I started ApexofMen in roughly my 2nd year of high school, when I was 15 or 16.
I knew what I wanted to do, not exactly knew what I wanted to exactly do, but I knew I wanted to do this. I knew that this was my calling.
As I continued my journey with apexofmen and slowly receded from socializing, school, and my family and other activities and hobbies, I began to more and more talk to myself and think to myself as if I were being interviewed under the spotlight.
I knew that I wasn’t going to finish highschool, and that I didn’t want to either. “College is a scam! Make an online business!” is all I ever saw, and I agreed with it of course – I wanted to be filthy stinking rich. So as I went along with apexofmen and writing and learning and tweeting, I ever increasingly stopped paying attention in class, showing up to class, and then finally showing up to school at all.
I have a unique disposition that allows me to be very aware of myself and my surroundings, so I was able to record and see how as I drifted away from socializing in pursuit of what I thought was “Success”, I also stopped knowing and feeling “who or what” I am, who or what I was.
I knew about the effects of isolation and such, such that I knew what was happening as I became trapped in my head.
Everytime I would go for a walk to ‘clear my head’, I would instead work through my problems and talk over them as if I were on a podcast or under the limelight. Day in and day out, I had to explain myself to myself and to the audience that were relying on me. I had to reconcile and elaborate on all my griefs and woes, and in part it worked to make me more honest with myself as I toiled over them endlessly, but I felt trapped and was ‘trapped’.
I couldn’t escape my own head, I couldn’t get out of my own mind.
Everytime someone would offer me an opportunity or ask to hangout or go to a party or anything, something, I would back away and say that I had to work on my business.
I was born for Greatness, and I knew that since birth and a lot of people always told me stuff like that too. Except, I was just a random boy from a random small town from a random country. Yes, I knew quite a lot and was very knowledgeable, and secrets to health and even immortality (if you believe it or not) – but who am I to tweet here as if I know anything? Who am I to write or act or talk as if I know anything, as if I am actually the ‘ApexofMen’.
For me to suddenly have all these followers, if even only a thousand at it’s highest, and to be friends or what I told myself were ‘rivals or enemies or threats to myself and my business and my dream and the empire I wanted to build’ with so many accounts with many times more followers, and who could seemingly tweet without any fear or care in the world – they tweeted without fear of losing followers or upsetting other big accounts that might ‘call them out’ or ‘expose them’ – but maybe that was because they weren’t hiding their true selves, or at least not hiding themselves or restraining themselves like I was.
After mindlessly scrolling twitter for increasing months and years, I always told myself that I had to compete, that all these other accounts on here were my rivals and enemies, and that clout and attention and validation and success and all that bullshit was the name of the game, and that I would be happy and perfect after I had my successful online business and empire – because that’s what I was told, and that’s what I kept telling myself.
But on the opposite spectrum, or perhaps still the same boat, still the same side of the coin, I was afraid of falling out of the spotlight – I was afraid of being left behind, afraid of being forgotten and not missed, afraid that I couldn’t keep up with others like Grimhood or GritCult or Atlus or Deja Ru or SolBrah or Drutang or anybody like that. I felt like shit and had ‘fallen from glory’.
Grimhood and Deja Ru especially ‘drove me off twitter’, they had blocked me without reason (the former thought I stole a tweet, the latter no clue). I felt as if my entire dream and ‘persona’, that my heart and soul and who I was that I laid out there was entirely rejected and spat upon, that I had no right to live or continue to be the ‘apexofmen’ – even though we both know that isn’t the case, and know that anytime you feel that that it’s not the case and that we’ve all gone through that at one point or another.
I thought that I wasn’t enough or couldn’t compete because I had an anime profile picture and played video games or something – but the people that felt those same things were the people I think I really started this all to help. The underdogs and downtrodden that wanted to be heroes, which sounds weak and cringe on paper but we all know it in our hearts that we all want to be the hero.
I was suffering from Imposter syndrome, Identity crises, Isolation, and all these other things all at once – after all, these ‘syndromes’ are just checklists somebody somewhere at sometime wrote down and called it this, and said this is how things are.
My bedroom and Twitter had become my world, instead of the real world.
I always tried and often was truthful and honest with these articles and writings, but when others write pieces like this I always scoffed and still do scoff because of how disingenous they feel, perhaps because they always end up putting a link to their products or email list at the bottom of it or just so happen to mention it 5 times in the course of the article.
But then and now I realize it’s not necessarily cringe or stupid or gay or weak or disingenuous to write truthful and honest, vulnerable articles like this (unless they’re using it peddle something, which they are lmao), but part of being the ApexofMen is having the courage and bravery to let your guard down, to tear your shirt off and let the world gaze unto your heart, with all its radiant golden valves but also the dark and abyssal peckered holes lying throughout it as well.
If others can learn from my vulnerability and perhaps looking like a weak or insolent fool, then so be it. If I can learn and become stronger from ‘putting myself out there’ and so can others, then I will gladly do it.
Because that is The Pursuit of Perfection – Learning from your mistakes and rising above your fears and anxieties and imperfections.
Rise from the ashes like the Phoenix, rise above yourself each and every day as you climb the pyramid towards The Apex of Men.
Apex of Men 