Your boy walked into a Big Ten university with $17 in his pocket.

I’d spent all of my senior year playing baseball.

Ditched the job I had to enjoy my last year of high school.

Kids are stupid…and I was one of them.

So, I rock up to Iowa City (I’m moving back in my 30s, but that’s a story for another day) and the wallet was light, the expenses high, and mom + pop made it very clear I was on my own.

“You’re a man now…”

“How come these zits don’t make me feel that way?”

So, I got this job, yeah?

A call center. The only college kid.

The rest? A bunch of retiree hopefuls who were hoping this tiny room with phones above a metal cutting shop was their ticket to the promised land.

Looking for their version of a senior year playing baseball.

But the cash wasn’t enough.

$12/hr wasn’t going to cut it if I wanted to have any college experience at all.

But there was this little loophole all my friends were talking about.

Donating plasma.

You could go twice a week.

Daytime TV. Rows of hospital beds. Whirring machines.

A cheap Apollo 13 set.

But it was my promised land.

75 bucks on the first donation.

Come back a couple days later and get another $175.

A cool $250 for letting them poke me while I scrolled my Blackberry.

I’d have done a lot more for a lot less.

So, while my buddies were using plasma as new-girlfriend money or first-round’s-on-me money.

I was dependent on my own blood to pay the rent.

And I had a problem.

Plasma requires a bit of protein for them to clear you to donate.

And I was always on the red line.

Sitting in a lecture hall, trying to will protein into my body while I learned about the Crusades.

Sometimes, I got turned away.

Big. Fucking. Problem.

So, after I got a $100 bonus at work, I bought a case of protein shakes.

But the guy living off of hot dogs and ramen noodles had no idea how to buy a tasty shake.

I didn’t buy the nice chocolate or vanilla flavors with 15g of protein in them.

I wasn’t looking at flavors at all.

I needed to pump those numbers up. So, the case I bought was this chalky orange goo with 40g’s a pop.

Like how they pour drinks in Wisconsin. 98% alcohol, splash of mixer.

Except in this case, it was 98% powder, splash of liquid.

So, a few hours before having to donate, I’d do what a normal college kid would do who’s had to rely on his blood to keep a roof over his head.

I grabbed a shot glass. Fired up FIFA. And would take a shot of chalk every few minutes.

And as the months tipped into years, this was my new normal.

My arm formed the scar tissue that looked like I had more than a video game addiction...🫣

We’ve all got these kind of scars.

I call it the curse of making it work.

Capable people suffer from it the most.

And suffering is the operative word.

A client of mine spent the first 36 years of her life in the church.

Not like, “I go every Sunday” kinda thing. More like every room, rule, desire, and future had already been spoken for.

While that’s for some people, she realized it wasn’t for her anymore.

She wanted a new identity, she started a couple of businesses, helping a lot of people.

What a come up, right?

‘cept, she had the curse.

My version involved plasma, rent, and orange chalk.

Hers looked more respectable from the outside.

“If I have something without suffering, I don’t think I deserve it,” she told me over a couple of Cortados.

And so, even though she’s making more, doing cool stuff, and thinking for herself…

She seeks out absurd operational conditions because “it’s supposed to hurt.”

Desperately wanting to take a breather, locked into the donating center with machines whirring all around her.

So far, suffering for her has felt like proof.

And this is rooted in the quality of her question.

She defaults to asking, “Can I make this work?”

Of course she can. If she’s willing to suffer and put herself last, she’ll find a way.

But we’re working on it.

Because life improves when you answer better questions.

So, we’re asking a higher quality question:

“Do I want this in my life?”

The answers aren’t convenient. The results tend to suck in the short-term. The old identity is saying, “Just stick the needle in!”

But she’s improving.

So, let’s see if we can ask a higher quality question for you:

What am I proving by continuing to make this work…even though it might feel absurd?

I’m grateful for the scrappy kid who donated fluids to live.

He was resourceful as hell. Stupid. But resourceful.

But I already know I can make ridiculous shit work.

That’s not the highest standard anymore.

And my guess is, it’s not yours either.

-C

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