The First Glimpse: Book Announcement & Preview

A first look at Chasing Control and an invitation to the road ahead.

August 8th, 2024 I sat down for the first time and stared at a blank sheet with a blinking cursor. It was exactly one year from the day we found out about Lucy’s health concerns. I’m not sure how many counts of the cursor blinking passed before words started appearing on the page, but from that day until yesterday, I worked nearly every day writing out the story.

As of yesterday, the manuscript is out of my hands, taking its final pass through production reviews. Today, I want to share a small bit of writing from the book. If you read no further, but are curious about what this project might entail, here is the best snippet from the Preface (below) that I can offer.

This book is not a how-to-do anything manual. Instead, it is a story of control. It is the story of my own, and my family’s, fight for life. Of potential destroyed and even greater potential realized.

This has been the most exhausting, freeing, brutal, and meaningful work that I have ever done in my life. I was helped along the way by so many of you, and I can’t wait to share more details with you all soon.

I will be setting up a very small advance reader group once the book is in a production ready state. If interested, you can find more details here.

With that, I give you the first sneak peek at Chasing Control: From Bottle, To Death, To Life.

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Preface

Ordinary and obsessive.

I’m not sure if these two traits square, but that is exactly how I would describe myself.

I sought the comfort and obscurity of living an ordinary life.

Yet, I was dominated by obsessions.

Fire was one obsession. I was drawn to fire as an element for its lessons and power.

Fire is the actualization of potential—the result of a balance of elements and conditions—fuel, air, and, finally, a spark. I can think deeply as I stare into flames. I easily become lost, searching the dancing flames for their hidden lessons.

The heat, visuals, and crackling of the wood offer the ultimate multisensory experience, bringing me into the depths of what it means to be a human.

Fire, when controlled, provides security and warmth.

Fire, when free to run wild, can scourge a landscape, seemingly stripping it of all potential for life.

Yet that destruction can cleanse. It can burn away that which is no longer useful.

I like to think about times when our ancestors lived with more connection to the land. Fire was revered. Fire gave them life. Communities gathered and tales were told around a fire, with the pulsing embers breathing life into the story’s characters as lessons were passed from one generation to the next.

They must have understood their delicate relationship with fire—the salvation it provides and the destruction it can bring forth when unleashed.

Did they understand that control was never fully in their hands?

Control was my unnamed obsession.

As time progressed, men and women have been honored for their achievements and contributions to our species’ well-being—often by advancing the notion of control over ourselves and our environment. Many of these have been truly remarkable achievements. But I can’t help but wonder: Have we lost touch with a truth that was made apparent to us as we stared into the dancing flames of a fire, night after night? Have we unintentionally fooled ourselves into thinking we control more about our lives than we actually do?

When I felt a loss of control, I reacted in a simple, yet destructive manner: rage. Early in life, it was relatively harmless. When I wasn’t able to control the outcome as I desired, my rage flashed forward. There were dings and nicks out of nearly everything that I owned.

But when alcohol got introduced to my life and I struggled to control my insatiable desire to consume, the rage turned inward and onto the relationships I held closest to me in life. That rage unleashed an all-consuming inferno inside me that started destroying everything. The consequences of wrestling for control grew in severity—until both my sanity and life were on the line.

I had an incredible life. I recognized that even when young. Much of my descent was reflecting back on my life and wondering:

Why do I feel so lost and in despair?

Why can’t I find happiness and peace?

I have it so well, I am loved, I had passions—why am I struggling?

My inability to answer these questions only fed the growing fire within me. I felt pathetic to be struggling, so I searched harder for ways to control my drinking and suppress the raging inferno of self-loathing and chaos. I isolated. No one could know the depths of my descent. I didn’t believe anyone could possibly understand.

By the time I recognized my loss of control with alcohol, I felt like my realization had come too late to save anything. The raging fire of chaos that had built throughout my life had now burned the landscape of my life without any hope of recovery.

Yet somehow, there was still hope. I was spared. I am lucky, and I know it. My life turned into the ultimate blessing, an about-face that to this day still feels like a miracle, even if this blessing also brought with it unimaginable hardships, burdens, and loss.

This book is not a how-to-do anything manual. Instead, it is a story of control. It is the story of my own, and my family’s, fight for life. Of potential destroyed and even greater potential realized.

If this story, my family’s story, can provide you with enough hope to persevere one hour longer, to discover the gift that is waiting for us in every single day that we are given, then the effort to write all this out was worth it.

Maybe you’ll see a little bit of yourself as you stare into the flames of this story. I am, after all, just an ordinary person, impossible to discover among the crowds and statistics.

But ordinary as I might be—and ordinary as you might feel—each of us is called to realize the greatest potential in our lives, yet few do.

And for that reason, this is no ordinary story.