I have been through several different chapters in my life. They roughly can be broken down into blocks of time where my life was very different from how it is now and very different from each other. Some of these blocks are easily defined by a major event such as me leaving home, moving to a suburb of Sacramento or eventually moving to Wisconsin. Some major parts of my life didn’t manage to define an edge, like working at the concert promotion company.
Some stages in my life have been interesting, some stressful, and I miss some parts of my past like hanging out with university friends and discussing any random topics which we might come up with, or being in a computer lab playing huge LAN games. However, I am a strong believer in “you can’t go back.” Even if you somehow manage to reconstruct the physical aspects like build a LAN party computer lab in your basement, and even if you are able to gether a bunch of people together who want to play DOOM II Deathmatch with you, it’s still not going to be the same. Some one will blow a circuit, someone will drink all the beer and you have to go to the store to get more, the Mountain Dew doesn’t cost a quarter a can anymore, and so on.
Instead of trying to recreate the past, I have been able to quietly close the door, take what I’ve learned, bring with my the memories and the stories I’ve gathered and turned towards the future and asked myself, “What’s next?”
That’s not always been an easy question for me to answer though, which is why there have been some dark times in my past. We can put so much time and energy into things that we feel that we should get rewarded for our efforts. I spent so many years at universities to improve my chances to get a certain kind of job only to have some people look down on me because I didn’t go to the “right” kind of universities or accuse me that because I went to any university that I somehow suddenly feel like I’m special. No, I’m not suddenly special because I had the opportunity to go to a couple budget universities. I just did what I thought I had to do, like all Americans.
The hard truth I’ve learned throughout several eras of my life is simply this, you can’t please everyone because many people project their own ideas, and ideals, onto others even if they are impossibilities. I think of the job application question, “Do you have reliable transportation?” Yes, of course I do. I have my feet, and at the time a whole county mass transit system that was developed to get people from point-to-point at a reasonable expense. However, no, that question wasn’t for that. They wanted to throw your application out if you did not own a car even when your job had nothing to do with driving and public transportation stopped right in front of the business.
So, this is why “Ain’t No Man” rather speaks to me. When I was young, I tried to be what was expected of me so I could get a job, have a career, be a “productive” citizen of this country. Only have that door slammed in my face repeatedly, although never directly because there are “laws that are supposed to prevent discrimination.” The laws don’t do a damned thing because people learn how to do it without being direct. So, about the time I heard this song in the late 2010’s, I was closing that chapter of my life. I decided that I was no longer going to allow other people’s projections to ruin my life. I can’t stop people from their wrong-headed beliefs, but I can stop internalizing them.
I closed that chapter of my life, turn around and look towards the future and ask, “What’s next?”
So far, what’s next has been this blog, getting an article published in a nationally circulated magazine, getting 3rd in a short story contest, helping out with some disability and mental health conferences and being a caretaker. I also ran for local office. I then received 39% of the vote and hey, that’s not too shabby for a still mostly unknown blind guy.
Life still isn’t easy and really it shouldn’t be. We don’t grow unless we are presented with challenges. I’m not done growing, I’m not done looking for new and interesting people, places, experiences.
Come join me in the future, we will face it together with a smile, a grin, a smirk and a determined scowl, all at once.
