Prologue: This is disorganized as shit. I was just typing away. Don't judge. It's my first post.

This past year has come and gone, and I'll look back and reminisce on a year full of changes.

Change is good. Change leads to progress. The year 2022 is the year I began taking ownership over myself and my actions.  These changes didn't all happen overnight, but I found that I needed a catalyst in my life to initiate the change.
Without the catalysts, I'm not sure I would have committed myself to change. The catalysts, in my case, aren't explicitly telling me to change - it was a realization that direct action is required of me. These catalysts were Odin and Becky.

I. Odin.

I was in French Park on a cool April day. It was one of the first weeks that the weather was fantastic in Cincinnati. I felt myself yearning for something, but I couldn't pin it. I trekked through the wooded trail along the creek. I love being in nature, it invokes tranquility deep within my mind and body. At the base of the trail, there are several occurrences where the creek and trail intersect. On one of these intersections I run into a man and his dog, 3 month old puppy named Athena. Athena looked to be a beautiful white and brown Australian Shepherd with two different colored eyes. One brown, one blue. I pet Athena and continue the walk. Athena never left my mind.

I stop further down the creek and sit on a fallen tree watching water striders float on top of the water. I spend 15-30 minutes here in awe of how such small legs leave a large shadow on the bottom of the creek. While watching the water striders, Athena and the connection between man and dog is all I could think of. I wanted that, but it wasn't quite realistic at the time to get a puppy since I was renting and there was already Jethro.

I finish my walk and get to the top of the hill, this is where I would get in my car, go home and play FIFA. It was far too beautiful a day to be inside though. I look over and see a few people in hammocks. I decide then and there that I was getting a hammock and going to enjoy this day. I drive to REI, purchase a hammock and come back to French Park.

I put it up and nervously climb into it, hoping it doesn't collapse under my weight. I pull out Mat Best's, "Thank you for my service" and begin to read. I enjoy reading accounts from people who served in the military. It's something that I wanted for myself, however, my bad decisions did not allow that to happen. While reading there on that cool, sunny day, I make the realization that something was missing.
I didn't have companionship with anybody or anything. This isn't to say that I didn't have friends, I had great friends. However, there was nobody in my life that I felt compelled to be selfless with, and put their needs over my own on a daily basis.

I decide then and there, I'm going to adopt a dog.

Over the coming weeks, I spent hours upon hours scouring the internet. I didn't want a dog that's been bred to be sold. I wanted a dog that was not wanted. A dog that was representative of how I've felt, so often in my own life.
I'm on Petfinder, SPCA & SAAP looking for a dog that spoke to me. I get approved to adopt and after missing on a few dogs I find a husky-mix puppy named Megatron. Absolutely adorable he was. He was a big fluffy pup, with a coat of brown, white, and gray mixed together. I'm approved to adopt him, and am due to meet him in two weeks. Ecstatic to get my new best friend. I continue scouring the internet for how-to's and general puppy guidance.

I find myself back on PetFinder. Why? I'm approved for Megatron, there isn't anything else for me there. Then I see him. "Boo Radley" he looks absolutely majestic in the first picture I see of him. I couldn't help but smile. He is who I have been searching for.I contact Louie's Legacy to get approved to adopt, they ask "if someone else adopts Boo are there any others dogs that you'd be interested in?" None, just Boo. After a few days I receive confirmation that I am approved to adopt. I contact SAAP and let them know that I am no longer interested in Megatron. Side Note -I'm sure he is a great dog, but he wasn't the one for me.

May 15th rolls around, I'm anxious and eager and nervous and excited. Overwhelmed with emotions. I get to PetSmart, where Boo was due to be picked up. I'm an hour early to get him. I didn't want to miss out. What if they promised him to someone else to ensure he has a home? Although it seems silly now, I was a little worried. I spend the time getting more things for Boo and at checkout I purchase a dog tag to engrave.

O
D
I
N

A powerful name. The God of War. A unique name I thought - my time with Odin at the dog park has proved otherwise.
11:15am - it's time to see him. I get to his foster's car where they introduce me to Boo, soon to be Odin. He absolutely melts in my arms, all 19 pounds of him.
I had been waiting on this moment and it was finally here. I was disheveled in conversation with the foster and the rescue organization. My mouth was on autopilot, I don't even know a word that was said. I'm infatuated with Odin.
I pay the $400 rescue fee and we take off home.

He's whining the entire way home. I cannot blame him in the slightest. Taken from his family at 10 weeks to be with someone he doesn't know. Plus, who is the big husky he met in the parking lot?
Andrew came with Jethro so that we could do a quick compatibility test (I was taking Odin regardless, even if it meant getting a place of my own.)
We put the dogs outside as we get home and Jethro is intrigued. He's a lone wolf per se, he's a fantastic dog, but many times prefers to be on his own. He is intrigued with this little fur ball that is going to bring so much life to him.

Fast forward 220 days and about 60 lbs and that feeling I had about him was right. Odin is perfect for me. He is the catalyst I needed. He has unlocked a level of unselfishness in me that has snowballed into a better life.
The more love and care I put into him, the more I feel rewarded and at an exponential rate. Gone are the days of binge drinking the weekends away and going to countless bars seeking to live the status quo.
Odin led me down a path of introspection, and coupled with Becky, my life has changed.

I've been awoken to the vices and have been taken on a journey of self-growth. Many changes between my ears and changes in my actions have occurred in the past year, and will continue to change in pursuit of living a happy life.

II. Becky.

Becky and I had worked together for nearly two years at Fifth Third Bank. Same team, but I was so shelled in the mindset to be emotionless and not showing people who I was that we didn't really get to know each other well.
Outside of a few food days at work, I can't remember much of our time together at work. Granted, this was in the age of covid. Two weeks in the office two weeks out of office. Masks always on. Paranoia running rampant.

In August of 2021, I left Corporate Actions to join Finance Transformations downtown. I sent out an email thanking my team and telling them of my departure. At the end, I put a picture of Jon Snow and say "My Watch has Ended." Classic Game of Thrones reference, everyone must know it... I never received a response to my email. No Game of Thrones fans evidently.
"Hasta la vista" I thought to myself, thinking I'll never see you guys again. My Spanish is pretty bad, let's see, I know cerveza, tequila, margarita, and baño. The essentials if I were to get lost in a Spanish speaking area.
Little did I know, Hasta la vista means "See you soon."

A few months go by and I find myself talking to my old team more than I did when I was on the team. Reminds me of the saying "You don't know what you have until it's gone."

In February, Becky and her long time boyfriend break up. Knowing that their friend group was basically integrated at that point, and that she was alone, I thought I ought to invite her to hangout with some my friends and I.
Heck, most of my friends went to her school.
She seemed to fit in, I started inviting her out more often. Emo Night. Bar Hopping. Hiking. Game Night. Champions League Final, "You'll Never Walk Alone." Out of what seems to be nowhere, I started developing feelings for her. The more we were together the more I was sure of it. In a bout deja vu, I felt the feeling I had when I saw the picture of Odin. This is the one.

June 4th comes around, my cousin Kierra is due to wed to Willie that night. I'm at One Way barbershop about to get a crisp fade from the owner, Nazim. My mom texts me and tells me some people bailed last minute for the wedding, "invite your friends/roommates to help eat food."I text Becky and ask if she'd be up for coming to the wedding. To my surprise, she is down to go.

We get to the wedding and she starts meeting my family. My uncle Andy comes around and in his natural curious state, asks if we are dating. I glance over at her, back at him and say "yeah, we are." He then goes on to ask if we live together.
Uhhhh we had not talked about dating prior to the wedding and here I was claiming yes. Fortunately, she became a willing participant in our relationship after I boldly proclaimed that it was a thing.

I have grown to admire Becky. From somebody who was just an NPC in my life at work, to someone who I want to spend my life with. She's brilliant, caring, and beautiful. (Side Note - I rearranged the order of those so it didn't say BBC.)
Sharp as a tack, caring as all get out (we spent 10-15 minutes in Kremer's Bierhaus parking lot so she could feed stray cats), and she is stunning.

I love all the memories we've already made. Taking our pups to the pupper park, going on hikes (Red River Gorge, Hocking Hills, the Hellpit that was Clifty Falls), kicking absolute ass in trivia (Family Feud Style, I'm not Ken Jennings here),
cooking together, and thinking of the future together. I look forward to all the memories we make, and will begin journalizing them.

III. Love and Happiness.

Homogenous to the way Odin has extracted selflessness out of me, Becky has as well, and even more so. In my quest to understand the meaning to life and the emotions that we feel, I am under the notion that love isn't as complex as people ascribe it to be.

Love is the feeling of selflessness.
Putting other's needs and emotions above your own.
Whether that be someone like Becky, a dog like Odin, volunteering, or helping those on hard times. Putting others over yourself is love.
While a jet ski will make you happy, it's only temporary. It's only while you're on it. Soon you will desire for something else, a boat, a beach home, a million dollars. There's a reason being rich isn't synonymous with being happy.
Long-term happiness can only come from love.

With some introspection, I find that the times of extreme unhappiness in my life were preceded by periods of selfishness that I exhibited in my thoughts and actions.

IV. Vices.

Love has brought changes to my life. In this past year, I've made adjustments in my thoughts and actions. While at the forefront these may seem like small changes, they've been paramount in my growth. I had to "kill" the old Cody, the selfish Cody.

Porn. Nightly routine, as sure of a thing as the sun rising the next day. I've grown to realize the impact that porn made. Porn aided in my selfishness.
While it may seem harmless in watching it, slowly the mind begins to view women as objects. Your main objective is fucking. Don't care about feelings, only that they can get you off.
Over time the mind becomes numb to physical sex, only porn will do. Porn can and will destroy a relationship, it warps the brain and makes real relationships less pleasurable.

Tobacco. Another sure thing for the old Cody, a tin of dip a day. Copenhagen long-cut. Waking up with gator lip and pulling the flesh from inside my lip for days after drinking. Spitting in literally anything I could get my hands on.
No empty bottle? Coffee mug, protein shaker, doesn't matter. No bottle in the car? Gas station, pour water out of bottle, dip. This one was obvious. After the first few times I dipped, there wasn't even a high, it was just a habit.
I tried quitting on several occasions, as long as 6 months, but the first inconvenience that came up, there I was at UDF getting two tins of Cope to help cope. Reason I didn't quit? I wasn't living for anything.
Nobody relied on me if something were to happen, so I didn't really care. Plus what are the chances someone gets cancer? "Can't happen to me, I'm invincible."

Drinking. This has been alluded to earlier, but I no longer am the drinker I used to be. I used to drink with the intention of blacking out. At one point, I would take black market weight-loss pills because they made the blackout happen quicker. Terrible for my liver.
I'll still partake in a few drinks in a social setting, but I stop myself far short from overindulging. Hell I'll even occasionally have some in my coffee, but I refuse to allow it to be a crutch. Control is necessary. If it can't be controlled it needs to be eradicated.
I've not gotten blacked out or become belligerent since adopting Odin. Alcohol has lost it's finish for me. This past January, I did dry January and at no point did I miss having alcohol around.

Gone are the days where my vices control and dictate my actions. Priorities are now straight.

V. Screens.

I am now embarking on a sort of contradictory journey. We live in an age of consumer media. Screens are fucking everywhere. We weren't designed to be in front of screens all the time.

People get home, turn on the TV, and on top of that pull out their phone. Constantly connected, a cog in the social machine. Churning away years of their life in front of screens. Hell, now kids are in front of screens all the time. I fear that they aren't going to develop the necessary social skills due to the over-consumption of screen time. Kids will watch kids hangout with friends on Youtube rather than hangout with their friends. WTF?

I truly think our connectedness via phones makes us less connected. People are becoming disassociated with their surroundings.

Go to the store, how many people are on their phone while shopping and don't even notice you are there? It's wild.
How many times have you been with family and everyone is staring at their phones? It's bewildering.

Phones are fantastic, a way to be reached and an entire computer in your pocket, but I am concerned about our dependence on them. Control, like alcohol, there needs to be control.

In my life, I found that any intermittent time between anything, I'm pulling out the phone scrolling and reading about something I won't remember in 5 minutes. The issue here is: Boredom sparks creativity.
When we don't have boredom, we aren't working our brain to think. There's a reason philosophers sat around in empty rooms to create their great theses.

I've lived in Cincinnati for 28 years. I've been to Findlay market countless times. I struggled to find it without Waze the other day. How?? 28 years?? I became reliant on my phone. I hadn't been working my memory to create a map in my head, I was effectively useless without my phone.

I have great concerns. I think in 20-40 years we'll find out that phones are going to lead to dementia, we aren't exercising our minds. Our minds need to be exercised like our muscles need exercise. Without actively exercising our mind, I fear they'll suffer atrophy from the mindless scrolling.

Trying to get to know people today has become an absolute bore. What do you do in your free time? "Uhhhh, I like the office." Like what?

People spend their entire lives doing 3 things: sleeping, working, watching screens. That's not living for me, that's just being alive.

All this to say, I'm switching to a "dumbphone." I'm about a week in and it's been fantastic. I embrace the times I'm bored. I would've never written this if I wasn't bored. I would've scrolled and scrolled and not written out ideas.
In 3 days, I've read nearly 700 pages of books. I'm enamored by the story-telling in them. How have I turned my back on these great novels? It feels natural. I sleep great, I feel great. My mind is active.

Scoffs and laughing from others is as expected. I expect people to think I'm crazy. Is it crazy to not want a screen in your face and constant notifications? Screens are literally designed to reel you in and capture your attention. Entire professions have been made to study how soon after closing an app should you be getting a notification. It's absurd. I am rejecting this age of consumerism and will live a digital minimalist.
Rant over.

VI. Introspection.

As I look to become a better human, I need to identify where I can become a better person. While I still am a very flawed individual, there are a few things I want to specifically work on.

Communication. I am a terrrrrrrrible communicator. If someone doesn't reach out to me there is a snowball's chance in hell I'll reach out. This isn't to say I don't care about them or love them, I'm just a terrible communicator.
I'm not sure why this is. Could it be because I'm a loner of sorts? While I enjoy the company of others, I also am content on my own. Being alone used to bother me, but over the years it has become a familiar feeling.
Even in a room full of loved ones, I could feel alone. No reason for it, nothing that they did. Outside of some lunches with a dear friend at the time, Angela, I was always alone at Xavier. I had 0 friends for the greater part of my time there.
My freshman year I can count on one hand how many times I had a meal with others, that number is 0. Surrounded by people laughing and having a good time and I'd be alone. It really bothered me at the time, but I became numb to it.
As far as classes went, I had 0 friends. Gym? Alone. It became my normal.

Retrospectively, I think loneliness was a factor in why I drank so heavily. The more I seemed to drink, the more people I became "friends" with. Drunk, belligerent Cody was friends with everyone. So I drank. Even when I joined the Rugby team, while I had a great time. I didn't seem to make lasting friends. This is with the exception of Cargo. He was made fun of for years because he wore cargo shorts to practice on the first time. In an odd way I think we got along well because he likely felt like an outcast as well.

It wasn't until this year that I realized why I am not close to many people. It's because I don't communicate. I wasn't alone because nobody liked me, I was alone because I wouldn't reach out to others or put in an effort. Didn't want to be rejected by others, so I wouldn't take the initiative in reaching out. My biggest fear has always been rejection.

I've taken ownership over what used to make me sad. Fortunately, I am alive and I can work to become better. I am going to be a better communicator this year. Whether reaching out to old friends, checking on colleagues, or calling family.

Talking about bad communication, Becky and I nearly broke up because of my failure to communicate. She had an issue with something I was doing, I told her well it's not going to change, she got upset. Rightfully so. What I failed to communicate is that there was a reason for my actions. Almost lost this beautiful soul due to bad communication. Fortunately, I was able to salvage the situation and explain myself.

Health. 2022 was the year of growth for me. I became a much better person, grew mentally and emotionally and uhhhh the ol' waistline decided it didn't want to be left out.
I've spent much of my life in pretty good shape. This is all relative to what I see as average. Not talking chiseled, but they didn't call me beefcake for nothing. 2021 was great, benching 455 lookin thicccc (need more c's.) Arms popping out of sleeves. Not afraid of being shirtless etc.. 2022, my back goes out early in the year I can't walk. I can't wipe my ass without pain. It sucked. Some sciatica issue. IDK, paid $1500 for the doc to say let us know when it happens more frequently (this is 4th time it had happened)... Anywho, that takes me out for two months, I get out of rhythm and never really come back. Occasionally would go to the gym, but not often enough. That being said, I could've gone. I just made excuses.

Getting back on track this year. In the past month I've incorporated walking into my daily routine. Odin and I walk every day, multiple times a day if time allows. I want to keep that up and be back to consistent on weights. Not talking thicccc, but maybe thiccc.

Fortunately I'm in a comfortable spot with my diet. Eating real foods, I've cut out most processed food. I literally just called it a diet, but it's not a diet, just being more cognisant of what goes in my body (Sorry Totino's.) That being said, I'll still go out to eat. I'm not trying to be a food Nazi to myself, but can't be putting shit food into the gas tank.

VII. Career.

In August of 2022, I made a slight redirection in career path. I began to notice a trend at Fifth Third. Promises that were always 3-5 years out and people stuck in their roles. How does that happen? They were told there was a role for them and it didn't come, but it is right around the corner. That wasn't going to be me.

I had taken an interview from First Fiancial Bank. I ended up taking the job, getting a large raise with it. My boss is awesome, love the team. I get to work remotely as well. The new role has given me something more valuable than money. Freedom of time. I can spend more time with Odin and Becky. No paying for parking, no commute, no buying unhealthy lunches. Best part is, I'm learning a field I was intrigued by, data management. Using SQL as my chisel I get information pertinent to making decisions within the bank.

I could see myself staying at FFB if my career continues to progress in the bank. If a better opportunity arises I'll jump on it. I don't see my career as something I want to do forever. While I thoroughly enjoy what I do, it is an avenue to buy back my time later in life.