I was talking to my friend Drew on the phone the other day. He’s in the car with his girlfriend. They’re amazing people. He says, “Hey, you look good. I saw your last post, and I read the thing.” And I said, “Can I level with you? I think I’m falling apart.”

He says, “Wait a minute, I need to put this on speaker so Sherry can hear it…”

Naturally, because the underlying truth isn’t in the pictures. It’s not in the highlights. It’s rarely in the caption. It’s always somewhere in the middle.

So I launch into how my shoulder’s still bothering the shit out of me. How I’ve done the rehab, the PT, the four grand worth of PRP injections, and it was finally starting to feel better. Then Kate and I took a fitness class in Boulder, and the next morning I can’t lift my arm above my head again. My shoulder completely flared up.

And I’m blathering on and on over speakerphone, about how I’ve been working on all this. How I’ve been doing what I’m supposed to do and laying off what I’m not supposed to do, at least mostly anyway, and still questioning why I’m not improving faster. I used to be able to do this, this, and this without pain. I keep comparing myself to my younger self, and in my mind, I should still be able to painlessly snatch dumbbells over my head. Now I not only don’t recover quickly, I’m not even sure I’ll fully recover at all.

A normal person would’ve stopped there. Especially when Drew said, “Take a breath.” But that didn’t register, and I’m not normal, so I went into full loss-of-self-awareness mode and started talking about how I picked up pickleball while rehabbing my shoulder.

And by the way, Jon, I’m doing a one-eighty on this. I know we wrote the most-read article of the year making fun of it (Why Pickleball is Stupid, read it here), but I reserve the right to change my mind. It’s not stupid. It’s fucking great.

Now I’m addicted and playing six hours a week, sometimes two- to three-hour sessions at a time, and both of my big toenails have turned blue. I’ve tried different shoes. I have the right size shoes. Wide toe box and all. I still have no idea why I suddenly look like I lost a fight with my own feet.

This didn’t happen at 23. Didn’t happen at 33. Honestly, it didn’t happen at 44 either.

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Then I digressed into how we went to Boulder for graduation, which was glorious by the way, but my allergies acted up and I sneezed six or seven times in a row in the car on the way to dinner. I woke up the next morning and a blood vessel had popped in my eye. My eyeball filled up with blood on the inside. What the fuck is that? I can’t even sneeze now without something happening?

I’m telling them all of this for reasons I still can’t fully explain, because I actually called Drew for business advice. But I have a tendency to drift into emotional tangents, and this was clearly one of those moments.

But somewhere in the middle of my spiral, I landed on something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

I’m in good shape. I do pretty much all the right things for my health, and at 53, that makes me feel pretty damn good most days. I’m a relatively happy person.

But here’s the question that really gets me:

If this is what I feel like while doing almost everything “right” (no alcohol, no junk food, no sugar, strength training three times a week, PT, doctors, sleep) then what the hell are the other guys feeling?

Look around. Look at the general population. The average middle-aged man. He drinks too much. He doesn’t sleep enough. He’s carrying an extra 10 to 50 pounds. He’s sedentary. He’s skipping checkups, ignoring pain, and numbing everything with food and TV and alcohol.

What does he feel like at 7 a.m.? What does he feel like by 3 p.m.? What does he bring home to his wife and kids at the end of the day? What’s left of him after running on empty in a body he’s neglected for 20 years?

I genuinely cannot imagine it. Because if I, while doing most things right, still have a bum shoulder and blue toenails and a bloody eyeball, then the guy doing nothing right isn’t just feeling a little worse. He’s probably not even registering it anymore. He’s normalized feeling like shit. That’s his baseline. That’s just a regular Tuesday.

And that, more than any motivational post or fitness challenge or wellness trend, is the reason to take care of yourself. Not to be perfect. Not to feel 25 again. But because the alternative is waking up every day as a husband, a father, a provider, running on fumes in a body you’ve neglected for decades and calling it a life.

You deserve better than that. Your family deserves better than that.

And the first step is just giving enough of a damn to try.

I understand none of what I’m experiencing are really major problems. None of this is tragic. None of it is keeping me from living my life.

But they are things. Things that never used to happen. Or at least not all at once like this.

I’ve started to accept that now, whenever I do something, something else might flare up. Something will ache. Something will tweak. Something will turn blue or bloody or disrupt my sleep or make my lower back bark at me for no apparent reason.

But I’d still rather have all of that happen because I’m out living my life than because I’m sitting still watching it pass me by.

If I’m going to lose a step, be a little sore, have a tweaked shoulder or a black-and-blue toe, I want it to come from use. I don’t want it to come from lack of use. From carrying an extra 20 or 30 pounds of bodyweight on my knees and feet and hips and joints. That doesn’t sound like fun to me.

So do I have to give myself a break? Yes. Do I have to dial some things back? Yes. Do I have to have a little more grace and latitude for myself, like I tell all of you? I do.

No more comparing yourself to your younger self. That guy is gone. The question now is, “how good can this version of you be?”

So yeah, I’m falling apart a little. But maybe that’s what happens when you stay active, stay curious, and keep saying yes to life.

The shoulder will do what it does. The toes will be whatever color they want to be. I’m not stopping. I’m just learning not to throw myself around like I’m still 27.

And if it took a bloody eyeball and a pickleball addiction to finally teach me that lesson, I’ll take it.

In Health, 

Greg Scheinman

Founder, Midlife Male

Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.

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