At the moment of writing this I’m 35 years old. I have a congenital brain malformation. I have a stress related heart condition. I work security at a psychiatric hospital. I study to get a bachelors in nursing. I maintain a solid training regimen, and diet. As of this moment I’ve lost a little more than 23kg of fat, since starting in late 2015. I’ve also paid off close to 33,000$ in debt over 6 years. Why am I telling you this? I’ll get to that in a moment.

At work I often come into contact with people, who have debilitating diagnoses. Ranging from schizophrenia to debilitating depression and everything in between. You don’t have to pick at the surface for long, to find a common denominator.

Now I'm a sucker for things like Jocko Willinks talk about taking extreme ownership. Of your decisions, and the fallout that trickles out from them. Listening to Jordan Peterson talk about personal responsibility superseding any adherence to ideology I get all warm and tingling inside.

I know it sounds like run-of-the-mill self-help bullshit. And it is. But as with everything else in society you pick off the parts you like, and you leave the rest in your wake. And back then in 2014 or there about that was exactly what i needed to hear.

All day everyday I saw people refusing to take responsibility for their lives. Citing some illness or handicap they sometimes yelled and screamed at me or my co-workers to live their lives for them. Because the had deemed themselves unable. Some doctor somewhere had reduced their life’s ambition to a dull hum. And in a country like Denmark where you can claim life-long disability and wellfare, they were content to waddle in their misery. And something about that always wore on me. Rubbed me the wrong way.

When I looked at them, even though I was professionally obligated to feel some modicum of empathy, I couldn’t. They made me angry. Because in them, I saw some reflection of me. Of the life that went on inside my head. I was fundamentally unhappy with most things about my life. I knew that I was relatively intelligent, and that I wasn’t living up to that intellect working security. I was disgusted with my physical appearance. And I felt I was wasting potential. Letting my story fade into obscurity.
Once this became conscious it started a cascade of realizations, and crazy ideas. Most of which I knew to be half-truths at best. But it ignited a fire.

Late 2015 I decided to take a long hard look at my life, and the apparent lack of direction. I went out to the forest, and walked around aimlessly for a good long while. Spoke to myself. Trying to find out what really made me spark.

In the days that followed I formulated a wishlist. And a plan.

1: Get an education. In my case, becoming a nurse. I wanted something with real-world application. The kind of skills that would be invaluable once this empire of nothing comes crashing down. But I’m also fascinated by the divide between what passes for sane, and the batshit crazy people I saw at work everyday. So I wanted to work clinically in that field.

2: Get in shape. At that time I didn’t have a clear concept of what I meant by that phrase. Other than the painstakingly obvious fact that I need to lose a lot of body fat. I also wanted to be able to do pull-ups and dips. To some extent I still don’t know. And it is very much still a work in progress.

3: Get a better understanding of myself. This gets tougher to define. But I had a few basic concepts down. I need a different concept of masculinity, than the mgtow, anti-feminists or players out there. It didn’t feel real to me. I wanted to spend some serious time developing my spiritual life. I wanted to reflect on my role as a father to my daughter, and my aims for future plans for a family.

But most of all a growing fear started in the back of my mind; No one was coming to help me.
I was all alone in this. If any of this dreamscape was going to replace the ruins of my life, I had to do it all. Bit by bit. Sacrifice by bloody sacrifice. It almost made me quit before I had begun. But I didn’t. And I think that was a first.

Since then I have been keeping a journal almost religiously. Two actually. One for training. And a mental journal. I make a habit of writing something everyday. Some days make sense. Some days it’s just drivel. But it has become a ritual for me. And it has become more about the act of writing than looking forward to rereading it once it’s full.

If I still have your attention, I hope I have also succeeded in driving home my motivation for writing this piece; Take responsibility! It does not matter if your stomach hurts, if you broke a nail, if it’s that time of the month. No one gives a fuck about your failed ambition. You’ll be another couch-captain telling anyone who pretends to care, about how close you came to making a positive change in your own life. Realize that no one is coming to save you. There’s only you.

But if you zero in on that fact. There’s great liberty in it. Pick your suffering carefully and do so based on the outcome. Share it only with those willing to support your saga. Own your life. For better or for worse, and make of it such a life as to be worthy of a song.

Or don’t.

J. Nielsen @Kaoshjerte, Scandinavia