September 15, 2024

#95 / I Survived Everything

In which he discovers a title for his newsletter.

I've left my job.

It wasn't an easy decision. I enjoy being a software developer. I especially like working at a small consultancy, where I know everyone, and where there’s lots of self-direction and minimal bureaucracy. I make a good salary; it’s a great living.

Someday I might work as a software developer again. Eventually I will need to make some money. I’ll probably return to the exact same company.

For now, I need a change. I need space. I need time to process, and time to be, and time to ask some important questions of the universe, and time to wait to see if I get any answers.

Revealing that I have the financial resources to forgo an income, even for a limited time, feels uncomfortable. I feel guilty that I have the privilege to do it, although I’m pretty sure when people find out it’s because of life insurance money¹, they’re not inclined to take me to task.

Another word for privilege is opportunity. I am taking an opportunity that has been given to me, one which I did not ask for and definitely did not want. Privilege is given, not earned, but that doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t be used for good.

Despite my trepidation, when I’ve told people about this decision, I’ve been open with them about how I’m able to swing it. It’s in accordance with my new motto:

OWN YOUR STORY

The reason I haven’t always lived this way, I think, is fear of judgment by others. Probably as a result of lacking confidence in my own choices. The fear, when I’m telling someone my story, creates uncertainty, including with the parts of the story that are straight-up facts, like where I get my money. (Difficulty talking money is a very American thing.)

My fear of external judgment became intertwined with a sort of preemptive judgment that occurs exclusively between my two ears. While some things we say and think ought to be judged, in my relationships, I’ve historically erred too far to the side of excessive self-judgment, which leads to self-censorship, which shows up as withholding myself from others. It’s a form of hiding.

The #1 thing I’ve learned from choosing to undergo my grief process semi-publicly is, withholding breeds withholding. You can’t get what you need from other people if you’re not giving anything of yourself. Even if the only thing you are giving them is your trauma, your pain, and your sorrow.

It doesn’t feel like anyone would ever want that. But if it happened, it happened. If you’re feeling it, you’re feeling it. The world is not neat and clean, no matter what the White Claw commercials tell you. When people care about you, they will accept your pain, and they will transmute it back to you as love. People are powerful that way. You just have to give them the chance. You just have to.

Vulnerability generates empathy. And vulnerability requires honesty. It requires calling things what they are. It requires owning my story. Because it’s mine, because it’s all I’ve got, and because if I don’t, who will?

What’s Next

You may be asking, “What on earth is this guy going to do with his time?” (Maybe you aren’t asking this question, at least not with that tone, but I’m thinking you’re asking it.)

Short answer: lots of stuff! So much stuff. (See how satisfying that was?!)

Longer answer (which may not feel any more satisfying): this is a period of discovery. And not a new period. This is a resumption: I am returning to a period of fundamental discovery I never completed.

I think a lot of people—no, let me be more specific—some of the people I’ve known and/or looked up to, for many reasons, none of which are important to me anymore, figured out what they wanted to do with their lives by their early 20s. Not that they figured everything out: I’m talking about (to give a completely unrelated example) people who were writing short stories for fun, or who were on the college newspaper, or who posted on Livejournal—and had been doing earlier versions of such things for as long as they could remember—and became published authors. People who found (or were found by) a calling and stuck with it.

Whereas for me, things became more confusing as I got older, not less, which was made more challenging by the fact that I often understood exactly how confused I felt, if not why.

It’s gonna take me way too long to explain it in an email, so let’s try to state the simple version of the story: when I was younger, I gradually lost track of who I really was. Other concerns and anxieties got in the way. I went on a long journey, off the path.

To be clear, it wasn’t all bad. Far from it. I met someone out there in the wilderness, and we made a great life together. I’ve got no regrets about this. There’s no one to blame. I survived everything, and I’m here to tell the story.

Only, it took a while, and life is short.

I’m a creator. An artist. A writer, yeah, but not just that. When I was a kid I made websites and computer games and LEGO scale models of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I collected baseball cards and made up dice games and read books and enjoyed visual art, and I’ve always been drawn to other people who made these things—the weirder the better. Outside the realms of biology and geography, creativity is my most consistent, longest-lasting identity.

I need money to live, and acclaim feels great, but I don’t make stuff for either of those reasons. Anyone who knew me when I was a toddler knows that I was a very curious child. (Double entendre 100% intended—if you talk to someone from my family, ask them about the garbage cans.) I followed my interests wherever they led, and I had a lot of interests. I liked to share what I found. I am rediscovering myself through this lens. I am rediscovering discovery itself.

My discovery process began resuming in earnest a few years ago. Maybe it didn’t resume; it became less dormant, more activated. For simplicity’s sake, and because it’s poetic, let’s choose a specific day, the day I sent out my first issue of this newsletter: March 15, 2020². A momentous time in the world! Between that date and the date my life changed forever—November 11, 2023—I wrote and published 93 of these things. People read them and (was this you??) gave me beautiful, treasured compliments. I started other writing projects during that time, and finished a couple of the smaller ones. It seemed like slow going to me—the gap remained³—but there was progress. I had plans.

None of it played out the way I thought. Once I lost Ashley, the whole process accelerated. I am starting to feel (again) the way I’ve always wanted to feel about myself, artistically—the way I used to feel when I was little and didn’t need to hang a name on it, when I didn’t need to protect my Inner Art Friend from any adultness—but it’s sure as hell not the way I wanted to arrive here. I might've been fine continuing to transform more gradually, balancing⁴ my creative explorations with the joys and demands of a marriage and a job.

Who knows what would have happened? Someone forgot to give me my magic 8-ball. It was never for me to say. If only life allowed us to exercise such fine-grained control over it.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

No truer words were ever spoken. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop asking questions. What fun would that be?

The occasionally unsatisfying thing about discovery is that it needs to be somewhat open-ended; the entire point is that you don’t know exactly what’s out there. You don't know what's really inside you. You don't know what you're capable of, or what's in store for you.

It might be everything you always wanted. You have to go and see.

I can see the outline of something in the distance—beckoning.

Just gotta cross the water to get there.

So stay tuned.

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P.S. Like Atlantic City, and Nebraska football fans, whatever figurative city I am building will probably be stuck in the 90s.

P.P.S. The beach literally has no name on Google Maps. If you know what it's called, do tell me. I'm curious.