Evansville, Indiana

As of today, I'm still living in Evansville, Indiana. For my friends back in Boston, all I can really say is, "Shit happens, you roll with the punches, and you make your own way in this world." Yeah, I just threw a whole bunch of cliches together and made it into my own little quote, and maybe they don't mesh, but the beauty of it is I'm on the internet and I can basically get away with whatever the hell I want. Anyways, I sit here at the ripe old age of 26 years old, and I've realized one thing over the recent summer months. Everybody learns about life and their self personally at a different pace. I learned recently that I don't know shit. True story. I actually don't know shit about life. Or, at least I didn't. I always thought I had everything all figured out. I would play hockey until I decided I couldn't do it anymore, and in the summer months I would manage to finish up my education, thus preparing me for "life after hockey." I've learned that "life after hockey" is a bullshit excuse that all of us who play the game have managed to use to procrastinate our lives, and in essence it actually hinders us from moving forward and actually LIVING A LIFE. The movie Blow, which has actually turned into one of the greatest films for inspirational quotes, says, "Life passes most people by while they're making grand plans for it," and I'm sorry to say that after all my years, I think I've been one of those people. It's weird to suddenly realize it. To wake up one day and discover that every thing you thought was important, and every thing that you thought mattered to you was really what was holding you back from living your life.

For me, I don't regret hockey. Never have. Never will. The sport has given me so much and taught me so much over the years that I can't help but be grateful. I've had life experiences that many people could only dream about. I've had so many ridiculous incidents happen in my life since the time I turned 16 years old that I honestly can not remember at least half of them. Maybe more. I've seen things on the ice that would shock you. I've seen things off the ice that I can promise you would shock you even more. A lot of people don't understand the lifestyle, and the concept that goes in to playing the sport. I wish I could try to explain it, but I really don't see how I could ever do it justice. It's best that I just leave it alone, and let you know right now that whatever experience you may have had with a hockey player, or whatever experience you may think you have had with a hockey player, isn't going to help you to understand the lifestyle better than any other random person. It's truly a one-of-a-kind sport, and that is what makes the players, the teams, and the sport itself so freakin' phenomenal.

Well, with all of that being said, I will say that hockey has held me back in some ways. Sure it helped me to receive an education to some extent (which I was too damn stupid to hang on to, and so here I sit at 26 STILL trying to finish my college degree, which is horse shit and I don't suggest anybody else ever doing what I did), it helped me to experience some of the stranger sides of life, I've been able to enjoy a game and play for a very long time, and I've had an identity ever since I started playing (hockey is a sport that you can identify yourself with, and it's a source of pride for many who play the game). The thing is though, there is so much more to life than hockey. I've always been very closed-minded regarding a lot of things in life, whether it be relationships, tattoos, other sports, or something as stupid as clothing. I always thought that I knew better about everything, and that's arrogant, it's stupid, and it makes me feel like a boob to even admit it. I don't know why I was that way, maybe it was because of where I grew up and how I was raised, or maybe it was just because sometimes I'm too smart for my own good. Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? It's not me anymore. I learned that life is too short to be closed-minded. Again, that's sort of a cliche as well, but it's the damn truth. Life is too short, so why waste it being concerned with useless bullshit? Trust me, ALL of it is useless bullshit.

So this summer I moved away from home in Boston, Mass., and returned to Evansville, Indiana. Everybody in the world thought I was insane. My parents thought my head was so messed up and full of shit that I had decided to settle for a life of mediocrity. My friends thought I was a dumbass for returning to a town that not many people even know about. Nobody could understand why I would leave a city that is internationally known, for a city that a lot of people in the United States couldn't even locate on a map. I don't say that to be disrespectful to Evansville, because obviously I chose to come here, but let's face it, it's not like this city is a hotspot. What was my reason for going back to Evansville? That was the question that everybody had for me, and my answer was simple. I wanted to get away from everything that I knew. I wanted to start fresh, and I wanted to find my way in the world. I didn't want the help from my parents (God love em) allowing me to live at home for free, I didn't want the same old summer job where I coasted by and made good money for doing nothing but bullshitting 24/7, and I didn't want the same life that I once had. I'm not saying my life back home was bad, that was NEVER the case, but I wanted to try something different. I wanted to 100% be on my own. I wanted to FORCE myself to have to do for myself. I wanted to see what it was like to find my own apartment, and then have to grind it out to find a job that would be lucrative enough to allow me to afford that apartment and enough money to live my life. I wanted to know what it felt like to be entirely dependent on myself, and nobody else. For once in my life, I WANTED to do it, and I NEEDED to do it.

For those people out there who may be entirely confused as to how I could be 26 years old and still not have encountered those situations before in my life, I'll do my best to explain. I left home when I was 17 (to play hockey, which is a common theme with my life) and attended prep school. I lived in a dorm, received all of my food from the cafe, and brought my laundry home to Mama Dags almost every weekend. When I was 18, I left home for Keller, Texas (Texas Tornado). I lived with a host family (an older couple who couldn't have been nicer to me and my brother, Matt Nickerson. I say brother because that's what we were, and we formed a friendship that still exists to this day, even though the psychopath lives overseas in Finland and beats the living shit out of euros all day to make a living), and they paid for my food and did my laundry. When I was 19, I went to Troy, New York (Capital District Selects). I ended up graduating from a Catholic high school (paid for by the two greatest people I could have had as parents), I would receive money from my parents for groceries, and a teammates' mother would do my laundry. When I was 20, I went to Lowell, Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts-Lowell). I spent 2 years battling at UML and just trying to make a positive impact on the hockey team. For whatever reason, whether it was that my head got sidetracked, my coach didn't think I was good enough, or whatever it may have been, things just didn't come together for me at UML. Again, I was blessed to be pampered by mommy and daddy (see the recurring theme?) throughout those 2 years. I don't want to say I took it for granted, but... I took it for granted. You see, a lot of people don't realize this but my story isn't a wild card. This recurring theme of being helped along through life, is a recurring theme for EVERY hockey player. Not just a few. There are some exceptions to the rule, but those are few and far between. The bottomline is that almost all of us have been given "assistance" with our lives. For me, it sort of unknowingly created a monster. Something I never realized, or on some subconscious level I somehow refused to admit it to myself. Anyways, after my 2 years at UML I was given a tryout with the Providence Bruins in the AHL (after my patchy years at UML it was a shock to me - and probably a lot of other people as well). For those who aren't educated in the ways of the hockey world, the AHL is the closest minor league affiliate to the NHL. It is widely considered to be the 2nd best league in the world. To make a long story short, I was one of the 1st players cut from camp after our 1st preseason game. Shit happens, and it wasn't like I expected to make the team with future Boston Bruins players like David Krejci (who, for the record, is as smooth as baby shit) on the roster. After getting cut I had myself one hell of a whirlwind season, playing in Lubbock, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Pensacola, Florida (for 1 game, la-dee-freakin-da); and Trenton, New Jersey. That year... was... crazy. I went all over creation because of the game, and it was great. I made good money, had free apartments (and not shit-holes, I mean legitimate places to call home), and just "lived the life." It was what I had always wanted to do, or so I thought.

The next year turned out to be a huge write-off for me. I had hernia surgery to repair two abdominal hernias just prior to the start of the pro season. There was no real chance that I could be 100% healthy going into a training camp, and I didn't want to spend another season drifting from place-to-place. Some buddies from Lubbock set me up with Dalhousie University in Canada. It seemed like a good place. I liked it enough during my time there. The guys I met were some real beauties, and genuine good guys. It was a good change from what I was used to for sure. The coach was a toolbag and I got sick of his ass real quick. I only made it through a little more than half of the season before I packed up shop and went back to Boston. I blamed it on financial issues, which was true but there was a lot more to it than that.

So I went home, back to the D'Agostino household, back to life with mom, dad, and baby bro Nicholas (who by the way may be even crazier than I am). Summer rolled along, and it was a great time. I was 25 years old, living for free with la famiglia, making good summer cash, hitting up the Boston bars on Thursday nights, and driving to Cape Cod every weekend. Monday mornings at "work" (a hockey school where I shot pucks all day - yeah, seriously, that was all I did, and I guarantee I made more money per hour doing that than you would even believe, which is stupid, but true) I would be so hungover from spending Sunday boozing until 5am with my buddy Pando that I would literally not be able to stand on my skates. Seriously. I looked like Bambi out there, and I thought it was hilarious. I would walk in to the locker room at 7am stinking like a bottle of Captain Morgan's, wearing my beach clothes and sunglasses. Half the time I wouldn't even lace up my skates all the way, or tape my shinpads. It was a joke, but life was good.

The fall came and I went to camp with the Toledo Walleye in the ECHL. I was back in pro hockey, and I was ready to give it another go. Toledo didn't work out. I knew it wasn't going to work out. They had dual affiliates with the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks (yeah, the team who just won the Stanley Cup), and there was no way they were gonna take me. I had a better chance of catching Ryan Huggett with an 8-ball (yep...) than I did of making that team. So I went with the old motto of, "It is what it is," or "It was what it was," or some shit like that. Toledo didn't bother me, but what really chapped my ass was getting cut from the Huntsville Havoc in the SPHL. I'm not going to say a whole lot about it because it's not worth it, but the shit that happened there really pissed me off. It turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. I ended up in Evansville, Indiana.

"Sweet," I thought. I've got a group of buddies in the SPHL that I should be playing with, but instead I'm stuck here in Hickville, USA where the sheep have to hide from the drunk farmers (yeah it's an insult, but you have to remember I'm describing my initial feelings and thoughts regarding Evansville, not my current feelings and thoughts). When I saw Ellis Park where the majority of the Icemen players were living, I said, "To hell with this, there is no way I'm living in this shit hole." I wish I was joking, but that's the truth. That was 100% my reaction, and I'm not sugarcoating it. That place was a dump, and the organization should be ashamed that they forced their players to live there. FACT. Anyways, I ended up moving into a house with Ryan Strayer, Mario Passarelli, Dustin Majewski, and Justin Neis. I knew Mario briefly from the summer "work," but he and I never talked much. To be honest, most of the guys who worked at the camp thought Mario, Brett Riley, and Ryan Huggett were kind of a joke. Mario and Riley turned out to be alright guys, but Huggett was, is, and always will be... a joke. My brother once told me that Huggy's breath was worse than monkey farts from the movie Outbreak. I laughed so hard I thought I was gonna die. So Mario and I already knew each other, and Strayer turned out to be an absolute gem. I wish I could just try to describe this guy to you, but I wouldn't do it justice. Stray Cat, you know you're an original, and God bless you man. You and I will be buddies for life, as evidenced by the fact that you lived with my parents for almost the entire summer, even though I wasn't there. That shit may seem weird to most people, including my parents (who thought it was some shit straight out of left field), but you have to know Strayer to appreciate it. The house turned out to be a great thing, for all of us (all of us except Cindy the landlord - good luck with that shed out back), even though we had to pay to live there (again, thanks a lot Icemen organization). My first night out in town turned out to be a memory that I won't soon forget. At the end of the night I buzzed my head into a mohawk simply out of boredom (anybody who knows me knows that I like to mix it up, I hate the same old boring stuff), and I met a girl who changed my life (which I now realize she changed it for ther better, and so for that reason I owe her a genuine thank you), but that story is something else altogether.

The year rolled on, and just like any other year in a person's life, there were good stages, and there were bad stages. I don't want to sound like a butt-pirate, but life is kind of like the tour de france (seriously, that's the analogy I'm using), and there are good stages, and bad ones. My year moved along pretty well, and in February I went to Louisiana to play. I loved it. The city. The team. The coach. The owners. The fans. All of it. The first two weekends I'm there, the Saints win the Super Bowl, and then Mardi Gras. Holy shit. A couple more life experiences that I definitely wouldn't have had without hockey. It was a great time. Our team finished out the year and missed the playoffs, but we pretty much knew that was going to happen anyways. They had started out awful at the beginning of the season and it was just too much ground to make up. When we finished up, I decided to go back to Evansville. We won the league championship. It was fun. It was a good experience for all of us, and I'll always remember it as a positive time in my life. The only negative thing was that when the season ended, my brain shut off. I went back in to dependent-mode. The mode that I had ALWAYS been guilty of falling back into as soon as hockey wasn't there. The biggest problem was that I was no longer depending on Mr. and Mrs. Dags, I was depending on a sweet girl who had done nothing short of everything for me, but I was too stupid to realize it. To this day, I still don't know entirely what I was thinking, or why I behaved the way I did. I regret all of it, big time. Still, I'm glad that it happened. If I hadn't gone into a total mind-f*** state of thinking then who knows what would be going on right now. To make a long story short, getting my ass dumped by the first legitimate girl in my life was a wake up call. A wake up call that I desperately, DESPERATELY, needed.

I learned that life really is all about making your own way, and you don't wait for things to come to you. "If you want something, then go out and get it," is a quote from Donovan McNabb, and that useless, injury plagued donkey was dead on with it. It's true. You can't wait on anything because all you will ever be doing is waiting. That is why I chose to return to Evansville, Indiana, and that is why I am still here. I'm tired of making excuses for myself. I don't want to be dependent any longer. I don't want to fall in to that hockey rut where it's considered OK to be in control of your life 7-8 months out of the year. I want to be in control of my life every single day, and I realize that may sound like some stupid bullshit, but it's the truth. I was tired of having my parents to provide me with a place to live, screw that, I can manage having to pay rent. I was tired of having an easy ass job that paid me well and taught me nothing about life, screw that, give me 40-50 hours a week of minimum wage, make me appreciate what it means to have to earn my money. I was tired of boozing away every single weekend, screw that, if I want to do things with my life then I have to grow up some time. I guess what it came down to was that I was just tired of all of the bullshit. Enough was enough as far as I was concerned, and that's why I did what I did, and why I've done what I've done over the past 3 months.

I don't know if this was a good way to start my blog, but it's the truth about me and the point where I am in my life right now. I'm trying to live my life to prove to myself that I'm capable of taking care of myself. No more dependency on hockey, family, or safe jobs. I'm doing what I can for myself to make my own way in the world, and it sounds queer as hell but I really am learning a lot about myself. There are a lot of things in this world that I never would have given any thought or consideration, and I would have just dismissed them for no reason. Not anymore. I'm open to new concepts, and new challenges, and I'm interested to see in which direction my life is headed. Right now things are looking pretty open-ended with a lot of potential, and I have to admit... I love it. Let's get this shit started. Welcome to my old life, my new life, and everything else in between. Welcome to Pauly D's blog, baby.