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I found out later that this is what they tell people who don’t get deals, that no one got a deal. But they did. Some people did. Just not me.

I get back to my tiny apartment and I look at my parentheses balance and I feel so tricked. I was made to believe that my life was going to be fixed and it wasn’t. I’m still the same loser who had flown to Los Angeles on my sister’s frequent flier miles just six days before. It was my first brush with a business full of fast talkers. They convinced me that my life was going to be changed, and it wasn’t. I think this is the reality my dad had warned me about.

I CAN’T STOP!

I was the youngest of four kids, so really anytime anyone was willing to talk to me or spend any time with me at all, I would gladly accept. My brother took advantage of this, and so when I was three, I became Joe’s personal soccer goalie.

I got to be pretty good. I was never a natural athlete, but I developed an uncanny ability to dive headfirst at soccer balls. “You gotta throw your body at the ball,” Joe would say. And I would. I thought, All you got to do to win is throw your body at the ball.

A few years later my diving-headfirst-at-balls technique paid off when I was selected as the starting goalie for Shrewsbury’s prestigious traveling soccer team.

During the game, in Oxford, Massachusetts, I went head-to-head with an Oxford forward in what’s called a 50–50 ball, meaning we each had a 50–50 chance of getting to it. I dove headfirst and got to the ball.

That was the good part.

The bad part was that when the other team’s player arrived at my head, he decided, since there was no longer a ball available, to kick my head with the same velocity that he would have used to kick the ball.

Let me rephrase that: an eleven-year-old kid kicked my head as though it were a soccer ball that needed kicking as hard as humanly possible. I don’t remember anything after that, but here’s what I’m told happened next:

1. The referee blew the whistle and a bunch of players and coaches ran over to me, shouting, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” I jumped right up and said, “I’m great! I’m fine!” They said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yeah! I’m good!”

2. The game continued.

3. About five minutes later, I started walking aimlessly off the field, oblivious to the game in which I was participating. I recognized one person: Tom Bachmann, my defenseman and the coach’s son. “Tom . . . ” Tom looked over at me. I was no longer on the field. I was somewhere between the field and a concession stand nearby. Tom said, “Mike, what’s going on?” I said, “Tom, what are we doing?” Tom said, “Mike, we’re playing a soccer game.” I said, “Tom . . . I think I need to talk to my dad.”

The coaches ran over, as did my dad. They pulled me out of the game and put in another goalie named Jim, who was immediately scored on four or five times. Apparently he did not have the proper throw-your-body-at-the-ball mentality that the position required. We lost pretty badly. I drove home with my dad, disoriented. They were careful to make sure I didn’t go to sleep because of that whole thing with concussions and sleeping and dying. And I never played goalie again. But I used that aggression elsewhere.

• • •

When you’re self-employed, you’re your own boss. You’re also your own employee. You’re also your own tech support. And your own finance department. All those jobs can make one person a little crazy.

I was living in Astoria, Queens, temping during the day and performing in New York City or driving to nearby cities at night. I was always on, and when I was off, I was still on, because the on/off switch wasn’t working too well. It’s actually never worked too well. I’ve always envied those people who have this very nuanced control over their own energy. People who can work in low gear for a few hours, take the night off and relax, and put it in high gear in the morning, only to put it into low gear for the afternoon again. I don’t have that. I’m a manic worker and manic sleeper. I’ve always crashed into sleep versus slowly easing into it. I’m a compulsive