A Weekend of Wellness

I am convinced that there are times when a double chocolate chip cookie is a great wellness choice. Hands down.

Refueling with good friends is also a healthy way to spend a weekend, even if it includes doing things that are not all that healthy.

Here our Associate Creative Director, Stu Fink, recounts his weekend of wellness.

Hope this finds you well -- Jim.

Take it away, Stu:

I have not seen The Hangover. I bring this up because every single person I’ve told about my weekend has asked enthusiastically, “was it like The Hangover?”

You see, I just spent three nights and four days in Lake Tahoe with six of my high school friends. Seems our last single friend is finally getting married. And while we were under strict orders from his fiancé that “this is not a bachelor party,” it was a bachelor party. And while there were no tigers or Mike Tyson sightings, it was still seventy-two hours of debauchery.

In the interest of not getting myself fired, the details are unimportant. What is important is that while I was simultaneously treating my body like a trailer park, I can’t remember the last time I felt so good. OK, physically, there were some mornings…and afternoons, and well, late nights as well, that I was worse for wear. But emotionally, spiritually and mentally, I felt like I was seventeen again.

Yes, being with my friends had something to do with it. The hot tub probably also had something to do with it. As did the great music and delicious food. But, come on, it was a bachelor party. Why do think I felt so good?

The impetus for this posting came to me while I was watching “17 Again” on the plane ride home. Give me a break, after what I just experienced, I needed a little Disney clean.

In case you don’t know, this is a movie about what happens when Chandler from Friends magically transforms into a coiffed mound of chestnut hair, so that he can go back to high school and fix….something. I wasn’t clear on what exactly.

By the way, I’m told the hair is named Zac Efron. The movie wasn’t actually that bad, though it was the longest commercial for abstinence I’ve ever seen. Put it this way, if I found out the movie was funded by the Catholic Church, I wouldn’t bat an eye. Anyway, it got me thinking, was there anything from high school that I’d like the opportunity to go back and change? And then I realized, of course not. I literally just spent the last three days doing just about every stupid thing I ever did in high school.

Nobody ever said the path to wellness was a straight arrow. Sometimes, in order to feel good you gotta spend a little time being bad.

Again, for the sake of keeping my job, let me stress, “a little time.” At one point during the weekend, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I noticed the collection of medications sitting on the counter. There were pills for anxiety, allergies, acid reflux, chronic headaches, blood pressure and high cholesterol. My first thought was, “why is all this old-person medicine here?” And then, of course, I remembered, some of that medicine was mine.

So, all right, we’re not as young as we were in high school. And as the bathroom pharmacy made crystal clear, not as healthy either. But did we care? Not for three nights and four days we didn’t. We were having fun.

Dumb, irresponsible, potentially liver-damaging fun. And it was great. We were great.

We were together and we were well.

- Stuart Fink, Associate Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness