by Learing to say no, tune out the noise, and Face Resistance
I spent many years of my life without a sense of time or urgency. In a way that’s natural I think, especially when you’re young. You want to have fun, explore with your friends, get into adventures, chase girls, and play video games until sundown. Who cares if you spent all night doom-scrolling and being caught up in random nonsense and bullshit? In your mind, you have a million more days.
But there comes a time, for me it was about a year ago at the tail end of 25, when I started realizing that if one wants to build their life and create something meaningful, one has to really start protecting their energy and time.
Almost every single day, I get a call, a message, or a request to hang out — to party, to go out, to do this, to do that, to go here, to go there. It’s never-ending. Even as I’m writing this now, I hear my phone vibrating from the other side of the room with friends calling to hang out. Even deleting social media and keeping a low profile doesn’t really stop the alluring and tempting offers. I reached a point where I no longer respond immediately or even pick up calls. It’s a tough decision because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I also need to protect my time.
I’m dedicating my time to my job, which I love and cherish, as well as to my family, the gym and fitness, reading and studying, and delving into my creative projects and writing. All of those things require time, focus, and dedication, as well as a healthy amount of sleep and regeneration. I can no longer spend my energy and time on random things like drinking until sundown every Weekend and simply “hanging out.”
Maybe I’m reacting the wrong way to this too, but it’s starting to really piss me off when almost daily I get messages from different people to hang out. Hang out and do what? Am I becoming an old fuck?
I’ve explained it nicely to people each time I turned down a request, but many still don’t get it. Some people are starting to feel offended, and they even try to guilt-trip me into hanging out. I’ve given in countless times in the past. But not so much anymore.
Over the past year, I’ve dealt with this almost daily, turning down requests left and right, and I’ve learned to be more ruthless about it. If I am not strict about it, people will just eat away at my time, and one day, when nothing is accomplished, I will have no one else to blame but myself.
Many of us have a dream and a vision and things we want to accomplish in our lifetimes; we want to grow and evolve. Achieving all the things we want to do and know we have to do won’t happen on its own magically. Doing them starts now, today, every day.
Each day, chipping away at that rock and coming closer and closer to the sculpture you want to build. I haven’t built my sculpture yet, but I have come to enjoy and respect the process of hitting that rock with the nail, bit by bit, every day.
About a day ago, I received a lengthy message from an old-time friend that left me feeling uneasy and prompted me to question many things. The message was basically about how my friend group, particularly the friend who messaged me, is upset with me and my distance over the past couple of months. That I haven’t been keeping in touch, not hanging out, not even dedicating a couple of hours to the homies when I can. He even said that I “cut them off” because “I have a new friend group.” All in all, my buddy sounded pretty upset.
The final straw for him, I suppose, was when he called me on Friday night to hang out while I was working the evening shift at my job, in the Italian market. It was a busy night at the store and I was running around making sandwiches, taking care of guests, pouring wine, making cappuccinos and espressos, and scooping and selling gelato. It was a busy night. I saw they kept calling, but I had no time to pick up.
After dedicating my energy to serving people and solving problems throughout the day, I wanted to end the evening with a book, some quiet, and music, and get some rest before the next day’s shift. After work, I let them know that I’ll pass on the night.
By focusing on helping a small business, spending time with my family when possible, prioritizing my health and exercise, and getting quality sleep, I can dedicate time to writing, pondering, accumulating knowledge and skills, tuning into my purpose, and staying disciplined and on track. Am I really a bad friend for wanting solitude and for wanting to reach my potential, for wanting to advance my way of thinking, and let go of old, unhealthy habits?
While all of this was happening, a customer at work randomly recommended that I check out David Pressfield’s The War of Art, where I came across the concept of Resistance. Through my experiences and reflection, I’ve come to realize that Resistance is a real force.
It pains me to say this, but friends can sometimes be a major force of Resistance. When you try to detach and work on your life in your own way, it often offends people and makes them draw their own conclusions about you.
If I had given in to most of the requests to hang out, I wouldn’t have put together this website and written the last couple of articles, even this one. But in reality, writing about this topic wasn’t my initial focus when I started my writing journey. However, as I try to become a better writer, experiencing this has driven me to write about it and get it out of my system before I move on to writing other things. Makes sense?
I have to put these thoughts out there, so one day you guys can read and understand my point of view and where I am coming from. So you can understand that I am not deliberately ignoring you or cutting you off or have something against you or look down on you, it’s just time for me to do the heavy work. To build.
A few days later…
Right after writing what I have written above, I dedicated a few days this week to hanging out with my different friends. It wasn’t something I had planned, it just happened that way.
Monday night, I hung out with a couple of my long-time buddies from middle school and high school. I’ve seen them only three or four times this summer, as opposed to past summers when we’d see each other almost every day sometimes. What did we do? What we would usually do throughout the years and through the pandemic, we cruise around the neighborhood and the city and chill and see interesting shit.
Wednesday night at the gym, I ran into another friend I hadn’t seen in a few months. It’s like fate had it that way. We talked and then he proposed the idea of going to see a movie with another friend of ours. I said fuck it, yeah, I’d be down to see Weapons. Another good friend of mine who came with us was the one who sent me that long message a few days ago about me being distant.
All in all, it was nice to catch up with them. The movie was fun and crazy too. When I was with my buddies, it was like no time had passed between us, and there were no grudges. Just chill. Same with the other two I talked about previously.
Thursday at work my friend and coworker told me that two hot Italian chicks want to hang out and go to some karaoke in White Plains. I said Yeah, let’s do it. Later, one of the girls said she couldn’t make it, so since one was out, the other didn’t want to come alone.
My buddy and I still decided to meet up and go to White Plains. It’s one of his favorite spots, he calls me there almost every week. Most of the time I pass, even though I was the one who discovered the nightlife that brews up in White Plains.
We went to the Brazen Fox, where we had some drinks and burgers, and spent most of the night hanging out with two other Italian chicks my friend had run into at the bar. These ones were pretty chubby, especially one of them, but the other one was kind of alright. They had a nice vibe, and overall it was a chill night of talking, drinking, and smoking some cigs.
Where was I going with all of this?
I’ve been on the right track the past year and have grown a lot. I think my friends see it too. Still a long way to go though. Moving forward, I need to balance my passions and projects and put more effort into seeing the homies too. They are good guys.
As much as I just want to fully lock in , it’s nice to step back and see them once in a while. I think I’ve made it clear now about myself that it’s not going to be an every day thing for me to chill and hang out. I’ll put in more effort, though.
In conclusion, fuck the outside noise, the parties, the clubs, the waste of time and energy, the big bar tabs, overpriced Ubers, and the hungover, dehydrated mornings. Although I know I’ll still have a bit of those down the line. As Hemingway says, sometimes you have to digest life to prevent your work from going stale.
There isn’t some big lesson here—the kind you’d get from productivity gurus or people who’ve already achieved a lot and pass their wisdom down. I’ve simply always wanted to become a better writer and storyteller. Now I finally have the time and the living conditions to support myself while pursuing those passions. I’m documenting the journey as I go, and with time, the story will tell itself.
