You know you’re alone in the world when your own car won’t back you up. So it helps to know your detachment style. You can’t pull yourself up with someone else’s bootstraps. It’s your own road to travel so you’d best pave it first.

You go through life surviving on first impressions. No one offers you seconds but it takes a minute for that to sink in. You always hope that when you collar someone, they’ll give you the shirt off their back. But your button-down style isn’t for everyone. Even when you ask how to pay for your free lunch, no one has any tips for you.

So that’s how it goes when life moves on but you don’t. Strangers tell you that you’re too hard on yourself, but what else would you have to live up to? Someday you’ll have the last word, but where on earth will you put it?

Bio: Peter Jastermsky