Never Put Yourself in A Situation

My mother’s lifelong advice to me had always been to never put myself in a situation that I can’t get myself out of. I think about this often.

Sitting at a stoplight checking rearview mirrors, riding the bike, finances.

I do find that I have to push the limits however.

How else do you find what you’re able to get out of?

Now I find that maybe the advice should be “if you can find the words for it, you can talk yourself into it but never put yourself in a situation you can’t get yourself out of.”

Wordy.

I’m so blessed.

I’m watching my life become precisely what I envisioned it would be.

I’m racing bikes. I’m writing everyday. I’m making music every day. I get to volunteer at the soup kitchen on Friday.

I’m volunteering at the soup kitchen the same day I have a song releasing.

And I think I’m a little more excited to volunteer at the soup kitchen if we’re being honest.

Food at the end of it all is my love language. I don’t think anybody should be fucking hungry man.

Nobody should be hungry and it’s a shame that hunger is even an issue in a world that has enough of everything for everyone.

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I talked to my mom for some time today and she brought up how much she’s heard Long Island has changed.

“They always said though, if you leave the island, you won’t be able to afford to move back.”

I haven’t found too much joy in visiting since I’ve moved so I wonder if it’s more of a spiritual thing than it is monetary.

Long Island is a weird fucking place.

You got—

Tesla Coils, Brookhaven National Lab, Camp Hero, King’s Park Psych Center, the colonial history, the Native Americans, Plum Island, Shelter Island, I could go on and on..

But it’s really just — a world of lore and I don’t think there’s anywhere else in this country like it.

For better or for worse.

It’s like a compressed version of the United States.

The north shore is a different world from the south shore, the east end a different world from the west.

I think the last time I was there it would have been November.

I can’t stand to go to Long Island anytime between Halloween and like the Spring Equinox.

There’s no life it feels like.

I don’t know why it’s that way. It could be seasonal depression. The lack of light.

Pattern recognition.

There was the one year .. my senior year where I was grounded through that period of time.

Once went to a Halloween party comfortable in just a t-shirt and woke up the next morning to snow on the ground. Like an on/off switch.

The year I left—

Squatting in my childhood home from October until just after the Spring equinox when I would have left for basic training.

It’s mind blowing actually to work a fulltime job and not be able to afford housing.

I worked a fulltime job, but couldn’t afford housing. I wasn’t even close to being able to afford housing.

If I could have afforded housing, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the utilities. If I could afford the utilities, I wouldn’t have been able to afford all that came with a car.

I worked a fulltime job.

I had no degree or skills to upgrade my situation.

What the fuck are people doing on Long Island actually?

There’s no room for anything other than— being enslaved.

This is a terrifying realization. I feel like I knew but— it’s terrifying.

I shopped at whole foods twice a month, just so I could get the best rice and beans and oatmeal—

I was a vegetarian so I wasn’t getting any meat. That probably helped.

My fuel was free because of my job.

My car insurance was a considerable amount of my monthly income.

I could treat myself with a couple slices of pizza every friday.

I went to the library if I needed a computer.

The gym if I needed a shower.

I was in great fucking shape at the time too.

I was in great fucking shape as a consequence of my life at the time.

Running helped keep my mental health in check.

I didn’t have hot water most of the time but I could afford a gym membership.

I never wanted anyone to know I was just going to the gym to take a shower so I always got a work out in.

I’m a two shower a day sorta guy more often than not.

I was working in labor.

My physical capacity begins to make more sense.

Pushing my body to its physical limit nearly everyday and refueling it with fucking rice and beans, oatmeal, and peanut butter & jelly.

Fueled by a search for the exit door.

Making the most of what I had.

Signing away my life just to get the fuck out of the situation I was in.

Eight year old me wanted to join the Air Force under completely different circumstances. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, I would have gone to the Air Force Academy or done ROTC. Still signing my life away but at least it looks pretty.

I don’t think I would have ever imagined that it’d look like me having no other real options.

I don’t say this— in an ungrateful tone.

This is all that had to happen for me to get to where I am now.

Reality is an odd thing.

Watching it all render as you begin to notice more and more of its plot devices.

Noticing the plot.

A lifelong search for a plot.

Death.

Only to be placed within the plot to return to earth.

“Our plots are side by side.”

Are we speaking ourselves into the plot, finding that how we define it is how the story goes?

Death, not the end, but a new beginning.

Never put yourself in a situation you can’t get yourself out of.

Ah.

And here I am putting myself into the plot.

What lies beyond the plot?

What lays beyond the plot?

But people ask—

“Would you do it all over again?”

Would I do it all over again?

At what point does doing it all over again start?

Being dealt such a hand or realizing that’s the hand you’ve been dealt?

“Would you do it all over again?”

I had the option???

All along?

I do believe in free will but I also believe God won’t give you anything you can’t handle. The free will is in— how you handle it.

Just a matter of having faith and knowing you can get through to the other side.

Whatever that side may be.

I guess at the end of this all—

I probably could afford to move back to Long Island at the end of the day— I know exactly what it would cost me.

But I don’t think that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

I won’t pay such costs to go backwards.

I don’t know what else there would even be to learn.

In this same conversation with my mom—

“I don’t play that. Once I close the door on a relationship, it’s done. I only need to learn a lesson once.”

So never put yourself in a position you can’t get out of — and well..

Don’t put yourself back in that position once you’re out.

Fair.