It’s Hard To Give A Fuck

Forty-one years.

Forty-one years of waking up believing that if something mattered enough, I could figure it out.

I've always been driven. Restless. The kind of person who sees a limitation as an invitation rather than a warning. Throughout my life, I've made a habit of chasing the things people—including myself—thought I couldn't accomplish.

I traveled the world.

I stood on stages and performed music.

I recorded albums.

I became a published author.

I transformed my body into the best shape of my life.

I stepped into martial arts and combat sports, despite always considering myself a lover, not a fighter.

Every mountain life put in front of me, I climbed.

Every ceiling someone placed above me, I broke through.

And every victory was fueled by one idea.

Love.

Ironically, the one thing I wanted most was the one thing I could never force into existence.

When I look back on my life, my bucket list is nearly complete. There are very few experiences I still feel compelled to chase. I've accomplished more than I ever imagined I would.

But when I look at my heart...

I feel like I failed.

Not because I didn't care.

Not because I didn't try.

Not because I didn't show up.

And certainly not because I loved halfway.

Every relationship I had was beautiful—until it wasn't.

When each one ended, I searched endlessly for the reason. I dissected every conversation. Every decision. Every moment.

What could I have done differently?

Why wasn't I enough?

Why was everything I gave so easy to walk away from?

Those questions can hollow a person out.

People say you shouldn't define yourself by relationships, and they're right.

But they rarely acknowledge the loneliness that exists when you've built a life you're proud of and still have no one to come home to.

I have no wife.

No children.

No family waiting for me at the end of the day.

I've spent years becoming someone I'd be proud to be.

I've learned to love myself.

I've built a life.

Somewhere along the way, my career quietly became the answer.

I get to tell stories for a living. I travel. I meet incredible people. I spend my days celebrating other people's passions, businesses, and lives. I jokingly call myself the Anthony Bourdain of the locksmith world because, absurd as that sounds, I genuinely love what I do.

From the outside, it probably looks like I've figured it out.

In many ways, I have.

My work gives me purpose.

It gives me adventure.

It gives me problems worth solving.

It introduces me to remarkable people.

My coworkers have become family.

The road became home.

The camera became my companion.

But somewhere along the way, work became something it was never meant to be.

It filled the quiet.

It filled the weekends.

It filled the empty house.

It filled the hours I didn't know what to do with because there was no one waiting for me.

Success distracted me from loneliness.

It never cured it.

Somewhere, I stopped working only because I loved creating...

...and started working because creating was the only time I didn't feel the weight of everything that was missing.

That's a dangerous trade.

Because when your worth begins to depend on being useful, every day off feels like evidence that you're disposable.

My career tells me I'm valuable.

It tells me I'm difficult to replace.

People trust me.

People celebrate what I create.

But the hardest part of my life has never been wondering whether I'm valuable professionally.

It's wondering why no one has ever decided I was irreplaceable personally.

There is one kind of love that cannot be manufactured alone.

The love of another human being.

It doesn't matter how much money I've made.

I've been there.

It doesn't matter how fit I've been.

I've done that.

It doesn't matter how consistently I show up, how deeply I care, how intentionally I love, or how much of myself I'm willing to give.

None of those things guarantee someone stays.

That's a painful realization.

Maybe the hardest one of all.

At forty-one, I can honestly admit that my well has started to run dry.

Not because I believe love doesn't exist.

Not because I think I'm unworthy of it.

But because after enough disappointments, hope begins to feel expensive.

I've watched people choose partners who gave them less honesty, less consistency, less kindness, and less effort than I was willing to give. Sometimes those choices came from fear. Sometimes from unresolved trauma. Sometimes from chasing excitement instead of stability. Sometimes simply because we all mistake what we need for what we want.

I don't judge them.

I just don't understand it.

And after years of trying to understand, I've grown tired.

The easiest thing in the world would be to become cynical.

To play games.

To pretend not to care.

To become emotionally unavailable because that's somehow mistaken for confidence.

But that's never been who I am.

I'm the man who pays attention.

I notice when you stop walking because something in a store window caught your eye, and weeks later I surprise you with it.

I notice when you've worked all day and probably forgot to eat, so I show up with your favorite meal before you even have to ask.

I make gifts instead of buying them because sometimes what I want to say about you doesn't exist on a shelf.

I don't rush intimacy.

I'd rather take someone on five different dates, see how they treat strangers, watch how they handle inconvenience, even learn who they become standing in line at the DMV, before deciding whether we're truly compatible.

Because I was never looking for someone to spend the night with.

I was looking for someone to spend a lifetime with.

Maybe that's old-fashioned.

Maybe it's unrealistic.

I don't know anymore.

What I do know is that I refuse to become someone else just because authenticity isn't trending.

I refuse to stop caring simply because caring has cost me.

I refuse to become the man who wins people by pretending he doesn't need them.

That's not strength.

That's self-protection disguised as confidence.

So here I am.

Forty-one.

A life full of memories.

A list of accomplishments that once felt impossible.

A career I truly love.

A heart that's more tired than broken.

Still standing.

Still believing, even if only by a thread.

Because despite everything...

I know this version of me is worth loving.

Some days, though...

It's hard to give a fuck.

And maybe admitting that isn't giving up.

Maybe it's just the most honest thing I've said in years.