The Road to Self is the “heads-up” I desperately needed when I was struggling to find and claim my place in the world as a young man; the kind of advice I wanted from the kind of father I would have wished for. Now, 30-some years after the fact, I have both the leisure and the knowledge – call it wisdom if you like – to see that it’s an ever-present struggle for all of us men: in the culture we live in, we don’t go deep. Men are, to put it mildly, not encouraged to explore or understand themselves.

The average city kid, for example, never gets taken hunting or mountain-climbing by his father; never gets to sweat, and struggle, and get bruised and scratched and winded and still get to his goal despite all obstacles. Never shoulders a heavy backpack, sights in on a hill just visible in the blue of the distant horizon, and says to himself, “that’s where I’m camping tonight. Time to hump.” And yet, these experiences – these attitudes – are the seed capital of manhood; the quiet, capable inner strength that makes us men what we are.

Today, most of us lack that core strength; what we have instead is something that looks like a choice between passivity and aggression. You can find lots of villains to blame, if you want: society, parents, misdirected child-rearing… but when you go looking for those, you’re missing one of the essential points of being a man: taking responsibility. Being the actor instead of the acted upon. Much of being a man is about the ability to take action; to be the one who steps up, who volunteers for the tough job, who perseveres and does even when the chance of winning is small.

I’ve been pursuing and living this way for most of my life. I’ve served in the military, raced horses, cars, and motorcycles, sailed the Caribbean, crossed hundreds of miles of open ocean, hunted and fished in remote wild places, rescued sharks and eagles, survived hurricanes, loved strong beautiful women, spoke on a stage, been filmed for movies and MTV, flown and jumped from an airplane, and countless other things of that nature. I’m not boasting – really, I’m not. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done anything incredible or unusual – I just wondered why everyone else wasn’t doing things like this.

Over the last few years, though, I’d lost track. An extremely rough and rocky marriage in which I’d invested – given away, and then threw away – all my internal resources left me high and dry, beaten up and bleeding. I spent a while coming up, just barely maintaining; out of shape physically, and nearly destroyed emotionally, I just needed a corner to crawl into, to either die or heal.

I didn’t die. Which doesn’t yet mean that I’m back in shape. Physically, I’m more than a hundred pounds overweight; emotionally, I’ve fought all the crap to a standstill, to be dealt with as time and ability offers. And now, it’s time.

It’s time for me to recover my power. It’s time for me to take charge of my ability to act, to reach, to achieve. First, the weight is coming off; in fact, I’m taking bets on getting down to 199 lbs - that’s 105 lbs less than I weigh now – within 24 months, and I’ve already got a cool $1000 riding on it. Here’s the deal:

If I have not reached a weight of 199 lbs by March 3rd 2014, I will contribute, to the charity of my readers’ choice, $1000 plus double the total amount that  my readers bet on it. If I succeed – NOPE, I won’t keep that money: you still get to vote, and it’s going to that charity anyway (but only that kilobuck plus your contributions.)

You too can click on the button below to add to the pain. Don’t forget to tell me which charity you want it to go to; I’ll keep track and let you all know.

Yeah, I’m letting myself in for a whole lot of hurt – if I don’t perform. And you, my friends, will get to leverage a serious contribution to a good cause – if I fail.

(Addendum: All right, I’m going to quit keeping track of how much people have bet already – it’s morbid. If things keep going this way, though, I’ll need to have Ft. Knox cued up on the GPS – y’know, as a fallback measure. But I’m betting on me.)

Come join me in my adventure. Over the next while, you’ll see me lose the weight, learn to back-flip on a trampoline, raft a wild river, rappel from a helicopter, and do a number of other things that I’m currently not up to – but will be.

Gentlemen… place your bets.