​zach.blog​

10.8.23

On extremes

---

Extremes have always felt like home.

In spring 2019, I was an EMT for six months. I was about to graduate college, with a half-dream of becoming a doctor. Really, I knew I'd never go to med school. But I did this any way.

This was the same time I started posting on Instagram. I started a business. I got in the best shape I'd ever been in.

It's not a coincidence.

I worked in Johnson City, New York, near my school. It had (and has) a huge drug/fentanyl problem. Huge.

And, I was a bad EMT.

I didn't study enough. I wasn't great under pressure. But I was hooked. There was something so..intoxicating. So new. So real about it.

College felt fake. Everything was manufactured- exams, dining halls, parties. But a 9-1-1 call was real. Most weren't emergencies. But, plenty were life or death. Doing CPR while a family screams at you. Wrestling a seizing patient trying to kill a paramedic. Announcing someone dead, then sitting in a lecture hall 20 minutes later, sipping a fancy drink from Starbucks.

I worked 12 hour shifts, all semester, for zero pay.

I was obsessed.

It was glorious.

I'd go straight from the ambulance to class, to the gym, to weddings for my event business.

I'd watch a dad cry over their daughter's dead body, then a few hours later, watch a dad cry during their father-daughter dance.

Nothing in life made sense.

And it helped everything make sense.

Extremes created clarity.

Intensity became natural.

​

There's a strange paradox that comes with so much contrast.

Everything feels so real, that nothing feels real.

Everything is so stressful, that nothing is stressful.

You walk around in a dream-like state. You see everything from a bird's-eye view. The gap between reality and delusion becomes paper-thin. Both feel possible. Both feel tangible.

And, the shortness of life weighs on you. The more extreme your life is, and the more time passes, the heavier it gets.

Eventually, that weight forces you to act.

Every day you don't, death stares you in the eye- mocking you, teasing you, reminding you of what you won't achieved. Of what you haven't experienced.

Looking back, I think this helped me start my dreams (writing online, starting a business) without thinking, or procrastinating.

​

Do more out of your comfort zone.

Close your laptop right now, and run 10 miles.

Fly to a new city overnight.

Walk into a bookstore, grab the first cover that catches your eye, and read it while walking down a road you've never walked.

Cut your hair.

Change your name.

Talk to strangers.

Marry the girl you met last week.

Drive to the middle of the country with no destination, and no plan.

​

Whatever you do, chase something real. Something that pulls you out of your scripted life.

When you get off the template of your day-to-day, you realize you can change it.

You can write it.

You can create it.

And then, extreme goals, and an extreme life, become normal.

---

Let me know what you thought of this short essay.

If you have something you're struggling with, feel free to reply to this email, and I'll try to answer it in a new edition.

---

If you enjoyed this, forward it to an obsessed friend. 🏴

If you were sent this email, click here to subscribe.

To read the Ten Bullets archive, click here.

---

Stay obsessed,

Zach 🏴