I appreciate the encouragement, genuienly.

Its... been wild.

Kind of just ended up actually living through the uh Fight Club line: "It is only after you have lost everything, that you are free to do anything."

Was quite a bit of a perspective shift... and I'd previously been working with serving the homeless at a shelter (ironic), but nope, even that was nowhere near sufficient to fully understand what its like.

But yeah, it did net result in me finally defeating my impostor syndrome... I actually have genuine self confidence now.

I have literally survived things that ... I literally saw kill other people, directly in front of me.

Made my way for a good bit of it by basically being the only person around that had basic, functional first aid training, and I more or less traded that for food, cigs, 'reputation points'.

More or less dumb fucking luck that I remembered some trauma oriented medical training I got at gun range years back, and that I was able to hold onto a good more or less medical bugout bag I'd put together in case of emergencies.

Local firefighters were a lot more helpful and trustworthy than local cops, in terms of actually helping out with dire medical situations...

So I am a bit pleasantly biased towards firefighters in that way too, haha.

Anyway yeah, one of these days, I'll get to go on a hike again, and that'll honestly be me being a happy and fully content man.

Lynrd Skynrd - Simple Kind of Man begins to play