Sound Of Silence

Hey guys — so I've been out of the nursing home for about three weeks now. I'm finally getting settled in my new apartment and routine, getting used to this strange thing called "normal life." (Is there really such a thing?)

I finally got my Buddha hung up — the one I've been waiting two years to put on a wall. It's a collage of tiny Buddhas made by my friend Jerome Lucani, the French guy who literally saved my life the day I broke my neck.

I put up a few of my fishing photos too — not too many. It's kinda tacky hanging your own art. Just enough to add a little feng shui to the place. My friend bought me a new TV — I got it mounted, bought a sound bar, some Japanese-style floor lamps, an orchid, and the espresso maker I've been obsessing over for months. It's just the right amount of simple, functional, and durable that tickles my brain as a quality product. Ridiculous, I know.

I'm comfortable. It's quiet. The beach is five minutes away. The cottage is tucked beneath these beautiful white oaks, wrapped in a manicured arborvitae hedge. I can work in the sun of the south-facing window next to my Edo-era lantern and the blooming white orchid. In theory, this is exactly what I wanted. What I worked so hard for.

But it feels… odd. I can hear the silence.

Nothing is urgent. Nothing's about to collapse. I don't wake up wondering who's showing up for the morning shift. I'm not scared I'll miss meds or sit in filth for two hours because the place is short-staffed. My stomach isn't aching like it was every single day in the nursing home — I think the fluorescent lighting combined with bacteria colonies so large you could actually see them made me chronically sick. Now I'm clean, fed, rested — and the people who take care of me actually care. They're friends.

My life is objectively easier. So why does it feel so uncomfortable?

That's what I've been thinking about lately. That's my next growth edge. And it hit me: I've been living in mission mode for most of my life — definitely the past two years. Every day in the nursing home was a fight. A fight to get out. A fight to find sanity in the cacophony of dementia and delirium. A fight to build a skill. A fight to get a subsidy. A fight not to starve because the food was garbage and something was wrong with my stomach. A fight to learn how to code, to prove myself as a coder, to learn Spanish, to meditate, to survive whatever the hell was wrong with my body.

It was nonstop obstacles that needed solving immediately — because they were physically uncomfortable.

Now the mission is over. I escaped. And not only did I escape — I excelled in that environment. I learned skills I never would have otherwise. I became a person I respect and can live with. And suddenly I have the privilege — the luxury — of being bored. Comfortably bored.

That's when I realized something deeper: this pattern didn't start in the nursing home.

I've lived my entire life inside chaos. I grew up in it, escaped it, then recreated it. I became a fisherman and spent my twenties in absolute insanity — winter fishing trips for weeks on end, enjoying the physical torment of working around the clock, tossing about in a gale, running on adrenaline and terrible decisions. When I wasn't fishing, I was traveling alone through far corners of the world — depending on what iteration of myself, maybe getting drunk, putting myself in stupidly dangerous situations. And when I wasn't doing that, I was surfing, diving, or chasing adrenaline just to feel alive.

Difficulty has been my home. Most often, unnecessarily so.

Now I'm here — alive, sober, safe — in a quiet apartment with sunlight and a pretty orchid. No dementia patients yelling, nobody rushing in at 3am, nobody telling me I can't go outside. But the echo of old patterns still rings out. The urge to make life more difficult than it needs to be. To look for the next challenge, the next crisis, the next mountain to climb. To find the situation that will make me unique and appealing.

I know this pattern is old. It belongs to a version of me who didn't know better. But I'm doing my best to learn — to take that wisdom and let it descend into my body, to actually feel it. It's difficult.

My meditation, my sobriety, my spirituality — plus the difficulties of breaking my neck, the gallbladder misery, the starvation phase, the countless other iterations of Matt and whatever shenanigans he was getting himself into — they all point to a lesson that's only crystallized since I've been out:

Wisdom isn't found in surviving chaos. Wisdom is found in realizing you don't need the chaos anymore. You never did. It was just an illusion.

Quality of life is stillness. Clarity. Presence.

So I'm trying to make it a practice — not needing to manufacture difficulty just to feel like I'm "doing something." Not needing to live under extreme conditions to prove I'm strong or smart or clever. Can I love myself if I just hang out with my friends during the day and let the hours tick by? Maybe success — maybe quality of life — is just learning how to rest. How to sit in the peace I fought so hard to build.

This feels like the next chapter for me: learning how to live without needing the struggle.

And knowing myself… yeah, I'll probably still pick some ridiculous challenge, build some wild project, or jump into something that requires a ton of energy. But this time, I'll try to separate the suffering from the mission. To work without the emotional urgency, and let the universe take the weight. I'll be more patient, more understanding with myself and whatever I end up getting into.

And maybe — finally — I'll let myself enjoy the life I spent two years fighting for.

But doubtful.