I began life in the wilderness. Parents who fancied themselves drop outs from society in the early 70’s. Dad built a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. No neighbors. No running water. No electricity. No doctors. No grocery stores. No nothing for 11 years. 

As I turned 11, we moved from isolation into a dirty trailer court in a small town (still in the middle of nowhere). I went to public school for the first time. Was tormented. Had to learn to fight. Would return home to an 8×20 aluminum camp trailer that we called home. Would hear the arguments from the neighbors (and the occasional crash when one of them drunkenly plowed their truck into their single wide).  In the summer it was like trying to sleep in an oven. In the winter, you were never warm.  Many people have lived in worse conditions, of course.  However the point is more that the conditions felt relatively shitty, and the ability to change them for the better seemed nonexistent.

At 14 years of age I felt depressed and lost.  I had a sense that I was drifting toward disaster.  So I looked around at the misery surrounding me, and decided to get out.   I knew that no one would help me do this.  Perhaps that was one of the hidden advantages of being surrounded by struggle.   You start to see how people cannot even handle their own lives, so they certainly are not going to assist you in your own.   Honestly, I was not always successful.  I made it up as I went.  I made terrible mistakes.  I stumbled countless times.  For me, however, there was no other choice but to just get up and keep moving forward.

In the end, I made it out.  Over the next few decades I managed to become a decently successful athlete (good enough for scholarships), student (attended elite universities and grad schools), and made the most of the opportunities I saw in the workplace.   Present day,  I have four happy and well adjusted kids, have been successfully married 18 years, and am an exec for a large Tech company.  I live in a nice house (with running water!) and my garage is bigger than the cabin I grew up in.   Plus I am generally at peace.  I am fit at 45, (no “dad bod” here), and look about a decade younger than I am.  

So, how did this happen?  If I can fumble into a relatively pleasant life from nothing, so can you. So can we all. Life is truly what you make of it.  I decided to start writing (even though likely no one will read this) simply because I thought it important to jot down some of my observations and musings on life to this point.   The biggest secret I’ll disclose right up front, because it is so obvious you already know it even if you don’t want to admit it.   No one else will care enough about you to make any difference in your life.  Even your parents.  Only you can change things, if you are not presently satisfied with them.   If you understand this, you are already ahead.  It boils down to the fact that you can cede your brief flash of existence to manipulation by outside forces, and drift through life buffeted by events outside of your control, hoping for luck and kindness.  (This will almost always fail.)  Or, you can focus on those things you can control, embrace personal responsibility, and make something of yourself.  People will always be offering you “help”, be it politicians, businesses, gurus, family, friends.   Making yourself dependent on the help of others only enslaves you to them.   Reject help.  Embrace action.  Strip away all that is external and face what is actually you.  Sometimes you may find there is very little of you that actually exists.  Change that.

We are meant to be creators, conquerors, bright points of light like beacons against the dark cold void of space and time. We are not meant to be dulled and automated, drifting helplessly toward death as depressed, overweight, manipulated, derivative creatures.  We are not meant to be sitting on couches staring at screens trying to distract ourselves from the pain of our failures. Get up. Fight the drift. Live. 

-Dienekes