ROX-TV presents a new series called “Reflections” which focuses on the road less travelled by.

Welcome back to the ROX-TV website. We always appreciate the returning readers and welcome anyone who has stumbled through the door. As many of you know, ROX-TV doesn’t mind going where most people won’t. Whether that is a good thing or not, will be determined at some point far into the future. The journey can not always be judged while travelling on the road, it is only when we come to the end that we can turn around and really reflect on who we are and what that means. (Also, I’ve included music that matches my moods as I wrote this to help illustrate certain points)

When I was younger, perhaps in my late teens…I sometimes thought that “life” was a destination. A place on the map that you pointed to and then went. I guess I thought that when the ride was over and the place located, that was basically it. You were somewhere, had a bunch of material shit, what ever society deemed “normal” and lived a life within those bounds.

But as my face has grown old, life has taught me a thing or two about my expectations and dreams. Perhaps one of the biggest realizations I’ve stumbled across in my ever moving journey into “life” is that somethings are not as important as I thought, while others are gold hiding in plain sight. For awhile I wasn’t sure what that really meant…when the system that I was flying with turned out to be junk.

I think it can fuck with the mind, when the value systems you have or had, start to fail. I guess denial is a great coping mechanism when faced with the idea that a person may have been wrong about a particular thing. For some reason, most people would rather suffer the poor idea than admit they were wrong. It gets even worse when there is a collective point of view, which turns out to be flawed. Most people just aren’t brave enough to do what’s right, when given the choice to go against the grain. Acceptance is powerful, otherwise most people wouldn’t worry about it so much.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being the popular guy with all the right moves and speech. But by the time I was in 3rd grade or so, I could tell that it probably wasn’t going to be the case. Even in those early years, when you don’t have all of life figured out, I had a feeling that being “number 1” was a long shot. I just didn’t draw like others did in the social net. Sure, I had a few friends I guess, but by middle school, it was more of a matter of working with what I had and I started to accept that fate. Destined to be the sports star on the school team? No. Johnny Sunshine with all the coolest clothes and accessories? No. Talented Mr. Ripley, with super sweet skills that surpassed all others? No.

I was learning about the “system” of life, and the fucking haves and have nots. I tried to fit into the regular mold as best I could and I will admit, at times….did ok, but for the most part it just wasn’t enough. I struggled academically for reasons unknown, although I got by, it was usually close at the end of a marking period. My GPA never hovered higher than a 2.0 for the most part and had dipped to the 1.3 zone a few times. I played basketball for the school but rode enough pine to build a 1980’s cabin in the woods. Soccer was alright, but grades caused me to be ineligible at times. I pounded a drum in the marching band, although I couldn’t read music and had to learn all the songs by memory….which was a nightmare for its own set of reasons…both technical and social (another time).

I lacked a proper identity because I clashed with my parents on topics of what I thought I needed to be “cool” and it wasn’t the same vision they had. So much energy was wasted on fighting to be someone they wouldn’t let me be, that it could have fueled a wagon train across the country twice. Sure I’m being dramatic, because that’s what you do when you remember time. But the core principles were there and it made life difficult at times. I wanted to be who I wanted to be and having that door slammed and bolted, I think only pushed me to fight further for the identity I was trying to build for myself.

Socially, I just didn’t fit in with the jocks and sporty kind of guys. Most of the time spent with the “teams” for the school were ok although sometimes they could be a real hassle. In the hallways, I was like a guy that was fighting for spot 63 out of a 100. Nowhere near the bottom, but also nowhere near the top either. I was a floater, and despite my efforts, could neither fail completely or win outright. I was lost somewhere in the shuffle.

I had “friends” in different groups, but these groups were not places that I would call “my own”. I was almost like a tourist in other peoples worlds…forever drifting by on the fringes, but certainly not welcome or privy to full time membership anywhere. Drifting is what I did, for better or for worse. I was misfit by definition and operating outside the norms of life. I did just enough to survive in the world I found myself, but in real terms, I was a ghost. Sure, I had an organic body, but I was partially invisible. You know the kind of shit I’m talking about….welcome at lots of places, but if I walked away, would anyone really notice or call out? Probably not, at least that’s how I remember.

You can really judge where your at in life but simply walking away and seeing what happens next. Do people notice the absence? Are there efforts to see where I went? I reflect on that and it seems like a very lonely situation. Maybe as a younger teen, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate that, but I knew the feeling or at least I think I did. That feeling of “well, if I didn’t put in the effort on my end, would there be anything there?”.

In the first couple of years of high school I was battling with these types of feeling or at least that’s how I remember it. My family moved before I started the 11th grade, and it was difficult. Not immediately, but looking back now, it was a decisive factor in shaping the future and washing away the past. To leave after tenth grade did two things really….first off I left at the critical time from my old school where not finishing out the milestones of graduating together really separated us. I didn’t go to Prom there, I didn’t go to the parties (for the most part), I stayed in contact with my gang of friends (and took that show on the road lol) but for the most part, all the time and experience with that place were lost.

It didn’t take long either. When 11th grade started, during the first few months I missed my old city and the people that I knew there but a funny thing happened and it let me know where I really stood with most people. I used to skip school a lot, before I had established a new crew in my new town. I longed to return to my old school and even fantasized about what it would be like to “go back” after the strange journey of moving away. Sadly, I didn’t even get to gloat about it because my parents waited until the summer to move, so cashing in on the youth “moving” bit was missed as well. I was simply just gone one day and there was a whole summer break for people to forget about it, not that most people cared. Hell, some people might have celebrated.

So there I was one day in class and I said fuck it, I’m going home….back to where I “came from”. I didn’t have a car at that time, but my mom was a teacher at an Elementary school nearby, so I walked to the car, got it running, and left out towards my old life. I remember stopping at a party store and buying lunch to take with me. I couldn’t run the risk of going through the school lunch lines, because staff might recognize that I was not a student there anymore (they probably wouldn’t have noticed but who knows).

I parked in the student lot and had little trouble getting into the building….it was 1996 after all, long before Columbine rocked the country and changed how schools operated. Most doors were unlocked and I simply slipped in during lunch. I remember how strange my former home felt and since my crew had graduated the year before, been expelled, or dropped out, I didn’t really have anyone in particular to search out and engage with. I had visions of the student body, people I had rolled with for the last decade, hoisting me on their shoulders and celebrating my return. I would matter and the celebrations would prove it or so I dreamed anyway.

The school ran three lunches at the time, and I got there just as “A” lunch was kicking off. I thought I would stun everyone by casually sitting at the tables and pretend like it was business as usual. I got a kick out of this vision and grabbed a seat, where I knew I would be noticed. Sadly though, something quite the opposite had happened.

Students filed in with their food and as I sat, watching these people, who I had spent a lot of time with (good and bad) nothing happened. No one seemed to notice me, or the fact that when school started for another year, I had been missing from their ranks. It was a lightning bolt…..dressed up as a flood. I was disappointed and perplexed. Perhaps life really was that cheap and nothing mattered.

It could have been a case of maybe most people didn’t dig me and so my vanishing act was a win for them. I don’t blame them I guess. I was known for vandalism and graffiti. I made poor choices. Flirted with alcoholism and minor drug use, hung with the local small town gang (hey it was the 1990’s and gang shit was fire back then). Listened to ICP, Natas, Esham, Kid Rock, and all things not “popular”. I celebrated rap culture and the urban experience, also not very popular (sometimes dangerous even from the pushback) at the time. I did my best to fit in, but when that failed, I had nose dived into counter culture. Why I thought anyone would be happy to see me is almost laughable now that I think about it. I was the underground for my place and time. Fuck it.

I sat through three lunches and only one person in the entire school noticed. A guy named Dan Murphy, who I played basketball with for a couple of years on school teams, turned halfway through his lunch tray, seen me and said “holy shit, Shep” and then turned back to his daily life. At that point I knew my old life was mostly dead and that I was out of bounds. After that, as I drove back to my new town and home, I decided to burn down the past and move on. Why care? No one back there seemed to for the most part. I still belonged to a local crew and I kept that going, but from then on I learned a valuable lesson.

I learned that except for a few down ass homeboys, I was on my own and with that…gave my self permission to build a new life at my new school. It took some time, but within four months I started recruiting for my neighborhood gang and by the end of that first winter, had put together a new chapter of homies…some fifteen members deep. This would eventually grow and we would wreak havoc all over town in the name of the C.O.C. but that is another story for another time.

I was free to let go of the past and create a new reality, which I happily did. I learned to operate within life on my own terms, even if it was still a juvenile understanding. I stopped trying to buy into society at large and embraced my life on the fringes of acceptability at school and out on the road. Fuck it.

Time marched on, my drinking and drug use (nitrous oxide, mushrooms, a tiny bit of LSD, some Marijuana) increased and by the end of high school I had become a problem drinker (aka alcoholic in short installments). I had managed to get arrested for a couple of felonies for the gang shit and although I graduated, ever so slightly….life was out of control. Because of the arrest and court involvement, oddly enough I was ordered by the judge to graduate, maintain a passing GPA, and not skip school. On sentencing day, I stood before the judge in court and with my college enrollment looming, the court reduced the charges from felonies to misdemeanors, and accepted my guilty plea.

I started working concrete, pouring walls for a concrete company based out of Fowlerville. That is also another story all together, but when the fall rolled around, I kissed that shitty job good bye. I had been accepted into the fall semester at Mott Community College in Flint, so I hung up my tool belt, shelved the work boots, and headed off into the unknown again, to see what I could see. I took my drinking problem with me and although I graduated with honors in 2000 from MCC, I was turning into a wild animal. Full of electricity and as Iggy Pop would put it “a lust for life”.

The future was going to be filled with reckless and dangerous times, I just didn’t know it yet. If I knew what was in store for me, I might have jumped shipped but, the journey of life is a tricky one and usually doesn’t let you get a full view of what or where your going until its already happening and too late to alter the course.

By the time I was twenty three, I was pretty much a full time drinker, and the only stops came when I had to go to work or sober up for work. I drank so much, it just became part of who I was. There were times when I thought I was Sid Vicious or Jim Morrison…..sometimes for months or years. By 2006, I was twenty six and hitting rehab for the first time. My drinking had completely taken over and I would be doomed to inpatient treatment and hospitalizations for the better part of the next eight years or so.

Being an alcoholic can make life difficult and growing roots, damn near impossible….at least for me. I drifted from station to station in life, experiencing that same feeling I did back in high school. I occupied places and positions, but somehow it always felt like it was fleeting. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but change permanently haunted me and I returned back into almost a ghost like fringe pioneer.

I learned to accept who I was and what I was. I stopped caring….almost on a daily basis, what people thought of me or my choices. I became an open book, and owned my skin to the fullest. Fuck it. After an absolute scorching decade from 2000 to 2010 (and beyond into 2013 if anyone is getting technical), I found myself jaded with life. Unhappy with the material world and most of societies expectations and marks for “success”. I was finally starting to crawl towards who I really was and who I would become.

I left the work force in 2013, when drinking and hard life experiences drove me to the very edge of the razor blade. I tapped danced on that bitch for years and I was going to have to make a choice rather soon in the matter. Either drink full time and die, or fight to get to a better place and live a little longer. I chose to live and enrolled into the Medical Marijuana Program in Michigan. I got a card, started blazing weed, and waited to see if I could turn the blasted ship around or at least prevent the whole thing from sinking into the Dead Sea.

I had been to treatment or the ER or the Psych floor, some twenty seven times or so. Or at least that’s all I’m claiming at this point. The number really doesn’t matter, I merely throw it out to highlight the desperation that I was faced with. I went to rehab so many fucking times, by 2013 they basically said don’t come back. I embraced my last hope, medical marijuana and floated off into the future.

(Author’s Note: Nothing is perfect, not even medical marijuana, but it worked good enough and kept me out of treatment for the better part of the next seven years. I dipped in from time to time, but over all, it was profoundly more workable than the other choices I had been faced with)

I still burned hot, but it was not as intense as the first ten years of the 2000’s. I took a lot of time to reflect on who I was, where I was going, what was working, and what totally sucked. By 2017, I was well enough to really get back to establishing some new life goals, since I had blown up my own life repeatedly going back twenty years (some my fault, some I put on others). I had gotten my mind back after breaking with the bottle for a couple of years and it was good. I started writing and eventually started stringing books together, which I released independently on Amazon.

I wasn’t perfect and I didn’t claim to be or even try, but I was living again and marching forward. After banging out releases for three years, I decided to get serious about writing and so I did. Looking back now, when I let go of the past and decided to see what life had in store for me, things got better all the time. But that was only half of the realization. The other half was that I was also coming to terms with who I really was. I had been through some shit in my life, was an alcoholic, minor drug consumer from time to time, a wild cat, and on it went.

I stopped caring about societies norms and expectations, and settled into a spot where I was comfortable with myself and who I turned out to be. I realized that our victories and our defeats were in fact part of life, the good and the bad, and they both played critical roles in the journey. The most important thing I learned though was that the destination wasn’t really the real gold, it was the adventure of life and living that mattered (at least to me). Humans fuck up, its what we do….the only question is how we deal with that? I’ve learned that the material world and most of society is a giant illusion anyway, so I encourage people to see past them.

And above all else, it’s ok to blow it sometimes. Most of us will probably taste failure much more often that sweet victory, and that’s fine. There can only be one winner usually, so that leaves the rest of us in defeat, no matter what game your playing. Fuck it. Losses are fine as long as you learn from them and don’t let them define you (which can be intoxicating all on their own). I encourage people to withhold judgement….lest they be judged. I wish people to be more understanding, more forgiving, and not take life so seriously all the time. You can toil for a big house, perfect family, large bank accounts, and all that funky shit but at the end of the day, the only thing they can fit into your coffin is you. We leave behind our legacies of how we treated each other and usually nothing else. Be kind to yourself and extend that to your friends, family, and even strangers (you never know who they might be in reality…3-6-9).

I recently crashed into rehab a few weeks ago, but I’m back on the right side of things. Sometimes when things get stressful, I tend to revert back to old mechanisms to cope, sometimes I just like to have fun for a bit, I mean no harm, but I need to feel human from time to time. I am not perfect, and sometimes I need help to clean up a bit. Am I ashamed? Fuck no. Do I care what people think about that? Not really. I do appreciate the support that I’ve received from my special people (you guys know who you are and I thank you). For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be, surrounded by people that I consider true friends and that’s no fucking bullshit.

I won’t get all sappy and besides, I’m almost out of room, so I guess that brings us to the close of the Series opener for “Reflections”. I hope you enjoyed the reading and the music I enclosed, which really sets the mood for my feelings lately. Now, it’s time to get back on the grind homeboys and homegirls. Catch you on the flipside……

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Signing Off,

Mike Shepard

ROX-TV Head Writer

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