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40 Years Well Spent
On sandcastles, legacies, and the meaning of life itself.
As of October 3, I am 40. Exactly 10 years prior, I woke up in a parking lot, homeless and carless and flat broke, about two hours before I ever cut my first check from writing.
Had you told me a decade ago that I’d find myself exactly here, I would’ve asked you to pass me your ketamine. Fun fact: I’d never so much tried ketamine until I had a robust patch of gray in my beard. That was 2019, or roughly 623 years ago. Alas. Now I have. Like 30 times. By prescription. For depression.
If you can believe it, it works pretty well, but I think in the past year or so I’ve gotten way more out of therapy and just by making a point to not treat my calendar like a Jenga tower — or treat my body like a trash bin or a chemistry set. (I’m not counting the gluttonous bacchanalia of this past weekend in that calculus. I think I earned that, though.)
If I could confess something even bolder to you, I’m not quite sure I meet the qualifications for “depressed” right now, and I probably haven’t for a while. Sure, I grieve and get sad and stressed and afraid sometimes, but today isn’t one of those times.
So yeah, those are strong words from a man who nearly lost himself to the Sisyphean battle with my frazzled mind, then built a…
