digits simply hit repeat on Metallica’s 8 minute and 18 second masterpiece that will drive me forward to a warm kitchen on the final trip home to cook Dad’s special “cheese egg” breakfast for my family. After a few failed attempts from the slightly outdated water-laden touch screen I manage to succeed JUST as the symphony’s chords hit and RIGHT before anger engulfs my thought process.Pausing for a moment I take one last huge gasp of air and sneer at the last amount of suffering that I am about to inflict on my system.
Then… I simply take off running at full speed with no second thought. Spraying slush off the ends of my muddied Nikes I disappear into the dark fog. My legs have started shaking uncontrollably on the journey home to the point I CANNOT sprint the incline of my neighborhood’s sidewalks any longer. Forced to finish in low 4wheel drive, I gear down to smash the last 40 yards of pavement with a fast and deliberate march.
If you want to, listen closely and you will understand through the buzzing music emitting from blue torn plastic into my scabbed over ear.
Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.
Paracelsus
The word “toxic” has taken on many new meanings these days.
It’s funny what happens when we play games of word association. Now the word toxic is almost always associated with masculinity, and masculinity is almost always associated with toxic. This is shameful. I know that people aren’t saying all masculinity is toxic, but no one seems to be able to wrap their heads around the unintended consequences of a media feeding frenzy around a newfangled cultural trope.
Toxic people have always existed. All people are toxic.
What did he say? Yes. We all have the capability of being a poison or a remedy in the lives of other people. We all have the capability in our own minds of being a poison or a remedy to ourselves.
When I was little, my parents would correct things that I said. It irritated me, because I was a cocky little intelligent kid who knew exactly what words I was using. How dare they correct me!
Dad: Son, where is your homework? Me: I forgot it. Dad: Why did you forget it? You were supposed to bring it home. Me: Gosh, Dad, I just forgot, I’m forgetful. Dad: No. You don’t “just forget.” Stop making excuses.
Me: I just can’t—Mom: Don’t say that. Me: say what? Mom: Whatever it was you were about to say you can’t do. Me: but I can’t! Mom: Can’t never could. Remember that book I used to read you? Me: Stop, Mom. Mom: With the little train engine? “I think I can! I think I can!” Me: C’mon, Mom! Mom: “I think I can! I think I can!” Me: …
I didn’t get it. I was a kid. Kids never get anything. They just think they do.
The entire universe in my brain was bottlenecked though by a few very toxic thoughts.
What you believe is very powerful. If you have toxic emotions of fear, guilt and depression, it is because you have wrong thinking, and you have wrong thinking because of wrong believing.
Joseph Prince
I believed that if I forgot something, it somehow absolved me of responsibility. How could I be held accountable for something that I didn’t think about?
I believed the “I CAN’T” that always swirled in my head. Why push myself? Why strive and struggle when I just CAN’T?
These are probably the simplest examples – but there were multitudes of other poisonous thoughts like this that influenced my decision making.
“SSSSSSSST” I can hear it. I can still hear it. I remember the sound more than the pain. I was 5 years old. A wide-eyed kindergartner that could already read.
They were teenagers. Brothers. Hellions.
And they had a book of matches.
And a warped sense of humor. They had already stolen my hat, and tossed it on top of the soda machine at the bus stop. I got in trouble for losing it, but I didn’t tell mom and dad that they took it. It was my problem to deal with. I didn’t need help.
I remember their pubescent cracking laughter, with a touch of bass, now a lilt of falsetto. I don’t remember any words. I just remember the laughter.
Now, a book of matches. One at a time. Lit, then put out on my neck. “SSSSSSSST” Laughter. Scratch. Fizzle. “SSSSSST” Laughter.
I didn’t know what to do. So I didn’t do anything.
It was my problem to deal with. I didn’t need help.
Eventually, one of the neighbor girls told my parents, who immediately took care of the situation. They had the school move a bus stop closer to the house, and made sure those boys took a different bus.
I remember reading about a woman who made lime jello for her husband everyday for lunch. She would add a few drops of antifreeze to it. Antifreeze tastes sweet, and could easily be camouflaged by lime jello. A few drops at a time wouldn’t kill him right away, but the antifreeze would get into his bloodstream and then crystalize in his brain. Those crystals would continue to grow as more antifreeze as introduced. Eventually, slowly, he would die.
So many of my experiences, those matches, bullying, and a myriad of other trauma crystallized in my brain. Those toxic thoughts would crystalize and grow, and left unchecked, they’ll kill me.
We often find ourselves wallowing in a circumstance. We don’t know how we got in to that place. Poverty / Overweight / Divorce / Addiction / Infidelity / Debt / Out of work / Stressed / Depressed / Lonely And it’s easy to look at those circumstances as external factors pressing in. (There are certainly times when external forces beyond our control can affect many of those situations.) In most cases though, we are where we are because of the choices that we make. Our behavior creates our circumstance.
Behavior comes from Feelings. We feel a certain way, want to feel a certain way, and we carry out an action to either make the feeling go away, or for a new feeling to come.
Feelings come from Thoughts. We think and we believe certain things, and those thoughts are formed and shaped by our memories, and the way we think affects our mood and our attitude.
If I do not like my circumstance, I must change my actions. If I do not like my actions, I must change my feelings. If I do not like my feelings, I must change my thoughts.
But how do I change my thoughts?
Our thoughts are plastic, and they can be shaped and formed. Even bad memories of trauma can be reframed to yield better results.
For me, it started by telling myself the truth. Looking myself in the eye in the rearview mirror while driving, screaming at the fool looking back at me.
YOU CAN DO THIS. YOU AREN’T WORTHLESS. YOU ARE VALUABLE. IT’S OKAY TO ASK FOR HELP. YOU ARE SMART. SMART IS GOOD.
And a long list of truth that I needed to hear.
If we don’t take ownership of our own brains, we will surely find that they are owned.
You don’t have to keep distilling the poison. You can clean it out.
Death comes for everyone. And on this side of the soil, it seems permanent. When someone dies, we lose them. We don’t see them anymore. They are gone. Dead is dead.
Some of us* subscribe to belief system that hang on the idea of an afterlife. Some of us believe in Resurrection… that at different times the dead have come back, or that one day the faithful will breath life again.
*I definitely believe in resurrection and afterlife. But this article isn’t entirely about my christian beliefs.
I wonder how many men that I know are dead.
How many men feel the echoes of their existence bouncing through their life, but have never had a visible glimpse of their purpose. Thoreau described men “leading lives of quiet desperation.”
I have been there. Going through the motions, struggling to keep my head above mounds of my own backlogged work. Neglecting the duties that I had promised to fulfill, and barely able to provide for my family’s needs. I blamed everyone else for my problems. I had no discipline. My creativity was spent… and in my business, I depend on that creativity. In that place, I made a series of bad business and career decisions. I could easily have lost everything. If my wife was smarter, she’d have upgraded to a better husband. Fortunately, she was wiser than smarter, and willing to be patient with my messes.
I know that feeling, to feel dead inside, to question if there is even a reason to exist, to give up hope that things will ever get better.
Addicted. Divorced. Lonely. Fat. Depressed. Angry. Empty. Hopeless. Hurting. Careless. Stupid. Sick. Distracted. Stuck. You are either there, or have been there, or at least know someone who is there.
Men, you don’t have to be ok with death.
You don’t have to embrace the tomb.
You don’t have to stay six feet under.
My friend Matt was a heroin addict. His liver was toast. He had Hepatitis-C. The doctor gave him six months to live. He thought he was dead. (Today his liver is functioning perfectly and his Hepatitis-C is gone.)
My friend Justin was 799 pounds. The doctor said, “Lose weight or die.” He took one step to get started. He’s very much resurrected after losing 600 pounds.
Before I was born, my dad was a drunken divorced brawler. When he met my mom, his friends warned her that he was trouble. After breaking his femur in a motorcycle wreck, a fat embolism stopped his heart. My mom sat by his bedside and prayed for him every day, until his heart changed. That dude wasn’t my dad. I grew up with a sober, kind, and loving father. Fiercer than fire when he needed to be to protect and provide for his family. My dad was alive. Not the dead dude in that hospital bed.
I was there in another hospital room, praying by his bedside with my mom a few months ago.
It’s ok, Dad. Stop fighting. You can go now.
But he didn’t go. His eyes were open, they hadn’t been for weeks. They had locked on each of the three of us for a moment or two, and then they were fixed in the distance. Strong. Determined. Like a soldier reporting for duty.
The nurses were shocked, because usually turning off the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines only takes 5 minutes. Dad fought for 2 hours. His lungs were shot. But up to his last raggedy breath, he was a fighter.
I knew that my dad wasn’t going to RISE UP and walk that day. Not because of a lack of faith. But because it was time. He’d told us he didn’t want to be kept alive by machines. We gave him every shot we could give him. But it was dishonor to disobey his very clear wishes.
Here we are, men. We’re being kept alive by our machines. If it weren’t for our cell phones and social media servers, we wouldn’t be able to connect with people. If it weren’t for our big ol’ trucks, we wouldn’t be able to arrive anywhere. If it weren’t for our bowflex and treadmill, how could we even be super ripped and shredded? Blenders, laptops, microwaves, GoPros, dishwashers. How can we even survive? We want too much. We give too little. We have to “work out” because we stopped “working.” We have to get LinkedIn because we stopped connecting.
I picture myself laid out in a mausoleum. Cold on the slab. Surrounded by flowers. What good to flowers do? Maybe the cut back the smell, but it’s not long before they are dead too.
I’m done with that. It’s time to suck air in my lungs. It’s time to rip the stitches and open my eyes. It’s time to put my feet on the floor and walk out of the grave.
“TWO PINTS OF BOOZE… Tell me are you a badfish, too?”
– Bradley Nowell SUBLIME
I had just hung up the phone with my Mom and was sobbing relentlessly into my freshly bloodied hands. Unable to calm down I frantically pleaded for her to “PLEASE!” come pick me up from Dad’s house immediately.
Uncontrollably a few moments prior I littered the walls of my teenage room with half a dozen rage driven holes following a surprisingly effortless suplex-ian toss of my old man down his Harrisburg home staircase.
From the perch of my perceived physically dominant position, the Richter Scale calculated avulsion was NOT going to be completed until I satiated the innate need to destroy every single one of my possessions in a blind unchecked rage. In strict compliance with my own seething temper and unhinged orders to execute my self imposed command to annihilate, I shortly thereafter accomplished precisely that.
My Dad had since retreated quietly docile to his own room knowing the cycle of our father/son struggle was now out of his immediate control. Conceding his stance while silently unwilling to escalate the physical violence any longer, he allowed me to vent simply knowing through OUR shared DNA not to fuel the ensuing affray any longer.
My heavily mauled Magnovox cd player complete with it’s recent freshly exposed electronic innards was forced to deliver the song “Badfish” by my beloved Sublime on repeat with the radioactive post apocalyptic fallout still fresh in the air. The boombox proved helplessly smashed and its digital display fatally cracked rendering it now incapable of receiving anymore viable instructions. Loyal and courageous the beaten stereo evoked a certain Wallace Hartley* spirit in its’ final moments of playing as Sublime front man Bradley Nowell dutifully crooned the familiar soulful melody and I scuttled around packing my remaining possessions.
*Wallace Henry Hartley – was an English violinist and bandleader on the RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage. He became famous for leading the eight member band as the ship sank on 15 April 1912. He died in the sinking.
Crimson blood ran from my torn knuckles. I let it drip arrogantly, staining the white carpet as all previously blocked physical pain started to enter back into my brain’s cipher of the situation.
After the anger subsided that morning I had realized that the standing with my father was irreparably compromised. The intense thump of adrenaline pulsing in my neck slowed to a quickly calmed heartbeat.
I was 16 years old at that time and our personal Resistenza Italiana* between father and son had finally torched through the thinly veiled pleasantries and the incendiary molotov cocktail mix of my parents divorce, teenage angst (justified or not) and years of just good ol’ fashioned hurt that now dripped ignited fury out of my soul.
* Resistenza Italiana – Italian resistance movement is an umbrella term for resistance groups that opposed the occupying German forces and the Italian Fascist puppet regime of the Italian Social Republic during the later years of World War II.
From that point in my life anytime my pent up pathos of passion is Hulk-ishly unleashed out of it’s securely locked corridor and I allow it to complete the inevitable explosive term of unbridled destruction; my combatants’ (innocent or otherwise) are usually correctly and categorically defined as DEVASTATED.
The warrior embedded in me is always caught off guard by the curse of this Marvel Comic, Manhattan project-esque’s destruction capability. The blast radius of these detonations still prove shocking to even myself.
The deeply bitter ingredients of confusion and emotional entanglement yielded from the wreckage of these staggering displays proves distasteful to the person I actually am. These showings are disjointed from the persona I know myself to be capable of. The ease of the equal parts love/compassion character I consciously present to the world cringes at the invasion of this behavior and treats them as foreign to my being.
Nonetheless like clock-work, life unveils sharp moments of clarity needed to advance our own constitution. These bouts of trumped up carnage give a slightly dangerous personal growth variation on the term “anger therapy.”
Oddly that same introspective moral quarrel that inevitably arises from my spectacled display proves the perfect braid to set the tone for most of this very personal accounting.
Arriving impartially to the whole volatile nature of the situation, my Mother and I were at the point in our relationship where she was as equally pleased to “save” me from my Father as she was genuinely relieved she could help guide her son.
We had packed the car and I left what would be the first of many unstable departures from my father’s home. I stared out the back window of Mom’s Oldsmobile Cutlass that day appreciating the bright colors that the bloom of spring had painted along the rolling central Pennsylvania hillsides.
Exhausted, I contemplated my part of the absurdity concerning the day’s prior events as I realized that moment had brought me back to my hometown of Bradford, Pennsylvania. I felt relieved to be going home as there was something calm, familiar and safe in that thought.
In the late 1880’s Bradford could’ve been considered “The Dubai of the West.” In its opulent heyday 7 of the 10 richest people on earth lived in my hometown due to the quality of our pure crude and thick timber. The magnificent stone arches and pristine masonry of that era’s time dedicate the importance on premium our community once demanded of itself.
Bradford sits nestled in the deep valley of the Allegheny WILD mountains. Self monikered as, “The City of ALL seasons,” we boast some of the most jaw dropping, breathtaking views of rolling mountains, skylines, bodies of water and wildlife that you can find in the temperate zone. Freshwater streams naturally cascade down the unabated hillsides that form magnificent protective barriers on all sides of the community.
There is a definite geographical importance when delving into the understanding of why exactly the people of Bradford are the way we are.
Annually winter in Bradford can be summed up at its best as an enjoyably frozen landscape, great for outdoor enthusiasts becoming a near spiritual journey of nature’s beauty. At worst, described as having bone-chilling consequence to anyone not inclined to respect its proven ferocity. Lake Erie’s dangerous* weather pressure systems routinely converge, dumping literal feet of snow on the region testing the mettle of even its strongest winter loyalists.
*Pennsylvania declared Bradford in a state of emergency a few years ago as winter employed a morale crushing wave of 20 degrees below 0 temperatures for ten days straight. The sub frozen temperatures breaking the cities main waterline and forcing the National Guard to bring in large supplies of water.
In 2010 The Weather Channel conducted an extensive national poll officially ranking Bradford, PA as the second worse weather in America (1st – Fargo, ND) narrowing out a strong post Katrina New Orleans voting contingent in 3rd place. You start to understand the resolve of the people here when you realize we all wore that national weather ranking very fondly as a badge of honor paid for by our service. The ranking was a nod to our regions gumption after battling nature annually and on an epicly frozen scale through many harsh decades of battering snowfall.
Our weather attributes an almost sadist allure to the strong willed trait needed to fully unlock my homespun town. The naturally kind spirit of the culture exposes the common decency of its’ battle tested, blue collar and salt of the earth population.
Recently I’ve enjoyed sitting on my balcony letting the autumn winds chill my skin while I listen to the cities grand orchestra tuning up below. It really is an astounding acoustic created by the city’s blocks, each channeling individual choruses performed over the melody of the vast collection of interesting characters inhabiting them.
The depth of the cities harmonized sonic boom is only equalled by the continued importance of its intact cultural traditions. All choreographed to Bradford’s spookily decorated storefronts and homes, the city’s witching hours haunt through Halloween time as Tim Burton displayed knick knack’s hang from cob-web window seal scenes passed down through years of family care.
In my town, the social etiquette amongst its entire civil structure is something uniquely old school and endearing. Living in a place where doors are still held open with a head nod and accompanying smile while “Please and Thank You” are a large part of the local language serve in my summation as the true test of character of any town. That sort of care is lost on most of this new world, yet are revered as just being polite here.
There is an economic understanding in this rural community that affirms “Bradford goes….as Zippo does…”
Zippo Manufacturing, provides the majority of local jobs and continued point of support within our economically scarred city. Zippo finds itself navigating through the industry damning smoking regulations and changing acceptance of the nations attitude towards its reliant tobacco brethren. Zippo has climbed to a remarkable 500 millionth lighter sold faithfully powering the faint heartbeat of hometown pride pounding against the hull of our “blighted” town.
The many festivals, local trade shows and jubilantly attended parades with off-the-beaten-path traditions of the region stand as solid testimony that there is a definite sustained momentum here. Downtown Bradford proudly displays fewer vacancies inside its once reeling main street sector while neighboring and revitalized Foster Township flourishes with new business.
Bradford has found itself entwined in the difficult struggle of positive intentioned loyalists fighting the broken record of a struggling and outdated guard all mashed directly against the bred contempt of its current disenchanted citizens.
A long list of random industrial warehouses, vacant buildings and condemned homes sit decaying, marked with giant x’s waiting for their own Coupe de Grais execution granted by city demolition teams. Against their consent, these catch term quick “Blight” properties sit as un-imaginative posters representing our embarrassed poverty line. Most of the buildings have served as graffiti projects and late repurposed habitats for much of the unemployed population.
We sat stubborn in the Allegheny “Wilds” for more than a hundred years locked away to our own divisive opinion. Bradford existed without any metropolitan city’s influence long before the Internet’s invited nudge of political correctness during the 90’s. There is no city bigger than small-town-sized for over an hour and a half in either direction keeping us cautiously secluded. For some time many “traditional” Bradford folks would like to have it stay that way too.
As kids, we grew up playing a game called Smear the Queer* when the teachers would let our savage group of students loose for recess at George G. Blaisdell** Elementary School
*Early 90’s tackle game where a single person wildly plays “keep away” with a ball from a gang of crazed collision seeking No Fear/Chump clad clan of mini lunatics running down the “Queer.” The point being to “Smear” him/her (Tackle and then excessively pile on until he can’t take the pressure on his chest anymore, prompting squealing and or probably crying) he/she then gives the ball up to the next “Queer.”
**Founder of Zippo Manufacturing
We took pride in seeing who could outrun the mob of red faced poof-haired, sweaty and sugar infused militia the longest. It sounds impossible but I’m almost certain it had no real meaning of hate or sexual connotation attached at all to its blunt outcome. We were a surprisingly tolerant and accepting bunch, mostly hell-bent on pushing the legality of situations as opposed to expanding their social divide. Almost an unabashed and unknowing innocence is the only stance we could have possibly taken for our ownership of the favorite bigot contact sport of Bradford in 1995.
There exists a pulse in the nightlife revealing the true mischievous vein of where our unbroken spirit runs.
Once in a blue moon if I can steal away from life’s hustle for a sacred night to myself I still unapologetically love playing dirty pool till midnight and chain smoking menthols at one of the low-key hometown establishments. By rule, reinforced by fable: nothing good happens in Bradford after 12 am if you like to chase the drink and have the tolerance to do so. There happens to be smartly camouflaged, thriving secret spots that innately share in the collective understanding of your exact intent. Usually after forcing the jukebox to jam out Appetite for Destruction’s “Night Train” a few too many times and shooting a few too many honorary* shots I like to jog home at near full tilt-ish clip through the sparsely congregated night streets.
*The beloved drink of Bradford’s sister city in grime, New Castle PA; The tradition of Shooting chilled Crown Royale until you start belligerently yelling.
Bradford self-aspires to be the town that you choose to graduate college from and hopefully come back to raise your blossoming children in. It has all the makings of small town utopia seemingly hidden from big city problems only lacking the common savvy to attract any of the fresh faced taxpayers it desperately courts.
Our local understaffed law enforcement officers are tasked to combat mostly domestic dispute arguments mirroring the regions leftover and slightly misogynistic attitude. The local cops made up of nearly all hometown guys/gals battle the bored Bradford youth busy busting out windows, selling dime bags of shitty weed, and sauntering around tilt-hatted like they run Compton.
Once in a not so blue moon bad heroin will pop up from Pittsburgh or down from Buffalo with local meth houses being broadcast as “BUSTED” too close to where my cousins live.
The mentality of our youth is written in bad graffiti across the windows of the abandoned building turned hangouts they inhabit. Their shared battle cry tattoo’d across their bodies, pierced through once sacred orifices and gauged open ears that mark their private B-Town gang affiliation. It all simply says one thing, “We don’t f-X-ing care.”
Most public disputes involve posse’s of flat brimmed, foul mouthed, wifebeater* wearing white militia simply yelling dumb swear words at each other really loudly; Walmart gangster’s bump Eminem’s “I’m not afraid” like it’s their bad tatted privilege to do so and peel out at every available intersection.
*local slang for the sleeveless undershirt referring to the fact most COPS domestic dispute episodes involve someone dressed in this white garb.
Bradford has bred a certain type of native individual through its geographical consequence that is for certain.
We litter the streets with bored kids turned bad criminals that slipped through the cracks because they didn’t have a clue about themselves, their own health, their own kids, how to be young parents or any anchoring heritage. They don’t work and were never shown a way out yet are expected to comply to rules they don’t care about.
The police basically fight that fireball of emotion daily that I can personally attest for having once came up a young man in this town.
The real story, what really is going on here starts to focus through the naively worn rose-color glasses when you take the opportunity to actually look and listen to the movement of the underlying foliage.
Look close and you can start to see the increased billboard space dedicated to addiction or HIV. These clinics have targeted our region with dark signage referencing disease, addiction, suicide and depression as plaguing its people. Silently assassinating towns as close as Salamanca, “Killer Herion” dominated spring headlines with the piqued shock attributed to the 4 overdoses within a 24 hour time frame.
In the Bradford hospital, TODAY a brand new sleepless mother will listen to a resident breastfeeding “expert” recite to her faithfully the important health benefits of naturally feeding an infant child. You agree nodding your head in nonchalant obedience as the lead doctor JUST walked out having prescribed a giant bottle of Oxycotin to get by, not 24 hours after the baby was born.
While writing this article a young Bradford women was left tragically brain dead off of what authorities called a bad heroin overdose. This morning her family chose to shut down her life support.
No one thinks this takes a toll? What result could we possibly concur would happen given this unchecked and apathetic stance on social responsibility? Maybe forcing sleep deprivation along with a prescribed way out is why modern women go bat shit crazy and drown their kids feeling helpless enough to stick needles in their arms.
Being a parent is hard. It is THE hardest. Imagine carrying 2 suitcases, a laptop and kitchen sink while holding a baby with trendy diaper bag slung over your shoulder trying to fit the keys currently in your pocket into your front door. The parent victorious over that scenario has no clue what the word stamina means until you unleash a second child into your brood.
in America than watching their young children toe the water of life without any understanding of the complete tidal wave waiting to engulf their kids every … single… day.
The subsequent town hall meetings upon meetings containing self righteous important pleas on how to take care of this epidemic are going to be catered with cookies and delicious teas. A perfect munch-time snack invoking high end theories while debating policy that no one in the room has the cajones* to implement. No one wants to admit that purposely un-legislated social standard, lobbied by our own personal lack of back bone impede any ability we have to take the proverbial bull by the horns and truly act. It’s all just one big sham set up for us to eat marginally tasty cookies as far as I can tell.
When I start to calculate the indifference to all this I feel like some profusely sweaty thug has clubbed me in the knee with a rusty pipe invoking my best Nancy Kerrigan painful yelp of “Why … WHY?!” You’re telling me that we would rather agree to let our children be poisoned at day 1 off their brand new life and ignore the loud flashing warning signs produced by local-headline-depicted drug abuse than admit something is unquestionably about to erupt here? The only guaranteed promise from all this public apathy and private concern is the undying certainty no action will take place to stop any of this from happening anyway. It Sounds … Absurdly cold-hearted.
As a country we’ve now endured two school shootings and one mass stabbing during my 3 week foray into the hours toiling over the tweaking of this article’s tone and tact. My line for what the world is now inherently capable has been pushed much further than Bradford could’ve ever trained my violent endurance for.
Don’t forget my class partially grew up in the pre-Columbine era, a time period where once at its worst we sawed off our boyish aggressions literally fighting behind the Mall. The Hiroshima effect of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s escalation of modern American violence shocked our previously acceptable tolerance for such things. We were the first wave of broken teenagers lambasted with terrifying images of mass shootings from around the country by the frenzied and desensitized media coverage.
Nancy Grace’s false posturing,“We think the shooter may have been a student” eerily drones on in the background of my TV this exact moment as another public shooting showcases frantic students, distraught/exhausted parents with the nightly news slyly positioning counted body bags as their lead story.
It’s now guerrilla-warfare for our own morality, our children’s right to a better living and basic tenants of being the civilized culture we so desperately try to portray yet sickeningly fail to accomplish.
To my initial alarm, Playboy officials announced they are taking complete nudity out of their sultry adult magazines. Playboy, yes THE Playboy, the American magazine company that re-framed morality in this country has seen their own censorship line pushed so far into depravity that they are NOW taking nudity OUT of their magazines. This is not a Deadspin hoax or sneaky viagra add. My marketing brain instantly thought it was an ingenious tactic for the sheer shock value to reinvigorate the once bulletproof Playboy brand.
Unfortunately, Playboy execs openly admit that they have been overtaken by the unwanted cultural changes they actually helped to pioneer. “That battle has been fought and won,” said Scott Flanders, the company’s chief executive. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”
Playboy took nudity out of their magazine citing ANY imaginable sex act is now available at JUST one passe’ click away. Please ponder that notion for a quick second.
What does that type of over exposure do to a generation of young kids raged out on nature’s sex-hormones now allowed to instantly access an unlimited number of any sex act they can imagine? ALL 11 year old boys do is try to excessively hump anything they come in contact with, I know this to be personally true. If you are in the care of one he is probably rubbing himself on something in your closet right now. You have two choices, continue on reading this or STOP his climax into your girlfriends soft undergarments. Tick Tock Doc.
Far be it for someone like myself to masquerade as a soapbox prude but there was a time when I physically had to pick up the phone and nervously call the home of my courted female friend and ask their parents permission to talk to her. We didn’t have the technological ability to streamline our thoughtful D* pictures to entire classes of women or have time to sort through an unlimited stash of bare-assed twerking videos.
*Selfie of the male genitalia
My very first cross into the threshold of arguably modern porn was a laughable scenario involving an old seedy VHS tape complete with a worn down label intriguingly named “Dickman and Throbbin.”
At our faithfully attended after school hangout on Jackson Ave, I remember my hand trembling with excitement as I reached for the coveted tape to jam into the VCR. Something inside of me knew for certain that day that I had woken up to the world a naive boy and was going to fall asleep an experienced man. My giant Jewish counterpart shhh’d the gathered viewing audience of friends as we sat nervously peacocking around the 18 inch blurred TV.
We went silent as this fantastic foray (almost politically correct satire of porn by today’s standards) attempted quite successfully to illicit a sexual response in its viewers by granting the voyeur access to a grainy FULL costumed BATMAN themed threesome.
Throbbin’ obediently subjected KittyWomen to his costumed affections and the 1980’s envisioned fantasy of what it would look like if all your favorite DC characters sodomized each other was now unlocked for our 12 year old brains to consider from that developmental point forward, forever.
Besides all of the uncontrollable waistband tucked erections my fidgety cohorts struggled with as they walked awkwardly home pondering their own place on the newly unveiled superhero sexual spectrum, I felt my first experience with manhood was a semi success.
I ask myself, “What happened to simply living life a little too fast on Bankers Club vodka blasting Tom Petty out your German Comfort Wagon* factory speakers?” When did two steppin’ terribly to Ja Rule at basement parties lead to new age suggestive dances that I cannot wrap my mind around completely? Our youth WAS a time and one we still pay for dearly BUT depravity seems to have escalated quite considerably since I was a young man.
We’re headed Mad Max style directly into some distorted and un enjoyable climax to human existence here. All the instant technology, zombie apocalypse, binge-worthy TV and poisoned GMO infused food we can handle until we reproduce mutated versions of ourselves that we cannot stomach to raise any longer.
It’s already happening. Our fast food fattened, sexually morbid, uncared for kin finally opiate riddled into a shuffling Zombie mass exodus. Soon we can just build underground cities to banish all of these un-Kardashian looking spawn to. It’s The End of Days soon if we don’t get our proverbial and literal act together.
You can’t convince me we collectively give a shit about these kids that are growing up in our city right now, right this second. If babies are proven capable of sensing a parents love from inside of the womb how could we possibly concur that at 12 years old we can’t feel abandoned without it?
It is a shame our generation’s parents have literally aborted their own ideas of free love, equal rights and 60’s ideals of peace/prosperity. Poisoning an abused nation of single households that they half-heartedly pushed out. Their stillborn genesis permeates nothing resembling a functioning family.
Only in current America is the idea of “Family” funny on the terribly lame sitcoms watched for hours by millions. Someday, you will tag a solemn Facebook post and shuttle off your parents to a drably lit pastel colored asylum to die while you happily gorge yourself on television in their place. Until then, mildly interested parents cohabitate with mildly uninterested kids ignoring the universal truth that family requires you take vested interest in one another. I don’t get how all this is somehow lost on our culture. It’s so simple to have a human experience with your loved ones that sets the foundation when things inadvertently become strained. The universal truth you tend to learn about family is that it is never about being right. Family is simply about being present when they need you the most.
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
– Goeth
Our society can somehow stomach the acceptance of placing our kids in house-payment sized daycare institutions allowing someone else to raise them while we work extended hours and second jobs for less pay. Not many other organized cultures in the world think this is acceptable. Are we dangerously close to adopting the nations flipped policy on parenting by accepting these sub par standards throughout our local culture too?
My real fear is that America’s overexposure to hours of fast-food commercials, pharmaceutical advertisements, elitist capitalistic greed, peer depicting racism, lethargy and corruption at the highest levels of their own government has permanently mutated its number 1 asset: Its people.
The second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin confirmed my social code after reading his biography, Magnificent Desolation. He stated that the immenseness of his experiences on this planet are all summed up into one definitive premise. The final frontier of this whole shebang in his view is based solely on one thing: our interpersonal communication and relationships with other fellow human beings. It was an intense affirmation for me. So much so, it inspired me to move back to my hometown and make good on a lifelong promise to my family that we would go through this struggle together.
Changing the culture of this generation is going to be difficult. We are dealing with children of divorce and broken homes that are mostly left without guidance or pride. The dangerous proposition is that WE are the generation of kids that already had The -Itis* bred into us and are now acting as the frontline responsible for changing the business as usual mantra with our children .
*The Itis: (1) the ability to literally not give a shit (2) The extreme hangover of cheap liquor
After flipping through a yearbook looking for nostalgia to write this slanted dissertation I noticed only young lively faces that we used to call friends that would go on to commit suicide or become undeniably broken individuals. Each one eaten alive by a system in which they were guilty of only being mere chosen participants.
Realizing we have brutally endured the cattle-chutes adeptly pre-manufactured for us and set to predator approved, I felt compelled to speak out against the negligent profiteering from every last one of us becoming broken, addicted or buried. I now write for my stepbrother that took his own life this spring. He posted to Facebook saying “goodbye” and then shot himself, weighted heavily under untreated addiction. I write for the surreal number of ailing individuals that all hide and compartmentalize their too-close-to-home stories that go silent due to the extreme visceral hurt they conjure.
I write to my aunt mysteriously found dead with a toxic amount of pain medicine in her system, taken from us before getting to meet her cherished nephews. I write this to the victims of abuse that are fatally trapped in an addiction that they were offered no ability to control. I write for the countless stories that we all hide and consciously compartmentalize going on with our day showing no purpose but to keep moving forward.
My adorned Braveheart blue battle paint signals sincere personal war over my territory. I now will demand your attention to secure stability over my watch. My two boys will know that they were cared for and guarded while they inevitably grow up cheering for the fire trucks on Memorial Day parades and navigate their own way through their much maligned adolescence.
What type of effort is going to be needed to fortify our action and start to become pure catalysts for change over our local culture?
The conviction to accept change I feel is the outright hardest thing to do on this planet and we are going to have to ask more of ourselves and our community that is for certain. The importance of the idea that a village raises your child is something that we have to stand by and never retreat from.
The village of Bradford I grew up in changed my course of history for the better, anchoring me into purpose and routine in spite of myself. It is a city I am unabashedly proud of and love very deeply. Becoming a dad in Bradford has strengthened my purpose to enforce the change necessary by whatever means we have vitally available.
To all the single parents out there: I offer much respect, love and admiration. There is no harder working person on the planet than a single Mom or Dad. Your efforts go largely unnoticed but their effects last forever. The pure energy I know other struggling parents allocate towards the “fight” keeps me going when exhaustion sets deep within my aching back.
To the new generation of Badfish wandering around parentless and desensitized to sex, addiction, born to single home families that are accustomed to constant over stimulation and lack of attention. Over medicated. Overfed. Over angry. We understand exactly what you are faced with daily. To the under protected generation of confused kids that were born with an aggressive chip on their shoulder, we all have walked in your familiar path.
We must ask ourselves what the cost of all this is? Not nationally, but locally. Right here on Congress street. What is the price we are willing to pay to ignore our afflicted youth? What will it cost to ignore what you’ve just read and what are the repercussions of that choice?
The call to action to excitedly pump life into our raucous town providing the needed energy it takes to power forward and become PROUD again is Now.
I believe in us. I believe in our city. As we start to grow our own red and black clad clans this family of stone cold killers will forever be coined the Bradford BadFish in my insane mind. Living as bastard sons and daughters brought up by the real Bradford experience, we personally conceal a razors edge sheathed with resiliency hard as a coffin nail and have no fear of its implementation. There is still something wild and untamable in even the best of us.
Rise X Up!
The surviving BadFish will stand defiant and honor our fallen with a nonconformist “Fuck You!” After all, WE are the only ones qualified to represent the BFD directly because of it.
… “Those kids from Bradford are BadFish Man.” You’re DAMN right they are.
“Two pints of booze…Tell me are you a Badfish too?”
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach they sat down gathering the good fish into containers, but the Badfish they threw away.
Ironmill and Manlihood are rallying a group to help remove rotting garden timbers, and other much needed labor at the garden as a part of their Rise X Up campaign. Lou Costa of Ironmill said that this is an effort to build a sense of pride in the community. “The Project Pride garden was an initiative started by the City of Bradford, and this cleanup is a step that we thought was a great way for us to do our part in the community.”
Costa invites the whole community out to help reclaim the space, which has fallen into disrepair. “A little elbow grease and a fresh coat of paint can make a difference,” said Costa, “We hope this is the initiative that can help to kick start in people a resurrection of pride in their neighborhoods.”
I believe in the power of strength training, fitness, exercise
or whichever your niche’ in the world of workout … to drive and to change your life. There is a discipline involved in training and great reward for those of us who constantly evolve our bodies shape, size and strength. This reward is one that I personally believe very deeply having been a personal trainer, strength coach and mentor to many young athletes for many years.
My journey through this life has run the gambit of emotion from grand elation to dumbass mishap and taken every single turn in between one could conjure up. The anchor through my course of existence has always been my commitment to strength and the positivity surrounding that dedication.
Lou Costa of Ironmill
The connection I have to training is actually palpable, almost indescribable when you work for something so hard that was thought impossible a month, a year, a decade ago … and now that same un moveable obstacle bends to your will as you grow in knowledge, strength and power.
It is that feeling that I wish to share with our community. The power to change after failure, to adapt and then to
OVERCOME.
When we drive ourselves to capabilities that others are unable to understand or comprehend, we form a bond amongst us.
Ironmill and Manlihood is a place to share that bond.
The Brother of “Iron”
…where the passion of sharing a wealth of information, experience, media and change is more than just welcomed, it is encouraged. If you read our philosophy and there is a fire sparked inside of you to introduce yourself to that idea of dedication, 100 % percent effort and absolute pride in yourself to not only change your physique but to cause a real shift your thinking … than we have accomplished our initial goal.
We here at Ironmill believe to our core that the commitment and knowledge we help instill in you to succeed to the betterment of your personal fitness goals will extend far past squats, deadlifts and dumbells. We believe that the commitment to the betterment of yourself will translate deeply into a more positive life as well.
Rise X Up!
I write that last statement with absolute sincerity.
I write that sincerely because that commitment and knowledge has changed many people’s lives around me.
It has brought us into this community together.
It has given us focus.
It has instilled work ethic.
It has forced a paradigm shift in our thinking. It makes the impossible, possible.
It suits us with the armor to overcome anything we are willing to work towards.
It is the passion forged within ourselves and brought together by the common bond of a stronger you.
Men, we’ve OD’d on complacency. We’re become comfortable with failure and defeat, and then settled in to our padded graves to watch the world burn.
We don’t have to live like this. Fat. Lonely. Bored. Distracted. Hopeless. Depressed. Broken.
It’s time to RISE UP from the dead. It’s time to RISE UP out of our graves. It’s time to RISE UP and take back the things we know we can and should be.
Join Josh Hatcher (Manlihood) and Lou Costa (Ironmill) on a 12 week journey, rekindling what it means to be a man. What it means to take ownership of your life. What it means to RISE UP.
