Yesterday, my body decided to file a formal complaint.
Not a polite email. Not a gentle reminder.
A full-on, red-stamped, “URGENT: READ NOW” memo straight from the chest.
Sharp pains. Right where the heart lives. The kind that doesn’t knock, it barges in like it owns the place. And suddenly, all the logic and confidence I’ve been building over these smoke-free days took a step back and said, “Alright… we might need backup.”
I had been chewing nicotine gum like it was bubblegum in a dugout. Two pieces, sometimes three. Thinking I was outsmarting the system. Outsmarting cigarettes. But the body doesn’t play chess like that. It plays truth or consequences.
Next thing I know, paramedics are there. Lights, questions, calm voices moving quickly. Then the hospital. A night under fluorescent constellations, hooked up to machines that listen more closely than most people ever could.
They ran the whole symphony of tests. Even the nuclear medicine stress test, which sounds less like healthcare and more like I accidentally signed up to become a superhero. In the end, no heart attack. No major damage. Just a warning shot across the bow.
Too much gum.
It turns out even the solution can become the problem if you lean on it too hard. That’s a lesson they don’t print in big letters on the box.
So today, no gum.
Not out of fear, but out of respect. I’ll keep it around like a fire extinguisher behind glass. Break only in case of emergency. Because the goal isn’t to trade one crutch for another. The goal is to walk.
And here’s the part that hit me harder than the chest pains…
While I was gone, Whiskey Kitty noticed.
She didn’t send a text. She didn’t call the hospital. She conducted a full-scale emotional investigation of the house. Patrol routes. Couch surveillance. Litter box security detail. A tiny tuxedo detective looking for her missing human.
And when I came home, there it was. Relief. Recognition. That quiet, unspoken message: “You’re mine, and you better stay alive.”
That’ll straighten a man out faster than any doctor.
But there’s another truth tapping me on the shoulder. While I’ve been documenting this journey, writing it, shaping it, turning it into something meaningful… my paints have been sitting quietly. Brushes waiting like musicians with no conductor. Canvas staring back like, “Hey… remember me?”
I worry about that.
Not in a dramatic, end-of-the-world way. More like a slow whisper: “Are you still hungry for it?”
Age creeps in with that question. Health joins the conversation. And suddenly ambition feels less like a roaring engine and more like something you have to consciously turn the key on.
But I know something about myself.
Put me in front of people, and something lights up.
In two weeks, I’ll be at the LA Times Festival of Books. And that environment, that buzz, that exchange of ideas and energy… it doesn’t just sell books. It feeds the artist. It shakes the dust off the creative engine and says, “Let’s go again.”
That’s where I’ll find it.
Not by forcing inspiration in a quiet room, but by stepping into the current and letting it carry me a little.
So here’s where I stand today:
No gum.
No cigarettes in twenty days.
A heart that gave me a warning instead of a goodbye.
A cat who thinks I’m worth guarding.
And a creative spark that’s not gone… just waiting for a crowd to wake it up.
Once again…
I got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
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