Gamify Life

For me to get high levels of exercise, I like to play games. Racket sports are great, but anything with a ball, disc, club or simply a taxing physical objective that I can win gets my juices flowing. When I got locked up in my mid twenties I was a drug addict and an alcoholic that mainly exercised by lifting drinks to my lips, fucking (the whiskey dick could make for some decent cardiovascular work) and dancing my ass of on ecstasy. I played a good amount of golf as well, but usually managed to drink a beer a hole which probably erased the benefit of an outdoor activity. Being locked in a place where the days move very slow I decided to pay better attention to my body and to exercise each day. In prison everyone has a job during the day and mine was to teach GED classes. I taught one in the morning and one in the afternoon for an hour each and spent the rest of my time writing and reading which lit my mind up again after running on dopamine for ten years. After work I would head out to the yard, slip on some headphones, and listen to the entire NPR newscast as there were not a lot of radio stations out in the boonies of Texas and I enjoyed hearing about the world from the calm voices of the NPR news people. I would walk for hours. This was the beginning to me building back a healthy temple, but I didn’t truly start to develop my strength and agility again until I started to sign up for the sports leagues.

I signed up for every sport the yard could offer – handball tournaments, basketball leagues (not many white guys braved the courts but I went hard, Laimbeer style), flag football, and the most prized league on the compound, softball. My father started throwing a ball at me as soon as he was able and having two older, athletic brothers created a competitive drive in me that has yet to be extinguished. Games make exercise fun! As long as a brawl doesn’t break out.

Handball is a poor man’s racquetball without the racquet. A little blue ball is slapped against a wall with the open palm of the hand and then is allowed only one bounce after it hits the wall before the opposing player needs to get it back to said wall. It takes a little while to get the hands in shape for this game, but once you can hit the ball with precision and violence, you can get pretty good. I was acceptable at handball – someone might pick me for their team in a doubles tournament and I could talk shit with the best of them, which is part of all prison games, extreme derogatory banter that creates another dynamic to the game – who can get into another man’s head. The winner of the head-game has a good chance of winning the hole competition, but most of us turned off the other’s banter and just enjoyed the sport. Handball was a game that could be played at any time with just two people, so it was a staple for me as it you asked enough folks, someone would definitely be bored enough to join you – did I mention prison was boring.

I played basketball with some elite athletes and was lucky enough to win a couple yard championships in our biannual league due to my alignment with a certain six eight gentleman that could shoot from anywhere and dunk flat footed from under the hoop. Flag football was a little intense being that I was a college quarterback and felt a lot of pressure to win the championship which I did not – there was a much older baller than me that could throw a football on a dime and moved with elusive quickness that always gave him plenty of time to throw. Softball was the most inclusive sport and the most competitive so it seemed that there was always a league running at least a night or two a week and I jumped on a team every time. I played with a black team, a Hispanic team and a white team during different seasons as I didn’t believe in the racial segregation and, lucky for me, I was in a camp where any violence sent you behind a fence at a much more dangerous institution across the street. Many people in prison did take the gamification to another level as well by gambling on everything – our currency was U.S. Stamps and the men would bet large stacks of prison currency on all the games we played and watched on TV – the guards looked the other way on gambling I guess.

The never-ending game that I was playing made the time pass much faster and my body reacted with muscle and agility. I have also gamified my professional life when I transitioned into the real world, as sales is just a game, or an always moving series of games, many of which you lose, but if you keep playing, you win enough to raise the standard of living for yourself and those around you. I play to win, but I don’t play for blood. I don’t want my opponent laying on the ground with nothing left to give because then there is no one to play. I do not talk shit about my opponent, especially to a customer, as that is low class and I have at least medium class. Healthy competition creates sharpness and makes the mind work to overcome as well as endure. I lose seventy percent of the time in my professional life, but as long as I get up each morning and make more swings than I did the previous day, I am winning. It is also what pitch you pick to hit that is important as the game has become more of a 3D chess game as I have added complexity to my life. The management of time becomes the key component to excelling.

I have hit the half century mark now and each day I wake up and start with physical activity – I either play several games of pickleball or do a vigorous weight workout in my garage. I consume large quantities of water before either endeavor and then I try to sit down and get some words pounded out. When I walk out the door to get things done in the world, my mind and body are attuned to the game I choose to play to provide for myself and my loved ones. I might not love every minute of my work, but when a long fought win comes in, the feeling is still refreshing.