~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

WHAT WILL YOUR DEAL BE FOR?

     I want to write one more thing I heard about creating memories a while back.  A guy once told me, and to be honest I don’t remember who, that someday when your laying on your death bed and you know the end is near you will wish you could cut a deal.  The thing is this deal will not be for more money, fame, or power.  This deal will be for more memories with the people you care about.  You’ll wish that maybe instead of working so much overtime or building corporate power you had spent more time watching your kids grow when you had the chance.  I think this makes a lot of sense because who would really wish for more personal accomplishments at the end of their life instead of more good memories with special people.  Once again I know there has to be a balance of making a living vs. quality time with family, but this is something I definitely need to work on more.

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

YOU SPEND TIME ON THINGS YOUR PROUD OF……THESE THINGS DEFINE WHO YOU ARE!

     I realize now that when you pride yourself on something, that’s basically you defining yourself.  If these things are unhealthy spiritually, or emotionally then your definition of yourself will also be unhealthy.  My mom has told me that I have an extremist personality and I don’t think I disagree.  This type of personality can work in your favor when doing something constructive, but if that extremist personality also effect’s areas of your life that are counterproductive (Or just downright bad) this can lead to disaster.  In my past years of partying there were times that I prided myself on being able to drink the most, or pick up the most girl’s, WHATS THE POINT IN THAT!  It was my extremist personality wanting to be the best at whatever I did, even if it was not such a noble cause.  The sport of wrestling was another source of pride for me in the past, and this source of pride was not counterproductive to life.  Once I started to show signs of being a good wrestler my extremist personality helped me to get even better.  However, even pride in an honest event can become bad if your actions become conceitful.  No one really wants to hear over and over about the great things you’re doing or have accomplished!  Unfortunately my actions became counterproductive after achieving a few small goals in wrestling

•••This is a draft of the "Introduction" page in my book Bulletproof ~ Lifestyle•••

~~~INTRODUCTION~~~

ABOUT ME.

    

     Hi, my name is Scotty Edman and I would like to welcome you on my journey!  When I first started this project (Nov. 2008), it felt like the world was coming to an end for me.  I had spent the last 20 years or so working and partying.  Giving little thought to God and what He wanted for me.  Even though I was raised in a Christian household, once my parents grip was not so tight on me I found ALL kinds of ways to get into trouble!

     The drinking started during High School when I was 17, if I remember right.  But shortly after graduating from school, I FOUND COCAINE!  This lead to all kinds of things that no parent would want for their child!  During this time (When I was around 21 years old), I became a father.  I’m not going to tell the story now, but I will say that I missed the first 15 years of her (Megan’s) life……..BECAUSE I WAS TOO BUSY BEING AN IDIOT!!!

     However, Megan did come into my life when I was 36 and had already found my soul mate….JENNY EDMAN.  I was married and trying to change, but still doing cocaine on occasion.  I had a job and my own business, so my life looked normal on the outside.  One weekend Megan was staying with Jenny and myself.  I had just got done building our dream house and decided to party it up a bit.  Next thing I knew, there was a tube stuck in my nose and I was in an ambulance!  If it wasn’t for the fact that Jenny found me hardly breathing…..I WOULD HAVE DIED THAT NIGHT!

     After getting out of the hospital I tried harder to be a better person.  And a few years later I found myself in the position to give up my job and become a self employed man.  This didn’t work out, and soon I was fighting for my life financially.  I was still (And will always be) suffering from the embarrassment of missing Megan’s childhood, the drug overdose, and going bankrupt now seemed like the final dagger!

     Thoughts of suicide soon were filling my days and I had to do something to stop them!  My sister Sheri had got me to join a local Church called Southfield.  And my brother Brian was talking me into taking better care of myself by weight lifting and running.  But I still felt like I needed to be doing something else!

     That’s when this journey started, IT WAS WRITING THAT GOD WANTED ME TO DO!  I have a story and it needs to be told.  At first this book didn’t really start out as a book, but rather my personal journal through pain and perceived failure.   Writing seemed to hold back my thoughts of suicide a little.  But as my writing’s went on, I started to realize some things in my own life that were “not quite right”.  Just writing down how I felt each day alone gave me some sort of peace.  But then when I went back and started reading my own writings, IT HAPPENED…….I STARTED TO REALIZE WHAT SCOTTY EDMAN HAD TO CHANGE! I began to understand what I was doing wrong,  and how to fix the problem.  I had tried listening to all kinds of people tell me what I was doing wrong but for some reason that just didn’t work for me.

I HAD TO FIGURE IT OUT FOR MYSELF!

ABOUT THE BOOK.

     “Bulletproof ~ The Lifestyle” starts out with my personal journey through pain and self correction. 

     This first part of the book is broken down into ? chapters.  During these writing’s I was in a VERY bad place emotionally and was struggling with daily thoughts of suicide. Eventually after writing for a few months I started to realize what REALLY made me happy in life, AND IT WASN’T WHAT I HAD THOUGHT!  Having a new way of looking at things helped greatly with beating my depression and after identifying and conquering my dark thoughts, I decided not to end there. 

     See, I was in the middle of a personal overhaul, and it wasn’t only my mind that needed some work.  I came to the conclusion that MY journey (maybe not yours, we are ALL different)  needed to include some other things.  Namely, religion and sports.  I had a lot to prove to myself as well as my family and just having a new attitude was not enough…….I NEEDED TO DO MORE!

     The second part of “Bulletproof~Lifestyle” is my journey to see this thing through to the end.  So what I did was write my life story and explain how I got into the position of thoughts of suicide in the first place.  While simultaneously journaling my progress with the religious and sports challenges I took on.

     I chose the challenges of reading the entire Bible…..front to back, and to run in the Chicago Marathon.  These were two things that I never thought I could accomplish in my wildest dreams!  The Bible is just too big, and to be quite honest……to hard of a read I always thought.  And running 26.2 miles after 20 some years of hard core partying, well……….that seemed like an even taller order!

     My writings start on Nov. 25^th 2008 during the housing meltdown, and come to a conclusion on Oct. 13^th, my wife Jenny’s Birthday and two days after the Chicago Marathon.

Now here’s the best part!

     At the end of each chapter are a few questions from me as well as a couple pages for YOU to write whatever you want.  Thoughts on my writings, what’s going on in your life, what you want to accomplish, anything!  Just start writin’ and you will be surprised how much and how quickly you learn about yourself!  And because you will be writing in this exact book…..

THIS MAKES US C0-AUTHORS!

          

     If you noticed on page ?, the “General Information” included’s:

AUTHOR   ~~~~~~~~~~   Scotty Edman

CO-AUTHOR ~~~~~~~

Go to page ? and sign as my co-author……sign here too if ya want! ~LOL~

     Congratulations!  We are now in this together  and it’s no secret that we ALL can use a little support once in a while.  Hopefully some of my writings will help you……. and if you want to return the favor, go to www.facebook.com/bulletprooflifestyle  and leave a comment, story, or verse for me.  I promise you one thing, if you answer my questions honestly…..and give honest writing of your own…..as you write you will start to realize what is, or at least should be…..

Important to YOUR personal happiness!

Thank You and Good Luck,

Scotty Edman

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

     O.K. when I left off about a week ago with my story on partying I was in Florida, and prowling the beach for girls.  One day after walking down to the pier, I was sitting on a bench just enjoying the scenery when an older girl caught my eye.  She was beautiful with long dark hair, and had a friend with her.  Eventually they both came over and sat down not too far from where I was, and it didn’t take long for a conversation to arise.

     There was a Dairy Queen right there by the pier, so we got some ice cream, and they went on to tell me about all the “cool” stuff that went on in the Fort Meyer’s area.  Remember, I was 18 years old, and even though I didn’t know how old these girl’s were, I knew they were definitely older than me, and had a lot more experience with the world!  This only added to my curiosity about them, and made me want to be as “cool” as they seemed to me.  Most of their stories involved drinking, and partying, and they really seemed to “have it all figured out”.

     These girls wanted something from me, but at the time I had no idea what they were up too.  After about an hour of hearing all their stories, and starting to feel really comfortable with them, they asked me if I wanted to go for a ride.  They told me they had a house in town with a pool, and we could go “chill out” for a while. 

     This was great (at least I thought at the time) two older girls, that were telling me stories of things I had not experienced yet in life, WANTED TO SPEND TIME WITH ME!  To top it all off, they were HOT!

     As we walked out to their car things got even better, they drove a Porsche.  I don’t even remember their names anymore, but one of them jumped into the driver seat, and the other told me she would sit on my lap on the passenger side.  It was a red convertible, and even though I can’t remember their names, I do remember feeling like the king of the world as we drove over the bridge leaving Fort Meyers Beach.  I was in Florida, with hot girls, riding in a Porsche, how much cooler could I feel?!

     The girls cranked up the volume on the car stereo, and we all started wiggling around in our seats, dancing, and screaming out the words we knew to the songs on the radio. (There was no I-Pod back then)  Soon a song from David Lee Roth came on, most of you readers in your 30’s, 40’s, and even 50’s probably know, it’s called  “Just A Gigolo”.  In the song David sings “I’m just a gigolo, and everywhere I go…..”  thats his version of the song, but I was having so much fun, I decided to make up my own version.

     If you remember my story about why I did steroids, it involved the fact that my girlfriend at the time was dating a wrestler that had won a state title that I just missed.  Well, this girl’s name was Chris, and even though I had no right to be mad that she was dating my friend Joei, I still had a little jealousy inside me that I was dealing with.  So in my version of the song the lyrics went “I’m just a gigolo, and Chris will never know…..”  This gave me some immature feeling that I was not upset about Chris, and that she in fact didn’t know what she was missing…..STUPID HUH?

     Well anyway, the girl’s heard my version and said “What, you charge money for girls to be with you?” and in my euphoria I said “If they want to be with me, why not?”  This was about the biggest lie of my life! No girl had ever offered to pay money for my company, let alone have it actually happen!  But the girl’s just smiled and we kept driving toward their house.

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

THE STRIP CONTEST.

     O.K. after all the drinks at the college, along with the long island’s I had consumed, the strip contest was not looking so scary.  All the wrestlers were in one area of the bar and the guy’s I was with seemed to know a lot of the crowd.  I watched a few guys go up and do their thing, and every one of them was getting cheers and applause from the audience.

      Finally it was my turn!  I remember walking up on the stage feeling like some sort of movie star or something.  The light’s were shining in my face and it was dark out in the crowd so I couldn’t see them too well, but I could definitely hear them, and the wrestlers were making the most noise.  As the music started I began to move around and all of a sudden it hit me…. I CAN’T DANCE!  Nobody really seemed to care however, so I just kept trying to do my best.  I wouldn’t even call what I was doing dancing, it was more like a bodybuilder taking his clothes off while posing.  At that time in my life I was fairly muscular and well defined so I figured I’d use that to my advantage!  The music got so loud and I was so drunk that very quickly I didn’t even really notice anyone, or anything other than myself. 

     Eventually I was down to just my pants and I do remember hearing the roar of the crowd as I started to unzip them.  See a lot of the guy’s went up on stage but stopped after taking their shirt off.  But I wanted to win, and impress the wrestlers, so there was no way I was going to stop until it was just me, the stage, and Kip’s underwear!

      As I pulled off my pants and threw them to the side the crowd went nuts, but the song wasn’t over, so I just kept dancing around the best I could while striking a pose every few seconds.  A couple of the girl’s threw some money up on stage and then it was over.  As I walked off stage towards the guys, they all came and started high fiving me and yelling about how cool it was, and I do remember feeling “ON TOP OF THE WORLD” at the same time!

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

WHO CARES WHAT PEOPLE THINK……IT’S YOUR LIFE YOU’RE TRYING TO CHANGE!

      Years ago I had a conversation with someone trying to lose weight.  I don’t remember the person, but the story is still loud and clear.  This person had told me about all the trouble they were having with dieting.  Basically in the beginning their problems were the same as everyone else’s trying to lose weight….no surprise there!  Their results were also the same as everyone else’s….no surprise there either!  However they did eventually lose weight.  I asked how and the answer was something I would have never thought of.  “I carried a tooth brush and tooth paste with me wherever I went.”  The first thought that went through my head was something along the lines of “CRACKPOT”.  But after listening to the reason and observing the results, my mood soon turned to admiration!  The reason was because whenever they would get hungry to eat something that was not on the daily diet plan, the tooth brush would come out and the teeth got a cleaning.  This helped I was told, because when the teeth were freshly brushed the mouth felt clean and refreshed and some of the hunger demons were held at bay.  This is a great example of trying something to see if it works for you and it’s definitely not counterproductive even if it doesn’t work for you, because as most dentist’s would probably agree it’s not bad to brush your teeth a few times a day.  I must admit I do not currently employ this technique.  However I did try it a few times after the story was revealed to me…..IT WORKS!  At least it did for me, after brushing I had much less desire to go and eat.  This person obviously did something that worked for them and didn’t let the dummy’s like myself that were thinking “CRACKPOT” influence their drive to obtain a goal!

   

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

IF WE ARE SO SMART, WHY DID THE PROBLEM EVEN BEGIN?

     The reason there are so many opinions on this issue just illustrates the complexity of it all.  I heard one of the government officials say “There is nothing to worry about in regards to the economic turndown, we have learned too much to let a major depression happen again.”  In all fairness this was said sometime back in October, 08 when all this was just starting. (At least as far as the American public knew.)  This individual however must have thought that he was smart enough to have all the answers on how to manage an economic system that’s global and constantly changing….good luck with that one buddy! 

     My point is that this crisis is just that, a crisis.  The ramifications of making more bad decisions are really unknown but clearly could be severe.  We have never been through something exactly like this and therefore don’t really know how to handle it for sure.  Super computers can make trillions of calculations per second so why don’t we just plug in the variables and let the answer come to us?  I’ll tell you why, it’s too complicated!  By the time all the variables were inputted into the computer Jesus would have come back!

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

IT’S OFFICIAL.

     I noticed one large manila envelope and it was from Greg Stern my bankruptcy lawyer.  After opening it and reading the first few sentences’ I soon realized it had happened, Jenny and I were officially bankrupt.  I knew Greg was in the process of filing for us but for some reason when I saw it in writing, Scott Edman-Jenny Edman bankruptcy filing notification, it really sank in.  I don’t know if I would have cried if I were alone, but Jenny was sitting right there so I blinked away the tears of disappointment and went on to the next piece of mail.

     As usual when Jenny left for work the house seemed so empty and lonely.  Megan was upstairs sleeping and I didn’t really have a good reason to wake her up other than for me to have someone to talk to, so I let her sleep.  Writing this morning just didn’t appeal to me but I needed to get out of the house, so off to the gym I went.

“When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, We cannot hide from our Lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our Lord except our bodies and our land.”   Genesis 47:18  (NIV)

~~~~~"BULLETPROOF....THE LIFESTYLE"~~~~~ rough draft

MY FIRST TIME DRINKING ALCOHOL.

     After mentioning that I drink alcohol on occasion this morning, and then working out with Brian, I think today is the day I want to delve into my thoughts on “THE PARTY SCENE”

     I’m not even sure where to start…….O.K. I guess the party started for me when I was 17 years old.  Kids my age were starting to experiment with alcohol, and I was spending my summers with my parents in Michigan at the cottage.  My friend Mark Shelton was with me up there for most of the summer, and we spent our time fishing, swimming, sitting by the campfire, and hanging out with the neighbor girls.(Yes, the same ones that were playing volleyball when I proposed to Jenny)  Their names are Robin, and Renee, and I had a big crush on Robin.  We use to wait until it got dark and then play flashlight tag, using our yard and theirs as the boundary lines.  All the kids played, Brian, Sheri, Robin’s younger sister Reagan, as well as her younger brother Aaron, even other kids on the block joined in the fun.  I used to look forward to the times that Robin and I would end up hiding together, but when this was going on I thought she had no interest in me, so we spent time hanging out during the summer and that was about it.

     The next part of the story is a little fuzzy, but basically Mark and I got invited one day to go to a yacht club teen dance that was coming up soon.  I don’t remember exactly who all was going but the night started off driving through the woods, and going to the beach with alcohol.  We had a great time, but my extremist personality must have come out, because everyone else had a few drinks and enjoyed the night.  I however,  didn’t get to spend more than 1 minute inside the dance before a man came up to me and asked “Son, have you been drinking?”