Staying Alive in Your 30s

It’s the young man’s duty to fully enjoy the drug of youth. The decade or so when he is bulletproof. Because for most of his life, he’ll be a tired, irrelevant dork. So he needs to enjoy the fraction of his existence when he’s not that guy.

The young man should sleep only sometimes and go to the gym too much. He should be broke and go to too many parties. Maybe crash a vehicle or be rude to his family. Youth should be a Navy SEAL Hell Week of debauchery, but it should last for years, and it should be a crime to regret it.

This isn't going to be a piece where I talk about how fit and strong I was back in my day. The reality was more nuanced. I never had a six-pack as a young man, but I also never got fat. This is because most of my precious youth was blowtorched away by social anxiety, so during those immortal years I just hid in the gym like a cave troll. I only worked the nightclub muscles. I always skipped leg day or ab day. I’m not a coordinated person, so for cardio I would just run sprints in simple, straight lines, so I wouldn’t get confused. Then I would go to parties wearing tiny T-shirts I bought in the Hanoi night market and drink tanker trucks full of beer. 

I got to be the young man for a long time. It was magical. The Captain America serum didn’t wear off until I was 36. Then I got Achilles tendinitis, so now I have to do tedious foam rolls and stretches every day just so I can maybe not tear my Achilles tendon. Now I gingerly tip-toe around like I’m in a minefield.

But not everyone has something like that happen when they get older. You might still be fine. You might still be able to run around forever. But if you don’t injure a tendon or a joint, the first sign of death will be your face melting like a candle. One morning, the pillow creases on your cheeks won’t go away. Father Time will find you. He doesn’t forget about anyone. If he hasn’t found you yet, then he’s looking for you right now.

It’s fine. You just have to keep moving. You can do new things if you can’t do the old things. I can’t run now, so I do jiu jitsu, which I am not good at because I’m not coordinated. I only go once a week, and it’s the worst part of my week. It hurts my mind and my body. On the mat, five-foot-tall Vietnamese guys treat me like a shoelace. But this brings humility, which is also your duty to experience at some point.

Another sad day as a #WhiteBeltWarrior.

Hanoi

I got to Hanoi in 2016, when the backpackers ruled the Earth. I was a suburban child in search of exotic vibes and maximum weirdness, and in Hanoi I found those things.

It’s a place of casual anarchy. Where in any bar you can meet someone who might be a fugitive, and where it’s OK to drive your motorcycle up the sidewalk like Tom Cruise if you’re late for work. Or if you just want to.

You have to wear a ninja mask all the time but you still taste gasoline in the air. Wherever you are, there is a woman in floral-print pajamas nearby killing a chicken and not washing her hands. 

Vietnam is so hot that it feels like the concrete is about to bubble into magma and suck us all down into hell. So you spend a lot of time at the pool drinking fifty-cent beers with ice cubes, giggling with your friends as you warp into a state of dehydrated delirium. There are worse ways to live. 

The backpackers all came here “for a few weeks” but then decided to stay forever and formed a fake aristocracy. They play the game of life with cheat codes on. They teach English classes and get paid too much money in cash like drug dealers. They have de facto diplomatic immunity to commit minor crimes on the roads and in the clubs. These people—a group that includes myself—will go down as the luckiest idiots of all time. 

Everyone is a long way from home. Vietnam is very far away, and it feels far away. It takes a long time to get here, and I like that. I believe that if you want to go somewhere exotic and worthwhile, you need to suffer. Direct flights are too easy. You should have to be in transit for at least thirty hours and get lost trying to find your connection gate in Tajikistan or wherever. By the time you finally land at Noi Bai Airport you feel like you’re on the other side of the galaxy. 

Whenever I get back to Hanoi, I feel like many problems in life have been solved. And whenever I have to leave, those problems get unsolved.

Photo by Chris Hocker

One of the OG Tays, a great photographer and a great friend.

Why This Website Exists

I've been a good little ghostwriter. I lurk, do the work, and don't say a word. 

I’m also a ghost when it comes to personal expression. I fill up notebooks like a detective but never really post anything (except for Instagram captions, which are my favorite art form).

Of course, the irony of being an invisible mercenary is that nothing shows up when clients Google you. So, I had to break cover and make this website. And here it is. Welcome to Ben Engelbach’s Website.

Fortunately for me, the writing is already done. I just have to go through my notebooks, and I’ll post any good stuff I find.

I know reading is really hard (it feels like you’re planking with your brain) so thanks for reading this far. And now, the post is over and you can get back to indulging in the bright poison of Instagram or whatever else you want to do.

These all say BEN’S SECRET DIARY DON’T READ!!! on the cover.