“Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”
-Tom Petty
I came back to write another post today, for a very good reason. You see, my last few posts have been a real bummer because I’ve had a bummer week, what with the mystery disappearance of my only income and my recent slip up with alcohol. Of course I've been down, I could stand to allow myself to feel down when I have perfectly legitimate reasons to.
Anyway, I didn’t come here again to wallow in all of that. My moods are cyclical, anyone who’s been reading this thing could probably tell me how long the cycles are and when I should plan for them, but it doesn’t make the feelings any less real to me. Once I learn to acknowledge the bad times for what they are (part of the cycle) and allow myself to feel the bad feelings, i’m going to be much more powerful. I’m working on it.
In the midst of all this, I keep reminding myself that I’m doing my best with what I have. It’s easy to be hard on yourself when things aren’t going well, but I’m trying to be kinder to myself, to cut myself some slack. After all, I can’t control everything in life, but I can control how I react to it. And even though things are tough right now, I’m still here, still fighting, still showing up for myself and for the people who care about me.
Ah! speaking of people who care about me, now I can get to the real reason that I came back to write another post today, to give a shout out to an old friend for taking care of the whole internet bill I’ve been so worried about, and wrote about in my last post (via ko-fi.com/evr0ck17).
Austin has been a close friend since we took the trip to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee back in 2004, days after my high school graduation, which was 20 years ago almost to the day. I think all of our lives were changed that weekend.
I joined his crew from the deep woods of South Plymouth, MA that weekend, and we were thick as thieves ever since. We grew a deeper bond over losing one of the members of that crew to a drunk driving accident the year after. When you experience something tragic like that at such a young age, you bond with those who you experience it with.
People like that are family.
I wont get too into all of the debauchery, but when it comes to that you’d usually find Austin and I as the last ones standing in the morning after any given party, out fishing at 6 O’clock in the morning, having not slept and not looking to any time soon.
This is another one of those times when I’m reminded that there is still a whole lot of stories I can write from the youthful days of festival going, and having absolutely nothing in life to worry about.
I’m not going to pull any of those out right now, but it was quite surprising to me maybe a month and a half ago when Austin messaged me to tell me he reads all of this blog. Any time I learn that from someone, i’m totally humbled by it, and honored that anyone would take their time to see what kind of craziness is going on in my head and spilling out onto this platform.
So, within 10 minutes of my posting that I wasn’t going to be able to keep doing this if I didn't raise some proceeds for my Internet bill, in came thei donation, and it was one major worry off of my plate.
He told me that a bird shit on him the moment he did it too… depending on how you look at that, it could be a sign of great luck.
So I actually did come to write another post around this sentence, so here it is, I grew up on PBS obviously.
The Evr0ck Initiative is brought to the internet by readers like you! Readers like Austin.
It literally is, I don’t know how i’d keep doing it without home broadband, i’d have to go sit on the sidewalk next to one of those LinkNYC kiosks or something, not at all as cool as my chair here in my room.
Through the ups and downs of life, it’s moments like these that remind me of the incredible people I’m fortunate enough to call my friends. Friends who have become family, who have shared in the highs and lows and continue to show up, even when life gets tough, even when I’m an asshole.
