I read this entry online that claimed that there are some very successful people who hadn't gotten anything done by the age of 30. It was meant to reassure people reading the article, like myself, who hadn't really gotten too much done at the time they were reading the article and were looking for a way to not feel that bad about it. I suppose it worked on me, to an extent. I mean, I'm not 30 yet, but it is getting noticeably closer and I do constantly get the feeling that I should have gotten something done before now, or should have a plan for what I'm looking to do if I haven't actually done it. This work here, this pile of thoughts and theories that I am still hacking away at, perhaps this is what I am ultimately supposed to be doing. Or maybe not, and it is yet another distraction that will lead me, unknowingly, onto something else, and I'm supposed to be doing THAT thing instead.
Maybe I'm not supposed to do anything. I have of course considered it.
Let's say I'm not supposed to do or be anything great. Let's say I don't do something very good OR something horrible, and I just kind of drift along in this same way, feeling exactly like this, for the rest of my life... is it really all that bad?
Oh, it's tough to settle in life. I know it's tough to purely give up or to watch yourself get complacent and make real peace with it, and there are constant reminders that I've known others that have risen up past the level that I would be labeling as what I am content with. But I can also admit, there are people I remember, people I grew up with, that are way worse off now than they were back in the day that I knew them. Or people that I didn’t even know, that I still would really not want to trade places with.
This one guy in particular, I never even remembered his name. But I ran into him at the bar in my hometown a few times, this same bar on a Saturday night. The bar was called 'Flips'. Our group liked it because the bar was easy to get to, it was right off the highway. And it was away from what was considered downtown, for our small and nondescript town anyway. Which meant there was less likelihood of running into random people we used to know in high school, people we didn’t care to run into now. And it was just a good, straight forward, no gimmicks just decent bar, it was all we asked for in our early 20's. Our group of friends liked to do interesting and insane things on certain nights, and go to bars with crazy specials and amazing bands playing, but sometimes we liked to be near home and just go somewhere simple and almost boring for a breather.
That and they didn't always card.
Anyway, by this point in my life, I was of age and didn't really have anything to worry about on that front. I was able to be irresponsible in a legal basis, which wasn't quite as fun but was showing its perks. I was at the point in my life and in college where I thought that I had actually learned some things and could talk as such. Every twenty-one year old in a bar thinks they finally have something to talk about, why wouldn't I?
Anyway, like I said, I never got the name of this guy that I met at Flips, but I still remember his face. He had these reddish eyes, these scars across his cheek on one side, this scruffy but still somehow managed beard. He wasn't that tall, but had a large heavyset type build. But like the type that could very well have been some muscle in the recent past years and just packed some flab over it. Or maybe he was even then still muscular, it can be deceptive for some people. But the point is, it looked like the guy had seen better days. He was a bit older and seemed just run down. In fact, I seem to remember he usually showed up wearing a headband. What kind of dude wears a headband to a bar?
But either way, the guy was not too much of a schmuck if you talked to him. Which I did once. I was there with a good friend, Kyle, and we had neared the end of several rounds and were about to call it a night. And this guy overheard something we say or we respond to something we heard and we strike up a conversation. He was just a dude, just some chill guy who was also drunk on a Wednesday night like we were. We talked about sports, and a bit about the music that was playing. And it wasn’t anything weird.
But I did notice him start to mention things consciously. He mentioned he drove a Benz, much like the Benz I was driving of my dad’s that night. He mentioned he ran track at Grapevine High School, like I did. I mean, he did it like 5 times, stuff that was not in conversation and in a weird way. And Kyle noticed too. And we didn’t mention any of the similarities when they came up, but we both said later that it felt like he was trying to elicit a reaction from us. Like he knew that they were similarities somehow. It was eerie. And the eeriness was further compounded by the fact that the next few times I went to that bar, he was always there.
Now, on one hand, this could all be a coincidence, and not really that sketchy in general. Or this dude could have been a stalker or a con artist or just some weird guy in a bar doing weird wild shit. He could have been trying to set up a gay hook up with me, I don’t know. There would be nothing wrong with that if I was also gay and it didn’t come off as completely surreptitious. And that’s the point I’m making here. I grew up in that town, I knew people that either didn’t leave or left and their lives crashed and burned, and it could always be worse. I mean, I went through a rough period post-graduating college, where I couldn't get a real job and didn’t have any money or anything going on, but shit, I could be the guy at the bar trying to strike up random conversations with strangers to establish or feign things in common. I could legitimately be THAT guy. And I’m not.
Could be worse.
So I just thought I’d throw that out there, for some of you that see these facebook feeds full of your friends and family doing all these epic things. People are finishing up their Doctorates, moving to different countries, buying luxury houses around their luxury cars and that have access to park their yachts, people are even building luxury cars in some cases. If you’re seeing lawyers and doctors and film directors and hedge fund managers and Congressmen and astronauts (no, I haven’t got any friends trying to be astronauts...that I’m aware of), if you see all of these things that others are doing and you aren’t doing these things too, just remember a few things. You aren’t in jail. You aren’t paralyzed. Hopefully, you aren’t in so much debt that you’ll never get out of it. Most of you have some kind skill, something that can be further developed and used as a focal point of your future and your career. Some of you are attractive enough that you have a significant other or might one day find someone willing to put up with you. No one’s saying your life is perfect. But you’re alive. And you’re not just finished, you’re not destitute. You’re not making grilled cheese sandwiches over an open flame in an abandoned lot somewhere. You’re going to be fine. Just keep being, living, doing you.
I do wonder what that guy at Flips is doing to this day. I haven’t been back in years, he could still be there. He could be living in a van down by the river. He could be dead. He could also be preparing a corporate takeover of some software start-up and getting ready to buy his 3rd villa house somewhere exotic because he has money like that now.
Just do you. You’re going to be fine.
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