I had the misfortune of being brought up in a stinkhole located in the eastern interior of the United States, and by now, at the age of 29, the only way I can even stand my life at all is taking steroids (corticosteroids to be precise). Yes, I know this isn’t exactly what one would call good, but without that performance enhancement I just can’t do what I need to do to have even the barest shadow of a normal fulfilling life like other people have, and that I deeply need to have for myself.
It’s like my body doesn’t work quite right, feeling tired and low-key sick all the time, and my mind is slow, fogged, and lethargic without it, and the drugs clear it up, turn back the clock, and make me into a young and wholesome person again. Well, a simulacrum of one, anyway; I get much hotter, particularly in the face, when on the stuff than I ever did when I was younger and had those traits naturally. And feeling normal only after waking up and getting your dose just isn’t something those endowed with natural wholesomeness experience. That’s a real drag, even if it is better than the alternative.
I’ve thought for a long time that it’s some genetic defect in me plus the cumulative damage from all the suffering I’ve had to endure in my life, and perhaps it is, but on both my trips to the West Coast, especially my recent journey to the northwest, I noticed something: the need for the steroids almost disappears when I’m under the direct influence of the Pacific Ocean. On the West Coast, I just don’t take them and I still feel good and can do everything I want without having to force myself into it or feeling sick while I do it. Well, isn’t that interesting?
I always figured a lot of my not-so-great experience in life was environmental in origin, but even then I find it as striking as it is surprising: West Coast air and lifestyle agrees with me to the extent that most of the friction I experience in daily living back home (and even other places I’ve vacationed; so it’s not just the effect of vacationing I’m feeling) just vanishes. Poof! Like it never really existed…until I have to go back home, lest my bank account be drained or my nerves be pinched from sleeping in a car for weeks on end (or both!).
Alas, West Coast lifestyle agrees with my body and mind but it doesn’t agree with my wallet. Getting digs out there, even in the outskirts of Greater Los Angeles, was well within my grandparents’ price range, but no, they didn’t give a damn about giving a grandchild any kind of opportunities in life, so instead, with prices out there having escalated out of reach for someone in their (or my) bracket, I’m stuck in the undisclosed location I call home, which honestly is slowly killing me. Being trapped there has robbed me of a fulfilling twenties, years that I’ll never get back no matter what I do, and that is so depressing I care not to think about it.
Luckily for me my body seems to like steroids and filler, so I can artificially boost myself for years, maybe even decades, but nonetheless my time to actually live in any meaningful sense is limited; the hands of the clock might have been rolled back, and henceforth they might tick somewhat slower, but still they tick!
What is to be done? I’m already near maximal aggressiveness in my investment portfolio, but that alone won’t be enough, so active income-earning will be required to add to it if I’m to close the gap between where I am now and being able to afford to live in a place I’d actually like to live in, somewhere where my body and mind won’t need performance-enhancing drugs just to avoid a complete withering breakdown.
Ballroom instruction will be a good start, which I’m currently training for, but the ceiling for that is low six figures; to really get where I want to go I’ll need mid six figures or better. The best way I’ve figured out is to pivot from ballroom instruction to luxury real estate down the road, both of which I’d be a good fit for and mesh together well to some extent (both draw upscale clientele; ballroom as a hobby isn’t cheap, you know…). At least I hope so…
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