Gil Can Run!A blog on Running and all the crap that runs through my head while doing it

Apr 6th So far, so good

It’s a beautiful day. Threw on my “No Meat Athlete” singlet and put in 5 miles. Relaxed and enjoyed the rest of my morning. Even managed to catch the season opener of Archer, after I saw the premiere of Season 3 for Rick and Morty last night. Really, not a bad day at all right? Right.
On my way to work today, and I’m thinking about this horrible “article” I saw with just the worst headline. It was for some vegan website about someone named Ruby Rose. I am aware there is a series called “Orange is the new black,” but have never seen it, and apparently she is an actress on this. We’ll get into my rejection of most pop culture in a minute. Let me stay focused on this supposed piece of journalism.
The first issue was with the headline which was something to the effect of, “Ruby Rose says if you want to defeat Trump go vegan.”  So I’m thinking that maybe this will be a big piece about how learning to have compassion for all living things, human and animal, and respecting everyone and everything’s rights would bring about a change in consciousness that this world sorely needs. Nope. Strike one.
So I read the article and they spend the first part of it talking about who she is. You drew people in on this person’s star power, and then, instead of following the inverted pyramid, like a good journalist would, you’re talking about who the person  you’re quoting is, and why we should care at all about her. Then talk about Donnie Pee-party’s (aka Lord Dampnut) attack on environmental regulations. Strike two.
Now, at the very end of the article, they finally quote what this Ruby Rose person said, and guess what they actually fucking said? She said that if you were angry about the erosion of environmental protection, fighting back against this could be aided by adopting a vegan or vegetarian diet. Not about defeating Trump, just a sensible quite about how much environmental damage is done by the factory farming of meat. Which, that nuance I’ve discussed before. Overall the number 2 contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Zero new information and completely misrepresented what this person said. Strike three!
More importantly; I am not vegan, and I don’t follow a vegan diet, but I understand the difference between being vegan and following a vegan diet. Vegans use no animal products or animal labor at all. Someone eating a vegan diet simply doesn’t eat anything produced from animal life or animal labor. Fairly easy distinction. You’d be surprised how many people just think it’s about what you eat.
The good news is, they didn’t try and liken animal rights to human rights in any way. But they did a horrible job representing the issue, what the person said, and made all parties involved look bad. It’s so tiring. It’s at least irresponsible, at most plain ignorant. But stuff like this doesn’t help anyone. It hurts the philosophy of veganism, it makes people fighting against Comrade Donnie look stupid, and it helps further the idea that journalism can’t be trusted.
I’m going to level with you, this blog was not my idea. It was a friend of mine who convinced me I had something worth sharing in my own weird way. My brain is an interesting place and when I’m on, I tend to have a very unique way of showing it, that is entertaining and informative. I don’t care if people love me, or like me, or take to heart what I say. I’m here, and I say why I say in the hopes that people pull their heads out of their asses and stop treating their brothers and sisters like shit and the planet like business in liquidation. The irony there is, that some of the time I seriously wonder if it wouldn’t be better off if humans went extinct and the Earth were left to heal itself.
Beyond that, this famous person with this statement, the horrible soft drunk commercial with that Jenner woman, Scarlet Johannesburg playing a Japanese cyborg; I’ve been reading a lot of justified, righteous anger about advertising. I get that I just called TV and movies advertising. That’s all they are. I’ve watched entire TV shows and realized I just watched a 22 minute commercial for various products and ideas. I’ve watched movies and left the theater realizing I just watched a 90 minute advertisement for products, services, or ideas. I understand the human need to be entertained, to be distracted. But there is no mistaking that everything you watch, listen to, and mostly read, at this point in history is a market-tested, and profit-driven advertisement for something.
This is why I do my best to pay as little attention to pop culture as I can. Yes, I love watching Archer and Rick and Morty, but I’m always looking out for what I’m trying to be sold.
Be entertained, but don’t get sold.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Apr 5th I am hardcore

Yep, I admit it, proudly. Not because my foot hurts and I ran 5 miles on it. Not because of all the marathons, or anything like that. It has nothing to do with sport, accomplishments, or anything of the sort. What is “hardcore”? It’s  not some fucking marketing slogan for “extreme athletes”. It’s not how many tattoos you have, the clothes you wear, the piercings in your body. None of that makes anyone hardcore.
Hardcore crosses most barriers, culturally, socio-economically, religiously, and on down the list. It’s about who you are and how you look at the world, and your place in it and those around you.
When I was growing up, they called us “latchkey kids”. Our parents were either divorced or together, widowed or widower, but either way, kids were pretty much left to their own after school while their parent(s) were working. It was lower middle-class nonsense. What happened was us and those like us would congregate, we’d figure shit out on our own. Usually our guidance was whatever music we were listening to. My friends and I found groups like the Bad Brains, Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, Agnostic Front, Madball, Minor Threat, Warzone. What they were saying in their music spoke to our experiences. The conclusions they drew were of the same ideas we were forming. Some of my friends found Straight Edge, or veganism appealing to their ideas, to their morality, others were about beers and barbecues, some became devotees of Krishna, but that didn’t matter. We kept our bond to each other. We were, and still are, brothers and sisters.
We learned that this brother and sisterhood extended past our immediate circle. We shared that with any and all who wanted to roll up their sleeves and get to work doing the right thing. What was the right thing? Whatever lifted everyone up and out of the shit we saw happening in the world around us. Was all this perfect? Did we find some sort of Utopia? Nope. Nazi fucks, fascist skinheads, fake motherfuckers would come around. They’d come to shows and start shit, trying to recruit people who didn’t know better, or were there for the wrong reasons. Fights would happen. We did the best with what we had and what we knew. Some of them had a change of heart, deep down I don’t think most of them did.
Yeah, we were outcasts because of how we dressed, the music we listened to, the tattoos, piercings (I never really participated in the tattoos until I was older and never was keen on piercings). Yes, most of us are working-class people who struggle because so many of our co-workers don’t look on us with brotherhood, they don’t stand with us, they don’t work together they work for themselves. But does that make us oppressed? For the most part no. We have our problems, we have our struggles, we don’t forget them, but we always have brothers and sisters to lend a hand, we are always there to lend a hand too. There’s always a benefit show, or some event to help out.
The weird thing about being hardcore is, you’ll always be hardcore. I see plenty of people who take the style, affectations, maybe cover themselves in tattoos and piercings for a time to “rebel”. But so many of them will one day take out the piercings, cover or even remove the tattoos, and go to work for themselves. At the time, so many in the “scene” will have thought them to be so hardcore, but in reality, they were there for their own reasons. You can’t be hardcore if you’re only in it for yourself.
That’s the thing, we aren’t an oppressed minority, we are kids who find their own way and find out, as much as we bust balls with our friends and even say mean shit to them, we actually like people and we want to improve our lots in life. But still we have people who come in and “cosplay” (for lack of a better term right now) hardcore and then take the makeup off and go about life like it never happened. They appropriate our subculture for however long they want and when it doesn’t serve them anymore, they leave.
This is the problem when  real oppressed groups have their culture imitated by the oppressors. Why it’s so offensive for oppressed people’s is this:

When you take the makeup off, the dress off, the boots off, or whatever, you go back to your everyday life where you are not a part of that experience, that culture. People may ohhh and ahhh about how well you represented whatever romanticized version of whatever person you were pretending to be, but at the end of the day you don’t deal with any of the negative aspects of whatever.
However, every day, the people from that culture have to constantly deal with the negative aspects. Negativity, usually thrust upon them by the culture you are “escaping” by romanticizing some small part of theirs.
Simply put, when you’re done being “Pocahontas” for the weekend, you go home and are Sally Smith. You go to your job, go about your life and that’s that. About 22% of the 5.4 million native peoples living in the United States today live on reservations. With poor Healthcare and little to no aide from a federal government who historically eliminated native peoples and forced them off their lands and into reservations with no resources to speak of in the first place, unemployment is very high, 40-80% on most reservations. 28.2% of all natives, regardless of where they live, are below federal poverty standards.
Any minority culture you try and “honor” with your costume, has statistics and stories like these. You want to “honor” people, how about you demand they get equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, maybe look into why they are oppressed, maybe challenge your friends who blame the group’s problems on (insert racist reason like “drinking problems” or “laziness” or “lack of father-figures” here). Get in their faces about it! Tell them to fuck off with their nonsense, motherfucker in Sandy Hook didn’t have his father around, no one blamed his lack of a “strong male role model”. No he was just an “unstable, lone-wolf”.
Point is, the people you are imitating are who they are every day, all the time. I only gave one example, and general statistics. Why, because I can’t know the psychological trauma which must come with knowing only 100 years ago the United States Government was still trying to remove you from land that was always yours, because there was some resource on it that some European man was going to come and commodities, and you weren’t going to get a dime of it. The trauma that must be felt as the citizens of Bismarck, ND voted against having a pipeline run through their community so now the government is forcing it to run through yours. Even though you’re told it’s your land and you can be autonomous on it.
I can’t imagine the psychological trauma of centuries of being treated like property, even having that codified in law. To then be told you were getting your freedom, only to be placed into an apartheid state, still treated no better than property for another 100 years, then when you finally have at least the law stop allowing it by word, still being 7 times more likely to be murdered by a police officer during a traffic stop. Then when you get upset about it, you’re told to calm down, just do as they say.
I can’t imagine these feelings, because I’ve never experienced it all the time. I’ve had instances where someone momentarily thinks I am Hispanic or Latino, I’ve had moments where people think I am Arab Muslim or sometimes have gotten Pakistani Muslim. But often these instances are fleeting and the tension passes as soon as my ID is seen or my voice is heard. I don’t deal with it every day. When I go home at night it doesn’t make me feel like I don’t belong, and I have only once feared for my life. I have no idea how the constant pressure must feel. And neither do you.
So whatever the culture, whatever the obstacles they face, don’t cheapen the beautiful things they have, and don’t try to make the beautiful things your own. Unless you’re willing to take on all the ugliness they must face as well. And it can’t be for your profit or well-being like Raquel Donutholes (Rachel Dozelal) who had no problem suing Howard University for rejecting her for “being white”, yet now claims to be “black”. She’s not, she’s just looking for a cross to nail herself upon to make a profit.
That’s basically what appropriation is: I’m going to take this good thing and pretend it’s mine, but you can keep all this bad shit. Or, I’m going to profit off this good thing from another culture but they can go fuck themselves and it’s their own fault they don’t profit off it, even though when they use it, we look down on them for it. This is what’s happening, this is why appropriation is a problem.
Now, you want to do something, be hardcore. Get dirty, fucking help people. You might lose some friends along the way, but don’t worry, you’ll make new ones. Life isn’t about making friends anyway, it’s about finding truth and sticking with it. Don’t put on a front and don’t take things from people when you have no skin in the game.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Just in case anyone has trouble with the lyrics:

Putting on an act that just isn’t working
You stole from your friends when you thought they weren’t looking
Your whole fucking life, you put on a front
You pushed it to the point when my trust slips through your hands
Trust
You don’t understand
Trust
Slips through your hands
Oh thought you were the one
It’s what you haven’t got
Try to play it cool
Why be something that you’re not?
It’s just the fucking point that you steal, that you miss
You pushed it to the point when my trust slips through your hands
Trust
You don’t understand
Trust
Slips through your hands
Trust
Slips through your hands

Apr 4th A beautiful morning

Seriously, wow. The weather is perfect for running. Not too hot, not too cold, no blazing sun, not a ton of clouds to wreck the beauty of the sky. The one thing that is against me is this horrible pain in my right foot. It’s the joint where my big toe meets the foot. It’s not swollen, it feels like a deep bruise, or some other injury like that. I can run on it, obviously, but it is super painful at the start, enough to change my gait and foot strike. But as I have said, I will run until I break. That’s what I did today. Well, ran, I didn’t break, I should have no problem getting out tomorrow morning, assuming I wake up in time.
I was thinking about seeing my family. While I really want to see everyone and say hi, I don’t really want to spend all Summer in the US. But I need to, I need to work this Summer, and I can’t work here and see my family and friends. Plus I have to get my license renewed and get a motorcycle endorsement. So Summer in the US it is. Everyone really needs to start making plans to come visit after that though. There are marathons, half marathons, 10km races, I’m sure ultras can be found. Yes, you need a medical certificate, but I can’t keep getting on airplanes all the time.
Right now, I’m just trying to sort a plan of attack for running this month. I keep getting side-tracked though. I’m bouncing between thoughts about work, the US, politics, socio-economic issues, racism, everything. Why do we make this world so fucking complicated? In no way is the way we conduct our society sensible. The worst is, as uncomfortable as I’ve always felt, I can only imagine how horrible that feeling must be for those who face the more insidious issues we create. My burden is only that I recognize the issues, and I know I must fight to correct them. It has to be corrected. Ignoring it is not an option. It’s not like a hurt toe. Because it won’t go away in time. It is a structural deficiency. As I’ve pointed out many times the beliefs our current system are based on, the “best ideas” of their time, the “best science” of its time, it was horribly flawed. Sometimes intentionally, mostly just due to ignorance.
Let’s get back in our time machine, and go back to the dawn of the anatomically modern Homo Sapiens. Let’s take one of those infant modern humans, and bring them today and raise them as any other child today. Are they deficient? Do they know less? Do they struggle with simple concepts we take for granted? No. They are anatomically modern, which means they have the same form and abilities as any of us. Educated in our modern system, with all the knowledge at our disposal, they should have no trouble grasping these concepts and learning just like any other human being. What’s the point of this thought experiment? Homo Sapiens has been around for a long time, and we’re not better than anyone who came before, and the people who come after will not be any better or worse, naturally.
Will our offspring have more knowledge to draw from? Better ideas? Better science? Better philosophy? Of course (particularly if they find this blog)! But anatomically they will still be like us, well unless some unforeseen evolutionary events happen. Yet the ideas our society are based on do not understand this concept. Not only did those who came up with the theories which run our society today believe that ancient humans were ignorant, incapable barbarians, naturally. They honestly believed in a difference between modern peoples. That the modern European male was the pinnacle of homo sapiens evolution. You can’t have a just society based on these ideas. Fundamentally dismissing most of the world’s population is going to give you a system of oppression no matter how well-meaning anyone using the system, or running the system, tries to be.
This is the basic idea of the “Ancient Aliens” shows and shit like that, I’ve talked about that many times. “It’s impossible these people could have figured this thing out, I mean they weren’t as wonderfully perfect a human being as I am, and yet I can’t even figure it out.” That’s the actual premise of those types of shows and ideas. When they say things like, “This stone was carved so perfectly, we can’t even do it today with our modern machines.” That is what they are saying. It is that sort of persistent thinking that the ideas which run the world are based on. There’s an inherent inequality in the thinking itself. How can the system that is built off it, be fair by any true measure?
Let’s look at it this way. I want to build a house, I don’t bother to level the foundation. Now, I build the house on top of that. My foundation is flawed, it is not level. I build a standard, timber-framed American house on top of this. Will my house stand for a particularly long time? I can’t even truly modify the home to stand properly. Due to the flaws in the foundation, there would be gaps between the foundation and the timbers, water would get in. There’d be decay and eventually structural failure. It may take a hundred years, it may take 10, but one day that house is going to fall no matter what, unless we constantly repair it and constantly shore it up, and eventually that’s all we do. How is that a sustainable model for the world? Not to mention, look at all the work involved? Why would we want a system which, itself, requires us to work. There’s nothing natural, normal, sustainable, kind, intelligent about it.
This is why I’m always saying, we need to look at things in a new way, we do need a true change in consciousness. We can’t just take an idea from the past, dust it off and give it a go. It’s still flawed. You can’t fix it. We have to first change our ideas, we already know the science and then the philosophy, which sprang from that, of the Enlightenment was mostly wrong. Why do we look to Capitalism, Communism, or any of the other ideas which came from those bad ideas to fix the problems we’ve created for ourselves. Also, why are people so resistant to changing when it is pointed out what we are doing is causing a problem in the first place? It’s time for a change, a real change.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Apr 2nd The best days to run are the ones that end in “Y”

Got a little cloud cover today. It made the run a little easier. Still crapped out a little at the end. I wanted a 9 min/mi pace so I took the liberty. It was a really nice day to be out there and I stuck mostly to the lungomare. I have been trying to avoid the road to Barletta recently. Stray dogs make me sad and it seems like in the warmer weather people are paying less attention to things.
Colonialism was on my mind. I don’t understand how some people simply ignore the damage that has been done to this world, and what is still happening. It’s the same as the very subtle differences between Feudalism and Capitalism; the new system Globalism and the old Colonialism. It’s the same people who have always been dominated, firstly. Secondly, now instead of a colonial governor and direct rule of some overseas government, it’s a local ruler, propped up by some overseas government. The really sad part about it, the rebels are always supported by another colonial power. The big name conflicts get the press, and still we seem to ignore this. Assad is supported by Russia, always has been, the US was supporting 2 sides of the resistance to Assad at one point. This isn’t conspiracy, we can look this up. But all over Asia, Africa, Central and South America, this farce has played out over the course of decades. Not months, not years, decades. What the colonial powers figured out after the First World War is that they needed war in order to continue their dominance and their unsustainable economic theories, What they discovered at the end of the Second World War is that they can appear to be at peace, enough to appease their respective populations, while maintaining a war which continually demanded resources, and funneled wealth into their pockets.
Now, does it matter if there’s a sinister cabal of wealthy families meeting secretly to plot this out? Does it matter if there’s a conspiracy here and they all laugh and pat each other on the back while they enjoy a highball and make jokes? No, it really doesn’t. What matters is that we drop the bullshit. Recognize our collective brotherhood/sisterhood. People who come from the old colonies, or those who look like they might have originated there are treated like crap. Refugees, forget it. We need to stop, who are “we” here? The colonials, the Europeans, in general. I’ve talked about this here and there, told stories of some of the refugees here I have spoken to. School teachers trying to become truck drivers, etc. No good reason they can’t be school teachers here, just, they don’t look like what people are used to for school teachers. But it fits into the paradigm. Oppress these people as long as you can, take advantage of their situation, take advantage of them because you get your citizens to dislike them for whatever reason. When these “outsiders” finally gain a foothold and are “accepted”, maybe 2 decades or so, then create a new crisis to create new refugees which can be exploited. It keeps happening. It started in the outskirts of Europe, and has continued to ominously creep across the globe.
In keeping most of the citizenry poor and too busy focused on the bare necessities, you keep them easily manipulated into creating the situation where the “outsider” can be manipulated. You give your citizens just enough so they don’t question it. Usually, this gets called, “White Privilege.” It’s a fairly easy thing to see on a daily basis if you’re looking for it. What people tend to not realize is, it is a worldwide thing. It doesn’t just exist in America, or Australia, or Europe. It goes everywhere. A good example:
I have gotten into many arguments with people on the bookfaces. Once someone starts ad hominem attacks against me, I take the gloves off, and when it comes to arguments about racism, usually I end up called someone a cracker, whitey, or something else equally “rude”. Do I get banned for it? No, I get a talking to, about how using language like that “lessens” my point. The fuck it does. But you know, being a “Euro” I shouldn’t treat “my own people” like that, I guess is their point. But then a new friend of mine gets 24 hours off of bookfaces simply for referring to someone as “Becky.” Even though people have called her all sorts of horrible names which do not need to be repeated, and yet those people, even though reported are deemed to not “violate community standards.” This is a microcosm of the “real world” where some people have to constantly police their own behavior, and even then they may not survive, yet others can do as they please and never face any real consequence for what they’ve done. This is the essence of White Supremacy. This is happening all over the world, every day, whether it be online, or face to face. All the time.
That is what happens, this is how it works, and it’s sick and it needs to stop. It’s not up to those who are oppressed to meet some magical standard. I can show you so many examples of standards being “met” and the goalposts being moved. It’s up to the oppressors to change what they are doing. To give up the game and let a new system or equality, of justice take control. At the same time, there are probably going to be some well-deserved lumps, deal with it.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!

Apr 1st Run rabbit run!

Well, there was no reason for today to be difficult, but never underestimate my ability to make my own life exceedingly difficult. So, when I got my new phone, I downloaded my favorite alarm clock app, and set it up, to a point. But for some reason, I left the weekend alarm as is, and just would change the time for Saturday and Sunday. That is to say, Saturday night I would set the weekend alarm for whatever time I felt like waking up and running on Sunday, and then Sunday night I would set it for Saturday morning at 6am, so I had plenty of time to get up Saturday morning, make breakfast, and get to work. But last weekend I forgot to reset Saturday. This morning, this stupidity of not just setting separate alarms for Saturday and Sunday burned me. Woke up with 5 minutes to leave the apartment to make the last train to make it on time for my first class. Got a shower, got dressed, got to the platform in time (barely). It’s truly rare that I feel like I complete asshole, this morning, yeah.
But work was good overall. It was the first time seeing my first class in a month, as they took their B1 exam a couple weeks ago. So I just spent the time introducing them to what the B2 exam expects from them. The second class, we were going over transportation vocab, and I ended up giving them a lecture on the importance of safety gear on motorcycles and seat belts in cars. Yes, that’s a problem here, people not wearing seat belts. Then one of the kids mentions how some people get seriously injured from airbags, namely they get scarring, and I say yes, but the alternative can be worse. Then we start talking about g forces and how the airbag is meant to slow the rate of deceleration. Was a wild one. But that’s not the most important thing today. But always a good talk to have, impress on them automotive safety.
Got home, managed a decent run, but low on calories I was not feeling 10 miles. Plus, I had neglected some sunscreen and the sun was pretty intense. So I got a little over 7 miles in. I felt pretty good overall, although hungry and definitely needed to drink some more water before I went out today. But I had a good pace and felt strong. I should be able to make up a few extra miles tomorrow, I have had a fantastic dinner and have been drinking water, taking care of myself tonight.
Tomorrow, running, cleaning, cooking, that is my day. A week and a half until the long weekend (It’s Italy, we get all of Easter off!) and the days should go by pretty quick. I’ll be busy. All in all, I’m doing alright, holding it down and getting shit done.
So, remember when I came back after my layoff and got my new computer and all that? I said I unblocked everyone on my block list because I was feeling generous and I was letting go of all the bad feelings I had about people and as long as no one performed any fuckery, I’d be fine to live and let live with all that? So one person, almost immediately, had to play “nope, I’m gonna get the last word” so that person went straight back on the block list. Don’t even know the person, they are a friend of a friend, and just a dumb son-of-a-bitch. An ex creeped on me and accidentally hit like and then unlike. Which was just funny to me. But then last night, a sort-of ex. I don’t know, I was told no emotional attachments, and then when I hooked up with someone else shit hit the fan. Well, there was never anything there save what it was, and when I’m told I’m free to do as I wish, I do as I wish. Well, I get the message “I see you unblocked me…” Fucking hell, just because I unblock you doesn’t mean I want to hear from you.
Now, I know this person well enough to know they had been drinking. And I haven’t answered, didn’t answer then, and won’t answer. If I saw someone who blocked me in my “suggested friends”, no matter what, I wouldn’t message them. I was blocked, that’s that. If the person wants to talk to me, they will bother to say something. And mind you, there wasn’t like an apology for the shittiness or anything resembling anything that would show any remorse or feelings of guilt for the crap this person pulled. It was like, “you should talk to me now.”

So, I will say it again, just because I let go of my need to block you doesn’t mean I want to hear from you, or talk to you. It doesn’t mean I miss you. I really do move on. Particularly if everything was on a foundation of “no emotional attachment”, like ok, why would I get my ass attached then? I just don’t understand why people think so highly of themselves. I get that I come off like I do sometimes, but I really don’t. I just roll with things as they are. But it’s just an annoyance, what makes someone think I want to talk to them. But if I’ve been angry at you for something and your lead isn’t an apology, even if I wanted to talk to you again, chances are it’s not going to happen.
Alright, so yeah. just bothered me. Still won’t block the person, I can ignore people just fine. Just need to vent that. I’m good now, I can go on with life. Onto Sunday, another bad-ass run, some more amazing home-cooked food, and cleaning this place up. I really am more and more pleased with my cooking. Each time I make a dish again, I do a little better. It really does pay off when you always think you can do better. I’m happy with who I am and what I do, but I always know I can improve, I always know I can be better tomorrow than I was today. That is what drives me. As I said, some days are better than others, but it is that idea which allows me to hone every skill I have. Never be complacent, never be “complete”. Always look for a better way, always look to improve, but never let someone else bring you down. Never let someone try and use that to sell you on anything. That’s where we go wrong. Self-doubt is a good thing, letting other people crap on you for that self-doubt is a problem. Being a better you is hard work, and no one has a magic serum or anything else to make it easy for you. No matter what you’re facing internally, all you can do is strive to be a better you tomorrow. As far as the external shit we force on each other. That’s the shit we need to knock the fuck off in this world.
The people that force their shit on other people, they always think they know what’s best. Look, I don’t know what’s best, I know what works for me, and I share it. I’ve always said, you take something from this great, you have a better way, fine. I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. But if you think you know what’s best, you’re always right, you’re something wonderful and special, and so everyone should always listen to you, I don’t want to hear it.

Have fun, keep running, and remember; if Gil can run then so can you!