Eleven years ago, I just said fuck it. I released from the career I’d had in the air force for ten years, refused to make any phone calls for any reason, and really limited my contact with people. In many ways, I became somewhat of a hermit. Eleven years later, I feel much better about interacting with others. I no longer want to basically kill myself anytime I stutter in front of someone. It really helped me put everything in perspective. At least for me, years of pushing myself through challenging situations, going to work every day, and constantly interacting with others had pushed me so far into a state of extreme burnout, it took eleven years of basic solitude to erase the damage that life had caused in the way I perceived not only myself, but everyone around me as well. I am currently in the process of selling my condo. I’ll be using the proceeds to purchase, and completely convert a new Ford Transit van into a home for me and my Shiba Inu, Aggie. We’re going to travel North America until we run out of money, which should work out to about five or six years, unless I’m able to find employment which I can conduct on the road, then we’ll be on the road indefinitely. I realize that most people are not in a position to do what I did, but I don’t think I could have kept my sanity up to this point, had I not shut out the rest of the world for as long as I did, and took the time to decompress from 25 years of what was basically non-consensual engagement with society. While people can certainly be cruel, it’s often the cruelty we inflict upon ourselves which ends up causing the most damage. I’m still learning to accept the fact that perfection is an impossible standard to set for yourself. Doing so is foolish, and fully capable of destroying your entire life.