No obstacles for this global nomad

Tom Haig loves adventure. From his high-flying diving days of youth to his recovery from a bicycling accident that left him paralyzed, Haig keeps on moving.

He chronicles his life, struggles, and triumphs in a new memoir from WSU Press, Global Nomad: My Travels through Diving, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Haig writes with wit and candor about the ups and downs of adventure, culminating in his new career as a documentary filmmaker.

In this episode, Haig, a WSU alum, talks with Washington State Magazine editor Larry Clark about reinventing his life, writing his book, and where he’s going next.

Read a review of Global Nomad (Washington State Magazine, Summer 2023)

“Wheeling new heights” (Profile of Haig in Washington State Magazine, Spring 2018)

Buy the book at WSU Press

This New Book Recounts a Local Man’s Life Before and After Paralysis (Milwaukee magazine, January 20, 2023)

Athlete Turned Advocate (WTMJ-TV, Milwaukee)

Transcript

 00:00

Larry Clark

Tom Haig loves adventure. He was a high flying diver in his youth and had wild travels around the world. A bicycling accident left him paralyzed from the waist down in 1996. It was a tough path back. But hey keeps on moving. Welcome to view escapes stories from Washington State magazine, connecting you to Washington State University, the state and the world. I'm Larry Clark, editor of the magazine. Tom chronicles his life struggles and triumphs in the new memoir from WSU press global Nomad, my travels through diving, tragedy and rebirth. He writes with wit and candor about the ups and downs of adventure and trials, culminating in his new career as a documentary filmmaker, I had the chance to talk with Tom about reinventing his life going to WSU and writing his book.

00:48

Tom Haig

I am Tom Haig, a 19… [laughs] a 2010 graduate of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication in broadcast journalism, where I was a student of Glenn Johnson among others. 

01:03

Clark

And you have recently released your memoir, Global Nomad. And I was pretty excited to get a copy and to start reading it and learning a little bit more about you. So I'm excited to let our listeners know about the book and about your really fascinating story.

01:20

Haig

Well, it ends up being, it's like almost like three books in one because I have had that kind of a life. My first half of my life up until I was 30. I was a springboard and tower diver all through high school, college, and then eventually was picked up by a professional diving outfit. And we would do extreme dives. So all the way up to like 94 feet, multiple somersaulting dives, and we'd also do clown shows and light ourselves on fire and do all these you know tricks and stuff. Really interesting way to live. And that's first seven years out of college. That's what I did. I ended up moving to Portland, Oregon, I started work for Adidas. And while I was there, I was also a bike rider. So I stopped training as a diver, because I didn't I didn't need to train as a diver anymore, I was probably as good as I was gonna get. And I fell in love, in love with cycling, I dove into it as hard as I could and ended up getting getting in a bike rack hit a truck. And this is a 1996, September of 1996 and have been paralyzed from the waist down ever since. I don't know if you ever recover from this because your life has permanently changed. But it's about having, you know, just the depths of depression. And how do you what do you do to get out of that. And then also another big part of this book is my brother is Dr. Andy Haig, who at the time was the director of the University of Michigan Spine Center. So he was a medical doctor, global expert in spinal cord injury, which is very serendipitous we, I would have rather he did something else. But since that time, we've gotten together we started a nonprofit called the International Rehabilitation Forum. And we collect we have a consortium of doctors who live in some of the poorest countries on earth, and practice rehab medicine. And so we've gathered these guys together, women as well, for medical conferences. And eventually these doctors were like, we need you to come to our clinic. They've got a bunch of spinal cord patients, other disabilities and they like we need someone like you to come and and just to hang with our patients basically be a peer counselor. And I was like, I'll come but like I don't want to be appear calm, I want to work. And so I picked up my skill set that I learned at Wazoo as a as a video producer, as a documentary producer, brought my cameras over and end up spending months and months. I didn't just go there for like a week but spending months and months in some of these disability enclaves shooting their stories, shooting how the hospital works, and then eventually teaching kids with disability how to shoot and edit video themselves.

04:06

Clark

What are some of the countries that you that you did this work in?

04:09

Haig

So the first half, the diving countries was all over the place, mostly in Northern Europe. I was in Taiwan, did a stint in the Middle East in the United Arab Emirates, but most of the time actually spent the last seven years I did this. I spent the last three and a half, four years in France and I moved into I got it I was the show captain at this park called Avenir Land which means future land, which is funny because it was an old west theme park. This is one of those language things you meet when you cross. This is when I started becoming a bike rider and I became just engrossed in the Tour de France and they ride the Tour de France over the roads I was trading on. So I just I just became a bikeaholic so I spent biggest chunk of my time living in France. 

It's traveling with the International rehabilitation forum. I did a big chunk in Albania, went to Ghana for five weeks. And then I spent four and a half months in Nepal. And I was about to spend six months in Senegal, spent the first four months there. And then COVID hit, we had to get we had to get evac-ed out, even though there was almost no COVID in Senegal. We only had like, a dozen cases in the whole country. And none in Dakar, where I was living, they shut down the airport, and I had to happen embassy charter off the DC. Literally, there was almost no COVID there. 

05:37

Clark

As the potential pandemic is shifting, are you hoping to do this in the future and continue to work?

05:42

Haig

Yeah, I really would like to and I work for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, because when I got back, I mean, it was COVID. We I'd spent all my money, it took a long time to raise money for these trips, and took me two years to raise money for the Senegal trip. And people donating equipment, cameras, and computers and tripods, for the schools. And I left all the stuff over there. And we weren't quite through with the whole project, there was still a lot of stuff we wanted to do. But I had to go and try to raise money during the pandemic was impossible. The donor fatigue was 100%. And people were afraid, right. I mean, people were dying. They and people were losing their houses and all this stuff. So it was impossible to raise money during the pandemic. So I started I got I went to work, I got started working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation. I work in events group here, which has been really great. I've got a couple of contracts. At the end of this contract, I'm going to concentrate on getting back to what I do, which is working with kids with disability,

06:48

you know, you have this great interest in travel. The book talks about your travels, you know, when you were when you're doing the diving, and I was kind of wondering, you know, after the accident, did you feel like that part of your life would became limited or that you wouldn't be able to travel anymore.

07:05

I was petrified that it was. I was petrified. And this is amazing. My French mom, so a family adopted me when I lived in France, and they just took care of me and a couple of other divers on our team, like they do our laundry, they'd have us over for dinner. And like my French mom would look disapprovingly upon a girlfriend I was going. She told me that to me as a mom, and the word got out that I broke my back. And she called me and she was like, you have to come back to France. And I was I mean, I was in the hospital bed when she called and I'm like, I am really messed up. Janine, I don't think I can come. And she's like, I'll call you in a month. So a month, she calls me back. And I was like, Yeah, and I started to go back, started going back to school and went back to take some classes. And I was like, Yeah, I think I could have got some time between my spring semester and summer, I can probably come for a couple of weeks. And she was having none of that. She was like you are coming all summer long. And you're staying with us all summer long. And I was like, I think I can do that. We're living in the foothills of the Alps, one of most beautiful places you could ever live. Bunch of people from my high school swim team, my college swim team, and my coworkers from Adidas raised a bunch of money and bought me a hand cycle, competitive hand cycle. So put it in a box, shipped it over to France with me and started getting out and slowly riding my old rides. The old training rides I have which are tough. I mean, these are at the Alps, right? It's a hand cycle. So took me so much longer to get up these climbs. And they were, it was really difficult. But then finally, one day, I got to the top of one of the big climbs around my neighborhood, and started shooting out on the backside of the mountain. And for the first time since I broke my back, I was screaming for joy. I was like, This is awesome. This is amazing. And I it was the really the turning point where I was like, I think there's a future here. I don't feel like killing myself every day. I just experienced something that was as profound as anything I had to the rest of my life from from my former life. I was like wow, there's still opportunities like this. I've got to go search for those opportunities. And so that put the travel bug back in me. And by the end of that trip I actually went to Israel and Egypt for for two weeks just to prove I could go travel by myself. They're not really super difficult countries, but they're not Europe either. So you know, and challenging country. Egypt, obviously more travel challenging than Israel, but just wanted to see if I could do it by myself and had just an amazing couple three weeks in Israel in Egypt and came back to America. Just really, really feeling energized by the whole experience.

09:55

Clark

That idea of just going for it really struck me in what you called your bridge to Venice rule. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that came to be and what it means?

10:08

Haig

That was the original title of the book was the bridge to Venice. And what it was my very first trip to Europe, as with my brother, Dan, and it's really funny, I left we've left America for a month in Europe, and I brought $300 with me. This is 19. What was it 1986. We kind of knew how much stuff costs because my brother had been living over there. But we needed more than $300. So we got to our last week, we had no money left, we had no money we had, we had like a half a tank of gas in the car. And we were in the Italian city of Trieste, which is right on the Slovenian Croatian border, that was Yugoslavia. And we had four or five days to kill before we, we had a friend of mine who's gonna send me a paycheck from home, he's gonna wire it to me American Express, but it wasn't gonna get there for four or five days. And we're like, well, we can sit here and Trieste, we can like blow our tank of gas so went to Yugoslavia and drove around. And we had, we had no money for food. We had like a red half a bottle of rum. We had some chocolate, you know, but we had no food. And I remember one time, we had like, enough money to buy some apples. And my brother goes into a bodega and pick some apples. And we looked so deep, like just emaciated that the art of the bed bodega, started throwing stuff into our bag, she was like, your boys look awful. And so we looked really, really bad. And we got to Venice, with one day left. And now we had like, enough gas to get to Verona where our our paycheck was coming in, we're sitting on the edge of Venice. It's a three mile bridge to get from the port, which is masked to Venice. We're like, Oh, my God, it's gonna be a three mile walk. We're gonna walk around all day and three miles back, and we have no food, no money. And we're like, most people would just like hanging out the car and just be like, we're good. We just traveled all around Europe. But we're like, no, that's not what we do. So we did, we walked across the bridge, we walked all around Venice all day on empty submenu to meal and like four or five days, like, this is the kind of stuff we decided to do, we decided we're going to push ourselves to the extreme. And if the choice is, do what's the date, or do what you don't know, you gotta go and do what you don't know, no matter what. And we had to on the way back to the car, you know, we're on the bridge to Venice, and, you know, silhouette of them Venice gone behind us with golden sunset. And we had this massive epiphany we're like, this is what we've decided to do. This is what we're going to do the rest of our lives is make these kinds of decisions. And we have 40 years later, and we have made those kinds of decisions at every turn.

13:04

Clark

And that rule, did it help you then after the accident?

13:07

Haig

At that time, it was almost mechanical memory or mechanical motor memory, where it's just like, you have to do this and I knew it was gonna be really tough. The other thing is like, I didn't have to go to Europe to bat to push myself, it was incredibly difficult in the beginning. Every day just to sit up just to get my bed or getting my wheelchair, you know, just pain all the time. So it didn't take you know, any extravagant situation. For those kinds of men that mentality to hop in, I had to do that mentality every single day. And I didn't succeed. I mean, there were days where I just was like, I can't do it, this is just too much. And then if you go back down, recollect yourself, Wait, chill out, patience, start up the next day. And, you know, eventually, you know, it took forever but you know, work my way through it. So that eventually would wake up feeling good in the morning. And that probably took at least five or six years before I actually would wake up on a daily basis. That feeling awful.

14:11

Clark

And when did you start doing the work around the world with disability communities and the education work that you've done?

14:18

Haig

So this is really great. Our nonprofit, we hosted a medical conference in the city of Kayseri, which is the middle of Turkey. So Cappodocia is the city it's near. A big tourist place, these beautiful rock formations. It's one at a time Caesarea. It comes from the Latin Gaius Julius Caesarea. So it means Caesar. And it's one of the oldest cities in Turkey. It hosts the oldest university on Earth. And that's where it's called Usiris University. And that's where we held our conference. And we had 80 doctors from all over the world. Doctor physical medicine doctors, and they all came and everyone presented papers. We did some team building exercises, that was really this amazing synergy among these 80 doctors. And that's when I met these doctors that were like, we need you to come to my clinic. We need you to come sit with my patients and tell them that there's life after spinal cord injury. And that was the foundation for the trips that I took that I was actually going to clinics where these doctors held, did their practice. And these were, I mean, it's like, you know, an Italian doctor working in Albania and Swiss doctor working in in Ghana. 

Nepal, nice guy we met at another conference a couple of years later, we had a conference in Bangladesh. And we ran into the only Nepali physiatrist. And he's in a chair himself. He's a guitar player. I'm a guitar player. And we just we hit it off right away. And it just like, we became like blood brothers right away. And Nepal had a big earthquake in 2015. And he was like, you'd have to come to my clinic. And I was like, absolutely. So I had to wait for a couple of months because a clinic that had 40 beds, they had 100 new spinal cord patients in one day. So they had to set up triage tents in their parking lot. And they got these tents for like the Pakistani army. We got to see her survives first and you know, who's Okay, they're going to survive without immediate care. And this went on for about four months. And after four months, he was like, yeah, it's ready. We're ready for you to come. And that's when I went over there with my cameras and tripods and microphones and we ended up shooting 30 videos on things like physical therapy, occupational therapy, nursing, disability awareness, we got involved with a sports group. So we shot one there's a Katmandu, wheelchair basketball league, not even elite. They've got eight men's teams and three women's teams in the city of Katmandu, so shot something on that and just shot something underneath that nip Ali's disability, disabled tennis table tennis. Society is one of the most popular sports is table tennis. And so they've got this massive table tennis facility that crushed in the earthquake, and they rebuilt it. And we did a video for the opening. And it was amazing, because I had a bunch of old stills of the building being crushed. And then I had pictures of them working on it. And then for the big finale, I had pictures of just the day before the opening when they're painting and you know, the place was completely built. And the video so the short video two minutes, but I switched from black and white, they did like a Wizard of Oz thing. Switch from black and white. The music was like traditional Nepalese, and then I went right to hardcore rock and roll and everything's in color just exploded in color. And the audience must have been 200-250 people there exploded, they exploded as if they've just seen a gold score in the World Cup. As a filmmaker that never happens to you. You don't. You don't go see your film people might go. Polite applause but this was an absolutely explosion of joy. And I looked at my buddy who's architect. in a wheelchair architect, and we just had like tears coming down our eyes were like, we were not expecting that reaction. You know? So if you find these gems, they do happen if you go out there and make an effort.

18:33

Clark

That's wonderful. So you know, kind of you're talking about the videos that you're making. I just, it's been on my mind. How did you end up going to WSU? Why, why did you pick by to pick Washington state?

18:47

Haig

That's a great story too. What it was, I was a freelance web and web print and copywriter. I did this for about seven years. And I was barely paying rent. And my dad talked to me one day and he's like, is this what you want to do the rest of your life and I was like now it's like, I don't want to go back and be a because I want to I want to be a journalist. Partly prior to that I had worked on the Adidas paper. I was the Adidas corporate writer. And I was like, I want to go back and do that. I want to go back and become a journalist. And he was like, let's do it. And I was like, it's college. It's really expensive. He goes, I don't care. You look for the school. I'll find the money. I went out that night with a friend of mine went to watch a college football game at the sports bar and I'm talking to my friend and some guy over here's me. He was a basketball player for the Cougs. He'd been out of college for about 15 years. And he was like, dude, because I was talking where do I go, to Oregon because they've got this journalism program. And I heard about the Cronkite School down in Arizona State and I figured the Bay Area or UCLA, you know, but they're super expensive, whatever. And he's dude, dude, you need to go to the Murrow College at Washington State, which I had never heard of. And he's like, he's like Edward R. Murrow, Keith Jackson came out of the school and stuff. And we had a laptop so we looked at. I looked at it and I was like, get out and he's goes, yeah, it's the best broadcast school, anywhere in the Pac-12 In these if not top five in the country. And I just was like Washington State and Pullman. I had to look on the map to see where Pullman was. And I was like, that's, and I'm like, ‘How is that a broadcasting place above UCLA?’ I started looking into it, it was like, No, Wazzu is the place. They have the best broadcasting thing in the Pac-12. 

And so I applied to I got accepted to a grad program. And then when I finally showed up on campus, it was like, it was a graduate school and communications and they're studying like phonemes and morphemes. I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to go on TV. So I dropped out of the game grad program and took went in for the second undergrad program. In in broadcasting. I also started looking for financing, and I found a group out of USC, they're called Swim with Mike. And they have this massive endowment that they built over the last 35 years they had a swim swimmer at USC named Mike Nyeholt, who broke his back and they started raising money so he could stay on a scholarship. And it went overboard now they've got this massive endowment, and they give full staff full scholarships to disability to athletes with disability. And I applied for it. And they gave me a full scholarship. It just this pieces started falling into place a full scholarship moved to Pullman in the middle of winter, which crazy snow like two feet the day before, and I'm like, There's no way I can get around this campus and figured out how that worked. 

And then, yeah, I met Glenn Johnson and I was like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get through this. And then Glenn kind of took me under his wing and, you know, shepherded me through this process and met these amazing professors like Leroy Ashby, who was Washington State Professor of the Year and Dave Jarvis, who is really became like this guy in my corner and stuff and I didn't get good grades at the University of Illinois but Pullman man, I graduated cum laude from Pullman just because I was so entertained. I was entertained all the time.

22:13

Clark

Yeah, that's wonderful. And all those professors you're talking about in are just they're brilliant. Dave Jarvis last year playing here in town.

22:21

Haig

We jammed together over at Rico's. Yeah, we did a piece we did a two minute piece and it started out with me outside doing the stand up and then went inside and the with the Jarvis. Jarvis Dozier quartet We played the Steve Martin tune. Oh my god. He's dancing with his face. King Tut, We'll use it as part of the piece. It's really great piece.

22:51

Clark

I'm pretty sure plenty of our alumni that are listening have pretty fond memories of listening to music at Rico's I know I do.

22:57

Haigh

Oh, absolutely. It's my favorite things.

23:01

Clark

It's great to hear that you were able to take those skills and everything you learned, you know, at WSU and use it to make these films do you still do that kind of work?

23:09

Haig

When I can say for the City of Portland, I, we do documentary and that documentaries, we do training films. So I do get to use that as much as I'd like here. But that's, that's one of my gigs here is I produce videos for bike events and things like that.

23:23

Clark

So I was gonna ask you about the book. How did that come about? Did you always have in mind that you'd like to write a memoir? or did somebody inspire you to do it?

23:30

Haig

Yeah, I always did. And what it was when I first got my diving job, I was always a writer, I did much better in writing classes than anything else. And then when I got my first diving job, or actually my first trip is trip to you to Europe. When we got stuck in Yugoslavia. I became like an avid journalist or journal writer, especially when I started diving, I realized my friends were all going to grad school, they were starting their first jobs. They're doing internships, some of them are went out to Colorado for the ski bones and stuff like that. And I was jumping off of things and getting paid for it. Sounds like this is an odd way to make a living and having these great adventures meeting people that did this and traveling in between the shows traveling around Europe. So I started just journaling, just journaling, journaling, journaling. I didn't just write down notes, I would write them down at full length stories, assuming that I would take these journals and turn them into a book at some point. God ended up having about 2000 pages of journals throughout the diving episode, whatever. And then I got it home and I put it together into a some kind of book form. And I wanted to sell that book and I couldn't get a buyer for that. 

And after I broke my back, I moved to India and my brother, other brother, Dan was the webmaster for the Dalai Lama and worked in the first Tibetan and computer resource lab. So I actually quit my job at Adidas before my job was drying up. But I quit and moved over to Dharamsala, India, that's when I really started putting together the whole book. And I probably sat there for five to six hours a day for three to four months and just wrote, If I didn't have my journals with me, my journals were all in the States. But this is when I had the time. This is when I was like, you don't have time like this in your life. This was precious time. And so I just started writing. And I just dove in and wrote the whole thing from memory. And then I take notes. And when I came back home, I'd fill in blocks that I didn't have. But I wrote the whole thing from memory. And then under paying about 600 pages, in which I knew it was therapy. I mean, I'm not cool. You're kidding. It was therapy, I needed to rediscover who I was as someone in a wheelchair. And this really was helping me and there are periods, like I'd write about the accident, and I was crying, I had to put it down for like a day or two and then go back to it. And it was really tough getting through that part, ended up with a, you know, a good chunk of book and I started pushing that when I got home. And then I found an agent, and she believed in it. She wanted it to go. But she couldn't find anyone to take on the project. And she was like, the problem is you're not famous. 

So ended up at that point, getting heavily involved with the International rehabilitation forum, and going on these trips and spending, you know, four or five months at a time again, living in these countries. And I started writing again and filling in every time I'd come home from a trip I'd write up that put it back in, had to throw out something from the old book, eventually, after this last trip to Senegal wrote up the whole Senegal and that ended up in a really great crazy adventure. Getting back getting to the embassy flight, oh, chopped it down to a palatable 330 pages or whatever it is, and submitted it. I submitted at first to the University of Illinois, University of Illinois press, and they were like, we don't do books like that. 

And then I submitted it to Wazzu. And Linda Bathgate picked up the book, she liked it. And she was like, this is exactly what we're looking for. We're looking for faculty and student memoirs. And we're going to launch a new subsidiary called basalt books. And this is exactly what we're looking for. And I could not believe the email when I'm reading this. I'm like, Wait, when you didn't say you're going to do it. And then as I entered the show, you're going to actually publish this thing. And she's like, absolutely. And I was floored because it literally had been 38-39 years from conception to the fact where someone bought into the project and God of Washington State isn't like the land of opportunity. I just don't know what it is. And it's, I mean, yeah, people like you know, I didn't get to get into U DUB, so I gotta go to Wazzu. Screw that man. Wazzu is the land of opportunity there save you take advantage of what's available to you and Pullman, you can't fail. I mean, there's just so much talent and the faculty and the attitude and the students and just very career driven people that Wazzu and just love the place to pieces.

28:03

Clark

Yeah, I'm so excited it worked out. The timing was perfect. For our listeners, Linda Bathgate is the excellent editor of WSU press and Basalt Books had just basically been launched, right? It was like this new imprint they're doing.

28:19

Haig

Third, if I'm not mistaken?

28:20

Clark

I think you're right. Because I remember talking to Linda a couple of years ago about Basalt Books. And this was exactly what her vision was, you know, this telling these stories of WSU alumni and people around the state, compelling stories. And I have to say, you know, looking at the book, I can tell you know, you took amazing notes and wrote journals, the storytelling and the details throughout the book are really gripping. So I know when readers pick up this book, and hopefully a lot of them will, you know, this was, this was some excellent reading.

28:51

Haig

And I wish I could claim, that's all my genius, but I have two amazing editors as well. And they are my sister Barb, who is a professional PR consultant, actually works for Johnson Controls, but she's editor extraordinaire. Also my brother Dan, who works for a company that takes old English and French manuscripts and puts them up online for libraries to sell pretty crazy. They would be like, you need to flesh this out more because I knew all these people, right? And I have these ideas in my head and they're like, and there are lots of exercises like this along with like comma and you know, the regular editing stuff like that. From what I get other people get through the book, which it's kind of an egotistical thing to ask someone, here go take 10 hours of your life and spend it on me. And so hopefully they're getting the payoff and they're not wasting their time. And early reviews are that it's reasonable, people do get through it. They don't get like this is looking at work stuff. They actually are getting through it so pretty happy the way it turned out.

29:52

Clark

For people who are going to read this book, what do you want them to learn from it? 

29:58

Haig

First off I hope they get a laugh out of it. I mean that so, you know, that was the original intent of starting to writing is that it was really crazy way to live. And there were crazy adventures involved with this. So I hope they get like a drop job kind of like laugh at the first part. And the second part, it's like the, once you experience something like that, you gotta find it again, you got to find those laughs You got to find those experiences. And the only way you do it is like I say, just dive in, you got to just go after it. 

And God, it's like, I mean, that sounds like Oh, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And for me, it was not that easy. And I was depressed for a very long, severely depressed and people talk about suicide and suicidal ideation, I was beyond that I had a plan, I was ready to off myself. And I had to check myself, had a really great psychiatrist that my rehab, there was a Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which is actually where my brother did his internship, and psychiatrists there gave me this clue or a great trick. And she said, when you get depressed, as far as you have, where you're down suicidal, the next time, anything bad happens, you're not going to get just a little depressed, you're gonna go right down to that basement, you are going to be in the basement for anything, you will burn your omelet, you will miss a bus you will do you know anything that is slightly disturbing. Instead of being slightly disturbed, though, you're gonna write down to that basement. And she's like, you have to realize that and you have to be able to pull yourself out of that situation, evaluate what really happened here is there's something I can fix, right? And how do I fix it and try to keep yourself out of that basement, because it really only one thing to put you in the basement, it's breaking your back. Everything else is not going to be that bad. But at the time, I couldn't see that. I could not see that. 

So it took a long time. So I mean, if you read through the book, you know, you get through it a couple hours ago, you got through that really great. And it's like, no, it took a long time. And it was not easy. And I had to ask for help. And I had to be willing to accept the help that people were giving me, which is not something I was used to doing before. I really had before I was like, do whatever I want. And I'm diving and getting paid for it. This is a great life. And now I had to ask people for help, and be willing to accept it. So I hope people can get that from the book. 

I mean, you know, just think of those first couple months of the pandemic were like, What is this one? Does it ever end? My mother died in the first month of the pandemic, and we couldn't have anyone come to her funeral. Couldn't have more than seven people in a gathering at that point. My mother is incredibly social woman, you know, things like this, which drop you, and we all we all experienced it together, which is, you know, just extraordinary. And I hope. I mean, I don't think people have gotten over that yet. I think it's because there's a long lasting effect, because now everyone's like, Oh, that was two years. I'm just gonna forget. It's like, it's not good to forget stuff like that.

32:56

Clark

And I think your book offers some really good insight. And some, hopefully, you know, people can really get that lesson from it. And where can people find out all this information about the book tour things that you're up to?

33:08

Haig

Easy as can be go to WSU press, Google WSU Press and put global nomad in the search bar and all the information pops out. Perfect news, we can buy the book bad news is we sold out in the first run. So it might be a little might be a little step before books end up at your doorstep.

33:26

Clark

And thanks for joining me today. Any last words for Cougar nation, listeners to the podcast? 

33:33

Haig

Yeah, feeling down, go look for some help. And if you're having a good time, ride it and Go Cougs. Go Cougs all day.

33:41

Clark

Thanks for listening to Viewscapes. 

You can read a review of Tom's memoir in the summer 2023 issue of Washington State Magazine.

magazine@magazine.wsu.edu 

Our music was by WSU Emeritus Professor Greg Yasinitsky.