Category: Life Experiences

I’ve worked in animal shelters for four years. Part of my job is euthanizing animals.

On a good week, we might euthanize 20 or 30.

When the shelter is at maximum capacity, that number can climb to 100 or even 150.

I stopped watching porn, and at first it felt like the smallest decision in the world. It wasn’t the result of a crusade or some kind of rock-bottom moment. It was more like realizing you’ve been listening to the same song on repeat for years, and one day, you just don’t want to hear it anymore. You get up, turn off the music, and sit in the new quiet. It’s not dramatic, but it’s different.

I’m 29 years old and 15 weeks clean from meth.

Right now I work at a fast food restaurant.

A few years ago, I was making six figures fixing cars. I had been with the same employer for more than ten years. I had a house, a newer vehicle, two kids and a relationship. I was good at my job and living pretty comfortably.

I’ve been writing software long enough to remember when being stuck was just part of the job.

You’d get a ticket. You wouldn’t know how to do it. You’d read documentation. Search Stack Overflow. Put breakpoints everywhere. Stare at a stack trace for an hour.

Sometimes you’d spend half a day chasing a bug only to discover you’d misspelled something.

It was frustrating as hell.

They say if you want peace and quiet, you go live in the woods. But I found it somewhere else—sitting 10 feet above the highway in a Freightliner, hauling 40,000 pounds of who-knows-what across the country.

I didn’t make plans for my life after 2012 because I genuinely wasn’t sure the world as I knew it would still exist.

I didn’t necessarily believe everyone would die on December 21. My expectations were more nebulous than that. Maybe a hidden planet called Nibiru would pass through the solar system and cause a catastrophic pole shift. Maybe aliens would reveal themselves. Maybe humanity would experience a metaphysical transformation and enter a higher state of consciousness.

Whatever happened, I was convinced it would permanently change everything. College, careers, retirement plans—all of it seemed irrelevant when the existing world was about to be replaced by something else.

I had been falling down conspiracy-theory rabbit holes for years.

I’m approaching 40, and I’ve never had sex.

More difficult to admit is that I’ve never really experienced intimacy of any kind. I don’t know what it feels like to have someone reach for my hand because she wants to. I’ve never fallen asleep next to a woman, kissed someone goodnight, or felt another person’s body relax against mine. I’ve never had anyone look at me in that unmistakable way that says, I choose you.

Between 2021 and 2023, I helped build and run one of the largest OnlyFans agencies in the world.

We managed dozens of creators—mostly women, all conventionally attractive—and brought in millions of dollars. But what we sold wasn’t nudes, and it wasn’t sex.

We sold connection.

1. “Where’s my hug?” If you have to force a hug you don’t have a “hug level relationship” with that person.

2. Saying anything along the lines of “you’re perfect” upon minutes of meeting.