I met Jerry at Ed's weekly poker game. He was a nice enough guy, initially a bit of a nit at the table (but then so was I). At some point he committed to improving his game under Ed's tutelage (as did I), and his game got stronger. And for a long time those were the main things I knew about the guy. I mean, we shared details and stuff, but this was guy camaraderie at its finest: whiskey, sports talk and poker. Neither a complicated recipe, nor a complicated result.
So over the months I picked up that he was a fitness consultant, and he seemed to specialize in helping people recover from injury.
One night at the game, right around the time in early August that I hit bottom, he was talking in a bit more detail about his work, and how no one he knew of does exactly what he does, and he mentioned that he'd been working on a book for more than ten years, but he never seemed to be able to find the traction to get it completed.
Well, I know a few things about stuckness, and I told him, "I can help you with that."
Not long thereafter, Ed, Jerry and I met for brunch at Snooze here in Boulder. I remember the conversation as pleasant, enjoyable, and relatively far-reaching. I remember a beautiful summer morning. I remember where we were sitting, and that my friend Charity (who works there) sent us one of their special pancakes, gratis.
Beyond that, there's only one specific detail I recall: I was describing the difference between how I approach skiing and snowboarding. When I ski, it's like I'm trying to dominate the mountain. On my snowboard, I play more; my approach is more about flow, and I remember how I illustrated this: I held my hand out in front of me, oriented vertically, and moved it back and forth, not unlike a fish swimming through water. From that detail I surmise that we'd gotten talking about energy and flow.
I must have explained something about my writing techniques. Jerry thought perhaps I could be helpful. He told me I'd have to understand what it was that he did, and that to do so I'd have to come work with him at the gym because he couldn't really explain it simply in words (perhaps explaining somewhat his difficulties with the book). Seemed reasonable enough. I agreed.
Funny how sometimes the things that turn out to be most fateful don't seem all that remarkable at the time.
We started working together a bit more than two weeks later, on Friday, September 5th. We met in the gym for him to show me what he does, and then we went to a local coffeeshop to discuss the writing. By that point I was a month into making big changes in my life, and so I was primed, and what Jerry showed me turned out to be immediately and startlingly profound, and after that things started to move very quickly indeed.