Around a year ago, I thought to treat myself to a 70 inch TV. I was just starting to get pretty deep into web development and writing code, but I felt pretty cramped in the corner of my living room behind two computer monitors. I wanted to be more ‘open’, and I thought getting a big screen TV to serve as my computer monitor would help with that.

And it has.

I ordered the TV online, and waited a grueling week before it arrived. I took the fateful day off of work to make sure I was here for its delivery, and at around 11:30 in the morning I see a truck pull up. I’m sitting there in my window, alongside Rowboat as we both eagerly watch this ginormous dude pull an equally ginormous box from the truck and carry it up to my door on his back.

The guy sets the box down in my living room, where I notice a pretty decent sized dent in one of the corners. I apprehensively sign for the TV and the guy leaves. I open the box, and it’s very clear that the TV is damaged.

A wave of feeling passed over me as I realized something I was waiting for and so excited about arrives DOA at my doorstop after a week. It felt very symbolic. “This is how things turn out that you’re looking forward to, Albert. No use in even trying. This is life, for you.”

And I said, “Well, screw that.” So after being bent out of shape and dejected for a day, I asked my sister to go to Best Buy with me the next day. Damnit, I was getting that TV.

And so I bought another 70 inch TV that I’m using write now as I type this.

But I still had the broken one.

I went back and forth with the company I bought the busted TV from, who were surprisingly helpful. It was the shipping company that were being a bag of dicks about the whole thing. So the TV company asked me to hold on to the TV for a while while they sorted out the insurance claim. That was fine by me. They had already refunded me the money I paid for the TV without any hassle, so I felt it was the least I could do.

Three months pass.

I get an e-mail from the company, saying that the shipping company only wanted to give the TV company $300 as insurance payment, and that it cost them $500 to ship the TV out to me in the first place, so they were pretty much boned. They said I could just throw the TV out, or do whatever with it.

Case closed.

But this is a 70 inch friggin’ TV. In a big ass box, and is heavy as all get out. I wasn’t a 6’8″ Russian dude that could lug this thing out by myself. There’s only a handful of people I know around here that would help me carry the thing out, and I struggle with asking people for help or feeling like I deserve help from people. And I didn’t know what policy, if any, my place had about dropping ginormous size things off at the trash area.

So… I just kept it. In the box it came in. Ever since.

I leaned the box against a corner in my bedroom and it just became a fixture, obscuring the Speed Racer poster I bought that reminds me of watching cartoons and action movies with my dad on Friday nights as a kid.

It was the first thing I’d see every morning, and the last thing I’d see before I turned the lights out to go to bed. This reminder that when I try for things, it’s going to show up dead in a box while I was excited for it and anticipating it. That that was my life, and the result of all the requisite ambitions therein.

And in some ways, I had truly accepted that.

Imagine having a thought like that burrow into your mind, reach your subconscious, take root, and underscore every thought and action for a year or so. Have it compound with a lifetime of self-deprecation and self-loathing. Not exactly the most healthy thing ever, I’d argue.

I woke up this morning, did my exercise routine, fixed a cup of coffee, put on some jazz and started cleaning when I froze. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can and can’t accept these days. From people. From things. From myself.

From that fucking dead TV sitting in the corner of my room.

I decided it was time for that damn thing to go. Originally, I had decided I would wait until tonight to try to get it out. I didn’t even know if I could do it by myself, and I didn’t want anyone to really see my take the thing out at all, let alone fail in the process.

But something in me said, “No. This damn thing is going now. Like, right now. And if someone sees you, who cares? What happens if they look at you? They laugh? They point at you? Do you know them? Do they know you? Does it REALLY matter what they say? Above all that, do you realistically think they even care enough to do anything more than glance your way and get back to living their life? Why are you overthinking this? Why have you been overthinking this for so long? What happens if you keep this thing here still? You concede to everything it’s come to represent. Do you think these hypothetical people you’re worried about are going to offer anything remotely approaching comfort? Do you think they care that you struggle with these thoughts? Is it really that big a deal to them? Why are you in your own way? Why enable this?”

Fair points. Fair points.

So, I found some tape, strapped down the open edges of this ridiculously sized box, and with no small amount of effort dragged that God forsaken dead TV out to the dumpster in broad daylight.

Some dude was getting groceries out of the back of his minivan. Looked right at me as I did before going on about his business. And, surprisingly enough (/sarcasm), the world didn’t explode. I didn’t die of humiliation. To be honest, I was too busy feeling jacked because I was able to lug that damn box out a lot easier than I had thought.

I let these thoughts weigh on my mind for a year, and it took me all of 15 minutes from start to finish to get that thing out of my house.

Now that’s something worth committing to memory.

Stop getting in your own way, Albert. You’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t try. And stop giving a shit about what people think when it comes to you doing something to better yourself.

Write that down.

The Veil Nebula is something that, along with a seemingly unending parade of other things, has come to my mind lately. It’s an absolutely breathtaking display of what’s possible in the universe; the result of a supernova explosion that released  untold amounts of energy into the universe, as far back as possibly 6,000 BC.

It’s a mesmerizing construct of ionized oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur. It’s just out there, larger than our minds can really piece together or understanding, some 1,400 light years away.

I have a picture of it as my wallpaper.

There’s a range of pictures of the Veil Nebula, taken through different lens and methods but this one has always stuck out to me. Maybe it’s because it’s kinda orange-ish.

But tonight I was winding down after my podcast. This generally involves some jazz music, lowered lights, and some time piecing together my thoughts.

I ventured back towards perception. The other day, someone told me that they would have never guessed I was an introverted person. They’ve only ever seen me in this lively, social context where I legitimately am extroverted so it was an understandable shock to learn exactly how introspective I am and can be. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve almost always been told that I’m too much of a hermit. That I close myself off. That I need to get out of my own head and my own way.

I kicked my feet up on my coffee table and had a sip of whiskey to Miles Davis while I thought on this. By the way, sipping whiskey is a first for me and it officially makes me feel like an old man and an old soul. I should have done it sooner. You gain such a better understanding of a drink’s flavor when you choose quality over quantity sometimes.

But anyway.

As I’ve written here, I do struggle with introversion. It’s easy for me to get lost in my own thoughts, and to separate myself. While I could stand to have some moderation on that front in some instances, being that deep thinker makes me who I am. And in spite of my gaffs and missteps, I’m growing to really like myself. Love myself, even.

I think I’ve started to game the system as far as this whole introspective thing goes. When I take one on the chin figuratively, it probably hits me harder than most people. I sit and think about it a while; a good while. But when I finally emerge from the depths, I feel so much better and knowledgeable. To the point where the last couple of times I’ve even started to feel excited in those moments because I knew I’d ultimately come out of it a better person.

And I wouldn’t have that without my introspection. Really refining this way of thinking is how I feel I get to a place of possessing unshakable confidence in myself. And that’s not something I’ve ever really had.

I’m okay with having quirks, with being unusual, and with not being everyone’s cup of tea. And I haven’t always been, but the more I am the happier about myself I feel. I guess I just hit a realization of wondering why the Hell I’ve ever looked at my quirks as things that were ‘wrong’ and needed to be worked on. I don’t need or want to become someone else for anyone’s approval, particularly my own. The whole Independence thing at play.

But damn is it freeing to embrace who you are and what you like about yourself. I suppose the grand irony or practical joke is that once I’m able to hone and master that sense of self confidence and adoration the more outgoing and extroverted I will end up being. Which has been a quagmire I’ve been trying to ‘solve’ for most of my adult life.

But maybe it doesn’t need solving. Maybe it never has. I am not like many people. At all. And that’s something to celebrate, if you ask me.

So I’ll continue being that weirdo, thanks. That suits me just fine.

But yeah. Veil Nebula. Miles Davis. Whiskey. Confidence. Weirdo.

I’m sure there will be valleys ahead. This is far from some happy ending. I think the happiest days of my life are ahead of me, but there will be plenty of dark ones too. But this moment is why I write this blog, so I can look back and see the catalog of my thoughts through the rise and fall that is my introspection. To enjoy the highs, understand the lows, and chart the progress of someone I’m growing to like more and more each day.

And that’s pretty flippin’ cool.

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve been looking around in the interpipe or if you’ve read any local periodicals, but a few days ago there was this day people call the Fourth of July. Independence Day. You heard it here first. You’re welcome.

Most years, the holiday represents just me getting a day off from work; which ain’t half bad. As I am one to do, I took a good amount of time over this extended weekend to really think about things and have yet another deep dive into my emotions and thoughts. It’s a vast, endless ocean where the deeper I go the more pressure and separation from the surface and the world at large I feel. I dove in pretty hard this weekend.

In my introspection, I thought back to 1776. I imagine a group of men and women, living in the British colonies and finding themselves increasingly irritated by the pressures of a distant government. Feeling like their own hard work is not really benefiting them, and that life would be better if they could live free of Britain’s influence.

These people had to know what they were signing up for when they decided to declare their independence, right? They knew, more than most, about the might of Britain and what effectively going to war with them would mean. These people could have probably continued to live on under British rule, and even felt instances of happy and normalcy for it. I’m no historian, but life probably wouldn’t have been that bad.

I’d imagine it’d have been better than going to war for freedom, and yet they bravely chose the hard way in pursuit of happiness and freedom.

Something one of the best people I will ever know tells me often enough to never settle. That that’s not how we roll. It’s a doctrine I’m a firm believer in, and yet in retrospect I can see instances where I waivered and accepted less than what I felt I deserved or was fair. I didn’t declare my independence.

And what does that even get you? The two options I can think of or have experienced are that I make some concession in some attempt to play the ‘long game’ and I end up without what I was playing for anyway. So then I feel like a jackass for the concession on top of whatever feelings come out of not getting what I was after, which is something depression loves to prattle on about.

Or I actually get what I want, but it feels a little hollow; like it came at an unexpectedly great cost. Am I really the person I strive to be if I sacrifice core parts of myself in some bid to bargain for something? Something I’ve told a friend of mine is that if you try to force a square peg in a round hole with enough force, it’ll go in there. But some parts of the peg are either shaved off or bent in irreparable ways. And that round hole then becomes a point of resentment than whatever you perceived it to be.

It’s a fool’s errand, basically. I’ve found myself too often on that sort of errand lately across a different range of topics. And I do believe the proverbial buck as stopped as far as all that goes.

Give me liberty or give me death. This is not the battlecry of a people that are cool with 60% happiness. Now, I don’t write this to suggest I’ve somehow adopted this rigid, inflexible mindset where I expect the world to bend to my will. Because I don’t feel that way.

But what I am saying is that there is a baseline of principles and ideals that serve as the foundation to the kind of life I want to have, and I’m no longer entertaining things that undermine them.

I’d rather walk away with nothing and stay true to who I am than to become something I’m not to settle for part of something.

For the land of the free, and the home of the brave.