Five years ago, I found myself in utter defeat driving from the hope of Lake Mary, Florida back into the desolation of Des Moines, Iowa. It was a long drive. 1,360 miles, and while there were bathroom breaks, food and drink, and weak attempts of sleep, mainly all I did was think. This was a huge disappointment, but nothing I wasn't used to. The magnitude of what had happened to me wasn't what ate away at me. The familiarity of it all, was.
The first dream I ever had in life was wanting to be a singer. Nothing too serious, within itself, but a catalyst for a deep desire to achieve something of magnitude. To desire something, truly want something and to put my heart and soul into doing all I could to achieve it. My entire existence, what I do, why I do it, what I don't do and why I don't do it has centered around this passion. It's who I am and who I've been for 33 years, so it seems simple and natural to me. Yet to others, even those I've tried desperately to explain myself to, its foreign and complicated.
In high school this desire to succeed was fixated upon wrestling. The goal was to become a somebody on the mat. Qualify for the state tournament, place in the top 8 of my weight class and show the world I was one of the best. The passion was there, as was the desire. Winning the Hardest Worker my freshman, junior & senior years speaks for itself. But I never placed at State. I didn't even go. Instead, I ended my career with a 65-70 record, and less medals in four years many win in one.
My next dream was acting and screenplay writing. Went off to college with this big elaborate plan that I had envisioned since the 7th grade. While so many kids I knew graduated high school without a care or a clue of what they wanted out of life, I had known since I was 12. I was going to go to college, get an undergraduate degree in theatre, and then get a graduate degree in screenplay writing. Pictured myself, a 24- or 25-year-old kid, heading out west, looking for even the slightest chance of making it in Hollywood. My college experience couldn't have went worse than what it did. Just shy of 3 years at Northwestern College tore the spirit I had to a degree to where I came out of it with a disdain and animosity for something I had once loved. I finished college eventually, getting a degree in history education.
I've tried a handful of times getting into teaching, but there's a lot about it I don't care for. Above anything else, I hate what it reminds me of. I hate what it lets me know about my life. I wanted so badly to one day get in my car, drive out to Los Angeles, set up shop and make a go at it. So many people want to tell me I would've failed, but in saying that they completely miss the point. I've failed at many things. This time I never even got to try. Instead, I was stuck back in Iowa, living paycheck to paycheck, often wondering how in the Hell I was surviving month to month. I spent 126 months paying off a $48,000 student loan. They asked for $500 a month & had I had it to give them every month, it only would've been 96 months. But I didn't have the full $500 every month. Sometimes I only had $400 or $350. Sometimes I didn't have anything at all. Hence the extra 30 months' worth of paying.
I was 24 when I graduated college. I took a 6 month deferment, qualified for another 6 month deferment, & then made my final payment to the student loan debt collectors just shy of my 35th birthday.
I was bitter about this for a long time. Very angry about it. I used to publicly voice my anger a lot. I had studied hard in high school. I didn't do drugs. I didn't party, go out and get wasted all the time. I had simply made the mistake of going to the wrong college. This is why I wasn't allowed to chase a dream? To go after something, I really wanted in life?
I came to peace with that for one reason and one reason only. The reason I was so angry about that for such a long time, is because I was sitting behind prison walls watching my dreams sail past me, and there wasn't a fucking thing I could do about it. 25, 26, 27, 28....It killed me inside. Why I don't see any reason in bitching about it or being angry about it anymore? Cause the ship has sailed. You pound upon the chest, and you take out the defibrillator when there's even the slightest hint of starting up the beat again. We're way beyond that now. The casket was lowered a long time ago. All that remains is a cold lump of dirt and a poorly chiseled tombstone.
I suppose that's why the pro wrestling dream coming to an end wasn't as hard on me. At least here I got to try it. I also went in perhaps a bit more realistic. I'm 5'8 and at the time I was about 200 lbs. In pro wrestling, there is big enough and there is tall enough. I didn't fit either category. Maybe I didn't as a writer either, but I wasn't smart enough to realize that. I'm still not smart enough to realize that. I still think ideas I have in my head are just as good, and some of them even better than some of the television and movies that are out there today. Another reason I came to peace a lot easier and a lot faster with pro wrestling not working out.
I don't necessarily categorize pro wrestling as a failure in my life, but I don't categorize it as a success either. I'm glad I did it and have a lot of fond memories, but let's be real here for a second. I started when I was 21 and I was pretty much done by the time I was 25. I tried to rekindle it and get something going for a while, but by the time I was 27, I knew this chapter of my life was over.
Oddly enough, despite all these attempts and not getting anywhere, I kept on trucking. I figured if these passions, these loves weren't my calling in life, something had to be.
I had always wanted to be a writer. Or maybe I should say I always wanted to be a storyteller. Screenplays was always my first desire, but I loved the idea of writing novels too. I was 18 when I attempted to write my first novel. A memoir of sorts I entitled NOTHING BUT HEART. Then a few years later, a better attempt entitled WRESTLING WITH REASONS. It would be followed by WHAT REALLY HAPPENEND TO ARIC? THE WEIRD STORIES OF SMITH JONES, THE 0 AND ALL HARRIS BULLDOGS, & THE GIFTED GREG FRANKLIN
I thought I was a good writer, but I was never arrogant about it. When I would get rejected and ignored by agents, editors and publishers, I never thought they were the problem. I wasn't one of these writers that thought I was brilliant, and they just couldn't see my brilliance. I always thought that there was something I was missing. I wasn't good enough yet, I needed to get better.
That's a lot of how and why Jason Janes became such a huge part of my life for 10 years. He had a dream of being a director, and anyone who has ever dreamed of being a director will tell you the same thing. What does a good director always need? A good script! We collaborated for a decade on different ideas. I entered a contest for LIFETIME MOVIE NETWORK writing a screenplay for a made for television movie I entitled THE PROFILE. Jason read it and soon after he came to me with a guy he knew that had pitched an idea to an executive of Amazon for a comedy series called TOKEN. They guy couldn't write, so that's where I came in. I read vague treatment and wrote a half hour piolet. We got a call back on it, took notes and made revisions. We never heard back again after that.
Nevertheless with so much disappointment and shortcomings in my life, this was the closest to succeeding I had ever been. It excited me, and I thought if Jason and I had come this close before, maybe we could do it again.
We began working on different projects. He was a huge fan of The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic and thought maybe as a team we could come up with something and become Youtube sensations. I thought we should work on developing our own television series, and work on trying to pitch it. Jason had an idea for it called WE HAVE EVERYTHING. Nine episodes were written in total, two written by Jason & seven written by me.
We had a lot of plans and a lot of dreams, and that's why I took the risk, sold my home, packed my bags and headed down to Florida. Wrestling, college, acting, pro wrestling, my writing career this far, I was 0 for 5 thus far in the goal department, but surely this would work out. Two guys with a dream. Stephen Stonebraker and Jason Janes were going to be the next Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Instead 3 days after arriving in Florida, I was heading back to Iowa, with my tail between my legs. I had been betrayed by a guy I considered one of my best friends in life, robbed of most of my money and robbed of yet another dream.
I'd had the life sucked out of me on so many occasions and always seemed to bounce back, but this time I didn't know if I ever would again or not. In a weird way, this may have been a good thing.
I stopped caring about succeeding and success. It didn't matter to me anymore. My perspectives and my philosophies began to change. I still wanted to say I did at least something of significance, even if relatively small, so I trained really hard to achieve a bench press of 405 lbs. After that though, my life became all about peace. Writing for the love of writing, nothing more, nothing less. No desire to make it.
I guess I had one last hurrah in me. While I was at peace 0 for 6, life wanted me to give it a 7th try. Why? I'm still at odds trying to figure it out.
About 3 months after the nightmare that Jason Janes put me through, Trent Reedy came into my life. A successful Y.A. novelist, who approached me about teaming up together to write a YA novel involving pro wrestling. I learned so much about commercial writing and about writing in general from Trent. So many tips, skills, techniques and strategies from him, that I will forever be grateful for. We worked for over year writing a novel. Then we were told that it wasn't going to work for various reasons. So what did we do? We started over from scratch writing a new novel. Spent another year working on it. Writing, editing, revising, revising, revising, revising, and in case I forgot to mention it, revising. Got the novel as good as we knew how to get it and sent it out into the world of publishers looking for an editor.
Maybe I had too much trust in the system. Too much faith. I mean after all with all of the prior attempts I've had at making it in this world, what was I to expect? Yet, I couldn't help it. This was supposed to be different. This was supposed to work out.
Two years prior, I had finally given life what it had been asking me for since I was a kid. I spent 20 years trying to succeed. Sacrificing, working hard, putting my everything into different things. I was never willing to lay my life on the line for it, nor was I willing to harm someone else in the process, but other than that, I was not only willing, I did.
I was so convinced this was going to work out. I mean why else would life do this to me? Why else would life, when I had already conceded, do this to me? I'm not ever going to succeed? I'm not ever going to be somebody? Ok, I am at peace with that.
Yet I get brought back into the world of hope, passion and desire.
We had a publisher get back to us, giving us a real glimmer of hope that this was going to work out. That they were interested. Here we go, after all this time, all of these failures, all of this bullshit and turmoil you've gone through for such a long time. Finally, success. Do a few more things for us, and we'll get back to you. We did those few more things. Then we waited and we waited, and we waited. When we finally did hear back...."oh sorry, I forgot about you. Not interested."
I'm a reader and I'm a writer. I've written nearly every day of my life since I was 7 years old. Constantly writing. I've read my books. When Trent told me ways to improve my writing, I was reading up to four books a month. I was working on another novel of mine, some days even getting as much as 10,000 words. That second email killed something inside of me.
It's been 11 months since we received that email and I was able to force myself to read one book over a three-month period. I so badly want to get back into reading again. Have the love and passion for it, but I just can't. I can't tell you how many times I've went to start reading a book, even something I know I'm very interested in, and after 15-25 pages, I want nothing to with it. I go to write something creative. Work on a novel. Even write a short story. I can't.
I know eventually I'll snap out of it again. I'll get back into writing and reading. I'll rediscover the love and passion. But right now I have too much anger built up. Too much confusion. I had already come to be peace with the idea of this never coming to fruition for me. The idea that I wrote for fun and simply for the enjoyment of it, I had come to peace with. Author and Stephen Stonebraker never being one in the same was something I had learned to live with. Why when I already was cool with this, did life need to beat it into me for a few more years?
I think a part of me wants to care and wants to keep trying, but I don't.
Now, as I said before it is all about peace to me. Going after peace and doing all I can to achieve peace. What is peace? Peace is doing the things I enjoy in life, being around those I enjoy. I want to get out of debt. I want to spend more time with my girlfriend, my dog and my cats. I want to put more time into my college wrestling website. Working on my articles and my youtube vidoes for that. I want to attend more college wrestling duals and tournaments. I want to attend more college baseball games. Hell, I even want to go to more college basketball events, theatre, all sorts of stuff. Visit friends more often. Go on mini getaways and small vacations. This is what I desire now. As time goes on, I know this will include having more time to read and to write.
And what's keeping me up till 1:30 a.m. right now is that fact that even within my morphism into a simpler man, I have someone trying to rob me of that. Someone trying to keep me from these freedoms and pleasures in life. Someone trying to make it so not only do I not get success in my life; I also don't get peace. It's hard for me not to be very angry about this. It's like damn, I'm not asking for much here. I'm really not. I've given so much of myself. I'm a good person. I've done good things. I'm honest. I'm fair. I'm a good friend. It's pretty simple. I want peace. I just want peace. I deserve peace. I have earned peace.
