A Letter To My Younger Self

September 25, 2020September 16, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 2 Comments

Timothy Wayne Hicks, with his little sister and a devil cat, 1993

Dear 22 year old Tim,

I’m here to tell you some things that I need you to know so that you don’t take the next 22 years and blow up, then rebuild, then blow up your life again.

I’m your 44 year old self, fresh off of 22 years of fun, games, heartache, tragedy, loss, joy, and fun.

At this point in my life, at the time of writing this letter, these 22 years have flown by. I will tell you some things that you won’t believe but shouldn’t be surprised about:

As of this writing, you’ve been employed by two places, both family-run. One you left because you wanted to start a wholly-owned family business with your father, mother, sister, and good business associate. You’re just starting work at your father’s first company at 22, and you’ve got a shit ton of hard work that you don’t know is coming that is coming for your ass. College was cake, this real-world shit is not.

As of this writing, you’ve finally, mercifully discovered the world of women. It took you 20 years to do it, and surprise, you did it well. But it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and it certainly wasn’t the lifelong quest you needed to have to find your Moby Dick. And yes, you slept with a couple of white whales. Don’t sleep with fatties.

You’ve had a life of living overweight and out of shape. For 20 of your future years, you will be a fat ass. It’s not personal, though it is. You come from a long line of family who doesn’t take care of their health. And going into the workforce after you managed to take care of yourself in college, you’ll let all that slip. You’re going to balloon into a 308 lb unhealthy human being, and only between riding the roller coaster of diets and exercise will you truly find visions of your true self, before you fall back into the fat abyss. But the good news is, at 40, just like everything else you’ll learn the hard way, you’ll finally get your shit together and be able to outrun your kids and outwork men half your age because that’s what you should’ve been doing all along.

You have two amazing girls and an ex-wife. Yes, I said EX-wife. You spent your 20’s working hard and not putting work into your own life, so in your 30’s you married a woman because she was the only one who said yes. She married you because you gave her to opportunity for children. Both of you didn’t know who you were because you never bothered to find out. Your divorce put you in massive debt that took you two years to pay off. At the time of this writing, you are agonizingly close to your goal, with a mere $4500 left to go.

Your kids are incredible. Your oldest is just like you in every way, almost to a fault. Tall, lanky, and opinionated, but strong-willed and spirited. She’s also got your anxiety and anger issues, some of your more unattractive qualities, but she’s still a firebrand and an amazing student, as well as a robotics champ and an engineering fiend. Your youngest is smart, funny, social, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. She’s an independent dynamo who is friendly to everyone she meets, as well as a supporting and nurturing presence to her family and friends. You’d be amazed and proud of what amazing kids you’ve produced.

I wanted to reach out to you because I know what you’re going to be going through and I want to tell you things that I would recommend you do, knowing what I know now.

I will give you a rundown, and trust me what I say, this will save you YEARS of heartache and spinning your wheels. I can tell you that you are doing well at 44, but not as well as you could be doing if you follow me on what you need to be doing. Many people write these puff pieces of what they want their past self to do, but mine is truly from the heart, and you have a chance to re-live this life with vigor and more heart that I did, because you will truly know who you are and what you want.

Find out who you are

You are Timothy Wayne Hicks, but you don’t have the first fucking clue who the hell you are or what the hell you want. You MUST find out. It will solve almost 90% of the problems you will have in the future. Travel, try new things, spend time with friends. But know this. The myth that you were told about having a wife, house, car, kids, job, etc, is just that. It’s a myth that’s been propagated as the meaning of happiness in life, and it’s not that for many people, you included. You need to understand that just because your elders are pushing you into a direction they think you need to go, it doesn’t mean you have to go there. You have to think for yourself and don’t buy the myths of what is supposed to make you happy. What makes you happy is being who you want to be, doing what you want to do, and living how you want to live. No one has the right to take that away from you, and many people have succeeded in doing that in my life. No more.

Don’t go into trucking

Yes, your father offered you a great opportunity, but you needed to do something else. This job, as successful as it has made you, has taken years off of your life. Trucking is stressful, problem ridden, and thankless, and you jumped in when you were young and dumb, which is right where they want to get you. Now, you’ve lived your dream of becoming an entrepreneur, but at a potential cost of your sanity. It was never what you wanted, and will never be what you wanted. You’re a slave to it at times, and while trucking runs in your family’s blood, it’s cool comfort to a man who’s endured shit tons of crap from it for 22 years. If you have a chance to do something else and then come back to it, fine, but my guess, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that you need to travel, and take that trip to Argentina to immerse yourself in Spanish. Live there for 6 months and get yourself some world action.

Have sex and socialize

In 5 years, at the age of 27, you’ll have sex for the first time. While this probably won’t come as much of a shock to you as it should, you’re terrible with women and you have been for a while. And it won’t get better these next few years, so I encourage you to get out and socialize. Put the fucking video games down and put your head in the game. Go out with your friends, go to business dinners, travel, and meet new people. You’ll wait 20 years and a failed marriage to get this through your thick skull, and it needs to be said. You must get better with people and improve your social skills. Experience women from different backgrounds and walks of life. And most importantly, wrap that rascal. But you need the experience.

Pursue your passions

You love meteorology. But you couldn’t cut it because you thought it would be too hard. You never even tried it. You just assumed. Stop assuming. Get your ass to work and get a degree in something you love. You wanted to be a storm chaser, you wanted to be a meteorologist, you wanted to fly into a hurricane. You walked away from it all because you thought it was too hard. You’re a dumb fuck if you do it again. Explore what you want to do in this life. You will discover, 22 years too late as it seemed, that you have a passion for writing and a passion for helping men to live a full and more stable life for themselves. Get some balls and make a decision to be good to yourself and fuel these passions. It’s your call. Don’t forget that.

Get married on your terms

Yes, you’re divorced at 44. Yes, you wasted 10 years of your life with a woman whom you loved, but whom you loved only because you were told that’s what to do. She’s a great mom to your kids, but you need to be better at vetting potential women in your life. At 22, you would marry the first woman that said yes to having sex to you, and you actually do that at 30. She’s a good woman, but disaster is coming if you marry her, which you do. 10 years of a loveless marriage, no sex for nearly 2 of those years, and an inert relationship that dissolves slowly. You’ll make the tough decision to leave the marriage in 2015 and you’ll be glad you did, but it will cost you years off your life as well as tens of thousands of dollars. She’s not a bad person, as a matter of fact, she’s a great co-parent and best friend, but you shouldn’t have married her. But the good things that came out of it are the two kids you have. They’re very special. But you need to marry on your terms and only when you’re ready. You’ve rushed into marriage under pressure from family and friends to “settle down”. Don’t listen to them. You’ve got to blaze a path on your own. You must take the world by the balls before you invest in another person, and that person has to be the one to help you conquer the world. If she’s not, then there’s no point.

Be smart with money

You learn 5 years into your marriage that debt is a prison and you rack up tons of it with your wife. Then you take Dave Ramsey, and you start to get it back, until your divorce when you rack up debt again. Don’t go into debt. There’s no point in trying to have everything at 22, when you can work and live for practically nothing and save up every penny. Your success should be internal, not to show up your neighbors or people you don’t care about. You have to be smart with money and set up retirement early and contribute often to it. At 44, you’re kinda starting over on that point, and if I had done this at 22, I wouldn’t be in the straits I am now. And I want you to get a will done immediately. And life insurance, term life insurance. And get a good accountant, lawyer, and tailor.

Maybe the reason I’m writing this letter is because I’m scared for you to go through what I went through and I want you to avoid it. But maybe avoiding it isn’t the way to go. Maybe all the shit you’ll go through is so you can tell your story to a younger man than you, so he’ll learn from you.

Trying to avoid a life of some difficulties makes soft men.

You need to take life as it comes, and learn from the mistakes I made, but you’ll still make mistakes. We all do, and the best of us learn, adapt, and warn others about said mistakes. You have a lifetime to learn the hard knocks classes, so get started.

And on second thought, after you read this letter, tear it up, and do what you need to do to live your life. Just stop listening to other people who think they know better that you do about YOUR life. They don’t, and they never will.

You’ve got this, Past Tim.

Go live your life.

Sincerely,

Timothy Wayne Hicks, 44

The Eye

September 18, 2020September 10, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 3 Comments

“In the eye of the storm, I’ll make my stand. But I’m not waiting for the walls to close in. I just brace myself for winds to change their ways.”
– Godsmack – “Eye of the Storm”

The hits kept coming.

“I can’t keep doing this.”

I thought to myself.

There I was, out on the warehouse floor of my work, Christmas rush blasting the dock, my daughter had potentially had another seizure, my parents were fighting, my ex-wife was threatening to take me back to court, and my aunt was having serious health issues.

On top of all this, I had just broken up with my girlfriend.

Towering waves, wind crested and pushed, were tossing me around. Swirling vortices of water, pushing me in every direction, a doomed ship upon the angry sea.

And I kept refusing to put down my anchor.

Helplessly bracing for the next hit, I was letting all of this consume me.

This hadn’t been the worst day. There’d been worse, don’t get me wrong. But everything was hitting at once. And I was letting it affect me. So I had to say “fuck it” and dropped the hammer. I lashed out at everyone at work about my shitty day. I got emotional. I punched a door. It was too much.

So I stormed out and slammed the office door. I was on the warehouse floor with freight, machinery, and large equipment in a righteously pissed off state and that wasn’t good.

After tossing a couple of load locks, my phone, non-stop since that morning, started ringing again. I chucked it across the dock.

After taking a 2x 4 to a pile of old pallets, I finally calmed down. I was sweating, out of breath, but surprisingly, everything was finally, mercifully quiet for a moment.

I sat on the pile of pallets, breathing heavy, fuming, and upset. It wasn’t stopping. The phone, surprisingly still working, kept ringing. Texts, alerts, overload.

It had to stop. It wasn’t going to.

I had to make it stop.

Enforce Your Calm

A man must understand one thing.

The storm of life doesn’t ever stop. You create the calm within it by being the strength to face it.

As I said in a blog post a few months ago called “Storms”, life doesn’t give a fuck about you or your problems. It’s unrelenting, and you can only control what you can control.

But what you can control will determine how you weather these storms, and if you are strong enough, anchored enough, and steadfast, you create your own calm, your own eye within the chaos, rather than being tossed uncontrollably by a machination of calamities, both perceived and real.

This is a matter of personal, emotional, and even physical strength. You make a stand against all of this, everyday. You put your chest out and face the wrath, unflinching. That’s the difference between today’s stressed out man and the man of the past, who was stressed, but did his shit anyway.

There is something to be said for stoicism, the practice of Marcus Aurelius, and why the manosphere continues to pine for his wisdom. Zeno of Citium founded the school of philosophy, and there is a ton of wisdom in it. It’s a lost art to be able to keep one’s cool, especially with a world that is constantly yapping at men to perform. Imagine a world that Aurelius lived in, with wars with barbarian hordes, disease, famine, and low life expectancy, as the back drop for a philosophy that required you to keep your head about you at all times, through all events.

Now, fast forward to today, where modern convenience has made all of what Aurelius dealt with obsolete, and see how we are MORE stressed than ever.

It shows to men today that we are not even close to being as weathered as our ancestors. And with the feminization of society, it only stands to reason that as society continues to denigrate men and masculinity, the victim hood of circumstances defense will still continue to get airplay.

All the more reason for men to focus on the small picture and handle their immediate concerns, and forge a calm center to retreat to in case of issues.

It really is up to you how you attack this.

The Mind’s Eye

All calm in your life starts with the calming of your mind.

Close your eyes in a quiet room. No distractions. Do you hear your mind chattering away? This is your mind’s default setting, but it is one that you can control.

You have issues. You have things that you have to do. You have worries. You have fears.

You have to assign importance of all of this in your thoughts.

You control what thoughts you listen to. You control your reactions to the thoughts that scare you.

You are in control of your brain. Many people aren’t, however. That’s where taking time to calm the mind is where the calm in the storm starts. When you’re calm of mind, the world calms around you, because you aren’t letting it escalate. This takes an enormous amount of self and emotional control which many men these days don’t have. To stand in the face of a blinding wind, gigantic waves, and the imminent threat of loss of life is to become more than the hurricane.

And it starts in your head.

The world, and hell, life in general is a bully, but it’s all bark and no bite, for the most part. We live longer now than we ever have. We have somewhat of a civilized society. The big picture things are handled so that we can obsess about the small shit, and obsess we do.

The human mind must always have problems to solve, or it creates them on its own. Idle hands are a major problem, and the problems that are easiest to solve tend to be the ones we overlook, and the lack of control for the bigger problems overwhelm us.

While seething on the dock that December afternoon, several things happened.

My dock was full of freight and we were busy
My daughter’s seizure was a false alarm
My parents worked out their issues
My ex-wife called and apologized and we worked out the issues
My aunt found out she didn’t have cancer

My relationship with my girlfriend ended by my accord. I found out later that she had been seeing her ex-boyfriend before me again, so it made my breaking up with her much easier to handle.

All the shit I was stressing about during that day had worked itself out (with little lifting from me).

After an apology to my work crew and a bit of door repair for the dented door, I was back to being even-keeled. But this time, I reminded myself that feeling this way wasn’t the way to go, and clearing my mind was going to be a priority to avoid future blow ups.

I’ve always had a problem with anger, and there aren’t easy answers. But you can control and channel your anger into productive exercises, as well as utilizing stoicism and mind calming techniques to pull back from the brink of the blowup.

Before, I would be uncontrollable with my stress induced blowouts.

But now, they happen much less frequently because I’ve managed to remember the big picture and how forming a eye of calm inside a storm of reality will truly make me a better man.

Find your calm and claim it.

Guilt and Shame

September 11, 2020September 10, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 2 Comments

“You can twist perception. Reality won’t budge.”

Rush – “Show, Don’t Tell”

Show me a man doing what he’s told, and I’ll show you a woman who used either sex, or guilt and shame to accomplish it.

Men, especially men here in 2020, millions of them, are in relationships or marriages where the woman calls the shots.

And the way the women call the shots? It’s the way they always do, utilizing emotional manipulation and withholding sex to achieve their goals.

Men are still, after all is said and done, responsible for their actions, however, they need to be aware that women (a majority) are doing this not because they are some sick, twisted soul, but because they can navigate emotion with great skill and do all of this unknowingly.

Women, regardless of where they are in your life, do this almost daily. We call them “shit tests” here in the manosphere, but we also must realize that this isn’t something that women can control.

While we want to rail against women who purposefully do this (they are called psychopaths or borderline personality disorders), a majority of women do this simply to make sure their man is up to the task.

This also goes for mothers and their sons, sisters to their brothers, aunts, nieces, etc.

Women test men daily, hundreds of times daily at times, to make sure he is who he says he is, believes what he believes, and holds his boundaries and beliefs unflinchingly.

But what we are seeing is what I was under for 10 years of my marriage.

Women can use guilt and shame to attempt to influence a man’s actions.

He must not let that happen.

The Fog

As I stated, I was in this trance for most of my life.

It wasn’t that these women who were in my life were manipulative.

They weren’t. I’m sure they wanted what was best for me.

But what was best for me in THEIR mind was different from what was best for me in mine.

My mother and sister, as well as my wife, tended to push me in directions that I didn’t know I didn’t want to go because I didn’t know any better.

As a man, I had no direction, so these women were trying to

My mother has been through a lot in her life.

She is a champion and is a fantastic mother.

She’s endured child abuse as a kid and survived cancer.

She helped my father raise three kids that weren’t hers as well as 2 that were.

She was a successful financial accountant for a giant corporation for 30 years.

And she is my rock when I needed support.

And she continues to be there for me.

But it wasn’t always on my terms. For a time, it was on hers.

She over-compensated with my child rearing, because of how bad her childhood was, she swore that her kids would have a better life. And we sure did, my parents were and are still very loving and supportive. But with the over-compensation, I was over-protected and relied on my mother for a ton of decisions that I needed to make myself. And that over-reliance on the women in my life spilled over into my sisters and my wife (now ex-wife). I didn’t want to take responsibility for my life, so I decided to let the women of my life drive while I fucked around.

Important decisions about my life were given to the women of my life. And as soon as I let go of the wheel, I was going to places I thought I wanted to go, and looking back now after taking back control of my life 4 years ago, I should’ve taken control sooner.

But many men never wake up, letting their wives / mothers / daughters / sisters take the wheel and drive their lives. And it’s not as if they aren’t good drivers, but men nowadays are more concerned with the “clock in, clock out” world than they are with actually making their lives all that they can, with women as their willing accomplices. But here’s where the break happens…..

News flash: WOMEN DON’T WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE.

I highly doubt my mother, or my sisters, or my now ex-wife wanted to tell me what to do with my life. I was so eager to avoid conflict, take the easy way, not fight for what I believe in, that their advice became a crutch for me to excuse making tough decisions in lew of the path of least resistance.

In short, I didn’t want to live the tougher parts of life. So I conceded that control to women who I felt had my best interests at heart. And in their own way, they did, except their goals and dreams for me never lined up with what I REALLY wanted, hence when the rubble of my marriage and my life was still smoldering, the conflict with the other women of my life came full circle. My life goals were now, after 10 years of marriage and 30 years of female control, diametrically opposed to that of the women in my life.

When you give someone overreaching control of your life, don’t expect to have an easy time getting it back.

It’s not that they want control, it’s the absence of control that you exert that forces women to take the wheel. Like an abandoned ship with no crew, she has to take control or she’ll be dragged down with the wreck.

I don’t blame my mother for any of this. She had a childhood where she was basically abandoned by her father and her mother neglected her. So she had to steer the ship. She had to control her world, and it took her childhood away from her. She didn’t get to be a kid, she’s been an adult her whole life and it didn’t give her a chance to rest and recharge. She didn’t deserve it, which is why when I took back control of my life, my goal was to tell her to put down the hard stuff and let me take it. And the process of that will take time. She needs to be able to relax, and me taking control of my life, though disappointing at first to her, gave her some relief that she didn’t have to take the wheel anymore.

And it gave me relief because I now have control.

The Only Way to Win is Not To Play

So you’re being guilt and shamed by a woman in your life? The best way to overcome and pass this “shit test” is the only way. Don’t play.

Any attempt to guilt and shame you is an attempt to change your mind using manipulation of a certain set of circumstances.

“If you don’t do this for me, I’ll XXXX.”

If someone is giving ultimatums to you, you walk. Ultimatums are a cry for help because these people have lost control of you. You have free will, which is usually a bad thing for a person who’s trying to control your actions with their guilt and shame.

As I say with many confrontations, you don’t avoid them, you turn them down.

Not getting guilt and shamed by someone so desperately trying to is the answer. Walking away from a losing game is not avoiding confrontation as much as it is not wasting your breath on such a confrontation.

You have better things to do, and trying to confront someone who has no interest in changing their behavior wastes your time.

You do you. Let them worry about themselves.

When you finally take control of your life, there will be MANY people who won’t like the direction. My response has always been “if you love me, you’ll support my decisions.”

And most importantly, you can’t be afraid to cut people out of your life, at least temporarily, but worst case, for a long time. Charting your own course, by your own rules, is the healthy option. Unless you are doing unhealthy things like drugs, crime, etc, you have every right to do what you want with your life. But many people see you doing that and it takes away their power over you, and the benefits of that power doing good things for them.

Don’t be afraid to walk and never look back.

Sometimes burning bridges is a good thing.

So back to me. My family life is improving. The women in my life may disagree with my path, opinions, or convictions, but they understand that as a man, I have every right to chart my path.

But with me wrestling back control, I have seen the women on my life, mother, sisters, and ex-wife, understand and accept my chosen path, and now, even support me no matter what.

That’s why I love this new me so much. I have put my flag in the sand and now people can either rally or leave. And the women in my life haven’t left, they’ve only become better allies in my conquest of my world and myself.

And for that, I can’t thank them enough.

I love you, Mom, Debbie, and Shanny. And yes, Jill, even if we’re divorced, I still love you. You ladies have helped me to understand what I really need and are there to support me.

I promise, you won’t be disappointed by the finished Tim.

He’s got this.