This is the story about how I almost quit at life in 2014. I didn’t, and in doing so started giving even less of a shit about so many things and really got started living (successfully, without thinking of quitting anymore).

There’s only three topics I really care about in the world, and it’s taken me 36 years to realize that being incredibly passionate about music, professional wrestling and race relations is quite alright. “Music, professional wrestling and race relations,” you ask? Yes. It’s simple. I grew up as a black child in the 1980s and because I was a “smart black boy” I was admittedly granted a ton of unique opportunities that people would grant to smart black boys to prove that we weren’t all violent uneducated criminals addicted to drugs. “But Marcus, it seems like you know about SO much more?” My answer to that question? Everything else in my life that people think I know I can pretty much chalk up to being handy with using the proverbial smoke and mirrors enough to sound passably intelligent.

Music and wrestling were my hiding place, where I’d attempt to find my life in a song lyric, a rock star’s quirky cool, Bruiser Brody’s woolen boot or Superstar Graham’s bicep. If I succeeded, I would then project myself onto and into them, away from a life that was filled with frustration and angst.

“You know, I think you want to be a martyr, Marcus…”

“Well shit, I’m already a fucking martyr!” I wanted to scream this at my concerned friend who uttered the quote to me in the most matter-of-fact and (seemingly) dispassionate tone ever. My whole entire life has been spent chasing a concept of “perfection” that I honestly feel will never truly be able to come to full fruition. I am ready to die on the cross for pro wrestling shows that entertain without being (overly) embarassing, racial and social equality for all, Baltimore club music progressing into the mainstream, as well as (of course) sex, drugs and rock and roll. Obviously, if you take one look at the world and compare it to my dreams, I could be on the list of the most martyred of martyrs to have ever martyred of all time. And I’m so happy to finally be okay with that.

I was standing on a section of New York City’s (relatively) newly constructed High Line, a monument to genius park planning that has epic vistas overlooking the Hudson River. But, I wasn’t looking at the Hudson River, or the Meatpacking District, or even any of the progressive artistic installations. I was staring into an office building somewhere the 23rd Street lawn section of the High Line, really attempting to get right with the idea that I was ready to quit at life.

No, I wasn’t ready to commit suicide and launch myself headfirst into Chelsea Market, though that was briefly the first thought I had. But then I had that realization of wondering just what my mother would say when she found out. It was the weekend of the Electric Zoo Festival, it’s third day cancelled again, this time due to a freak thunderstorm and not drug overdoses like the year prior. But that wouldn’t have worked for my doom and gloom predictor of a mother, who I knew would’ve imagined the worst. This scenario starts with me chopping out a few lines of blow in a High Line bathroom stall. Then, high as hell, I’d have taken a running start and leapt over a railing, falling to my death some fifty feet below. So, no. Given that I’ve never used cocaine, I certainly wasn’t going to allow my mother the displeasure of that thought crossing her mind. No, I was just going to quit at being a martyr and quit at being happy.

Of course, to be ready to quit a life of complete and utter happiness, you first have to encounter being unfathomably sad.

Roughly five years ago I got laid off from a job that paid me way too much money to sit at a desk and become completely dispassionate about myself and my dreams. I was calling real estate brokers to update their properties in a database, a job that required that I pay attention to details that I actually never wanted to care about.

However, somewere around 2006, I was in a worse place than I ended up in by 2009. But before we get to 2006, we should probably head back even further to 2003. Wow, was 2003 ever not ridiculous? I was a 25-year old college graduate attempting to use my degree in Political Science from Providence College for more than a great way to get a discount on my first post-college automobile (yes, that happened). I was working as a researcher and administrator for a government contractor. It was theoretically my “dream job,” but it really wasn’t. My dream job in 2003 would be doing what I was doing on the weekends for a living, that being travelling up and down the east coast to indepdendent (non-WWE affiliated) professional wrestling shows and writing commentaries about not just the shows, but about the wrestling industry overall. Of course, given that I was paid in free tickets to shows for doing this, I was stuck having to live another “dream” and feeling really unfulfilled as a human being.

“Marcus, you should probably quit working here because you’re not going to be successful until you’re your own boss.”

In order to become a terrible property researcher I had to first be a horrible researcher and end up getting fired. Sucking at this “dream job” was a really crushing thing. It hurt because it only highlighted the fact that I was still on the road every weekend pursuing the other dream but instead of wrestling shows being a fun diversion, the shows and travel felt controlled by a clock ticking backwards to zero. Returning back to the office on Monday morning, my cubicle felt like a prison I was forced to sit in for five days at a time instead of a more ideal surrounding.

By 2006, I was in a — in retrospect — really terrible relationship. See, the best time to date someone is when you have a steady job that you’re not in constant fear of losing because by this point you’ve crossed over the guardrails and are now a pro wrestling manager. At that point, the job I was failing at trying to have was to be a wrestling manager while working as a full-time temp. Being an office temp felt like an amazing joke that paid incredibly well. Yes, I was still in a cubicle, but no, I really wasn’t (really) the employee of a company, but more of a contractor. I was floating between the two, and for awhile, it worked.

Of course, there’s that point when you start wanting to miss work for wrestling shows, dreams becoming conflated with the realities of earning a living wage. Of course, as is the case in this story, I again lost a “dream” job, and was left taking a job updating real estate. Why would I do such a thing? Well, this (now, in retrospect) bad relationship had mushroomed into a bad co-habitation situation, a co-habitation situation that required rent and bills to be paid. So, as much as I wanted to keep pursuing my dream without really finding discovering a good work/life balance (a balance that doesn’t exist, by the way), I took the first job that would have me, and there I was, in a cubicle, making calls, making money and making myself completely miserable in the process.

The best part of a life defined by self-contempt is finding new and entertaining ways to make that life implode.

At some point I could write a click-bait style listicle outlining “ten unbelievable ways to destroy your own life (that actually happened).” I think my favorite though was the time I got into my car and drove an hour north of DC to a restaurant in a Days Inn to go to a swingers party. I was (fully clothed) and sipping a martini while another older and stouter (and totally naked) black man stood next to me while similarly sipping a martini. “Man, these white bitches are crazy, huh?” he related to me as we watched two pale, nude and heavily tattooed Rubenesque Caucasian women deep in a drunken embrace and make-out session. “Yeah man,” I said, as I a) noted I was the only person still fully clothed and b) also figured out that I needed to really take in this moment and remember it because life likely wouldn’t ever be this bizarre ever again. Well, fast forward a month to me being similarly naked, and well, life certainly got even more bizarre.

And now we’re back to 2009. I got laid off, recklessly cashed in my 401k, and promptly decided (in my mind) that I was freeing myself of everything that felt “constricting.” At some point that meant girlfriends, a solid relationship with my mother, and amazingly enough, my “career” as a weekend warrior pro wrestler, too. Of course, I never took into account the idea that the life of humans is akin to the life of all organisms, as we’re all trying to avoid getting tangled in the spider webs that exist in our lives. Thus, in being free, I needed to stay free and not say, fall (back) in love (and back into the spider web of being in love) with music.

In five years of being trapped in the web of the music industry, I’ve done all of the stuff that one does when being trapped in the web of the music industry in the past five years. I’ve written 8,000 blog posts. I’ve done South by Southwest, I’ve been to (countless) EDM festivals, I’ve seen Google unsearchable indie bands, I’ve interviewed arrogant rappers, I’ve run recording studios and radio stations, managed acts, run PR and marketing campaigns and like every other indie scenester boy has done since the beginning of time, I’ve fallen in and out of love with indie scenester girls, too. After having done all of that, I’ve reached a point where I’ve been so successful in avoiding being eaten by the giant carnivorous spider that music (or just insert whatever you’re passionate about here) has become for me that I think I’ve either camoflauged myself into the web, or found successfully found the loophole to escape. I’m not quite sure, and in having discovered this, I’m really glad I didn’t quit.

Life is fucking amazing, and should be always be treated that way.

Here I am (and here you are, too). We’re in 2015. For me, I’ll be 37 this year, and I’m exhausted. The past decade for me has been incredible. I learned who I was, and what I needed to do in order to be happy and fulfilled. I wrote this article because I really believe that life is fucking amazing and should always be treated that way. The key to life is in the living, the ups and downs, the strange moments, the curious pathways, and the lessons they teach.

Finding comfort in yourself and finding strength in your dreams is key. Having earned the wisdom of knowing that owning your dreams and pursuing them is more important than anything else in the world, I now pass it on to the world. Insofar as my own future? I have no idea. But I know that I’m finally comfortable in my own skin, and that’s a victory in itself. 2014 is the year I almost quit at life. I’m so glad I didn’t do that.