Stress and the Citizens Grindset
How a lack of perspective has some of you looking at things backwards
“Coleman! Get back in line” the Indian River juvie-jail roller barked at me as I wandered out to talk to someone in the hallway. I ignored him, I had fresh squeezed juice to gossip.
“Coleman!”
“Keep my name out ya mouth!” I yelled back over my shoulder. This wasn't my first time doing a baby-bit and I learned long ago these guards couldn't put hands on me unless I put hands on them first. Can't manhandle a 14 year old.
It wasn't just me but all of us doing time there. A whole underage population of kids thinking they're killers who knew that there were no new consequences that could be leveled against us.
Without that context you'd think I was the one having a hard time but it was the civilians who worked inside that facility with us who were struggling. How can you punish someone who's having fun at rock bottom?
Life wasn't hard on me, you're the ones, good people, who struggled.
This is a concept I've only just now begun giving consideration to. A common sentiment I've encountered over the years is how difficult my life had been. Whenever I told a story there would always be a degree of sympathy from my readers even when I was clearly the antagonist in the tale. So much so that I believed it as well.
These are awful stories for the casual citizen to read about unbelievable situations and dangers. Of course they were awful hardships. Anyone going through such things must've suffered greatly.
Right?
However I smile every time I write about them on here. I laugh whenever I tell the tales in person. While I no longer live that way, I genuinely miss living that way. I'm happier now yet I'm by no means more joyful if you're able to understand the difference.
I've always attributed this to some ridiculous degree of resilience on my part but now I'm wondering. If laughing during such “hard times” was a me thing, then why was everyone else around me having just as much fun back then?
Maybe it's not resilience at all. Maybe we weren't the tough ones. Maybe we're looking at these things all wrong.
I was running from a few police officers once due to some misunderstanding about me breaking into a store simply because they saw me breaking into the store.
I led them on a rabbit chase through a string of backyards where I'd sprint and literally dive over each chain link fence to tumble roll right back onto my feet while maintaining my momentum. I even stopped several times to let them catch up. Yelling smack with an ear-to-ear grin like you wouldn't believe.
It was a game to me, this cat and mouse. However, this was serious business for the group of officers I was taunting. Their career was literally to stop people like me, to protect society from me, and there I was mooning them at one point. I wasn't the one who was stressed.
I had no responsibilities, nothing to lose, no pressure of any kind really. If I got caught then I got caught. I wasn't being tough because I wasn't actually overcoming anything. Of course things were dramatic, I'm the one who made them that way. This wasn't some random thing that was happening to me, I had to go find it.
That doesn't sound like a hardship.
Up until this moment, as I take a step back, I thought I was overcoming difficult times but maybe that wasn't it at all. I wasn't walking through fire, I was starting them and walking away. Of course I was upbeat about it. I wasn't the one getting burned.
I was the one who caused stress.
Even when I was robbing drug dealers, I didn't share their anxiety, stress, fear or confusion. It was my fucking plan, I'm only in trouble if it went wrong. They were the ones in danger. Nothing was happening that I didn't want. Even when things went sideways, it was still my baby. All the worst case scenario caused was for me to go to plan B.
Sometimes diving out a window is what it is.
Yet once again, nothing was hanging over me beyond getting myself out of a mess I created.
Even in the worst case scenario where I might get killed I understood that it didn't actually matter. Dead people don't care that they're dead. Something that was proven to me later down the line when I had no idea I had been killed.
No, not caring is different than being tough. Just like a man can't be brave unless he's overcoming fear. It's starting to make sense to me now.
All I ever had to do was simply live where I was. Whatever that place was had nothing to do with me. When I thrived, nothing changed. When I failed, nothing changed. Whether you were a boss or a back alley fiend, it didn't matter. Nothing ever changed. I've been a homeless gutter punk and prison royalty and the world spun in spite of me either way.
Had my heart not started beating again all those years ago when I was “murdered”, absolutely no one would've noticed. How can I be stressed when I didn't even exist beyond the immediate moment I was in?
I'm starting to think that's why I could laugh through all of it. There's nothing to worry about when you have nothing of value to lose, including yourself.
But then I tried something different. I tried things your way.
Getting shot at was easier.
I walked out of the joint determined to do things “the right way”. I owed that to the woman who took a chance on me. Because I had both gotten married while inside and bought my first house, I hit the streets with responsibilities on day one.
I had never had those before. I had never been responsible for anything beyond myself in whatever immediate moment I was in at any given time or place. Eat food, don't die maybe, fuck shit up, laugh my ass off, repeat.
I've told a serial killer he’s a bitch to the side of his neck and then turned my back on him. How hard could this be?
I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.
I had no appreciation for the abilities you possess.
First off, most of you have been working actual jobs since you were teenagers and a few probably before that. Just using the averages you get up 5 days a week and go out 40 hours of your waking time into the honest man's grind. Many times you do this performing a job you hate and still you show up every day?
What the actual fuck? Because it's something you've always done and because you see it as simply how things are, I don't believe you give yourself credit for just how impressive that is. That is not the path of least resistance you think it is. The right way is actually harder.
Hear me out. When I was busting my ass at the factory, I'd pick up every shift I could get in an attempt to make ends meet. What I earned every two weeks was considerably less than what I'd normally pull from a 30 second corner hit. Hell, several months didn't even add up to what I could stumble across during the 3 to 4 minutes it would take to flip a stash house.
What you're doing is the real grind, not my bullshit. Especially if it's some monotonous, minimum wage nightmare where you have to sit in your car before each shift and talk yourself into walking inside. You could be a welfare queen, you could be a taker, an abuser, a system leach, yet you grind because that's what good people do. You don't take the easy wrong way. That still staggers me.
What's a bill? Y'all do this every month for everything? I remember being in my 30’s when my wife was stressing over the electric bill. She told me what it had gone up to and I was like, “yeah, that's a dollar amount” with a shrug because I had literally never seen a utility bill before. I had no way of knowing what it was supposed to be or what a reasonable amount was.
You budget and keep track of these things and pay them at different intervals throughout each month and keep track of that. Don't even get me started on how confusing trash bills being every other month can be. This is due on the 1st and that one is the 8th and this is the 15th and so on. Yet you don't get paid on those dates, which means you have to float money in between and remember what goes where and when.
And if you get it wrong things get shut off and taken.
I know that all sounds simple to you but that's because you do it. I had never had a bill, never been in debt. Are you telling me y'all were doing this stuff as teenagers? My entire life was, “how much is it? I either have it or I don't. So I either buy it now or go get the amount I need.” That's it. Zero stress. None.
Then there's the people who depend on you. Oh my God, are you kidding me? Kids? A person who is completely dependent on you and could literally die if you don't do things right. A little human being who the State will come take if you suck at it. I was not prepared for the pressure of being a provider. I knew in my head I was supposed to be but had no basis for understanding the weight of that going in. My entire life I had to just keep myself alive and nothing more.
Yet I watch y'all do this without hesitation. Life was like, “wut up homie? Dig, everything you've had to do to keep your head above water, double that.” And then after a moment it laughs and says, “I'm just playin’, I meant triple it fam.” You chose to be a good human being and take responsibility for something so many run from. I know Mom's are usually stuck but Dad's run all the time from this. Yet there you are, nose to the grindstone, doing what needs to be done in spite of the difficulty. All because you couldn't imagine doing it the wrong way.
Going to work, juggling bills, being a parent, fixing your car, budgeting groceries, repairing your house, remembering to put the trash to the curb, paying bills again, I can go on and on. You get up and do it every single day. The grind is a street term but, in reality, you're the ones who are doing it.
My entire existence once fit inside an Everlast backpack and nothing mattered beyond where I happened to be at any given moment. You believe that we had it harder because we had nothing but the opposite was true. Having nothing, in possessions, responsibilites and expectations, made everything easier.
I know this likely won't make sense to you, just as living your way once didn't make sense to me, however I took the easy path from day one. Everyone like me took the easy option. It only seems hard from the outside looking in. A few minutes of crazy could carry me for a month or more.
Being dirty is easy. If nothing matters and you only worry about the moment, everything is fun and games. So long as you don't care who you step on and hurt, life's a party.
Yet here you are choosing every day to be good people. You make a conscious decision to do the right thing over and over and over even though it's almost never easier. You choose the stress and hardships over being a dirt bag. That's fucking mind blowing.
Do you understand that every time I don't do the easy criminal thing it's because I told myself “that's not how they do things”? You're the “they” I'm referring to. The compass I use because the way forward isn't natural to my sense of direction.
Good people do good people things every day even though you're choosing the harder path. You're choosing the hardships and stress and losses all because you'd rather suffer yourself than pay that pain forward to someone else.
Are you grasping how big that is?
Y'all keep giving me the tough-title but all I did was start fires. You're the ones who walk through them.
Every god-damn day you walk through fire.
Forget humility for just a minute and admit you're tough. Give yourself the credit you earned from living a stressful citizens Grindset.
Amen, JC. Great piece.
This also explains why you noticed that combat vets tend to “get”you. Because it’s a very similar mindset when you’re at war. All of the mundane bs of the grind gets left to mama and the kids.
When I was in country I knew all that mattered was the immediate moment. Nothing focuses the mind quite like some other dudes trying to kill you with high explosives.
The PFC - Private F***ing Citizen - taxpaying and bill paying grind is the real narrow path and it is no picnic. Salute to everyone trying to do it honest.
I suggest you reissue this for Father's Day