I had a good day yesterday. Got a massage in the morning. Played golf in the afternoon. Did really well at both. Of course, it was easy to do with the massage. You simply relax on a table. Golf is a different matter. Ideally, you should relax a bit, but a round can take multiple hours and it’s hard to do. But I guess the massage helped. I rang up a lot of pars and even threw in a birdie. At no point did I ever feel rushed or did my brain access a random swing thought with really weird consequences.

We played at a course in Comfort that my buddy, Jim, and I discovered when we were staying in Kerrville for the wedding of another friend’s son in Hunt down on the river. I think it was in the first decade of the new century. Being wayward ball strikers, we were fans of the course because the rough, which is where balls go when you’re a wayward striker, was pretty tame. Still is. Jim’s gone now but I still consider it our course, the one where we had fun and lots of good conversations and I first broke 90.

But back to the massage. If you’re having trouble in life, I highly recommend a massage. They are therapeutic to the max. If I was rich, I’d have a masseuse on staff and do one every day. I think in large part it has to do with human touch. We need it. Sometimes it’s hard to get. And while hugs are good, muscles tend to bunch up in ways and places only a masseuse can find. So, if you haven’t had one, ask around, surely one of your friends has and I’m sure they’ll be happy to tell you all about it and point you in the right direction.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale