My Autobiography

(Page Update 1/1/26)

The what, where, when, who, how, and why of the Optima Bowling site, the experiences, outcomes, and lessons taught and learned, are about me, the Optima Bowling Coach, sharing essentially as a historical, autobiographical life. It all starts and ends with my life iterations of purpose, knowledge, understanding, and experiences from my livelihood development.

The relationship between existence and the individual is one's autobiography, the current lifespan story. All that one has accomplished—the up-to-the-moment outcomes of the individual's existence ever wedged between the past and the future.

I offer you, my autobiography.

I am currently retired in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, and still bowling a bit. This story and the Optima Bowling site present a narrative of life, human development, conscious performance, athletics, and other interests as my pathway to individual evolution. Written with the help of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control. The LPPC model operates through and creates moment-to-moment outcomes, a life story that is, by definition, only in the present. During the individual's current lifespan LPPC models the phrase, "living as essentially a historical, autobiographical life", experienced in real-time, in the now, in the present, reflecting on recorded past experiences, which can also assist in predicting one's future livelihood development, as a reference, a system concept perception, or world view, that one intends to control in the present.

My Most Important Transition:

In 1968, graduating as a promising local athlete, as seen today in hindsight, I decided to make the transition from a life of ignoring worlds to begin working upon worlds. In many ways, you will see that 1968 was a pivotal year for me and the World, a crazy world for sure; in his section of California, USA, now known as Silicon Valley, the average home sells for $1,500,000 (2023). Here, resting between the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay, the Santa Clara Valley, once upon a time, was distinguished as the "Valley of Hearts Delight" for its scenic beauty, mild climate, and thousands of acres of blooming fruit trees. Eight million fruit trees blanketed Santa Clara County between the 1880s and 1940s, creating, wrote Wallace Stegner, "springs that were Milky Ways of blossoms, and summers rich and overripe with fruit."

Back then, after the family's 10-mile move south down Highway 101 from our tiny East Palo Alto house, while living in Sunnyvale, CA, between 1956 and 1968, you'd find me, the athlete, participating and sometimes competing in seven sports during my formative years: baseball, football, swimming and diving, track and field, gymnastics, basketball, and bowling. As a several-time individual champion, three-time team champion, and identified in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League (SCVAL) media guide before the 1967 football season as a "tremendous athlete, good sense of balance, quick, broken-field runner, the biggest problem is size—he lacks it, but makes up for it with his quickness, tough and aggressive".

High school graduation came with a couple of college football offers. But due to my transition decision, it was college, yes, and competitive sports, no. 1968, that pivotal year, I began to focus my consciousness development upon the physical-etheric, emotional, and mental-causal worlds. Thus, what I call the "ten years of college with no degree period", during which, from 1968 to 1985, I enjoyed studying as a serial student in five majors: Engineering, environmental design, business, cultural history, and photography. But, as far as sports were concerned, I never stopped playing; I just didn't perform in coach-led competitions. However, that was to change in the late 1980s.

The bowling, marriage, baby, real job phase:

Baby, STV, was born in 1990 (4th generation Californian), making 1990 another pivotal year in my life. I was unaware of any other happenings around the world that year, and, as for my transitional working upon worlds of Man: the physical-etheric, emotional, and mental-causal, even though progressing nicely, that work suddenly took a back seat. But as you'll see, only for a few years. During this phase, bowling (and a bit of golf) and bowling coaching (after work and on the weekends) with the kids (the wife had two from a previous marriage) grabbed most of my free time. So, long story short, before officially retiring from face-to-face coaching in 2023, I was coaching as an American Bowling Congress (ABC) Junior Coach from 1995 and a United States Bowling Congress (USBC) "trained" Level I through Silver coach since 2009.

Competitive bowling and coaching phase 1986-2018:

In 1998, I took a two-year look at joining the PBA Senior Tour (now called the PBA50 Tour). Before 1998, I had been competing in the Amateur Bowlers Tour (ABT) events in San Jose, CA, but to compete at the professional level, I needed a coach. My ball-driller, Nick Melnikoff, introduced me to Len Nicolson (now in the Hall of Fame). Len's lessons at Earl Anthony's Dublin Bowl quickly changed my perception of competitive bowling. Thus, I began to win some ABT Masters events. From there, I moved up to bowl in two senior tours, the Northern California Senior Tour and the West Coast Senior Tour, to take on some PBA champions and others living in the West. I enjoyed the experience for a couple of years, and cashed in a few stops, but I was never a champion. So, in June 2000, one week before my first tournament, I said goodbye to the PBA Senior Tour.

Coaching and league bowling continued as an enjoyable and rewarding part of my life until the 2018 stroke; I had quite a fight to recover. Then, after the two-year COVID lockdown, I returned to strength workouts and league bowling in 2022, hired coach Bill Hall, applied Bill's perceptions on the game, and began to improve: A 2nd-place finish in division B at the Southern Nevada Senior Tournament and cashed in a couple of ABT, Las Vegas, NV events. And since returning, I've maintained respectable senior league averages: 174 in 2023, 172 in 2024 with a high game of 276, and 176 in 2025. Note: Career highs are a 300 game (3/12/1987) and an 834 series (1/9/1999).

The divorce and the baby's death period:

As mentioned, I temporarily dropped organized sports competitions during the last half of 1968 to attend to the question, what the hell is wrong with this crazy world of ours? Between the years of the divorce in 2008 and the death of the baby in 2022 (STV was 31, died from Covid), my focus was again totally on the transition from ignoring worlds to working upon worlds. Which, now, from the hindsight of 12/18/23, I know as individual consciousness development, the meaning of life. And somehow, has always been a weak causal intuitive life view of mine.

During this stage, my scholar period, a resolution to the 1968 question finally materialized. The future beyond this crazy world of ours is what the Optima Bowling Coach is championed to convey. Simply put, it is the responsibility of every human being to transition from ignoring worlds to working upon worlds through self-research for self-development. It is simple to conceive, but you might say it is very difficult to apply in a crazy world. This condition is what some might call a catch-22. But, as they say, only the strong survive.

Knowledge and Understanding:

Now, to be fair, when I share what they call wisdom, it is drawn from historical accounts, from hindsight, from remembrance of my past experiences, and from research for my development, processed through a weak (blind) intuition at the level of mental-causal consciousness.

Actual causal intuition opens the world of ideas and correct knowledge of reality, acquired through perspective and systems thinking operating within the mechanism of perceptual control.

Please, enjoy my site.

Bruce C. Vann (USBC Silver Level and Optima Bowling Coach)

See More: Human Development and Changing Axioms