It works no matter your income level. It works no matter what possessions you have. It works whether you're single or in a relationship. It works no matter where you live.
And holy shit, is it easy...
When I started this new blog, I mentioned there would be times I would write with wild abandon and there would be stretches where I didn't write at all. Well, my writer's fingers have been missing the last three months for good reasons. My brain has been truly healing.
You know that feeling when you have a vicious canker sore, and it's just miserable for what seems like years? You can't eat without it bothering you. You can't sleep without it bothering you. You can't even just stand there and do nothing at all. It just bothers you. Well, my recent mental illness has been like that for me.
In the aftermath of that one particularly destructive relationship, which left me floating around mentally like separated blobs in a puddle of toxic goo, my mental state was precariously close to a cliff. Fuck that. It was that person in the movies hanging on by the fingertips. Whether I was the hero or the villain in the story at that point, I'm not actually sure.
My mental health, by the way, wasn't a canker for me then. It was more like a shotgun hole that had been blown through the middle of my head at point blank range.
Can a person heal themselves from a blasted noggin? Can they do a pull-up by the fingertips to pull themselves back up over the cliff edge to safety?
I didn't know. What matters is that after that relationship ended, I had the strength of Superman. Super-fucking-man...
While he is laying ass-up on a bed of kryptonite.
Even in my most skeptical moments, I have always been a bit of a romantic. I have never stopped believing I would one day find my someone who would ride away into that sunset of bingo games and slowing down the freeway together with me.
Dating in our 40s.
I had no idea the difficulty that awaited, friends.
When you’re in your early twenties, dating is so easy. You can fit everything you own into the back of your car, and it doesn’t matter too much where people’s families are from, what those you date want in their future, or even if you have a weirdo roommate eating pork rinds on the couch next to you, while you go to second base with your new special someone.
In your early twenties, you don’t know what your own red flags and problems really are yet, so you also have no idea what to look for when it comes to those things in a partner. Seems almost anyone could be a potential mate. After all, you’re young and just having fun. Plus, let’s not forget we all knew everything about everything when we first left home. There wasn’t much to learn about ourselves when we already knew it all.
Do you ever just look at the world surrounding you and wonder, what the actual hell?
I’m not talking about the whole world. There are endless “what the hells” in that world. No, I am talking about your world. The one that surrounds you in your life.
I know I constantly look at the world that surrounds me. Sometimes it’s rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes it’s a monotone “meh.” Sometimes it’s a big, steaming pile of dung. And sometimes, if I’m being real, it’s a world where the “what the hells” can quickly evolve to become “what the fucks.”
For example, I very recently had the opportunity to listen in on an hours-long conversation of a group of {ahem} children. Let’s just say, there were some very interesting things being said. The following is a small taste of those things that doesn’t even come close to covering all of it:
Today I hopped on Facebook to try something I hope to make a thing... Doing pottery while discussing different topics. On the docket for this one... Dating as a middle-aged person.
I'll have to do a proper blog post about it because live video mixed with heavy concentration is going to take some practice, and there's no way I discussed all the dating dynamics I'd like to, but here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Friends, welcome to my brand new blog, "Dan Pearce Knows Nothing."
This is the first post. Everything you read here that was published in the past was something I wrote and shared when I was blogging as "Single Dad Laughing." I've shared only a handful of posts from that decade of more than 3,500 posts, including my "final words" series, several of my poems (which I hope you'll go back and read), as well as five or six of the highly viral posts.
But enough about that. The purpose of this new blog is to do my current thing without being painted into the corner that Single Dad Laughing was. I'll be thankful for it forever, but it's something I'm saying goodbye to as I start this new venture.
I just did a live video on my Facebook page. Lots of great interaction and a full explanation of what brought me to this point, what I'm trying to achieve, and what I hope to achieve here. If you'd like to watch that, you can here:
And with that... Let's just jump in, shall we?
I had a really good run with this, friends. A really good one.
Over ten years, my writing did reach hundreds of millions of people through my blog posts. My books were read by so many. My Facebook posts reached billions of people.
I hope that I truly did make a real difference in the lives of many with what I have shared day in and day out. I hope that what I shared has ripple effects in this world that bring about real goodness and understanding among mankind for a long time to come. I hope that my deeds do somehow echo throughout eternity, in one way or another.
Today’s message contains my final words and thoughts to those who still, even as grown-ass adults, call names when they fight or argue.
Dear friends,
When you fight or argue with someone else, stop calling names. Not only is it absolutely childish, it also does nothing but escalate whatever fight you’re fighting, and it is a really dirty way to have a disagreement with someone.
Today’s message contains my final words and thoughts to those who are carrying around some sort of big secret.
Dear friends,
Almost everyone on Earth has at least one big secret they are carrying around, sometimes several. These secrets can run the entire gamut as secrets go.
Today’s message contains my final words and thoughts to those who just kind of know they are morally superior to the rest of us.
Dear awesomely morally superior people of the world,
Can I ask you all something?
I’ve always wondered because I’ve never gotten even close to achieving what you have… What’s it like to be so fucking flawless in both thought and action?
Today’s message contains my final words and thoughts to those who have also been bullied.
Dear friends,
From the end of fifth grade, when I started a new school (just a month before we were let out for summer), all the way through eleventh grade, I was severely bullied both verbally and physically by classmates. I don’t say I was bullied lightly, as if someone once called me a mean name that hurt my feelings. The bullying I experienced was harsh and relentless.
Dear beautiful humans who at some point gave such an important piece of yourselves to me,
I know these final words posts have all been my “unapologetic messages” to the world, but this one is very much apologetic and is the only such message I plan to write.
This message contains my final words and thoughts to those who are burnt out or running on fumes.
Dear friends,
Do you remember before you were officially burnt out, when you were running on your final fumes, and it felt like you had nothing left to give?
And then, after you kept running on those precious final fumes, when the last of them finally combusted, you literally could find nothing left inside of your internal gas tanks to give to anything or anyone anymore?
Dear friends,
May I share one of my all time favorite quotes with you?
“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.” ~Charlotte Brontë
Absorb that for a moment. It is powerful.
Dear friends who are obsessed with that ever-changing number,
For the love of everything you hold dear… STEP AWAY FROM THE SCALE.
Walk into your bathroom, right now, pick the damn thing up, and shove it into the back of some closet in some room you never use.
Dear friends who are anti-something, anti-anything,
Can I ask you one thing honestly? What good does it do to be anti-anything at all?
Dear friends,
Marriage, and staying married, is not the end-all-be-all for life.
Life is so complex, and each person’s prerequisites for happiness are so fundamentally different, it seems absolutely absurd to think that “marriage for life” is for everyone.
Dear chronically “nice guys,”
After all these years, you may be tempted to think I am one of you. It certainly may appear that I am from the outside, but I am here to tell you that I am not another guy in your “nice guy” club. I may have been once, but I’m not anymore.
I want to tell you all a story.
When I was a young child, I was sexually abused and raped by a man.
But that’s not the story I want to tell you today. Today I want to tell you the story of how I tried, really, really hard to be at least kind of a little bit gay as a 30-something-year-old man.
Dear all too human friends of mine,
These are my final words to those who get jealous in their relationships, and also (in a lesser degree) to those who struggle coexisting with a jealous partner. Can we all have an honest and real discussion about jealousy for a moment? What it is, and what it isn’t? What it does, and what causes it?
Dear friends,
First, I am going talk to all the ugly ducklings…
You all know the story of the ugly duckling, right? The baby duck that was born ugly and different than the rest of the baby ducks, but grew up to be a beautiful bird of some sort? I’m guessing that’s the story that applies to many of us.
Dear friends who struggle with bitterness,
Please find a way to get rid of that shit. Right now. Bitterness will absolutely destroy so much goodness in your life.
Yesterday I wrote a similar (yet very different) message to those who have bipolar disorder. I actually really suggest everyone here reads that message before you read this one so that you have a better idea of what bipolar is to those who have it. And with that…
Dear friends that love someone who has bipolar disorder,
I’ll be honest with you right up front, and please don’t take this the wrong way… I am not going to apologize to you today for the pain that I, or others with this disorder, have brought to your life.
Dear friends,
I am 39-years-old, about to turn 40. It was only last summer that I was diagnosed with Type 2 bipolar disorder, but looking back there is no doubt I have had the disorder since at least my late teen years. I may only now have a label for it, but I know the illness very well. I’m sure you do, too.
Or do you?
Friends, it’s an illness and a disorder of the mind. That’s all.
Dear single friends,
First of all, let me say that I honestly believe people are just people no matter where you meet them. There is nothing less human about someone you meet and fall for through internet dating services than had you met them at a party or a bar.
That being said, today I want to implore you to start being completely real as you present yourself online.
Just since I started this new blog a few months back, I’ve already written and published more than 100,000 words. To give you perspective, that’s roughly the same length as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3 in the series). All seven Potter books together had just over a million words combined.
In other words, I have written and shared a lot over the past ten years, more than I think I even realize sometimes.
I’m beyond fried at this point. I’m tapped out, especially after trying to share about my bipolar journey. I’m both financially and mentally broke.
THE OTHER NIGHT, I was sitting with my family, most of whom are very successfully married. We were going around the circle, giving our best marriage advice to my little sister on the eve of her wedding. It’s something of a family tradition.
But I’ve had two marriages, and neither of them was successful. So, when it was my turn, I just made a joke about divorce – how you should always remember why you loved your spouse when you first met her so that, when times get tough, you can find someone new that’s just like she was.
There were a couple of courtesy giggles, but overall my humour wasn’t welcome.
They finished round one, and started into another round. And that’s when I realised. Hey, I don’t have any good marriage advice to give. No. All I had was “don’t dos” – “how not to botch your marriage like I did”. They were my regrets, not my successes. And I didn’t really feel like anyone in that room would want to hear them.
So, later that night, I sat down and wrote out my ‘advice list’ for my little sister. You know … things I wish I’d known or done differently so I didn’t end up divorced (twice). And I thought maybe I’d share it with you, too.
