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.
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.
You look far behind you, then way up ahead
You really now wish you just stayed home instead.
Bumpers to bumpers, horns heard near and far;
You’re surrounded by buses, and big rigs, and cars.
Aggravated you are, when you just were so happy;
A fine day indeed, so dang quick now turned crappy.
You have much better things that could really use doing;
You have hobbies and chores that entail pursuing.
Of all of the days to get stuck in such messes,
It had to be this one, and it’s giving you stresses.
You watch other drivers, of which there aren’t few;
Some so angry, some pleasant, and all stuck just like you.
Then you notice one woman who brings you perspective;
Your problems and lateness become quickly subjective.
Her hands grip the wheel, her knuckles are white
Tears stream down her cheeks, something extremely not right
And you can only sit there.
And watch.
Until traffic devours her from sight.
You look miles ahead, on this long, messy ride.
There are thousands of cars with humans inside.
You can’t get that woman, or her tears off your mind,
And you can’t shake the awareness you suddenly find…
That these cars aren’t just some moving fat hunks of metal,
There are hearts that control every foot on each pedal.
There are lives that were built ‘round those very same hearts,
And struggles which easily could rise off the charts.
I mean, you don’t know…
The man in that truck might have just lost his sick mother
That woman right there may have betrayed her dear brother
There’s a teenager there, did she just have her first breakup?
The old woman in that one might have applied her last makeup
Yes.
Out of thousands of cars, there are bound to be
Battles so great, not one of us can see.
One person may be dreading soon getting divorced
Another might be incensed over being sexually forced
Someone may have just done something terribly wrong
Someone else maybe bullied, now pretends that he’s strong
Maybe that woman right there, just fell out with a friend
Maybe another gave into a once-beat addiction
Maybe one driver just came out to his entire family
Maybe another so loathes his addiction to candy
You look all around, at the women and men
At the old and the young, then you look ‘round again.
You’re stuck in traffic, whoopdie-doo.
Others are stuck in situations far worse than you.
A mile behind you, there might be a little white van
With a kid suddenly puking all over his hands
And a mile ahead, there might be another
With an infant now screaming, just wanting her mother
And somewhere now lost in this vast sea of cars
Is a temper that just made someone take things too far
And somewhere there’s someone who’s watching her phone
Just waiting for anything to not feel so alone
And somewhere is someone with precious months left
Since she just got the news cancer spread from her breasts
And somewhere is someone who just got to hear
The very worst news they so greatly have feared
Certainly someone out there is longing to die
With depression so thick, they can’t even cry
Someone else, you must guess, just sits in unrest
As they think of the bills stacking up on their desk
Once again…
You look miles ahead on this long, messy ride.
There are thousands of cars with… humans inside.
And let’s not forget, that somewhere ahead
Someone has crashed, and just might be dead.
Annoyed you just were, when you just had been happy;
A fine day you declared had turned out so dang crappy…
Wasn’t really so bad, in the big scheme of things;
It was perspective that only the crying woman could bring.
What was her battle? What could it possibly have been?
A breakup? An illness? Some bad news? A sin?
There’s no way to know. There’s no way to tell;
We each have those days of such personal hell.
You look miles ahead on this long, messy ride.
You turn on good music, and become more thankful inside.
Your task list can wait; your hobbies can chill.
You got stuck in traffic. Big fucking deal.
Dan Pearce | Single Dad Laughing
(Based on true events and unexpected perspective in my recent life)
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.
“I’m broken,” says she
With a look all too sad
“And until I can fix me
it’ll always end bad”
I looked her once over
And then did it again
Was she really so broken?
Did she need a good mend?
Yes it’s true, she could sometimes
Bite your head clean in two
And she was occasionally known
To be ornery and rude
To Be the Perfect Dad
When I would get caught in a lie
His hand was often firm
When I would fail to do my chores
His voice was all too stern
When I would fuss and moan and groan
At the green things on my plate
He’d sigh and give me one hard look
That said ‘trouble now awaits’
When I’d steal from his jar of coins
He’d let me have it good
When I’d be late for suppertime
He’d throw away my food
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...
