Attainable Alternate Realities: on learning from lives within reach
with wisdom from ultrarunner, Michael "Gagz" Gagliardi + me contemplating nunhood???
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Monday night, Philly had its first snowfall of over an inch in 715 days—the longest streak on record. I stepped out of my nail appointment into the frosty darkness, squealed before the salon door even latched. I mean, how fitting: to get my first French manicure since senior prom, tips Aspen white, as the skies finally opened on our garbage city! It was in that moment I learned God isn’t a DJ, but a choreographer; everyone on the block—from pizza delivery guys to blondes walking Goldendoodles—tilted their heads back to the heavens, smiling like it was snowing just for them.
We needed that shared appreciation for something elemental, something pure. If you can’t bring yourself to hunker down and reflect, nature will force her hand.
Laying on the couch, scrolling my phone, being a veritable piece of shit, I saw how the snow looked in other parts of the country. A divorced writer in the midwest, perched at her new boyfriend’s farmhouse, revealed blanketed woods through rustic windows. They roasted chicken and potatoes and her children played and everything looked like the American novel I wanted to read. Hell, I could write that shit from there. I had to log off. I started feeling jealous, like my normie life was a purgatorial version of normie lives elsewhere. These people had real snow and a landscape to watch it decorate and L.L.Bean duck boots while I trudged a mile to work through polluted slush in crusty rave stompers from Dolls Kill. (I know, that’s on me.)
When a life feels within reach, the experience you have beholding it can be visceral. Such is the power of what I call attainable alternate realities. Attainable alternate realities aren’t your pipe dreams of being the next Julia Roberts, or buying a Tuscan villa. Not even meeting your soulmate who really, actually checks every box (happy to burst your bubble on that one). They are the lives we could slide into next month. They are the things we could do and the people we could become with relative ease as a downwardly mobile generation, seeking new definitions of self-actualization and fulfillment.
It’s no surprise I was moved by that woman’s Instagram stories. One of my attainable alternate realities (I have many) is finding barista work and a cozy shack in a mountain town, living out my days with some rescue dogs, notebooks, and my lover. The cost of living is low. No one knows what the fuck Margiela Tabi boots are. We exchange vegetables from our gardens, send hand-written notes and fresh orange juice when we get sick. I train for marathons at altitude and you wouldn’t believe my VO2 max.
[Microsoft Authenticator pops up with a code I must enter on my phone to access the company VPN. The fantasy collapses into itself.]
You see, I just changed positions at work—a lateral move, but one that could help Advance My Career which is apparently something I care about. And I have to be in the office four days a week. And I like being walking distance from CVS and Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and my doctor’s office. Taking Mousse to a dog park down the street. Being close to friends, family, and an airport. What keeps me, and probably most people, from pursuing attainable alternate realities is a complex web of circumstances. You work hard to achieve a certain level of material comfort and for what? To throw it all away on some Ram Dass quotes and an inkling that you might breathe easier in Vermont? There’s a lot on the line.
The second I started contemplating this whole thing, I thought of Gagz. Michael Gagliardi aka Gagz is Philly’s ultrarunning king, even named to Philly Mag’s celebrated “Best of Philly” list in 2020. Known for running 76 miles around the city’s perimeter, logging 500 runs across the Ben Franklin Bridge in a single year, and plenty of race titles, Gagz has been featured in The New York Times and UltraRunning Magazine, and counts Hoka and Ciele among his brand partners.
For much of his adult life, Gagz chased the American dream. He worked his way up in the Philly courts system, landing a coveted municipal job as Supervisor for the Adult Probation and Parole Department with a cushy salary and a pension. A wife, two boys, a beautiful home in the Northeast. “I tried for a long time, man, to be that person. That dad in the khakis at the barbecue,” Gagz tells me over the phone, “but at 48, I’m realizing maybe I’m not meant to be a conventional person.”
Gagz made a splash leaving his job in 2021 with an elegant resignation letter. “Today is the day I have decided to live my life deliberately,” he wrote, “I will no longer be tethered to an administration that is woefully incompetent, as it protects the incorrigible and blindly fumbles towards mediocrity.” And deliberately he lives, amicably divorced, happily co-parenting his sons, now both in high school, from his center city studio apartment. He doesn’t own a TV (“shoot your TV,” he advises) and can walk to his job at Philadelphia Runner. “You have to temper your expectations and drop your ego,” he says of his tranquil new life with the feral sagacity of Alan Watts. Can you tell he was an English major?
I ask Gagz about the influence of ultrarunning on making such life-altering decisions. “If you’re trying to work on your marriage, don’t become a competitive ultrarunner,” he jokes. We discuss the unique mental wiring of endurance athletes, the way crazy mileage orients the brain toward courage—rebellion, even. “You could replace ultrarunning with any passion. Once you tune into that frequency, it’s hard to turn the volume down.”
Passion is central to the attainable alternate reality. Attainability, the way I’m using it here, is almost antithetical to striving beyond your means. Thus, passion becomes currency. For example, tie-dying out of your bathtub from the depths of Appalachia might bring you a joy you’ve never known… but it probably comes with a pay cut. And that’s one of the coolest things about attainable alternate realities: they often betray the ladders we’ve climbed, subverting the cultural obsession with wealth and status. We hear stories every day of the sacrifices people like Gagz make to live their truth. Eventually, those losses become gains. That’s the weight we shed to rise.
You wanna hear something completely insane? I’m talking so alien, you’ll think I’m lying. One of my attainable alternate realities is BECOMING A NUN. I ooze Catholic guilt. I’ve been objectified since childhood. Imagine the total liberation of a sexless existence, grounded in spiritual rigor and relinquishment of self. Glorious. Immaculate. I think I’d get the best sleep of my life every night.
Now, we both know Sister Dia is an inconceivable figure. But she represents another benefit of cultivating your attainable alternate realities: you don’t need to live them to learn from them. I’m not sure I’d ever fully grasp the importance of stripped down simplicity in my life if I didn’t regularly access these fantasies. And so we may need to stick it out at our jobs, live close to family because child care is expensive, whatever. But we can extract meaning from the mundane unknown and apply it to our lives. Remember, attainable.
Before hanging up with Gagz, I received a philosophical parting gift: “burn the boats.” To burn the boats is to cut off your escape routes. Deny yourself the comfort of turning back, so you have no choice but to succeed with what you’ve got. Every day, we get to choose our reality. I want mine to be worth burning the boats.
You can follow Gagz on Instagram here.
"One of my attainable alternate realities is BECOMING A NUN." Absolutely hilarious, because in 2nd grade (when I was still in Catholic school before my mother pulled me out) I also decided I wanted to be a nun, and took a "vow of silence" lol for like 1.5 days. Perhaps yung me was already aware of my big ass mouth & wanted to try a rebrand? I won't be doing that again BUT it's good to tap in to some "say less" nun energy every now and then, I've found!
Microsoft Authenticator was triggering