By Steve Moran
The alarm went off at 6 am.
I had a golf tournament to get to. A charity scramble. The same foursome that has played together the last two years. Good guys. Nobody’s going to mistake us for professionals.
The last two years, we finished dead last. Both times. We won the prize for the team that had the most fun, which is a real prize, and we were genuinely proud of it, in a weird kind of way.
It was raining when we got to the course.
We didn’t care.
We hit good shots, bad ones, and some in between. We told stories. We laughed. By the end, we had climbed out of last place, which felt like winning the Masters.
By 4:15, we were beat. Done. I grabbed my bags, headed to the airport, and got on a plane to Phoenix, headed to LTC 100. What I most needed was a hotel room, a good night’s sleep, and nothing else.
Then my phone buzzed.
A friend who lives in Phoenix — someone I don’t know all that well but like a lot — said he couldn’t do lunch the next day but could drive over to my hotel … at 11 pm.
Every reasonable part of my brain said no. I said yes anyway.
We talked for an hour and a half. Stories, laughter, the kind of conversation that goes in six directions and never quite lands anywhere, but you don’t want it to stop.
At midnight, I was back in my room. Wide awake. Took another hour to fall asleep.
And I was up at 6 am the next morning.
Here’s the thing. I should have been destroyed. I had burned every calorie I had. I ran on too little sleep. And I woke up the next morning energized and ready to go.
Joy doesn’t cost energy.
It produces it.
Most of us have that exactly backwards.
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