Prologue: My First Attempt at Solitude

My first attempt at solitude was not at all what I hoped… but it was invaluable. Those few days helped me understand the battle I was fighting, get my footing, stop the spiral, and start climbing.

In my first book, “From War to Writing,” I will tell my story. A story of healing and recovery, of climbing out of the hole of a downward mental spiral of overwhelm, stress, and despair. After my 24-year military career I found myself drowning, but I learned how to swim.

I was lost. I repeatedly told my family I didn’t have the words to explain or describe the chaos in my head. I couldn’t explain how every day felt like a battlefield and the daily struggle had begun to overwhelm me. It took another year, but I’m finally finding the words.

I didn’t find ‘the perfect book.’ I didn’t join a 12-step program. I worked it out… slowly, and deliberately. Substack helped. :)

But I’m not just telling my story. I’m sharing my journey... the tools, techniques, and curiosities I found in the chaos on the road From War to Writing.

Here on Substack, we can travel and learn together.

In this book, I share what I found that helped me. Everyone’s road is different, but if parts of mine can help you, writing this book is worth it.

This is still a work in progress, but much of the initial phase of this project is already published here on jofty’s Corner. I invite you to look around and see if you find helpful resources or insight.

(Edit: The Introduction¹ can be found here.)

The Table of Contents will drop dropped² on August 19th. That will provide links to each chapter and a better overview of the scope of this book.

Now… on with the prologue … where my healing journey began.

PROLOGUE

FOR MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT SOLITUDE, I had no clue what I was up against.

I had ignored myself for too long. Not in some virtuous or altruistic way, but in the sense that I mustered just enough discipline, crafted just enough routines, and maintained just enough boundaries to keep my professional life together. That thin veneer of “success” led to compounding chaos over time. My family was suffering, and so was I.

For two decades I ‘kept it all together.’ While my focus was on my mission at work and being a husband and father at home, I didn’t realize how much of my total effort those took, and how little of myself I brought home to my family. They were getting my leftovers, and over the years there became less and less of me to go around. By the time I got to the cabin in the woods, I was running on fumes.

A year after I retired, each day felt like a battlefield. The need to reduce the constant, perceived incoming fire was so intense, a large part of me wanted to run screaming from my newly forged life and start over on my own. A few days alone was a lot more realistic than another total life change.

I once told my therapist I wanted to punch walls most days by 0900. If violence was my thing, I would have hurt myself, or my house, depending on which wall was first. Even alone at the cabin, the same feeling of just “too much everything all the time” spun me up before I was fully out of bed.

Everything was an adversary. My dandelions, walking the dog, simple chores like dishes, were battles I’d fight every day, and they would start before I got out of bed.

Solitude was supposed to fix that… at least temporarily.

Nope.

People online talk about scripted morning routines. They all seem to assume step 1 starts outside the bed.

When battles start as your eyes are opening, simply getting to the coffee cup can be a victory.

Every morning, I was under fire before I got to the coffee pot. By the time I was ‘ready for the day’ I was battle-weary and strategizing the path to some nebulous “relax” time at the end of the day. Often, that never came. It was a constant firefight … until it was time for a quick break to go at it again.

Every little thing was an adversary.

The idea that I still couldn’t figure this out after a year was itself a cause of frustration. I’m used to being relatively competent, so even though I couldn’t solve everything yet, I should be able to ‘just deal with it’ by now.

Nope.

Over most of my career, and growing steadily stronger over the final decade or so, I felt a pull to take a short break - just for me. I had dreams of spending a few days alone in the woods. I thought that would allow me to relax.

I felt a need to spend a few days alone, without the constant pulling in so many directions life always seems to entail.

A few days to escape the chaos.

To focus on myself
To simplify
To unwind
To unplug
To relax
To chill
To rest

… with no one else relying on me for anything.

I spent most of my career “defending freedom.” You’d think a few days of personal freedom from most daily responsibilities would be amazing, fantastic… glorious, even.

Nope.

I wasn’t ready to chart my own course. I wasn’t ready to set my own guardrails.

I thought the human body was hard-wired to enjoy solitude at a cabin in the woods.

Nope.

If it is, that wiring can get scrambled on occasion.

This experience led me to understand I needed to focus inward - to figure out and address (fix? repair?) some serious things in myself. I needed to unwind. My desire to help others needed to be reined in. I needed to regain some balance in my life.

Like putting on your oxygen mask before helping others in an airplane, I needed to breathe.

I didn’t know what I was fighting, but I knew I was in an epic battle. I thought a short ‘sabbatical’ was the solution. I thought a few days with less demand on my focus would allow me to sort things out and get back to ‘normal.’

Nope.

It did allow me to recognize the chaos… to see that I was in the midst of a complicated struggle beyond any simple fix or with any visible solution.

Solutions would come later… and eventually become this book.

At that point, I just needed to stop the downward spiral and get my bearings.

A cabin in the woods seemed like a good place to get some fresh air.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

I arrived on a Thursday evening and left Sunday morning. Summer solstice was on the horizon, and I had a comfortable cabin just two miles off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

As I pulled up to the cabin, it was as peaceful as I remembered. It was a beautiful day and was truly picturesque. The grass was green, the sky was blue, a few puffy clouds floated through the sky, and I could hear the active stillness in the air, life buzzing around me, but not a human to blame for any noise.

A few days alone at a cabin in the woods, with spotty cell coverage and barely enough internet to stream Netflix, all my favorite food, some choice books, and some playlists to help set the mood… all of those should have been enough to relax…

…but the chaos raged, and I never really calmed down.

There was a full kitchen, and I brought everything I needed. I had a couple new recipes I was excited to try on myself before subjecting anyone else to them, and it was game-on.

At the grocery store, I was like a kid in a candy shop. I gathered all the important food groups: salty, crunchy, chocolate, licorice, beef, chicken, cheese, donuts, Mt. Dew and Yoohoo.

I clearly wasn’t on a diet. My goal was to pig out. I had been losing weight, to the point the VA prescribed me Ensure, (who knew that was a thing?) because the nagging feeling of hunger felt more comfortable than the constant anxiety.

My snacks and personal meals did help lighten the mood a bit. :)

When it came to cooking, I wasn't in a hurry. I had all my spices. I had all my dishes. There was no-one else to feed… no set mealtimes.

Yet, when I couldn’t find a spice, the chaos struck again. It felt like incoming fire… an immediate skirmish that required my full attention.

Why did something so simple feel like an emergency?

… because the feeling of a panic attack had become my baseline level of daily living.

The occasional sputtering of the aging fridge never fully faded into the background. Every once in a while, it would grind, wheeze, and clank for a moment and pull my focus fully from whatever else I was trying to do.

When a distraction made something that should take 2 minutes take 4, that imperfection, that small deviation, even alone at a cabin in the woods, compounded to inflame the nagging sense of urgency that never went away.

I brought books to read. I figured I would enlighten, educate, or entertain myself with something befitting a large recliner by the fire. The peace and quiet was nearly perfect.

… but I never read a single page.

Even alone in the woods, I was constantly on edge. I couldn’t even relax enough to read.

It wasn’t the unfamiliar sound of vibrant life, large and small, trudging and buzzing through the nearby brush, after dark, when I was clearly intruding on their space. Once this city boy understood his place in that environment, things were fine there. Besides… inside the cabin, I felt physically safe. Inside my head was a different story.

It was the constant sound of my brain sorting through something … a whole lot of somethings … like a 1950s switchboard with all the operators furiously slamming plugs from one port to another, 24/7, with bottomless espresso.

www.kickassfacts.com/telephone-switchboards-history

It was almost like I could feel the connections in my brain suddenly palpably reconfiguring to see the world in a completely new way.

Over my career, I ‘kept it together’ by putting all my concerns in little boxes in my mind. I would close and store everything unnecessary as appropriate and just operate with the ones I needed. The problem was, I had lost my ability to sort the boxes… to close them and put them away when they weren’t needed. I thought a few days in the woods would let me sort them out and get back on track. What happened was they all dumped out on the floor, and I spent three days trying to put them back in some semblance of order.

I was still me. It was still the same world. There were just a million connections in my head that needed to be rewired to adapt to my new reality. Defenses I’d carefully crafted over a quarter of a century were no longer helpful. They needed to be re-made.

---

To take a break from the chaos, I figured I’d go on a short road trip. I’ve always enjoyed driving, perhaps because it keeps me focused, and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world was practically at my doorstep.

Sunrise seemed like a solid goal, so I set out in the dark. On the road, I was chasing shadows. Actively scanning for eyeballs ahead kept me focused. When I stopped at an overlook for sunrise in solitude, shadows sprang up across the horizon… but their beauty escaped me, because the ones in my mind came alive.

One other thing I expected on this little retreat: I looked forward to sleep.

No alarms, no cats to feed… but there was never a break.

My brain was always at full throttle. A night’s sleep was only a brief stutter before the deafening chaos resumed. Always more to do. No time to slow down.

I couldn’t even get 15 minutes into a movie without the ‘cares of the world’ overtaking me… while alone at a cabin in the woods.

Though rest escaped me, I did figure something out: I was spiraling fast, it needed to stop, and I was the only one who could make that happen.

Though I craved empathy and understanding from those around me, the bulk of the effort was going to be on me.

At the end of the day, my first attempt at solitude was not at all what I hoped… but it was invaluable.

Those few days helped me understand the battle I was fighting and get my footing to stop the spiral and start climbing back up.

FROM WAR TO WRITING

A year later, as I pen this now, most days are okay.

A year later, I have hope.

I’m on a solid path to recovery.

As I started writing, things slowly started coming together.

When things start to derail, I’ve learned to recognize the signs quickly and adjust accordingly. The bumpy road continues, but I’ve learned how to drive. I still hit some potholes, but I’m fairly confident I can avoid driving off a cliff. :)

Now I feel compelled to share what I’ve learned and continue to learn.

If any of this makes sense, or feels like a struggle you understand, you may find useful tips and perspective in this book, or around my Substack.

Though I don’t have all the answers, I can tell you what worked for me.

Perhaps someone you know has withdrawn and is struggling to reconnect. This book may help you help them… help make it make sense.

My story is still being written.
So is yours.
So is theirs.

Let’s get through this together.

I invite you to join me on this continuing journey, as I travel the road From War to Writing.

Thank you for stopping by. I look forward to seeing you next Saturday and sharing the next ‘chapter’ of the book.

I hope you have a pleasant week.

Take care,

- jofty 8^)

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