Everyone Wants to Live“YOLO”
For all our newest readers, welcome! If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know I’ve been working on my mental breakdown for several months now. I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog front lately. At first I was trying to wait it out, the colossal disappointment that my reality has become of late, and get back on here full of vim and vigor as soon as things mellow out but I made the realization two days ago that that day may never come. I’ve been waiting for some semblance of normalcy to return to my life and I probably have to just live with the fact that everything is pretty fucked. If you’re lost with all my doom and gloom shit, don’t worry because we’re about to recap.
One year ago, I was at my lowest place in life (at that point anyway). I worked at a corporation full of dipshits and every single day was a struggle. My house needed repairs that I couldn’t make on my bullshit wages and I was stuck in a situation where I was sitting on an asset but could potentially default and lose everything. I had become a social pariah, spending all my free time in my home and far away from people. I had stopped dating for several years and had given up on the entire ideology of love. I was convinced that the only way to break free from a life that was suffocating me was to change everything, shed my old life, and hopefully emerge a wealthier, more emotionally stable butterfly open to life and experiences again. I sold my home, gave away all my belongings, quit my job, and hit the road in a truck and camper to find great adventures and new perspectives.
The whole towing-your-home-thing quickly proved to be quite a challenge but if nothing else, I’m resilient and tackled that learning curve. After about a month and a half, I really got to learn what the rig could do and things became easier. In fact, I almost liked it. But before I could really step into this new era in my life, my brand new truck (Dodge Ram 3500) began to break down. First small things, here and there, but those issues quickly snowballed into a constant barage of serious failures, leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere for over a month unable to return home. Eventually my family made the trek out and towed my trailer back to Las Vegas where I stayed in the driveway for the most unbearable temperature streak this place had ever seen. A ten day streak of temperatures over 118° and over 30 days of temps over 110°. Even at peak performance, the trailer could not keep up with the searing temps outside, keeping the interior around a cool 95°. The fridge subsequently broke and then the water tanks burst under the barage of heat. The trailer qucikly became unlivable and a more reasonable accommodation had to be found for me and my animals. This went on for six weeks before I broke down and moved us into a room in a friend’s house.
All along, the dealership here continued to incorrectly diagnose the truck, replacing tens of thousands of dollars worth of engine components, and with every swap, I lost a sliver of hope. After the replacement of the intercooler, missing emissions bolt, EGR valve, MAF sensor, turbo and actuator, the truck still did not run and I hastily jumped into the first job I could find. After over two months and endless conversations with Cummins engineers, no resolution had been found and on blind faith that the diesel mechanic knew what he was talking about, I spent $3,000 of my own money to replace a computer module when the DPF finally failed and the dealership told me to pay them another $2,800, before taxes. So in six months, I went from having a beautiful home with a ton of equity to squandering almost all of that small fortune, marooned in every city across the southwest, and living in a 100 square foot room with three cats and a dog, working parttime at the bar that’s within walking distance of the house.
What does it all mean? I’m gonna break it down for you right now. When I was jumping feet first into the unknown and everyone who knew and loved me tried to reason with me about the huge leaps I was making, I couldn’t be told shit. In fact, to every single objection I replied that I’d rather get out there and fail than to never know what could’ve been. Well, that’s really fucking easy to say when you don’t know what terror lies just beyond the bend. I also suffer from undiagnosed mania and have insurmountable ideas of grandeur, so there’s that. I thought I was smart, I thought I was fearless and capable. I thought I was becoming the person I was supposed to be. I WAS A FUCKING IDIOT. I lost everything and I’m now restarting my life even farther behind than I was at 20. And I blame the YOLO. You only live once. Well, thank fucking God for that because I couldn’t do this shit twice.
YOLO has become the official siren song of every dipshit mother fucker to proclaim before they make an uncalculated and egregious mistake. This is what people say before they snort miscellaneous drugs off a TP holder with some dude they’ve never met or jump off a fucking bridge with a bunch of idiots on acid. This is not what grown adults with mental stability say when planning their financial futures. Well, except for me. I said it. The unfortunate side of the YOLO is that there’s no coming back, no do overs, no second chances. Once a fuck up is committed, it is there to stay no matter how huge it is. And that’s the real life lesson here. I was unprepared for the reality of the choices I was making and now I’m going to spend the rest of my life scraping by and trying to clean them up. My future is so bleak that I’m on my second round of don’t-kill-myself drugs. The reality is that everyone wants to be free and spontaneous but I’m here today to tell you it’s all just an illusion, like happiness and Instagram. It’s not real. The real YOLO is safe financial planning, a slush fund for a rainy day, a job with benefits and security. The real YOLO is a huge bag of fucking money planted in the backyard under the laurel bush and the peace of mind that that type of financial freedom can bring. Don’t get caught up in the shit you see other people doing and think you should do that too, especially if you have a long history of undiagnosed mental illness.
So without futher ado, here is what I’ve learned from my big YOLO moment: