I feel like I should preface this with the notion that I live within the idea that life is hard. Yes, it’s as cliché as it gets, but let me dive a little deeper into that rabbit hole. Life is hard, and I also believe it is supposed to be hard. If this fucking thing was easy, everyone would do it and we would all get out of it alive. Things that are worth doing are hard and meant to be hard.

The caveat is this: what is hard for one person might not be hard for someone else and vice versa. Which, for me, ties in with something I’ve mentioned before, and will probably mention a lot. Stop comparing yourself to others. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Only you are living your life, so if something is hard for you, then fuck, it’s hard. People who disagree can pound sand. THEY ARE NOT LIVING YOUR LIFE!!!

I don’t know if my life has really been all that interesting. Sure, it has had some good times, some fabulous and strangely fun times, and of course some dreadful ones. But that’s okay. Life has to have both. It has to have joy and suffering. You can’t have one without the other, so tough shit, deal with it, because life is going to keep moving forward whether you’re ready for it or not.

I’m not exactly sure that’s how I wanted to open this. However, that’s where my brain went, so fuck it, that’s how this little journey of words is going to start. I hope you have your PPE on because this exploration of thoughts could get a little bumpy. Puke bags are not included. But I really want whoever in the hell reads this to sit back and do some introspective thinking about themselves, the space they occupy, the world they’re currently living in, and the world they hope to occupy.

Statistically, I’m not really that old. But between you, me, and whatever “post” you want to insert there, sometimes I feel old, and my knees, back, shoulders, and crack agree with me. That’s probably because even though I tend to move quietly along the margins of life, I’ve treated myself more like an amusement park than a temple. I’m fine with that. I have the stories, scars, regrets, and pain, both physical and emotional, to go along with it. What’s life worth living for if you don’t have a little pain? It took me a long time to realize this, but with pain comes growth. And with growth doesn’t necessarily come a better life, at least not for me, but a life with different perspectives and meanings. Pain, to me, is somewhat of a muse.

That said, who in the actual fuck wants to live in constant pain? I don’t. It takes growth to recover from pain, but for me it takes pain to realize I need to grow. It’s a vicious circle, but one I need in order to keep discovering who in the fuck I actually am. There’s something about being stagnant and unfulfilled that makes my stomach turn like I drank the water in Mexico. Nobody deserves that kind of toilet trouble.

The older I get, the more I realize life is both crazy long and incredibly short. So I find myself thinking about mortality. Not just mine, everyone’s. I wonder if they think about it too. And if they do, do they fear an unfinished version of themselves the way I do?

It might seem morbid, but I think it’s healthy to think about mortality. To ask yourself whether the life you’re living is actually being lived, or if changes need to be made to make it full and enriched. One thing my life has experienced a fair amount of is death. I know a lot of people have experienced death, and everyone deals with it differently. The first time I truly remember feeling it, I was in sixth grade. Those memories and feelings live rent-free in my head, and thank God for that. I wouldn’t want to forget. I think that’s around the time I really started thinking about mortality. Not as deeply as I do now, but the thought never left. As life moved on and I got older, death showed up more often. The more I dealt with it, the more I matured, even though I still sometimes have the maturity level of a teenager riddled with anger issues. Over time, I stopped fearing death and started respecting it.

And somewhere in that shift, I started questioning myself more. What do I need to do so that when it’s my time to drift back to the stars, I don’t feel unfinished? I’m still wandering that winding road. This is just one of its curves. But for once, it feels like I might be headed in a direction that leads to a more fulfilled and less unfinished life.

One thing I’ve worked on to make my life feel more finished is not quitting. I’ve tried so many things, and quit most of them. Sometimes from lack of interest. Sometimes because I thought I wasn’t good enough. Eventually, quitting became my M.O.

Now this might go against the grain, but most of my thoughts do. I don’t always think quitting is bad. It’s generally labeled weakness or cowardice. But for me, quitting helped me figure out what I don’t like, what I’m not good at, and what doesn’t light me up. Trying and quitting is still trying. It’s better than never trying at all.

If you never try, you’ll never know what you truly enjoy.

I wonder how many people stay in jobs they don’t enjoy because they’re comfortable, afraid of change, or just need the paycheck. I’ve been guilty of that. I might still be. But I’m trying to find the thing that fills my cup. Change is hard because it pulls you out of comfort. And this, this little thing I started, has pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that even typing this makes me anxious about posting it. But whether it’s good or bad, whether I’m a terrible writer or not, I am enjoying the shit out of it. Every time I finish something, my cup fills a little more. Maybe this is what I’m meant to do. Maybe it isn’t. But it’s filling me more than 50%, and for now, I can live with that.

I tend to believe trying new things helps define who we are. It helps us find the things that make us feel finished when we fade into the light and dance with the endless eternity of the unknown.

Maybe this is just the perspective of a slightly unbalanced, still-picking-up-the-pieces, lost soul trying to find his way.

But here’s what I know.

I don’t fear death.

I fear getting to the end and realizing I played it safe. That I stayed comfortable. That I left parts of myself unexplored because I was scared to look stupid or fail.

I don’t want to reach whatever final curtain call this thing has in store and wonder who I could have been.

I want to drift back into whatever cosmic waiting room we came from thinking,

“Fuck… that was a ride.”

Not perfect. Not polished. Not safe.

But finished.