Issue link: http://e-delivery.uberflip.com/i/1278983
There's a scene in Scorsese's Goodfellas where Ray Liotta is trying to keep it together as Henry Hill, a gangster who is attempting to look legitimate as his life unravels. In this scene it's early morning. He moves through his house quickly and heads to his car. Outside, he looks up and an elephant is falling out of the sky with a man trailing behind him. It's unclear if this is real or a hallucination. Henry Hill is an absolute disaster of bad chemicals and stress. That was essentially me, for twenty-some years, but not gangster part. At 28 I had started a graphic design company with my best friend from university. We were a creative pair. I was a good talker and an excellent yes-man, and he was creative too and technically exceptional. Together we had a lot of skills. We had some wins and the business grew. And so did I. By age 45, I barely recognized myself, inside or out. We had a large staff. There were so many clients. So many projects. So many restaurant meals. Each day I'd wake and park myself in front of two 21" computer screens, seven days a week. I worked on headlines, taglines, branding, layouts, websites, and advertising campaigns. It sounds glamorous. It wasn't. Oh, I'd also gotten married. That was the good part. I had two small kids and a wife and I was...just exhausted. I was Henry Hill. A empty facade. A random elephant fell out of the sky daily, sometimes hourly, and my job was to catch it and sell it so the circus could keep running. I was a mess of seared nerves and synapses. My gut hurt. I developed tinnitus. At some point I hit 260 lbs. My heart felt like a bacon-wrapped baseball steak. I kept waiting for it to explode. It didn't. It just got bigger and emptier. I felt something was going to happen, and something did happen. I started running with a camera. That was the trick that fixed me. Between 2013 and 2020, I ran over 14,000 kilometers with a camera in a backpack. I lost 60 lbs. It was a good outlet for me. I still have my wife and kids and I'm a slightly better specimen, physically and mentally. What follows is some of what I captured that helped put me back in balance. 1 Good Eye, 2 Good Legs...