0001 - get active in your own rescue
Get active in your own rescue.
This is a phrase commonly used and known amongst the wilderness crowd. It’s a famous quote amongst stoics too. The full line is given to us by Marcus Aurelius and reads as follows
Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue—if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.
I first heard these words in the summer of 2018 when I was living out of my Subaru in the wilderness of Wyoming. My escapades that summer had led me to nearly drowning on the lower GV river in Teton County. While going through some degree of shock when my friends made first contact with me one of them grabbed me by my shoulders and brought me back to reality.
”we’re not safe yet. you need to get active in this rescue.”
What would transpire that evening would become ingrained in my memory forever. Two more would be sent downriver out of rafts and headed into serious rapids. Losing daylight and having to rescue people from violent white water in near darkness; it was a paramount case of biting off more than you can chew.
But the moment and meaning of those words stuck with me. For better or worse I would find my life in jeopardy a handful more times in the years that followed. But the sentiment of what was communicated to me on that river would always echo in my mind whenever death and danger lured near. It’s an expression that reminded me to stay alert and available in the presence of physical danger. And until recently that’s how it stayed, a mental tool to use only for physical danger. But, we can suffer from things that are intangible as well too. I have had no shortcomings in that either. I’ve worked a miserable and soul-sucking second shift job from 2-10 (if not later) where I watched the summer waste away all while working for a company I hated. I’ve suffered from heartbreak that left me alone in dark rooms dis associating with reality, staring into the void. And very recently I was told I would be laid off from the job/career I loved at the end of the first quarter of this year.
While none of these situations present any physical danger to my well being they all have held significant danger to my mental health and well-being all the same. But all the while I never treated my mental health with the same urgency as its physical counterpart. The ideology of being active in my own rescue never materialized. Embarrassingly, I’ll admit that mindsets of doom and “woe is me” took its place instead and I suffered greatly because of it. It wasn’t until recently on a phone call with a close friend whose been there when I had to embody this stoic sentiment that it clicked for me.
Currently, my life sucks. A lot. In a few short weeks, I’ll lose my job and be separated from a community of scientists and researchers who have been nothing short of incredible. They’ve been some of the greatest friends and mentors I could ever ask for. And like myself, the vast majority of them will lose their jobs too. To say I’m distraught over this situation and the impact it will have on me and my community is putting it beyond lightly. In short, I find myself in a dark place right now. But, I can’t change the circumstances. All I can do right now is be active in my own rescue.
I’m unsure of what the future will hold for me. I’ve been applying and interviewing to a ton of scientific roles only to hear nothing back or get rejected after literal months of interviewing. I’m unsure of a lot of things, even next week seems cloudy to me. I’ve been in love with photography for years now, but as of lately I’ve sort of placed it on the back burner. I think I’ll start with my own rescue here. I just bought a D850 and soon I’ll have nothing but time on my hands. Re-building this website will be the first step. From there, idk. But for now, this seems to be one of the only things that I have that is dependable.
We’ll start here.
