To Hell With the Old Gutterball Loop
Start your new year with an early morning routine that embraces daydreaming, planning, and joyful expectation
Fear is my gutterball.
It probably has been from a very early age.
And I sure as hell have been throwing my share of frames’ worth lately.
I’m coming out of a fog of holiday dread and confusion, worried about the state of the world as well as that of my own friends and family. Aging brings health worries added to economic worries, which become a pile-on of anxiety that would rattle the steadiest of us.
It hurts to admit this, but the frustration has reached the point where I needed to slow down, breathe, focus on the pins in front of me, and center that ball straight down the alley. Even after multiple gutterballs.
It’s a weekend morning, but even so I got up early — just like my late father, Paul, used to do, even on mornings when he didn’t have to go to work.
I can still hear him happily humming to himself while making coffee in the kitchen, before disappearing into his inner sanctum — the den — to switch on the radio, listen to news and music, and generally plan his day. I was then in my early teens and, as teenagers tend to do, I was a night owl…
