Background

I’ll never forget that morning, I was on a “sabbatical” from college and was lucky that my grandfather offered me a job while I figured out what I wanted to do.

Playing golf, at least improving ones’ game, is really pretty similar to the process of recovering from a brain injury, or for that matter, an individual’s self-improvement journey throughout a lifetime. For one thing, they’re both never-ending processes without finite endpoints where perfection is achieved, or even distinct completeness.

After learning of Jim’s accident, Kathy and Jim reconnected. In 2013, Jim started speaking to some of Kathy’s classes where she now taught in Westborough High School in Westborough, MA. Now in 2021, Jim and Kathy decided to share their reflections on their journey from starting out as student and teacher to becoming colleagues and friends.

As I sit here typing 15 years to the day after my car crash, the fact that I’m typing a new blog post leaves me full of gratitude, let alone that I can sit up on my own in a chair. Just the possibility that sharing my experience along this TBI recovery journey can help someone in their own life, or provide even a positive thought, gives me joy!

One such thing that I heard people say a lot was that, “the older I get, the smarter my Dad gets.”

The last thing that comes to mind when one hears the word perfectionist may just be a seemingly unmotivated, chronic academic underachiever: Perhaps a Valedictorian would be more expected  rather than the class clown. So one could imagine my surprise when multiple times I’ve had my behavior called perfectionistic! I would normally discount these opinions absurd had they not been given by professionals with multiple letters trailing their names.