That VHS that saved me (more than once)

In 1992, I had a VHS tape.

It wasn’t official. It wasn’t rare. It was one of those homemade recordings a friend passed along — the kind that felt more valuable than anything you could buy.

Every day, I would get home a little after 1 p.m.

School in the morning. Sun high in the sky. The world outside fully operational.

Inside the house, though, there was a different tempo.

I would drop my backpack near the door, grab something quick to eat, and press play.

That hour — somewhere between childhood and whatever came next — felt suspended.

Not quite a child anymore. Not yet someone the world could pressure.

On that tape there was:

• Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
• The Simpsons - Do the bartman
• The Cure - The Lovecats

When Nothing Else Matters started, the world slowed down.

There’s something about hearing vulnerability at an age when you’re still pretending not to feel too much.

Back then, I didn’t know what pressure was. I didn’t know what leadership dysfunction looked like. I didn’t know how environments could slowly erode your confidence.

I just knew that when that guitar began, everything felt stable.

Looking back, I realize something.

I wasn’t just listening to music. I was absorbing posture. Tone. Emotional permission.

That quiet intro was teaching a young mind that strength didn’t always need to be loud.

Fast forward decades.

Life happened.

Corporate pressure. Toxic leadership. Years of performance measured by someone else’s scale.

At some point, I felt cracked.

Not destroyed. Just stretched too far away from something essential.

And then one day, I remembered that tape.

I played the song again.

Not to escape. But to check something.

Was that version of me still there?

He was.

And now, in 2026, I find something strangely familiar in a very different place.

Late at night, after the noise of the day fades, I log into DayZ.

A cold map. A ruined city. Silence broken only by wind and distant footsteps.

It’s a survival game.

But it feels like something else.

It feels like that same suspended hour at 1 p.m.

No corporate hierarchy.

No performance review. No politics. Just awareness. Presence. Breathing.

Moving carefully through a hostile world and staying alive.

The VHS tape taught me that vulnerability and strength could coexist.

DayZ reminds me that calm and danger can coexist too.

Both are rituals.

Both are pauses.

Both are ways of stepping outside systems that try to define your worth.

Maybe we think someone broke us.

But maybe we were just stretched too far away from the boy who once pressed play at 1 p.m. and felt steady.

The technology changed.

The room changed.

The battlefield changed.

But the need for a ritual that restores balance never did.

Sometimes healing isn’t about fixing damage.

It’s about remembering who you were before you needed armor.

And pressing play again.