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This one’s for everyone who’s done being polite to MS.

I write most of my thoughts between commutes and reality checks.

These aren’t quotes …..they’re survival notes.

You’re not your thoughts. You’re the one noticing them.

If you’re tired, angry, or numb, you’re not alone.

I love you for still showing up, and if you love me back, keep reading.

October 15th…

On my way to a job I like… that doesn’t always like me back.

When you’re dealing with a chronic disease it’s easy to give up.

My body’s running a comedy show my nerves didn’t approve.

I’m exhausted before I even move.

So yeah some days I say “F it.”

I hide under my cooling blanket and act like time doesn’t exist.

And that’s okay… until it’s not.

Because crawling out of that hole feels like trying to escape quicksand while holding bricks with your soul.

And guess what? You have to do it again tomorrow. Every morning, every day off, it’s just the same shit.

Positivity is a workout.

Smile. Breathe. Be grateful.

Meanwhile, your bladder’s planning a surprise attack and your legs are ghosting you.

When’s the right time to scream “F you, MS”?

Any damn time you want.

But don’t live there too long  you’ll catch a bad vibe.

And negativity spreads faster than my spasticity on a humid day.

I try to manifest healing.  Each and every single day. 

When I catch my breath, I remind myself:

“My spirit keeps showing up. And That’s enough.”

Stillness doesn’t mean stuckness, it means I’m tuning in.

Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t.

But it’s something to hold onto when faith feels like a rumor.

I picture a future where I’m better. Not cured. Just better.

Where my biggest complaint is arthritis and my weight.

Where I joke, “Remember when I had MS?”

If you’re living with a chronic illness, I see you.

You’ll want to give up, and that’s human.

But MS doesn’t get to write the ending unless you hand it the pen.

So no, I’m not done.

Not today.

Not tomorrow.

Even on the days hope feels like a scam, I still show up.

Because at the end of it all…..MS, do you. I’m still doing me.

This life isn’t meant forever.

Once that sinks in, you move different.

Every step counts. Every choice becomes a pulse.

The struggle? That’s the lesson.

The heartbreaks, the burnout, the mornings your body says, “nah, not today.”

We chase comfort, success, a better version of the dream. And still, it’s never enough.

Some people find peace….I respect that.

But most of us are sprinting toward something we can’t even name. Sometimes doesn’t even love us back.

No matter how strong you are,

how fast you run,

how much you lift,

life will still slow you down.

But that doesn’t mean stop.

You take the hit, keep your grip on the wheel,

eyes forward,

hold on until it’s safe to breathe again.

There’s not a week I don’t want to quit.

Life has punched me in the chest so hard

I’ve lost the wind,

the will,

and the why.

But then I rise,

and I whisper gratitude.

I tell myself two things every morning:

I am a medical miracle.

I am leaving this apartment to find the cure for my disease.

That’s my mission briefing before I go 1-on-1

with the final boss….the staircase.

And when the sun sets,

I run the same level again

on hard mode.

See, life is a game.

A serious one.

You show up every day,

and it throws its worst at you

glitches, traps, side quests you never asked for.

You still play.

You still choose.

Your choices light your path,

or they leave you walking in shadow.

Either way, the journey’s yours.

You don’t lose by falling.

You lose by refusing to get back up.

My disease might never be cured.

I’ve made peace with that.

If I fall one day and don’t rise again,

so be itI know I played full-hearted,

no shortcuts, no cheats.

G.U.S.—God, Universe, Spirit—

isn’t somewhere out there.

It’s in here.

In me.

I don’t want to lose you.

But if you’ve got faith,

you already know—

God hands us what we can outlast,

outfight,

out-endure.

And that’s what this is.

Not a tragedy.

Not a trial.

A test of endurance.

And I’m still in the game.

I love you, and I hope you love me too.

This post is messy. It’s scattered. I wrote most of it in the back of an Access-A-Ride van , and then sometimes late on a Friday night. These notes are just random thoughts I sit down with when I am alone. These are raw notes from my “F-U Personal Journal.” I cry when I write like this. Not once or twice. Every time. Because when I tell the truth to myself, it hits hard.

My body misfires.

Muscles feel weird, they tingle and twitch without warning.

Feet drag.

Hands get stiff and cramped. 

Sometimes I pee before I’m ready.

Sometimes I can’t pee at all.

Sometimes I pee on myself. 

This is MS.

It attacks the protective layer around your nerves.

Messages get scrambled.

The connection breaks down.

When your body starts lying to you, trust becomes a problem.

You second-guess the recliner.

You second-guess the walk to the bathroom.

You second-guess your own timing.

You second guess walking down the stairs.

The trust issues aren’t mental.

They’re neurological.

They show up in your gait, your joints, your breath.

They change how you move.

They change how you plan.

You stop trusting mornings.

You stop trusting heat.

You stop trusting your body to act right in public.

You start looking for patterns that don’t exist.

You overthink.

You brace for the next fall.

You assume collapse is close.

Then the spiritual trust starts to fade.

You question your path.

You question God.

You question purpose.

You stop praying.

You stop meditating. 

You stop expecting.

This happens fast.

One bad week.

One small fall.

One public accident.

Then your beliefs start slipping too.

I show up by writing.

I show up by resting.

I show up by talking to my wife without pretending.

I show up by asking for help when I need it.

None of this feels natural.

But it’s necessary.  My up bringing taught me to be self reliant. It is hard for me to ask for help. 

I don’t trust every step.

I don’t trust everyone.

I trust breath.

I trust timing.

I trust Spirit, quietly.

MS broke my nervous system.

But it didn’t break my will.

I’m still here.

Not searching for answers.

Learning to sit with questions.

One breath at a time.

If you’d asked 16-year-old me what being a man looked like—well, growing up in the Lower East Side during the ‘80s, I probably would’ve tossed out something ridiculous like:

“Don’t cry. Lift heavy. Protect your people. And hey, maybe throw in a six-pack while you’re at it.”

That was pretty much the unofficial “man-up” starter pack.

And for a long time, I stuck to it. I hauled all the groceries upstairs in one go—arms burning, pride intact. Didn’t ask for help. Didn’t admit when something hurt. I just push-through. Or poured a drink and shoved the pain somewhere quiet. Independence was everything. My body was proof I had it all together.

Then MS barged in, uninvited.

No warning. No knock. Just kicked the damn door off the hinges and said, “We’re flipping the script” get on the floor!!!! Give me all your energy! 

Suddenly, my legs had their own agenda. My Energy? Came and went like a moody roommate. I went from being the one who moved the furniture to the one sitting in it, needing help just to get up. And let me tell you—there’s no section in any manhood guidebook that covers asking your wife, grown as you are, to help you out of bed just so you can pee.

At first, I panicked. Thought maybe I was losing who I was.

Because we’re taught that strength is about action. Pushing. Lifting. Enduring. Never letting anyone see the cracks. But MS? It forced me to sit with something uncomfortable:

Real strength sometimes means stopping.

Not because you gave up—but because you finally decided to stop pretending.

It’s letting your wife see you “Ugly Cry” without laughing them off.

It’s telling your kids, “I can’t today,” and trusting they’ll love you anyway.

It’s asking for help without feeling like you just checked your man card at the door.

And here’s the crazy thing: I didn’t lose manhood. I just had to redefine it.  Not really by choice, a decision to mentally survive the long game ahead. 

Turns out, I’m still strong—just in ways that don’t always show up in muscle. I protect my family with more than my back. I protect them with presence. With showing up, even when my legs don’t. With listening when I’ve got nothing else to give. With humor. With stubborn love.

Fatherhood feels different now. My kids don’t just remember the guy who walked them to school or made sure they had the freshest gear. They see the guy who rolls in a wheelchair and still manages to show up—who laughs, who stays soft, who still loves their mom like it’s day one. They’ve learned that being tough doesn’t mean being hard. It means staying kind when life’s been anything but.

That last sentence hit me hard as I wrote it, not gonna lie. I got a little misty eye.  

Partnership, too—it’s on a whole new level. My wife? She didn’t stick around because I can carry heavy things. She’s here because we carry each other. We’ve had the kinds of conversations that peel your ego back like old paint—where you admit you’re scared, worn out, or just need to be held. That’s not weakness. That’s trust. That’s real intimacy. That’s grown-man strength.

So yeah, I’m off the “man-up” train for good.

If manhood means bottling it all up, pretending nothing phases you, and dying with your pain locked in your chest—I’m not interested. I’ll take the version where you speak honestly about what hurts. Where you cry if you need to. Where you’re still the rock, just not made of stone.

MS stripped away parts of my independence, sure. But it gave me something better:

A masculinity built on honesty. Connection. Grace. And yeah, vulnerability too.

Funny thing? That kind of strength—the kind rooted deep in who you are—it doesn’t go anywhere. Not even when your legs do.

Because strength isn’t just what you carry.

It’s what you’re willing to share.

I have not said this in a while but, “I love you and I hope you love me too”.

The other night I had a dream. And like most dreams, it didn’t ask for permission—it just arrived, vivid and weird and strangely sacred…. I think.

I was walking through a quiet neighborhood. Fall had clearly checked in: the trees were bare, the air felt crisp, and I was with my best friend’s parents and a small child—maybe two or three years old. We found two balloons along the way. Simple white ones. Joyful, floating, light. The kind that make toddlers smile and grown-ups nostalgic.

The baby cried. I don’t know if it was her balloon or just the idea of something pure drifting off forever. But we comforted her and went to get another one. Because that’s what you do when something good escapes your hands—you try to bring back a version of it.

We kept walking. Me, the baby, the balloons, and the falling season.

Somehow, as dreams go, I began collecting more white balloons—walking through a neighborhood that looked both familiar and not. But the trees, tall and bare, made me nervous. I worried the branches might pop what I was holding. So I did what any balloon-carrying, overprotective spirit-warrior would do: I brought them in closer. I held them tightly, protecting these fragile floating things like they were sacred.

Eventually, I arrived at an apartment—maybe mine, maybe someone else’s—but I knew I was safe there. And here’s where it gets trippy.

I released the balloons into the room, expecting them to rise. But they didn’t. They deflated mid-air, falling gently to the ground… and when they hit the floor, they transformed into coins.

Yeah. Coins.

Not quarters or nickels or anything I could identify. Just strange, sacred coins. I dropped to my knees and stared at them like a man trying to decipher a challenging Sudoku puzzle. I turned to the baby and whispered something that surprised even me:

“Don’t worry… they’ll turn back into white balloons.”

I woke up still holding that sentence in my chest.

I don’t always recognize the coins this illness gives me. They’re not always shiny. Sometimes they look like days I can’t walk. Or mornings I wake up angry that my body forgot how to be my body. But every now and then, in the silence of reflection, I realize they’ve been currency for something deeper: patience, presence, surrender.

And maybe… just maybe… some of them are waiting to become white balloons again.

If you’re reading this and holding something fragile—hope, grief, identity, health—I see you. Keep walking. Hold on tight. Let go when it’s time. And trust that even the deflated things still carry magic.

Because even coins can fly, if you believe hard enough

“It happened so fast, I didn’t even feel the blast”

Since my new job recently, I don’t have access to a computer where I would normally past my time by writing in my blog. So here I am doing this on my iPhone 13. So here we go!

In just a few weeks, I quit my job, took a breath (finally), and walked straight into a brand-new chapter. I swapped sly comments from my manager for balance, cold leadership for warm-hearted teammates, and plot twist I became a cat grand dad.

But let’s rewind for a second.

Leaving my job at Equitable wasn’t a snap decision. It’s been a long journey of resume sending, ghosted interviews. I spent everyday for the past three years refreshing my emails. In hopes there was a new opportunity waiting to happen for me. I gave that place 15 years of my life. 15! That’s longer than some of these financial planners have even had a driver’s license.

I didn’t expect a grand exit, but what I got truly moved me: genuine love and support, not from management, but from my coworkers. The planners. My team. The people I worked with, not for.

The folks I supported showed up with kindness, encouragement, and reminders that I mattered. They made me feel seen and valued in ways I hadn’t felt in years. It was healing. It felt like this to very moment I was leaving those doors for the last time. I had a parade of people walking me to the elevator bank. I even had one guy chase me down the block to hand deliver the card you see above.

So what about the leadership or management? You know the ones you had meeting lunches with, the ones who wanted white glove treatment?…Crickets. No farewell lunch. No handshake. Not even a thank you. Just the same quiet indifference they’d shown whenever I asked for small things—like empathy—and compassion.

When you live with a chronic illness like MS, that silence hits different. I never asked for special treatment. Just humanity. I think collectively we are all lacking this fundamental component. We could talk about this in depth at a later date. This is not to offend the reader, this is towards the ones you know well.

So yeah, I left.

And for one whole week, I did something wild—I rested. I breathed. I let myself be still. I’m lying!!  I played video games for 12 hours everyday.  I’m sorry but I am just hooked to this one Xbox game. Then I started a new role. One that came with more responsibility and, finally flexibility!

At Telstra, I’ve found a team that’s not just sharp, but kind. People who greet me with respect. Who understand that contribution doesn’t always look the same for everyone.

And still… I was scared.

That week before my start date? I was on edge. Anxiety in full swing. I barely slept. My wife was concerned. Meditating couldn’t help me. My mind was stuck on loop:

What if I can’t do this?

What if I made the wrong call?

What if they see my wheelchair before they see me?

Spoiler alert: Fear lies.

This team has welcomed me in every way that matters. I show up. I contribute. And slowly but surely, I’m starting to believe again, not just in the work, but in myself. You got this kid!

Meet Amira Lynn, our new cat. She’s already the queen of the house. We suspect she has a little feline ADHD (zoomies at every time O’Clock sharp), but she brings the kind of joy that fills a room, and maybe leaves a few claw marks.

She’s chaos, sure. But the best kind. The kind that makes you laugh. The kind that reminds you that love doesn’t always sit still.

So yeah, it’s been a ride. New beginnings are rarely smooth. But sometimes, when you walk away from what no longer serves you, you find a door you didn’t even know was there.

To anyone standing at the edge of change: trust yourself. Even if your voice shakes. Especially if it shakes.

Signing off until next time with love (and cat hair),