Lessons From Rumspringa

The Amish have decided that it’s wiser to let teens get through their sinful phase away from their watchful eye rather than punishing them for every act of disobedience. Amish adolescents will take advantage of this final hall pass and embark on an indefinite period of debauchery before returning to the community (if they return).

I went to a 4-year College known for its party culture, however, I don’t consider that to be my Rumspringa. That wasn’t anything abnormal for a kid from Nothern Jersey. Isn’t my life hard?! COVID was my Rumspringa. (Mandatory disclaimer that COVID was not everyone’s 3-year window to travel the country/world. I get it. Shut up. This is about ME).

My journey away from the “Church” (in this case, living and working in New York City where I’d constantly be finding ways to jack up the speed on the hedonic treadmill) began when the Mayor of New York said “everyone has to stay home for like a week or two, TOPS!” in March of 2020.

For those of you who are saying, “hey wait, didn’t you tell us that you’ve been sober for a year like last week? What’s all this Rumspringa talk?” Yes, I was sober in 2022 and still am, but still consider myself on Rumspringa because, even though I was sober, I traveled a ton and took every day as it came.

I don’t want to bore you with the travel itinerary, but I actually will. Here’s a helpful “Rumspringa Resume” (trademarked):

July 2020- August 2021 - Charleston, South Carolina (read that w/ Southern Twang)

• Ate and drank like an absolute King for just over a year.

• Accelerated my goal of working from a beach in my 40s to doing it at 25.

• Got tan.

September 2021 - Present - Denver, Colorado (and surrounding areas)

• Rebelled against my gluttonous ways and became sober. Great Decision

• Became one of the best skiers, hikers, etc. hailing from New Jersey, and took every chance I could to get outside and experience a different landscape.

• Red Rocks.

Charleston is an amazing place that everyone needs to check out. After a year in SC I said, “Denver sounds cool” packed my things up, and drove across the country for 3 days until I saw the smoke forming above the city that has been my home for the last 16 months. Since then I’ve seen California, New Mexico, Utah, and all the hipster spots in between. Separately, I spent 3 weeks in Tanzania and hiked Mount Kilimajaro. Shit has been tight. 

I’ve done a lot, and I’m glad I did it. I made all of the right mistakes here’s what I learned…

Move away from what’s familiar for at least 1 year, ideally longer (if you have the means)...

Uprooting my life from what I was familiar with, from who I was familiar with, and essentially starting from scratch TWICE in 2 different cities allowed me to hone in on what’s truly important.

I couldn’t rest on my laurels, I couldn’t go home to Mom, and I couldn’t hang with the friends I made in high school or college. When I felt scared and alone, which happened quite a bit, it was on me to figure out what I needed to do to get out of that rut.

When you’re in a completely foreign place, you start building a life that you think you might like. Oftentimes you copy and paste from the life you lived back home. Quickly you might find that you’re choosing to do those things out of habit, but they aren’t things you really love. At first, this scared the shit out of me. I asked, “Why am I programmed like this?” But thank god it happened. This vacuum created space for me to strip away certain judgments I held and try on different hats.

I have a much firmer grasp on what makes me tick at the age of 27 than I did when at 25. Being alone helped accelerate a lot of those discoveries.

Not working hard for long periods of time is NOT the good life.

Want to know the weirdest feeling on earth? Sitting on a pristine South Carolina beach with gorgeous 80-degree weather, yet still feeling like something was missing. Something that relaxation wouldn’t solve? Something that “relaxation” was actually causing. The more I “relaxed” the less I was relaxed. The more I solved for a day-to-day routine built for convenience, the more I reacted poorly to any minor inconvenience thrown my way.

“There’s traffic on the way to the beach again?!?! You gotta be fucking kidding me. Every time I go to the beach at 3 pm the bridge is always clogged up. This is the 5th day in a row!”

Looking back at the inner monologue I’d love to punch myself in the face and remind that child that he was, as he had just stated, GOING TO THE BEACH FOR THE 5TH DAY IN A ROW. He wasn’t on vacation, he was just living by the beach while making an NYC tech sales salary.

“You found the cheat code!” My friends would tell me. I would force a smile when they said that, knowing that I yearned for something deeper. I was rattled because when I lived and worked in Manhattan I yearned for the life I was currently living. Turns out I traded one end of the spectrum for the other. I went from non-stop to complete stop. Leading me to my next point…

Balance is Key

This isn’t a novel idea. The chances are slim that just because you don’t like something, you’ll like its antithesis. How often, though, do we deploy this logic? At least for me, I found myself saying,

“60-hour work weeks are burning me out, so, therefore, I don’t like working”

“Big cities make me feel trapped, so, therefore, I’d rather live in the mountains or at the beach.”

Turns out neither are completely true nor completely false. Nuance is important. I love living in a city that has greater access to mountains, but I also find myself missing the energy of a big city like New York. Sometimes you have to leave a place to appreciate it. That’s a harsh truth I’ve come to realize.

None of this matters, dance like a fool at weddings.

“None of this matters” sounds like I’m beating a nihilistic drum. I’m not. Don’t throw away your life because of your impending death and the statistical improbability that generations 200 years from now won’t remember your name.

Instead of throwing it away because no one is watching, live the hell out of it for that very reason. Trying a bunch of different places out and having uncomfortable moments each time proved to me that I’ll survive. You’ll flex muscles you haven’t used in a while. Having to make friends in a new city for the first time since I was a freshman in college was weird. I was clearly rusty. Especially as a 27-year-old man, asking another guy who you seem to vibe with if they want to hang out again, is SO WEIRD. But it’s how I met some lifelong friends in my late 20s.

“Dance like a fool at weddings” is my new mantra. No one expects you to be good at dancing at weddings, so stop sitting at your table watching other people have fun, fearing what might become of you if a Snapchat story of you flailing around gets published. Who cares?

No one expects you to be good at life either. No one really knows what that means. So try something out instead of weighing the pros and cons. Action begets action. Your commitment to something will give you more information about whether or not it’s a good fit for you.

Move to South America, try out a different career, and reinvent yourself in big or small ways. But once you decide to do that thing, commit to it. If it’s painful, sit with it. What about it is making you uncomfortable? Once you discover that, ask yourself why that’s making you uncomfortable. Then act.

That's it for me this week.

Enjoy the ride!

Matt

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