18 July 2022
Hey man.
You don’t know me, and I bet I don’t know you as well as I think. My friends and I started a little writing club, and the topic for the week was to send you a message in a bottle of sorts. The obvious route would be to offer you advice, maybe gift you some wisdom gained from fifteen or twenty extra years of life experience. After mulling it over, I have decided against taking that path and instead just vent a little to you to help myself. Because the one thing I’m relatively confident we share in common is the hatred of people’s unsolicited advice; the ramblings of boring adults telling us to turn back and take their preferred shortcuts, even though it is evident that all the good juice in life is found in fruits that grow in miles-deep canyon bottoms thick with scrub oak. So tired of those strangers pointing up at the well-maintained trails as if we didn’t fucking see them, as if we didn’t purposefully make up our minds to avoid them at all costs. To them, we are a strange creature obsessed with pursuing pointless endeavors. To us, they are… well, we don’t really care what they are, do we? I think we understand them even less than they understand us.
The difference between us and them is we don’t interject. We don’t vocalize to these people what we really think of them or their habits. We try to be enthusiastic about them getting off their asses and doing something at all. “Wow, amazing, you did a great job. I’m really stoked for you. You must have had a blast! What’s next?” For some reason, despite the endless discouragement from some of our peers, we still feel obligated to be the whole goddamn world’s cheerleader. Maybe our kindness is viewed as a sort of rolling over, an admission of our inferiority. Maybe we took the Golden Rule to heart too heartily. There should be a warning tagged to the end of that one. Here’s my suggested revision:
Treat others as you would like to be treated, but don’t get your hopes up that they will return the favor.
I hope it’s not disappointing for you to learn that this is just as annoying today in the future as it is for you in your present, and I do apologize for the selfish thrusting of my feelings upon you. This is not an attempt to try and nudge you onto another road, but if it does, that’s cool too, because the last thing I would ever do is to try and persuade you to do it all the same as I did. Afterall, that’s the same old shit everyone always does to us. I cannot possibly put myself in your shoes, no matter how hard I try. Those Vans of yours have so much room to expand and learn; honestly, I am jealous. We always loved the feeling of being an amateur. We also know we can never go back, and the only way to stay that special kind of dumb is to keep on learning. The joy of blissful idiocy is maintained by trudging forward through the unknown, and I refuse to rob you of that by offering you explicit directions to my honey holes. You would prefer to find those on your own, I am sure.
ANYWHO, I hope all your pet projects are running smoothly, and I hope you’ve got your nose deep in a good book. Hold onto that woman, keep learning, and as the Toasters say, “Don’t let the bastards drag ya down!”
Love,
Future Bryan
P.S. I played with the Toasters last month. Twice, actually. It was sick.
P.S.S. I play the drums now. Highly recommend picking that up sooner. But you know… do whatever you want.