Journey to 30: Go Home and Be A Family Man

The glass shards that sliced me didn’t really hurt. Or maybe it was that I didn’t notice them. After all, I was busy dangling sideways. But not in a cool “Running the Zero G track from Nickelodeon Guts” way, in a lame “Suspended By a Seat Belt That Just Saved My Life” way. Moira Quirk was nowhere to be found, but Kanye would have been so proud of me.

I turned 30 today, which means I can no longer describe myself as a Forever Teen without getting put onto some watchlist. I’m not having a mental breakdown (that happened at 25). I’m not purchasing a motorcycle (that’ll happen at 50). I’m not showing my significant other a meticulously rehearsed and animated PowerPoint on how a sister wife would be beneficial for us (I’m saving that for 40). It’s just a day.

I hit rock bottom a year ago when I was fired unexpectedly. Well, I thought it was rock bottom. It was actually the botched Rock Bottom through the Spanish announcer’s table to set me up for being handcuffed and hit 11 times in the head with a folding chair.

In August 2015, I was fired. The worst part about being fired isn’t the worthlessness you feel now that you are #confirmed inadequate. It’s not the humiliation of others finding out. The worst thing about being fired is having to update your résumé. I navigated the frustrating and draconian system of oppression that is unemployment in SC, which I think actually made me lazier.

For reference, in SC if you are on unemployment, every dollar you make at a part-time job gets deducted from the total unemployment benefits you qualify for. My weekly benefits, the max at the time, were $376 a week for my family of four. So I could either work 20 hours and make $376 ($200 paycheck + $176 unemployment difference) or I could just not work at all and make $376. 🤔 What to do…🤔…what to do…🤔

After hopelessly sending out hundreds of resumes, my friends who own a brewery offered me a job as a salesman. I loved it. I got to work with my buddies. I got to get back out from behind a desk and interact with people. I got to learn a new industry and a new product. I got to drink amazing beer. This was the first job I ever got yelled at for working too much. I had a spring in my step like I couldn’t remember.

Oh shit. Slam on the brakes. Cut the wheel. Fuck. I’m going too fast. A guard rail! That will surely stop my progress. Nope. I was wrong. Those are trees behind the guard rail. This is it. This is how it ends. The car is definitely in the air right now. Great hangtime. I wonder if anyone’s recording this. Ouch. The car is definitely sliding on the ground. This seat belt is strong af, boi. Why didn’t the air bag go off? It seems like it should have gone off. Ahhh. Yes. The consequence of my actions. Inevitable. There was nothing I could have done to avoid this. Why me?

One night on my way back from an out-of-town beer festival where I was serving beer for 6 hours, I fell asleep at the wheel.

I could have left immediately after the festival, but instead I stayed around to hang out with the owners of the farm and two of the city’s top chefs. I could have left after that. I didn’t. I stayed in town to visit with some friends. I left late. I wasn’t drunk. I hadn’t had a beer in several hours. I was hydrated. If you saw how clear my pee-pee was your eyes would bleed. I could have gotten a hotel room, and spent the night… But I wanted to get back home. I could have pulled over on the side of the road… But I wanted to get to that rest area that was only 12 more miles ahead.

However, the consequences of the decisions to not do what I should have done that day were only amplified by the decisions to not do what I should have done from the night prior. I could have left that event early. I didn’t. I stayed around downtown to hang out with some friends for a quick drink that turned into a several hours long convo. I ended back at the hotel that night for a restful two-and-a-half hours of sleep. That two-and-a-half hours of sleep was exactly what I needed to power through a 12-hour day of work.

Luckily, a good samaritan who happened to be a volunteer firefighter stopped to help me after he saw what I imagine looked like a deleted scene from a Fast and Furious mockbuster called “It’s Drivin’ Time,” which can only be found in that bin next to the checkout lines at Food Lion. He talked me through dislodging myself from my seat belt without further injuries and helped me climb vertically through the mangled driver window whose glass had already introduced themselves to my extremities. I trekked up the 20 ft. embankment and got looked at by the EMTs.

Do you submit to a breathalyzer?

No.

I’m placing you under arrest for driving under the influence.

All in all, it took ~15 minutes to go from careening off a mini-butte to being put in the back of a cop car. That’s not a world record, but it was a personal best for me. And how could you blame the officer? I smelled like beer because I was covered in it from setting up kegs and pouring hundreds of samples earlier that day.

It eventually took two cranes working in tandem to fish my car out of the woods, drag it up the hill and then lift it over the barrier. I had found the one section of woods along the interstate that was thinnest with trees and hadn’t hit one. I would love to post some photos of the carnage but I never took any. I don’t want to remember anything about that night. But if you are headed West on I-26, a few miles before you get to exit 60 there’s a rest area and exactly 1 mile before that there’s a shiny new patch of guardrail courtesy of me. I think it really spruces the shoulder up a bit.

I informed my bosses of what happened that Monday, and was promptly fired. A brewery can’t employ someone who gets charged with a DUI, whether they are guilty or not.

Fired not once, but twice in the span of 6 months.

Why me?

I understood why they fired me. I understood why they said they would tell people I left to find a higher-paying job (that line benefits them and saves me embarrassment, plus it’s partly true). I don’t understand why if they were my friends they never texted or called afterwards to check in on me or see how I was doing. I suppose I could have reached out to them, but you see, I’m taking the high road by bottling my bitterness up, and putting it into a thinkpiece for content — the true Millenial Way™. If they had reached out, they would have learned I became extremely depressed. I felt abandoned. Useless. I thought after being fired the first time that this job was my out. This was the “I used to be in advertising and miserable, but now I’m a beer man, and I’ve never been happier.” I thought I was going to finally beat the system. I thought I was going to get to do what I love… but, alas, back to advertising, back to miserable.

This isn’t the first time an opportunity went askew (by no fault of my own I should add!). Two years ago I, a lowly South Carolinian yokel, was granted the golden opportunity to go to New York City aka The Mile-High Avocado Toast to be an on-air video personality for a prestigious media empire. When things got rocky between us, they informed me (on my way to the airport to fly up for work that weekend) that they were going to cancel the remainder of my contract. I drunkenly posted a blog post before takeoff about the situation, only to land to a hundred emails and notifications asking me what’s going on. It’s so weird that I have a long legacy of being a victim! What are the chances?

Why me?

Reflecting on all the opportunities I was given that failed, I kept asking, “Don’t I deserve the glory? When is my prosperity?” I spent days repeating, and getting lost in, that glorious self-pity mantra: “Why me? Why me? Why me?” and finding both agony and solace. I could never answer it. And, because I couldn’t nothing needed to change.

Transitioning from teen to twentysomething is grueling. Your clutching at that immaturity that keeps your life fun while the world ushers you down the assembly line towards gulp…growth…W-4s…life insurance…shudders… all the while eroding your strength for resolve. You become consumed with rebuking the metamorphosis. Fuck I look like in a chrysalis? We stave off adulthood with a cute tactic of “knowing better.” There’s hubris in knowing better. Yes. I’m making a terrible decision, but I’m aware I’m making this terrible decision so actually I am smart and this terrible decision is good.

The maturity is cherry-picked. I didn’t buy those $200 sweatpants yesterday so I actually deserve to buy these $300 shoes today. I thought being self-aware was a saving grace, while in reality it bolstered my self-destruction.

As the great philosopher Ariana Grande once opined “If you knew better, boy, you would do better.” To a certain extent that’s true, but what’s the extension of that. What if you already knew better?

*Extremely Tony Robbins Voice* If you know better, you should “no” better.

Maturity isn’t knowing better. It’s not being selective with self-destruction. It’s doing the things you think are inconsequential that when combined provide you with a platform to prosper. Coincidentally, maturity is also rarely fun. Look at all this dope shit I didn’t buy.

There’s a scene in S03E10 of Bojack Horseman where Bojack backs his Tesla through his glass doors into his pool. I was watching this months after the accident. Art could not have imitated my life more than that scene, and really that whole episode. That’s the exact range of emotion I went through after I woke up right before plowing into an interstate guardrail going 70mph.

Hyper alertness. Acceptance of death. I’m alive. I deserve this.

I had to turn the episode off. I didn’t finish watching it until two weeks later.

In a “ Finkle is Einhorn…Einhorn is Finkle” revelation, the answer became clear. It was there the whole time, obscured by punctuation.

Why me?

Why? Me.

I should have been more professional. I should have been more responsible. I should have drank less. I should have said “no” to myself. I should have been more gags mature. I knew I should have been those things. I knew better. I just didn’t possess the capacity. I had suffered through the painful reality of accidentally falling into an unfulfilling career—a thing you never recognize until you’re five years too deep. My wife and I suffered through a miscarriage. I had gone through feeling inadequate as a man and father, of feeling like it was too late to make any kind of positive change. I had gone through feeling boxed in from every angle. I deserved all of these chances! So, how did I squander them? I treated them like rewards not opportunities. I suffered; reward me. I felt entitled to a positive outcome. I was so eager to escape the sweltering hell I was trapped in I got complacent because someone turned a ceiling fan on high. I ruined them. When it came time for it, my self-destruction manifested nicely into self-sabotage.

This whole time I thought that if I can get to the next level on my own I can reach back down and pull my family and friends up with me, but I realize now there’s no reason to struggle on your own when you have others who can help. You level up together.

Taking responsibility sucks, especially when you’re so good at making excuses. I miss being an idiot all the time. I’m a 30-year-old dad of two, and legally I can only be a part-time idiot now. Thanks, Obama.

After getting fired from the brewery, a company I interviewed with when I was unemployed called me back for another interview. I ended up starting the next week. It’s like the intergalactic deity in charge threw me one more bone. The DUI got tossed out. I’ve stopped drinking. I’ve lost 30 lbs. I’m nicer, more loving. I spend more time with my family. I’ve started enjoying my job, and become kind of proud of how good I am at it (vomits uncontrollably). I moved out of the in-laws and bought my third house. I stopped resisting growing up and worrying about some arbitrary countdown. Things have fallen into place. I’m at peace with where I’m at. It feels nice. Everyone should try almost dying once. It’s good for your mental health.

I’ve reached a plateau where, at least for a brief respite, the never-ending avalanche of shit has ceased toppling down ‘pon me. I’d been searching for that nebulous ‘old me’ for years. It’s returned. It was always there, I suppose. It was just buried deep down under all that awareness.