Never Surrender

 Okay! How much more can we heap onto the pile? 2025 has proven to be a year of multiple tasks like I have never seen before. I am not speaking recreationally either.

Granted, I saw myself taking on the necessary home and car maintenance projects that had been building up for years. What I did not see coming was that some of my solutions to address those issues created even more work, making it so that I was not gaining at all.

This shifting of a laundry list of tasks from one object to another has created a spectacular gridlock. I was born in the 1960s, but all of this was enough to snap anyone into an ADHD seizure-like state of being, so paralyzed you don’t know where to start.

This is robbery, of course, because on the lighter side, I wanted to get some of those things done so I could do, what I really love. Every time I go out to eat, I find things to appreciate, and I also discover areas where I can contribute to the culinary world. I wanted to be a voice in that forest. Still, it turns out I am buried under the rubble of backfired projects, fatigue, and unforeseen events so incredible that I could not have possibly imagined them. 

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everything I have in my life. And I would not ever trade it. I think I really have something to offer in so many places, and yet, there is a backlash of trying to get ahead of me over and over again. I am not looking for pity, because I am not alone. In this world, everyone has something. 

I recently learned that I can sell food at a New Hampshire farmers' market without a food license, as long as I do not exceed 4 days within a 30-day period. Let me tell you, I am all over this! In Vermont, I would need a Temporary Food Stand License at least. Of course, I would need to apply for the New Hampshire meals and rooms tax ID, as they expect their monthly cut.

How can I fit that in when everything wants a piece of me? I believe the answer lies in the past. I remember being any age, be it 28, 32, 35, or 45. The days of youth were so taken for granted. Worrying about broken cars, maintenance on the house, or the demands of work. You get the idea, just like the income-to-debt ratio in the world, it is a loop of causality, self-inflicted, ruthless, and suffocating. The answer is, do it now. I have to. Waiting for there to be a segment of this winding road to pass the vehicle in front of me is not coming. Do it now, because I would rather live knowing I tried than playing it safe. Sometimes, safe is death. It depends on what it is.

There is this thought experiment presented by Elle Cordova on Instagram. She asks if you are sitting there, rotting inside your house, just lying in your bed, or sitting on your couch. Scrolling, doing nothing, feeling nothing. Imagine time speeding up, the days speeding by, the sun coming up and going down, faster and faster. The Earth is flying around the sun with you on it. Major life events are happening, births, deaths, the seasons are going so fast it just looks like the earth is respirating with them, and then, BAM! You arrive at your destination, the last day of your life. You have lived a long life, and here you are. It is the future, and technology exists to hook your consciousness into a simulation in which you can be placed in any random day in the past. The simulation puts you into this day, this random, rotting day that you are having, in which you are doing nothing.

Here you are again, everything is exactly the same as it was. What do you do? Go outside and feel the sun on your newly young-again skin? Do you call some people who are now miraculously alive again? Do you taste your favorite foods? What does today mean to you now? The crazy thing about this thought experiment is that from everything we know about how we perceive the passage of time as we age, it ends up feeling a lot like this. The older we get, the more time seems to speed up as we age. And if you do have the privilege of getting that old, it will feel like it happened in the blink of an eye. Knowing how desperately short human life is and how incomprehensibly fast you will be flung into that final moment, what a gift it is to be able to luxuriate in today.

That says it all, doesn't it? So, why not demand more from today? Why not insist that I show up? That evening, surrendering to the recliner in front of the television looks so different now. Like the great prophet Don Henley said, "I will not lie down....I will not go quietly." I also glean this from my boys. I have watched them over the last few years pull incredible determination and tenacity from within and push forward completely on their own to achieve the things they wish to accomplish. They have staked claims in ways I would not have thought of, and their individuality is so fantastic to watch.

So why not trade it in? The worthless for the worthwhile? That chance to fight for it and make things happen. I dare say that even in the days beyond me, it will produce beautiful fruit. For today, if I continue doing the things I have been doing, I will get the results I have been getting. That is stagnation too, isn't it?

Of all the craziness of my unplanned life. All of the jumping in the dark without ever knowing there was a place to land, how can I just surrender to comfort and safety? It is wrong. It is nothing. 

As I sit here on the porch of camp at Shadow Lake on the first of September, Tom Petty croons that he is all mixed up in 1987. The quietness is broken by the sound of a screaming boat. Boats are holes in the water that you throw money into, but so. They disrupted their lives to feel this way. Yeah, it means work, but who cares? Texture, heat, cold, so many sensations, all the things that can't be captured on a screen, can happen, but only if we push. We have to fight and then persist. We have to be angry when it is kept from us, loving when it needs nurturing, and patient. 

All I can say, is when it comes to being subdued, let me up, I've had enough.