This is chapter is intended to have background music to garner the full impact of the feeling that I’m portraying. Once the lyrics of this song start you may begin reading. Until then picture yourself walking in a place of serenity.

August 2021 marked the end of a major chapter in the epic that is my story. My longtime friend and boss had informed me that he had and opening in one of the stores that he was managing up in Tennessee. The store was located in the city that I’d had previously earmarked as an area that I wanted to move to as it was a city that supported both my medical needs as well as supported my desire to move to a mountain biking community. One quick mention prior to this offer, I had been trying to move up the corporate ladder to hopefully land a position working within the home office as a part of the marketing staff. Over the past year HR kept telling me that in order to work in the home office I would need to be located within the East Tennessee area since that is their main recruiting pool and that positions “were coming” now that additional funding had been secured. Back to the offer at hand. After I had gotten off of the phone with my friend that I needed 24 hours to think it over since this was a major change and I needed to reach out to a few people first. I will tell you that I had some major anxiety (or maybe it was excitement) that day that was boiling up on whether or not I was making the right decisions (spoiler alert, I ultimately made the right decision for a plethora of reasons). After my primary Cystic Fibrosis doctor signed off on the move, I looked over to Rei and said “Fuck it, we are moving to Tennessee.” Rei looked back at me confused as she normally does and proceeded to bark at me for a treat.

Up until this point I had been preoccupied with living without premonition. But what does this actually mean? Does it mean that you “just live going through the motions” or does it mean you do what you feel is right in that moment? Is it passive or is it active? At this point in my journey I feel that it is a combination of both of these ideas. The more we fight against the natural waves of life the more we invite in anxiety as that natural waves becomes internalized via our inability to think and make decisions. On the flip side lately I’ve come to the conclusion that you do need to stick your neck out every once and a while because if you don’t you’ll still be stuck in the same patterns day after day. As someone with their own neurodivergent needs, (autism) I will naturally resist a lot of change but over time I’ve learned that life does require some level of change to grow with the world around you.

One major lesson that I have been learning over the past few years is to trust my gut instinct. If something feels off then it’s a no go or proceed with caution , if it feels right but is uncomfortable then dive in feet first, if it feels right and is exciting then dive in head first. I can attribute my own growth and awareness to these simple ideas, from chatting up the cute girl I have a crush on to making career choices for the betterment of myself. I tout that my ability to listen to others is one of my greatest strengths (I swear I’m listening even though I’m not looking you in the eyes) and I at times failed to listen to myself which lead to certain life choices/experiences. The therapy that I’ve been through is rooted in the idea of listening to yourself and making adjustments as necessary.

When it comes for major life changes or really anything in general I used to list all the pros and cons of each and every decision I wanted to make. This practice was overly complicated and always led to me never changing course and remaining on the status quo. Now I have flipped an internal switch and only focus on the pros of these changes. Why might you ask? Because there will always be a way to mitigate a con with a little bit of change in perception. Whenever we bring up any kind of negative emotion we will undoubtedly focus on that idea while completely missing out on real meaning of that situation/change.

At this time I am not the same person I was down in Floriduh. I am something better, I am elevated. I will never go back to the person I was. I felt trapped in Tampa, but now I’m free. So here we have it from the concrete jungle and buildings of Tampa to the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

I was figuratively suffocating in Tampa and I didn’t feel connected to the world around me, due in part to the amount of negative experiences that I had unfortunately had while living in the city. Don’t get me wrong I am thankful for everything that has happened to all of my life experiences both positive and negative as they have help craft me into the person I am today. But I will say that when I was making plans for my move a weight was lifted off my shoulders as if I were shedding a portion of myself that needed to be left behind.

It’s a mad world, but I’m making the best of it. Right now I squarely view my current job as a means to an end. I’m back again in the corporate world but at least this time I’ve got my hand on the reins and can steer my own course (to some degree). Personally I believe that my mental maturity has more or less shown me what is important these days. What I mean by this is that I hold my non-work activities (yoga, Magic the Gathering, mountain biking, my physical and mental health, and my other hobbies) to a much higher standard as well as making them the number one priority in my life. At the end of the day when it comes to my job I’m just a number in a seat behind a desk, no more no less. Now I will say that my job does afford me some positive energy/value with the clients that I help day in and day out. There is a tremendous amount of doom and gloom out in the world today, some of which is artificially manufactured and some of which is based solely on perception. I am fully aware that are marginalized portions of our population that do not receive opportunities that I may receive. This is where one of my favorite quotes comes into play: “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Here is where we can do better as a society to help out our neighbors and to truly make the world a better place to live. I’m not saying that we have to immediately go out and start trying to solve all of the major issues that plague this world, what I would like everyone to do is start out small. You would be amazed on the impact that simply smiling back at someone can do for their spirit. Spread a little empathy around and let someone know that they aren’t alone and that they matter. This is all that it will take to get the needle moving in the right direction.

At the end of the day you as the individual are the only person who can control your sense of happiness/fulfillment/value or whatever sense of being you want to choose. I know that in the surface this is a very cliché and unoriginal thought but at the end of the day it is really true. Because I’m always lost in my train of thoughts, I tend to always look inwards and try to understand why I do the things that I do. Since 2020 I’ve developed a very keen self awareness (sometimes aided by my good friend Mary Jane or during meditation at yoga or better yet meditating while amongst the clouds) that has allowed me to better understand what truly makes me, me. I still have my dark days like we all experience, but lately it’s been more bright and sunny days even when it’s raining outside.

Yes being stuck in a mold absolutely sucks, but it is possible to break free from its confines. The more that I shifted my perspective from the monotony of the “daily grind” to one where I see myself, the more my vision opened up. What I mean is that I am being true to the being that Tony is and will continue to be regardless of the situation. I’ve got my swagger back for a lack of a better analogy. I feel that a part of the mold that we find ourselves in comes from an unconscious insecurity in which we hide from the person who we want to be in order to fall in line with societal expectations. I know for some the task of trying to change your living situation may seem like a daunting task but small steps along the way can still carry you a long distance. Once again it appears as if perception is the key factor in determining what we should focusing our energy towards. I don’t want to discredit your own struggles but I want to empower you to look at them with a different lens. When there is this shift in perception we can look at things in the third person and will give us the perspective that we need to see. From this perspective we can see the places where can grow and follow the journey ahead.

Much like mountain biking, you need to let off on the brakes to smooth out the trail that we are cruising down. Now I’m not saying every night needs to be a no hold full tilt bender, but sometimes you need to relinquish control and just ride life’s waves. It seems a little counterintuitive in order to smooth things that you need to let go of your control and complete a bit of a trust fall. In the case of mountain biking it makes sense that in order to smooth out a rocky trail that the less time you spend on the brakes the smoother the trail will become. You will be effectively “skipping” or the rocks allowing the suspension of the bike to absorb the undulations, the tires will be able grip the surface allowing you rail the next berm. Now with the mountain bike example we have physics on our side, however when transform this idea in to our be that looks our mental health these concepts will play out in a similar way. We’ve talked about this in other chapters that when we fight the natural waves of life this energy is transferred into us and will manifest as anxiety.

Case in point my struggles to ask the cute girl out in my yoga class. I’ve been constantly waiting for the perfect moment but failing at recognizing that a moment in life will never be one hundred percent perfect. I’ve got a ton of people in my corner cheering me on and providing me encouragement to just flat out put myself out there and embrace the perfectly imperfect moment. But here I sit still in my head fighting my natural tendencies to maintain control while trying to grow as a human.

And the kicker to this is I know what I must do and I have the ability to make this step but I hold myself back because of some unconscious protection from being “hurt.” The thing is I’d rather live a life of no regrets rather than filled with missed chances because of random idea that I may be hurt again.

At the end of the day we don’t get out of life alive. We will all meet our end at some point in time, and I’ve had brushes with mine in the past. So you’d think it would come natural to me to pursue a life worth living but that always hasn’t been the case. Every day is a new day to prove to yourself you can accomplish anything if you are willing to put in the work. I took the majority of time between 2020 and 2024 to learn to love myself and discover what I truly want out of my life. I will tell you that I’ve gotten better at relinquishing control and allowing the waves to carry me along this journey. I’ve been working on accepting the perfectly imperfect moments in life and just living.

So live like you are dying, because at the end of the day we will not be here anymore.