Listen up here, I’ll make it quite clear
I’m gonna put some boogie in your ear
Shake and bop, don’t you stop
Dance like a maniac until you drop

I don’t mind, I don’t mind
I can run a razor right up your spine
What are you waiting for?
What do you think you were created for?

It’s 3:21am and I’m wide awake and Motorhead is screaming in my ears, except it’s as quiet as a mouse. The only noise is the air conditioner. The cats are even asleep. And this is normal for me.

Not the 3:21am part, that’s clearly some bad karma or something. Maybe it was the spicy food, but that feels wrong to judge something that brings me so much joy.

The music part, however, that’s completely normal. Most days, most days that I’m okay, at least, I wake up that way. The songs vary greatly. Today it was Motorhead; tomorrow it might be Dwight Yoakam. It’s anyone’s guess. It’s never something I’ve recently heard, however. It comes from somewhere in the depths of my mind and usually sets the mood for the day. On the really fun days, the days I feel like I can take on the world, I’ll get in my car for work and that song I woke up with in my head will be on the radio: Synchronicity. I think that’s what Carl Jung called it. However, none of that is what I’m writing about today. Except maybe it is, and maybe it’s all related.

“Everything is energy, and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” Darryl Anka.

Albert Einstein normally gets the credit for this statement. The reality is: it’s a sales pitch from a New Age author in 1996. Either way, it’s a hard idea to shake once you’ve heard it. It’s catchy. Something about it rings true in my soul.

It conjures up images of tuning an analog car radio for me. I think about being a kid, riding in the car with my dad, slowly and methodically turning the dial on the radio, hoping against hope that 97.1 KEGL would bounce off the ionosphere at just the right angle so I could hear anything besides country music in East TX that day. That only happened in the spring as a general rule, but my hope never faded. I like that image and I’ve carried it for a long time now. Just like I carry the hope that there’s still hope, still opportunity.

New Age snake oil or not, there seems to be some validity to it in my life, and synchronicity always follows closely behind. I learned early in life that when I focus on something, an idea or dream, it seems to happen. I’ve always used this knowledge to get a job I wanted or to open a business, but I’ve never really applied it to creative endeavors.

I’ve always been a writer, artist, and musician, with something in me constantly trying to escape. Yet connecting has always been a struggle. I don’t feel alone or misunderstood, not at this point in my life. I’m just highly aware of the missing connections. For years, I’ve slowly, methodically tried to find my frequency, to find my people. And largely, I’ve failed.

I went home recently and saw a few friends. It was the first time I had seen any of them in seventeen years. The thing that struck me the most was how much I missed talking to them. It was something I felt in my soul, a longing that I had suppressed for so long that I had forgotten it existed. It’s hard looking back at moments like that and not wondering: Is that where I belong? Is that the frequency my soul has been looking for? I’m not sure I know how to answer that question. What I know is that I’ve spent my life drifting to and fro, chasing ideas and feelings. And that chase has never fulfilled me.

Despite what this all sounds like, I’m happy. I love my life. I’m creatively fulfilled in ways I didn’t know were possible for me. It’s clear that I should be writing. I keep having unexpected chats about how something I wrote moved someone or how they feel safe confiding in me. There really isn’t anything that I’ve found that compares to that.

So what’s my point?

I don’t know that I was ever genuinely happy or creatively fulfilled until I ended up here. I certainly love my wife and kids. I don’t just say that to cover my ass. It’s legitimately true. But something was missing, and I think that was my sense of purpose.

I’ve always been called antisocial. Taciturn is probably closer, but I don’t think that’s correct either. But it’s how I’m usually seen. A friend whom I recently saw in TX called me “selectively social” once when I was a teenager. Honestly, that was the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about me. The internet would call me a sigma male. And I, well, I don’t really care what you call me. But I do care about how we interact, about the quality and depth of our conversations, about honesty and loyalty.

So, I am selectively social.

But here I am, on Substack among other places, talking about what until recently has been a very private life. I’ve felt compelled to take my writing public, to a world I wasn’t sure would want to read it. But the idea, the process, all of it, suddenly has my attention. And here I am, screaming into the void with all of you. And some of you are echoing back. I suspect some of you are my people, the ones I’ve been looking for since I was born. Writers, artists, dreamers: you’re on the same frequency as me. Or I’m on the same frequency as you.

And my timing on this scene…

I’ve often said that recovery is really just a prolonged process of letting go. Letting go of old ideas, old places, old people. These are the things I once thought would bring me joy, that would quiet my mind and help me find peace. The longer I’m sober, the more the process evolves and grows. Now, while letting go still happens daily, learning to listen to my body, to my heart, to my internal still, calm voice that’s buried underneath all the “I want” and “I need” noise. That’s becoming more important. I think that voice is trying to steer this ship where it needs to be, to this place and time when someone is ready to hear what I have to say. And, I am ready to say it.

That’s synchronicity.

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