All is Well

June 25th, 2018

Woke up to another “A” on last weeks paper.

Had a full nights rest compared to the past few weeks of coming home at 3am from that crazy job. Which, by the way, may have contributed to my exhaustion. Possibly. But I was waking up at 10am. Just unnatural sleeping schedules I guess.

Nevertheless, feeling better today. Probably because I know I can get a full day of studying and classwork done without the pressure of going to work. I got there last night, it was like a tornado struck the place. Nobody did any cleaning while I was gone the past two days. I handed in my time slip for the week, left that vest they issue to use for safety, got dinner for my wife and I and went home.

Aside from that momentary feeling of disgust for people, I’m calling today a refresher. A full restart and targeting the construction of the ultimate tech resume. I’ll get another job within a week if I do it right.

In the tech industry. NOT sweeping fucking floors. Look, it was admirable work but fuck … let’s face it. The American way of doing things specifically demands that we make good money smartly. Not by busting your ass.

Thus, the enhanced education.

Unimpressed

June 24th, 2018

I’ve been writing a lot to the journal because I have no one to speak to. Even if I had someone to talk to, no one care what I have to say anyway.

No. Not feeling suicidal. Not today, anyway.

It’s an overwhelming feeling of boredom with everything.

Have you ever looked at a person and just wondered “is this it? Is whatever that person is doing is the sum of what living is all about?” and just feel unimpressed with the existence of that person?

Well, that’s what I feel about almost everyone I see outside at the mall, the streets, passing in cars. People don’t impress me. When I look in a mirror, I feel the same about the person looking back at me. Worthless. No big deal.

That is a typical emotion I always feel about myself and others. I took stock of the pointless work I did at this soda warehouse and realize that this might be all I could ever do.

Sure, I’m trying for a degree and certifications. I always have ‘plans”. I just feel I have a life of nothing behind me….no matter how much heart I put into things. And I have no point of reference of success to believe my future will be any better.

Again, not suicidal. Just feeling worthless and drained of reasons to keep life going. I get in these moods. It’ll pass. Just wish I can feel impressed with my boring life.

Tomorrow I’ll start over. Get a full nights sleep. Get up in the morning, do my classwork, practice the guitar. My wife will be at work so I can actually concentrate on a few things comfortably without the TV on all day.

I’ll re-build a new resume that focuses on tech support work exclusively and start pitching for a new job tomorrow.

Tonight, I just need to let this feeling pass through.

Weeks Notice

June 24th, 2018

I gave that temp agency a week’s notice working at this soda warehouse. My body is done with this place.

It’s not a career move and I want to get into tech work. Stuff that I have been applying for months without luck, but do I keep going to this job making almost nothing, working a lot of hours and it’s not part of any upward move career-wise? Or stay, collect $200 a week working 50+ hours and too tired to get my school work done?

I don’t think I’ll be unemployed for long. The ‘just take anything’ isn’t smart anymore. I said this before — until I just needed something. Now that I just ‘got a job’, it sucks and it conflicts a little with school.

Life choices suck for the financially strapped.

Side Effects

June 24th, 2018

I’m going to do a full stop of all nootropic pills. I woke up this morning with a sense of reason behind my extraordinary sleepiness.lately. Additionally, there is another issue: my hand is still moderately swollen and it’s somewhat extended up my right arm with a little joint pain.

Not just me. My wife as well. She, too, has been sampling the medicine I purchased and she has been complaining about her right arm as well.

Yesterday I went to Six Flags Over Georgia with my daughter and it seemed like I couldn’t stay awake. I took off the day prior. I slept well into the morning before I went to the park. Spent half the day there: 12 noon to about 6:30pm. Got home and slept till 10pm, got up ate, and went back to sleep till this morning.

I did take Coluracetam before I left for the park — maybe to kind of try to find some usefulness out of it. Plus I wanted a lighter mood being around so many people. God, people are doomed. Never so many disrespectful lost human beings in my life. Another observational complaint for another time. safe to say the pill did its job to get me comfortably through the day without wanting to kill someone. People are ruined.

Anyway, I was thinking it was my work hours and me just getting older. But I worked longer hours at Walmart doing heavier pallets of work and I was not this sleepy.

Now, about my hand. I don’t have a clue how it got injured or when it exactly happened, but the rest of my arm isn’t in the best shape either. Hard to do pushups. Hard to close my hand to grab anything.

No insurance so I can’t get it checked out. The temp agency is offering something for me but I barely make any money as it is already for them to take more out for insurance. Then, of course, the child support as you know. I’m fairly broke every week.

The only change that I know of is my use of that Coluracetam because it did ‘something’ positive. The other stuff I don’t use much because it failed to work. Including the Caffeine pill.

But if it seems like it is affecting my wife (arm pain suddenly she can’t explain), then I have to put that stuff away.

is she sleepy all the time? Well, she works 12-hour shifts, put on a little weight (as wives ALWAYS do damn it. Haven’t had a wife yet that didn’t get fat once they got married. It’s disgusting. I hate it — but silence keeps the peace). So the weight and her hours make her tired. Hard to associate the pills with that for her.

So, here’s what will happen: all stop on all meds. Detox for the next couple of days/weeks and see if we return to normal.

The problem with many nootropic supplements is that they are not FDA tested nor have years of studying behind them for solid results. You take chances, figure things out for yourself and make wise decisions.

My wise decision is to pull out before anything gets worse. You can tell me that this stuff has nothing to do with my hand, arm, and exhaustion — but my physiology isn’t yours and yours isn’t mine. For instance, marijuana doesn’t get me high and I tried supposedly bad to expensively good versions of the stuff. Felt nothing. Since I never know where to get the stuff, I depend on whomever I am with to give me a sample. My friend will get some sort of high but I won’t.

Sad, actually. I wish I could get high. Well, at one point in my life I wish I did. Right now, it’s all about school and I don’t want that kind of lifestyle to interfere. So maybe I’m luckier than I thought. Or, to quote from a previous journal entry: slotted for life to not be addicted to things, unable to get high — to have clarity of thought for something.

Still, working out what that something is. Apparently has something to do with education and likely law.

Odd Few Days

June 22nd, 2018

I think my ex just asked me out. Not the ex from the previous conversation (wife #2). Ex-Wife #3. Yeah … I’ve had a full life. Fuller than most.

Until I can discern what this is about, I’ll be spending the day with our daughter and my ex (my daughter’s mother) will happen to be there at the same time. We’ve gone to functions together for the sake of our daughter before. Not a big deal.

But this one was different. I was invited to a theme park that she even bought the ticket for me. I have to pay her back, but a day she had planned to go to the park, she sorta kinda asked me if I wanted to go too.

I’m going so I can have fun with my daughter. I just wanted to make a note—document — my suspicions. There have been other hints in the recent past that I just rolled off, but this kind of underscores suspicions.

Moving along, my daily guitar practice is going well and I love my instrument. How professional guitarists do their thing is beyond me. These early first steps are foreign to me (finger placement, fret holding, etc) but Fender Play assures me a few minutes each day will improve. I put in about fifteen minutes twice a day or so before work.

Oh, about work, which is really where the odd part comes in. Going there is starting to do damage. My hand swole up like a little balloon. The knuckle grew large and it was hard to close my hand. I think either something bit me or I got scratched with a nail. There’s a lot of garbage I sweep and put out at the job. It could have been anything.

So, I stayed home today because I just couldn’ use my hand at all. Kept it under ice and slept much of the day. I felt bad about not going in. It’s not like I make enough money anymore for the days I do go in. It’s worse now with the child support being taken out. Financially, I’m in that ruined area of life. Too expensive to GO to work.

Yeah, school and certifications all sound great and encouraging. But the right here and right now is hard as fuck.

Plus I’m physically tired all the time. Probably why I slept so much today. Still tired.

I’m calling the nootropic stack I bought a failure. At least for me. I think my body is super immune to simple 200mg caffeine pills when they show no effect with coffee on top of it. The Coluracetam works. But even that fades with too much use and doesn’t give energy.

A personal WORKING stack I would recommend:

1 300 mg Coluractam & one serving of Redline Energy Drink.

Let me tell you about Redline Energy. It works. Harder than Red Bull, a touch longer than five-hour energy. Actually, Redline gives you the same kick of drinking both Red Bull and 5-hour energy drink at the same time.

As you can see, I am a heavyweight energy drinker. Not long ago, I read some kid overdosed on caffeine from soda. Either he died from just too much soda alone or he was a lightweight. I’ve downed so much energy drinks, with Adderall, at one time I should never go to sleep again. But, at this time, all of it just runs through me.

My wife and I are going to go see Jurassic World tonight when she comes home from work. I’m going to take a little nap before she gets in.

See? Just can’t keep my eyes open.

My First Guitar.

Thought I would share what it looked like. An inexpensive acoustic guitar from Amazon.com. The goal is to practice with this and step up to a better guitar in a year if the quality of my practice improves.

I think this will be the first of many, including electric guitars. I have a secret fetish for collecting musical instruments. The true goal is to not only collect them but to play them successfully.

If you are a regular reader of my journal, you’ll understand that I strongly believe a creative outlet does wonders to calm your ass down.

Half-a-Zoloft

June 21st, 2018

I took half of a Zoloft this morning. I felt the anxiety coming on last night; dealing with the boneheads at the job, the child support situation mentioned the other day and suddenly memories of my own past stupidity started rushing back to me. I tell you, my mind fucks with me that way…magnifying my awkward life moments like an unwanted home video presentation. Making me very anxious and jittery.

Here’s the thing: I have an acutely accurate memory of the worst times of my life. Almost 360-degree imagery of the same instance from all sorts of angles but I have to work so fucking hard to remember things for exams.

I’m going with the idea that I actually have a very good memory — long-term memory things, I guess. Things that leave impressions. Like I remember a lot of good things, too. Like my first girlfriend and the things I did for her. Not just the emotions and faces. I’m talking full segments of conversations and events 20-30 years ago.

Odd. If I really stopped to assess my memory, I really do have a solid memory of a lot of things. Why did I ever think I had a bad memory? HAHA…I forgot why I thought that. LOLOLOL.

I think I have a bad memory when I struggle to commit schoolwork to memory. Or I panic when it is time to take tests and feel I forgot everything.

Then I can go ahead and recall stupid events from when I was a kid that my mother doesn’t remember.

Well, anyway, the Zoloft is to settle me down because I dreaded going to work again today and I want to do a lot of schoolwork and keep studying for the A+ exam. I told my wife that going to work now, with less pay, makes it difficult to swallow the usual shit I was taking at this job. Now it’s all magnified. It’s a mental thing, but seems so much worse.

Taking a full Zoloft would have made me lethargic. Half keeps me on my feet but mellow.

It’s already starting to work.

See? Even a sensible psychotic can get through society if he takes his meds when he’s supposed to.

Child Support

June 20th, 2018

I was married before. We have two children that are now well into their teens. I love my children; that I can’t and will never deny. They were the only best part of that relationship.

What do I remember of my marriage with that woman? Her parting words that I can’t ever forget and they keep constantly ringing through my subconscious, making me cringe with anger and hate: “I’m going to take you for child support and they’re going to take all of your money.”

Quote — end quote.

Add to her annoying high-pitch voice and you get the picture.

At the time the child support started, I was making more money. I have, of course, since lost that job and they have been adding arrears into the thousands. Honestly, I have never owed so much to one source in all my life. I have tried to reduce it when I had a lesser job. The judge flat out said: ‘No.’

Really. I couldn’t afford the payments and it was ramping up astronomically back then and he said, without reason, just No.

To this day, I think that is where I started hating people.

I have made attempts to reduce it or change things but the system is thick with red tape. I would have to go back to NY and it’s a complicated mess on purpose. The quest to be a lawyer also includes rectifying alot of this bullshit, by the way.

So what has happened ever since:

I lost my drivers license.

I can’t get a passport.

I have ‘dead-beat’ status arrears that are heavy and impossible to pay off at $12.00/hr.

A long time ago, I asked the ex to help me reduce or remove this child support order. She said no.

I think back then I was near going to kill her. Why? Because I am constantly in my children’s life REGARDLESS. I give them money directly. I even gave them debit cards that allow me to give them money they can use.

Why don’t I pay the child support directly?

Well, let’s go back about eight years ago. I had a good job that paid about $16.00 an hour. Child support started taking their payments and one day my children stayed with me as they usually did in the summer or holidays. They didn’t have appropriate coats for the weather or even decent clothing.

So I asked, “what is your mother doing with the money she’s getting?” I shouldn’t have involved them in my struggles with that bitch but I was fed up. She talks bad about me to them and I usually don’t reciprocate by calling her a bitch to them. But this time, I let my son see what got taken from my checks for child support and opened his eyes to the mother he has. Based on what he said and the lack of stuff I see them have, the money I sent wasn’t being used for them.

Then he confirmed stories I already knew about her: spending money on other people and parties to make herself look like an important person.

She has a job, but when all this started, you got to understand, she ‘took’ my children from New York (where we used to live) and moved to Albany, GA. For about two months, she tried to live off my child support payments, without telling me where she went. If I kept a journal of those events, you would have witnessed me very destroyed at the time. Basically, we divorced, she hit me with child support, when I came to pick up the kids on the weekends like I always did, she was gone. Moved. Left without telling me.

That was when I used some of my inherent missing person’s skills. I found them through a logical set of questions/asking people who didn’t want to tell me. Got a lawyer and forced her back to answer for taking my kids across state lines. The most that happened was I stopped her from moving any further without my permission. She kidnapped my children and got away with it and I’m still paying.

So, flash forward to now and I don’t want her dead as much as I used to but child support still hangs over my head. I don’t ‘willingly’ report it to the services because they often take more than I can afford to live on plus I give my money to the kids directly for the things they need and it’s never as much as they need to take.

I don’t know if that amount will ever get paid, so I don’t even bother.

Meanwhile, there are times, like now, where it catches up to me. They started taking money from this little job I have, cutting my income down to more than half. If the job wasn’t worth going to with what I got, it sure isn’t worth going for less than half.

But this is the constant rotation of it all: Find a job, child support starts in, quit the job because I can’t afford to go to the job or live off of it, find another job, repeat.

I can’t answer for other fathers not doing for their children, but I do. My kids know it and I’m deadlocked into a system that won’t reduce the arrears, release my driver’s license to get to a job if I needed it and it keeps rising. Add a bitch ex-wife that just wants “all my money” and you can see why many ex-wives end up dead.

I have no sympathy when I hear of an ex-wife murdered by her ex. You don’t know the buttons that bitch probably pushed. If you knew the buttons my ex pushed, you’d want her to die, too.

So I’m in a position where if my kids need money, I have to direct them to their mother that received a payment. How can I give them any more directly if she’s getting it?

This sends me in a frantic need to get/find a better job. But, because of my lack of a degree, I couldn’t get a better job — and this brings us to where we are today: me striving for a better life with a degree, thus a potentially better job.

Let’s be clear: if I was getting paid at a job that allowed me to have a life and pay this child support bill, I would be fine with it. I don’t WANT to pay child support to this particular whore, but I am WILLING to pay it if I can make sure I can survive too. What’s the point of paying child support if I can’t survive to go to work to earn the money? Which I will never understand why they suspend driver’s licenses. How do you get to a job without a license? Reasonably. Don’t say mass transit because fuck mass transit if you have a car.

I’m venting. I have a lot more to say on this ex-wife bitch thing but I’m trying to stay centered. The plan has not changed. In fact, I’m really just writing this as documentation to showcase the overall pressure I’m going through. To underscore exactly WHY I am pushing for this degree.

But the degree isn’t coming tomorrow. Or the next week. I have another year and ½ at best before I graduate and can utilize the degree.

So, if I wanted law, I said I was going for a paralegal certification. Get certified and get a better job, right?

But the classes for paralegal cost more than I currently make now that child support is being taken. Not that I suspected this would happen, but I am so used to things falling apart when things are going good, I prepared a contingency plan should I not be able to get the paralegal classes which is …

A+ Certification. I’m in an IT degree program BECAUSE I wanted a safety if law didn’t go through. I’m studying the A+ Certification BECAUSE I can’t afford the paralegal certification classes yet. The A+ lessons are free with my education at AIU. All I have to do is pay the exam testing fee which is like $97 each (I’ll need two of them).

Get certified and I can start looking at $16+/hr jobs. Preferably into the $20/hr jobs repairing PCs and technical support, which I have experience in. But my resume jumps from job to job so much I have to really develop one that will be the ultimate IT support specialist version that takes advantage of the certification to come and the bachelor’s degree to come.

What if I don’t get A+ certified? What if I fail the exam? I’m already tired as it is working six days at a job on my feet all night and with a small window to study.

Do I quit this job giving my ex the big “go fuck yourself’? Then I’ll be out of even that little bit of weekly money to even pay for the exam; putting more pressure on my wife again.

Honestly, I’m sticking to the plan.

The plan is working. I just have to notch back how I spend money with the little I have.

I’ll also have to drop down to five days instead of six days a week at this cornball job. A touch less money but more time to study and work on classwork.

I’ll still give a little money directly to my kids. Just not as much as before, I guess. Simply can’t afford it.

THANK GOD I bought that guitar when I said I would. Seeing the child support take a majority of my money, I would have not bought it, knowing it was a frivolous purchase. It’s actually essential. You need something to make yourself happy. I want to learn the guitar and, through all this stress of trying to make more money, get a better education, child support, etc,… I need this artistic ‘me’ time.

Keeping the child support rolling keeps the system off me indirectly. It doesn’t pay off the arrears, but it’s documented SOMETHING is being paid and that isn’t a bad thing. If .. WHEN … I get certified, I’ll look for work first within the same temp agency I currently work for. This way, the support order stays consistent and I just have to have income requirements that will satisfy both the support and myself.

Otherwise, get certified and just find another job — making the support order find me.

Heavy sigh. Regardless, nothing changes. It was a few short months ago I didn’t have a dime to my name and was unemployed.

I’m employed with less money weekly — but I have money. Now, it’s just up to me to weave through life with a saving/spending control system that won’t make me feel broke until I get the certification. For instance, if I need to pay for things like the exam that’s $97, I don’t use the whole check for the exam fee. I save $50 this week. $50 next week. I split all bills I need to pay in half and storage cash when I can.

The bitch did not win. I am not as angry and I’m still doing well in school, going to learn the guitar, going to get certified and currently happily married.

I just have to stay on track and keep telling myself: the bitch did not win.

I’m winning.

Nootropic Update

June 19th, 2018

I can’t say — yet — that anything I’ve been taking has been truly effective. I have been sleeping a lot, even with a caffeine pill and that’s bizarre. I’m not with a cloudy head and feel like my thinking is foggy…which is good, but it feels like my body is working overtime to do things, making me sleepy.

Maybe working overtime to keep the fog away. So on the upside, a weak form of clarity has happened. I say weak because unlike Adderall, the stuff I’m taking isn’t allowing me to retain information — just receptive to be aware of the information. Even as I type this, I have been making A LOT of spelling errors. A little more than usual that I have to go back and correct.

It’s only been less than 24-hours so I won’t call it a failed experiment just yet. I go to work today so we’ll see how that plays out. Right now, I’m, tired. I took only two pills… no three, today. The coluracetam and the alpha-gpc. That was around 4am. I went back to sleep after studying around 6:30am.

I woke up… a little groggy so took the caffeine pill and a cup of coffee with breakfast. Guess what? I could go back to sleep. I got to see what that’s all about. I have long since said that ‘heavy thinking’ and stress can wear a person down. Maybe I’m stressed and I don’t realize it. Consciously, I feel these are the best days of my life with school and such. Of course, I need a better job but that’s why I’m studying extra hard on the A+ Certification process.

This week I’m ordering that other pill, Adrafinil. Reports say that it comes closer to the effects of Adderall so we shall see. As it stands now, only the Coluracetam does a modest job of making me ‘work’ or desire to be productive. The Alpha-GPC? I think it’s just sugar pills, honestly.

Nootropics 2

June 18th, 2018

Well, after an extended USPS delay for those pills to arrive, they finally got here. The United States Postal Service sucks more than ever these days. Even as we speak, my Amazon account still reflects as “Out for delivery”. I truly look forward to the death of the postal service as we know it.

So, I got the set:

Coluracetam, L-Theanine, Caffeine pill and Alpha-GPC as part of this stacking process. It’s 6:11PM, I took all four at 6:00PM and I’ll monitor the results.

Just in time. I took off today to focus exclusively on homework and studying for the A+ Certification. All of which I accomplished much of the day WITHOUT the extra meds — but going into the evening, I could hope for a boost in focus and clarity.

9:32PM Update:

I’m exhausted. Between 7pm and just about an hour ago, I was actually pumped and my mind was a little overflowing. My eyes had that usual caffeine’eyes open wide’ feeling but it faded. I feel like I’m crashing and I wanted to stay up longer to do more studying. The odd thing is, I had a red bull a few hours prior to taking the pills and at least two ½ cups of coffee earlier in the day and what was left of a five-hour energy drink. So, by all accounts either I should be DEAD or, at the very least, wide ass awake.

Instead, I’m dreadfully sleepy and that might mean something else is going on.

I’m going to bed and get up early to resume the study.

Wish to hell I knew why I’m so damn tired after taking all of those things. Maybe next time I’ll leave off the L-Theanine, which is supposed to be a relaxing agent. But, taken with the other stuff, it was supposed to even me out. It’s doing way too much maybe?

All a learning process. Goodnight.