I’ve developed this theory: one can tell a great deal about the worldview of a person based on his or her reaction to my home disc golf course, lovingly called the E.D.G.E. (Elwood Disc Golf Enthusiasts!) here in Indiana. One sector of people will instantly grumble, their focus consumed by the glass shards & scrap metal pieces that dot the course (more on that in a second!), what they judge as ineptitude or incompletion or whatever. The other group will lead with curiosity & celebration, acknowledging context (stick with me here!), attention paid instead to the short, technical, wooded wonder that is this course. Born naturally hyper-reactive & later suffering from a serious mental illness, I have spent the last decade of my life learning to be the latter, convinced that being a member of this disc golf community has given me the models, the modes, & the insight to be a more present, mindful person. 
 
Our current mayor, Todd Jones, who has been tremendously supportive of local disc golf efforts, likes to emphasize Elwood’s classification as a city (at around 8,000 residents!), but it has all the markers of a Midwestern small town, half-balanced between poverty—meth problems, low employment, dietary issues—& opportunity, as local support is high & enthusiastic, at least in spirit, if not in funds, for anything that will add value to the lives of its citizens. A disc golf course carved out of the woods that overgrew the old city dump (hence the glass & metal that sifts to the top!) by a group of blue-collar men, truly a DIY labor of love, is an apt example of the good that arises from places like this. 
 
That group—including folks like Aaron Hill, Trent McPhearson, & Alan Hazelwood—found each other at the Morse Beach course in Noblesville, Indiana, about 30 minutes away, as Hill told me on a previous episode of this podcast. At the time, it was one of the few courses within a short drive, the only in the now-booming Hamilton County, adjacent to the then-zero in our Madison County. As their crew grew & as opportunity likes to spring out, they were offered the woods behind the Elwood Athletic Club complex, home of the Babe Ruth baseball field & youth football field, where many of us in the next disc golf generation first caught the bug for playing sports.  
 
Never having created a course, they led with passion & hard work, pulling at both ends, fundraising as they began building the course. As Hill remembers it, McPhearson & Hazelwood set up a booth at our yearly local fair, the Elwood Glass Festival, with baskets & putters to introduce folks to the sport, as well as taking donations for the in-progress course. The group, a dozen or so strong at this point, had started carving fairways, pulling ribbons through the dense honeysuckle & overgrown vines, cutting paths until lines began to emerge. With local businesses & other stoked area disc golfers pitching in funds to buy baskets, tee-pads, & signs, the first nine holes were complete in late 2010. A full year of this incredible effort had yielded a truly unique & bizarre course with some of the tightest lines around; it is slightly reminiscent of the legendary Honey Bear Hollow course up the road in Peru (our state’s first course!), & certainly nothing like the open, pitch-&-putt park course that birthed this group.   
 
I was falling in love with disc golf at the time, having picked it up a year prior as a college student at Ball State University, Muncie’s beefy McCulloch Park being another local course. That next spring in 2011, following graduation & my first major psychological episode, I moved back in with my parents here in Elwood, clutching my creative writing degree & a nagging suspicion that something was going haywire with my brain. Young, lost, & oblivious, I learned quickly what a course like E.D.G.E. in a place like Elwood could offer: simply, a place to go & others to be around. 
 
Something like this, I realized, stretched beyond disc golf, an opportunity to work through our struggles, celebrate our triumphs, & uncover a little more, day after day, hole after hole, about who we really are.  When the course first opened, I saw many men from the area (like many clubs, we still hope to get more women & children involved!) who didn’t fit in other, more traditional places, such as the ball golf course down the road; they found, in the course, their own safe space for working out their demons & cultivating their angels—the ones struggling with addiction, the ones who had gained some weight & lost some confidence, the ones in need some positive company, a weirdo artist like me who was terrified about what the next decade would bring. 
 
As the course extended to 18 holes a year later, thanks to E.D.G.E. member Travis Faucett convincing the company he worked for to bankroll the back nine, I soon left for Austin, Texas, chasing some answers, slowly losing my mind, & with a tub of discs in my trunk. I would play local events when back for holidays, meeting up with the E.D.G.E. guys to check out the other courses swiftly popping up in the area (like Madison County’s second 18-hole course in Anderson!). When I finally moved back to Elwood in the summer of 2019, I was more of a disc golf enthusiast than ever, returning with a wife, another creative writing degree, & more than a hunch about my increasing mood swings & psychotic symptoms like paranoia & rage-induced black-outs. I did not know much, but I knew that playing rounds at this course balanced my moods & grounded my awareness like nothing else did.  
 
There’s an episode of King of the Hill where Hank Hill & his buddies push their friend & local conspiracy theorist Dale Gribble too far, pranking him by stealing his mower & concocting a story about its disappearance being tied to aliens & the U.S. government. Dale’s paranoia is intensified to an off-the-deep-end level, with a regretful Hank remarking that they dropped “extra stress on a structure not up to code in the first place.” In retrospect, that is what the spring of 2020 did to me. Already unable to work because of my unpredictable, psychotic symptoms, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed me into my house, away from my support system & emotional outlets, & deeper into my growing distrust of the world. To make matters worse, my wife, rightfully terrified of my “spells” (we didn’t know what they were yet!), left me less than a month into the pandemic. 
 
Unsurprisingly, this was my Dale Gribble moment, the structure of myself crumpling under the triple-threat stress of global crisis, personal grief, & my heightened disconnection from reality. I was hospitalized, first for a week & then a few other times for shorter stays that summer, overwhelmed by suicidal ideations. I was finally properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder (bipolar I, severe, with psychotic features, if you’re nasty). As BP Magazine (a great online resource for those curious about this illness!) teaches us, bipolar disorder is “a treatable illness marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy, and behavior...also known as manic depression because a person’s mood can alternate between the poles—mania (highs) and depression (lows).” This was it; similarly to how I saw myself in the men flinging discs through the ups-&-downs of life, I, at last, witnessed myself in a description of a mental illness & the experiences of others afflicted with it. 
 
Like with any ailment, the treatment trajectory is never linear nor without its flailings / failings, necessarily aided by structure & support. Thankfully, our society has finally started to reckon with the millions of lives uncared for due to a lack of mental health treatment & awareness. A couple years before my rock bottom, professional basketball player Kevin Love published an essay in The Players’ Tribune called “Everyone is Going Through Something,” detailing his own panic attacks & urging us to be gentler with others & ourselves. I recall baskets at multiple courses cradling discs signed with the names of victims of suicide, asking players to throw it in their honor & leave it with the awareness of the tragic effects of depression & other mental illnesses. In the last year-and-a-half, I have witnessed how organically a community like ours can turn that awareness into action.  
 
It starts with simply showing up. I obviously was not the only person whose mental health tanked in 2020, with 4-in-10 adults reporting symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders a year into the pandemic, compared to only 1-in-10 the year prior, according to KFF. I also certainly was not the only one that turned to disc golf to restore some sanity, stretch some muscles, & be out in the world again; with disc golf arguably the top socially-distant, outside activity, disc golf rounds played nearly tripled in 2020 compared to 2019, according to UDisc. My eye test concurred, the parking lot of our small-town course seemingly never empty, the woods constantly buzzing with folks slinging plastic as a means to get through the day.  
 
In my recovery, assisted by mood stabilizers & anti-psychotics on the medication side, as well as regular communication with a therapist & my support system (big shout-out to my parents & my best friends!) on the processing side, I kept hearing the same things: That I needed to develop a regular routine—sleep, diet, exercise, meditation, writing. That I needed to inform & stabilize my support system.  That I needed to find meaningful work, not necessarily for money, but for structure, for confidence, for self-worth. Soon, I realized those necessary facets of my life were best practiced out at the E.D.G.E. course. 
 
Within the community, I had a regular place to be, be it the two weekly E.D.G.E. leagues, the visiting leagues from our displaced friends in the Anderson Disc Golf Club (their home course sadly knocked out mid-pandemic!), or my regular Thursday morning round with my longtime friend, Josh Lee, who himself had found his way onto the course at the beginning of the pandemic. As I became more involved in this community, my support system widened to include several disc golfers who would check-in if I missed a league round (oh the importance of being seen!), who I could talk to casually about my journey during warm-up chats, & who I grew to trust as our conversations widened, as the rounds & the year progressed (I’m looking at you, Bourff brothers!). Likewise, I found meaningful work, such as running the Saturday morning random draw doubles that had become so important to me, or through participating in course maintenance in preparation for tournaments.  
 
I often admit to people that it was impossible to know how troubled I actually was while in the midst of my madness, just now able to reflect on how truly imbalanced my last decade was psychologically; similarly, it is hard to measure how much I have grown while still very much engaged in the recovery process. As I attempt to bring my mindfulness practices onto the disc golf course, as I begin to write about these experiences, I find the markers of my rehabilitation not just in the improvement of my scores or rating, but in how I handle the rough rounds & high scores, how I have regained confidence as a community-oriented guy, how the number of connections I make & the knowing nods I give continue to accumulate.  
 
The day before the 2020 Madison County Open, my grandfather died, I the last one to sit with him, to see him alive. I played the tourney the next morning, shooting as well as I could expect, stoked that Matt Bell was playing our little course, but the thing I most remember is carrying my sadness alone, simultaneously managing my disorder & freshly grieving my grandfather’s passing without substantial connections in the community to lean on. In contrast, I played this year’s tournament on the one-year anniversary of his death, & because of the community that had taken me in the previous year, I did not have to reflect in solitude. I sponsored a hole “In Loving Memory of Fred Tyner.” I talked to my card-mates & my other buddies who were playing about the importance of this date & the pressure I felt to play well. I chatted with the caring organizers, Colt Carpenter & Ashley Waterbury-Carpenter, about the reality of my mental illness & the steps I am taking to manage it (hello sobriety!). This sort of confidence & transparency would not have been possible less than a year previous, me teetering on the edge of taking my own life. 
 
Could another course have had the same effect? Sure, absolutely. But the fact is, melodramatic as it sounds, the Elwood Disc Golf Enthusiasts saved my life by giving me a regular, welcoming place to go & in offering structure within which to practice my self-care & personal growth. Now itself stretched to 27 hard-hitting holes, I see the course working its magic on others still, offering folks like Roy McCormick what it has gifted me. With his own equipment, McCormick (always with a smile on his face!) spends countless hours of his retirement doing maintenance at the course—mowing, weed-whacking, trimming trees, picking up broken bottles & old brake pads. It is in people like Hill & McCormick that I find the kind of man I want to become & finally, thankfully, feel it is possible to be.  
 
This course saved me because it is so much like me—dotted with the stuff of its past, cared for by the people who keep showing up, growing because of those same folks. I want to be a third kind of person, the one continuously in awe of the parking lot stretched full of cars & trucks with disc golf bumper stickers, the one that tells the league organizers & tournament directors thank you every time, the one that, first & foremost, celebrates the strange & beautiful Elwood Disc Golf Enthusiasts. Only then will I enter this ass-kicking course, sure to never forget the debris & what it symbolizes.  ​

That has been a struggle my entire life, balancing boundaries & this frantic urge to love & support others who are struggling. When I was a kid, my mom would always laugh because of the kids I asked to invite over--the fourth grader already in alternative school, the kid from the family of criminals, the friend who had been caught stealing more than once. I think I always knew something was off with me, that I was one of these difficult friends, but luckily, I had also been born with a combo of good, supportive parents & (during balanced time) a good head on my shoulders, as my dad would say. I felt like I owed it to them, to share my privilege with them, to see through their struggle to the solid core I knew was there.

In April of 2020, when I was hospitalized for an extended period of time at a psych facility, I did the same thing again, this time as an adult, trying to bring home two of the guys I met in there who needed homes. Luckily, my mother convinced me that I needed to focus on my own recovery & that two ex-cons with drug addictions were not reliable support in that journey. Instead, I gave them some money for a couple nights in a hotel & my phone number in case they ever needed to talk. Sometimes, I realized, my mania blasts through expectations & common sense, singularly focused on camaraderie & ultimately, not being alone.

Lately, I've been having to remind myself of a lesson I've had to stress with a few friends, that we can't take too personally & seriously the rude / odd / difficult things people do & say around us, even to us, because it is out of our control & usually has very little or nothing to do with us, a dead end of frustration & hurt. Among my many acceptances in this bipolar journey has been accepting that, while I love everyone, I don't like a lot of people's negative & coarse vibes. With my tendencies towards paranoia, delusion, & psychosis in stressful situations, I can no longer be close with or frequently around people who project pessimism or disconnection.

I must better surround myself with people who lead with a wider perspective, people who understand the difference (& importance) between facts & experiential reality, people who are reciprocal with sharing our full selves, people who lean on positive communication, thoughtful action, & expanded consciousness. This, ultimately, is the kind of person I am, hoping to enact it a little more each day. 

This revelation led me to some tough chats with a couple family members this past week, addressing some behavioral problems that were negatively affecting the family, obviously stemming from unresolved trauma. I had to be upfront, confessing that I can't be around them, can't have the close relationship I would like, if they aren't working on themselves. I am trying to project positivity, awareness, & collaboration, so folks, even family members, not up to reciprocating that task do not fit in my current iteration of self. This conversation should've happened years ago, but better late than never, as I've seen all involved grow more aware in their actions as a result.

For me, I spent much of my Insane Decade (as I'm calling it), either being written off as a bad person for my mood swings & explosive outbursts or given a free pass out of sympathy for my mental illness. Neither of those approaches actually addressed the root cause & created any substantial change to better myself & to prevent future problems, what I hope is the goal for all. I floundered for years because of a lack of directness & nuanced thinking, in both myself & those folks who took up the task of caring for me. It wasn't until my mother took it upon herself to make some professional calls, learn about my illness, & lead with her backbone that I truly felt supported & empowered to get better.

On the other side of that particular muck, I'm determined to be that active witness for the great loves in my life--to reflect back what I see, to be proactive in my support, & to zoom out to the larger picture of what's happening. Sick people of any sort can't get better alone; they need thoughtful, assertive people to do more than send prayers & well wishes--to have real conversations, to assist with troublesome tasks, to provide accountability & contextualization in everyday life. 

​When I was very mentally ill, I heard the phrase "hurt people hurt people" a lot, an important step in acknowledging the cyclical nature of trauma & necessary wider approach to dealing with the ill, the difficult, the outsiders, the folks causing harm in our society. Still, it rang incomplete for me, missing the hope of more, better living. Today, I stumbled upon the idea that only transformed people can help transform people, thanks to Richard Rohr, to the extent that they themselves are changed. For me, this means right now I can support folks in finding the courage & resources to get help, witness others' choices, reasoning, & symptoms, & be present in their times of need.

In order to do the support work I want to do fully--providing professional guidance to rural & small town men--I have great strides still to make. I must continue to grow in my practice of mindfulness & nonduality. I must further commit to a nonviolent approach to conflict. I must manage my disorder to properly engage with more education. I must gain a better understanding of & resolution to my collected traumas. I must sustain a routine rooted in holistic health, personal growth, & collaborative living. I can't believe I'm this well, & I'm stoked to see how much more I can recover in order to benefit both myself & others.

I think I share this same photo every year for Father's Day because it captures the essence of my male / Gobble lineage so well--the body shape, the particular style, the smile & its corresponding vibe, the camaraderie, the white square that plagues our faces. My dad is in the dark brown jacket; my Uncle Cooter is the other feller. Has my dad been a perfect father? Of course not, no one is (& we must stop expecting people to be perfect!), but the most important lesson he taught me was learning from one's father's mistakes & continuing to grow as a human being no matter what. He saw the mistakes of his father--alcoholism, poor financial choices, & a lack of community--& went the opposite; he barely drank when I was growing up, emphasized buying things that provided positive activities, & he modeled having hobbies & a good circle of friends. As he got older, he made great strides in understanding & sympathizing with folks who were different from him, myself included, his mentally ill, weirdo poet son.

I, in turn, am working to not fall into the cultural & societal traps that were some of his shortcomings--fear-based decision-making, quick judgement, & an over-emphasis on job-related work. Thankful for all my father has taught me, gifted me, been beside me for. He is retired & living in North Carolina these days, for the first time in 35 years, just a golf cart ride away from his last surviving brother. I couldn't be happier for this chapter of his life. As for me, I got a redneck dad who was playful, kind, & not a Trump supporter. Lucky me!

On holidays like this, I think it is always important to acknowledge & send good vibes to those on the other side of celebrating, the ones with hot wires under the surface in regards to this particular F-word, "father." This is an important step in my journey to rewire my default setting, the one that insists I am the center of the universe, that my experience is the primary experience. On Father's Day, let us not forget the folks without fathers, the folks who can't be fathers, the folks who have been hurt by their fathers, the fathers who've lost a kiddo, the folks separated from their fathers.

I see the difficulty in moments like this, when the world is locked into a lane that one can't access, & I'm sorry that has happened to you. This year, I was sending good vibes to those folks, & I always hope they have the support needed & plenty of other things to celebrate, this & everyday. I say to them, "May you be happy, may you be comforted." In upcoming holidays & celebrations, I hope to be more proactive in reaching out to those othered by moments like this.

As for the fathers in my life, I did my best to reach out to all the good good ones out there, to give props to all y'all keeping it real. From my time as an educator & my outsider perspective, not just on this day, but every day, I hope to offer what I can in encouragement & inspiration. To keep playing with your kids. To keep improving yourself. To keep communicating your feelings & growing your passions. To keep modeling your values for the little ones. 

When I was married, I'd often get asked why we didn't have kids or plans to pop some out. I usually mentioned the issue of overpopulation or the ethics of bringing someone into such a cruel world or our lack of a stable lifestyle, blah blah. I'd also throw in "not wanting to pass this along to a poor kiddo," making a crazy hand gesture encircling my head. Sure, I could talk my way outta those first reasons, but that latter answer had to be honored, unflinchingly.

Truth is, for the last decade-plus, even through true madness, misdiagnosis, & improper treatment, I knew enough to know that something was dangerously abnormal in my mind, causing me to have severe mood swings, impulse control issues, & even violent outbursts. I knew it was immoral to subject a kid to that, no matter how awesome I might be as a parent (& you best believe I'd be fun as hell & a grand supporter of curiosity & hands on learning). Yes, I'd love to have a little buddy to teach disc golf & read poems to at bedtime & have dance parties in the truck. But up till now & for the foreseeable future, I'm gonna have to put that energy into being a rad Uncle T-GOB.

As for the guys in my life thinking about becoming a father or already in that role, I always urge them to not forget to take care of themselves, holistically. I know many people, myself included, who were unnecessarily negatively affected or even traumatized by their father's simple lack of awareness about their psychology & how their behavior affects their children. Male mental health matters, for the father, for their partner, & especially for their kiddos.

As men, we are taught to hide our feelings, suppress natural urges to discuss what's going on, & put our energy into more "productive" or "masculine" activities. I say the exact opposite is true, especially in regards to giving our children a better life than we had, a goal I hope all fathers share. If one is modeling self-awareness, self-improvement, & self-care, the kiddos will see that & likely grow with that in their value system, thus hopefully leading more expansive & dynamic lives. What I'm saying is let's normalize men taking care of their mental health, okay.​