What Works?

April 22, 2019

If you look back about a year, just before I started school again, I was expressing that I found a terrible secret to my life — that the things that I want and desire don’t work out half as much (if at all) compared to the stuff I don’t have an interest in. The logic being: my passion for animation/film won’t work out for me, but doing something so left field, as being a lawyer, will.

Results have proven, even still, this way of thinking/being has not failed. Even though I took a break from school, I had enormous interest from my math teachers to help me get through the course. More help then I ever got to get a film off the ground, or even a damn review for one of my novels. Even as we speak, a have a novel on Amazon since last year that STILL doesn’t have a review. Good, bad or indifferent.

You know … I put my everything into that novel, too.

Anyway, I’m messing around with animation again. Trying to finish one small project.

Suddenly, my screen is going black. It’s not that Windows crashed, or the monitor is failing. Something is going on where if I am doing too much in Maya (animation program), the screen just shuts off.

Searching online gives all sorts of reasons. I know my computer is old. The graphic cards is fairly new. On and on …

It’s just I don’t remember this kind of shit when I was plugging away at school work.

(Heavy sigh)

My desensitized nature to failure helps me keep plugging away. I’m still trying to squeak out this animation. I just needed a place to vent my frustration. Never forget, that’s what this journal is about. My observations of my own life.

OH! Least I forget: my son is going through a pregnancy-scare thing. I warned him during his last one … I don’t think I mentioned it here. He has a girlfriend. He thought she was pregnant. Turns out she wasn’t. I warned him to leave her because even before she found out she wasn’t pregnant, she was thinking of keeping it. I told him that this was a warning shot ….

Wait a minute.

I am remembering an error in my own life. Something that has to do with abortions.

How having one triggers a collection of bad karma never before experienced.

You might think I’m mad, which you probably do — but let’s get to it. Long before this journal, I had another one on paper that expressed my feelings during my first marriage, the days and months before we tied the knot, and the first abortion we had.

I initiated and finalized the move to have one. It was going to be a girl. How do I know? Well, that’s complicated. Let’s just say, hours before I made the final decision, I was warned. Call it a vision.

Now, I know you’re reading this and saying where is all this coming from? Anything you can say about me is I am deeply aware of things — life’s maybe spiritual motions and how it connects with us. Not enough for me to be a fanatic, but enough for me to say “Hey. I noticed if you do this and that, results seem to be “that””

After that abortion, my relationship with my first wife fell apart. Even before we got married, but I was young and ignored the signs.

Anyway, I took my experiences and shared them with my son. He’s not ready for children, but I’m afraid if he initiates an abortion, there will be trouble. I did ask him to arrange to get a paternity test, though. Especially if she plans to keep it. They break up a lot. He suspects she’s been with other men. It’s a mess I’m familiar with.

If there was a time in my life that I need all things I am trying to do to work out, this is it. I want to help him where I had no father to help me.

Speaking of which, my biological father is dying. Dementia collapsed lung, pneumonia … it’s pretty bad. My wife tells me, based on pictures my sister(s) send of his charts and such, he won’t make it to June when I’m heading back to NY to drop her grandkids off.

How do I feel about that? This man’s death?

I never quite knew him. I would have liked too.

He makes me feel I need to mend connections with my first two sons.

His dying inspired me to write a short script about inheritance. I don’t expect anything from this man when he passes. It’s just the story-generating mind I have.

He had a hard, drug-induced life. Funny how I am 100% opposite of that lifestyle. It’s a good thing. He’s about 80 years old. I’d like to think I will surpass that age. I’m fifty right now.Mentally and physically (except for my aching hip from time to time) I feel I can do another fifty.

My kids stress me out though. lol. Grey hair rapidly forming. LOL. Welcome to being a parent.

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.

Legacy

June 15th, 2018

I should be sleeping but I’m annoyed.

My mother. I don’t talk about her much here. She’s still living in New York and we just recently became friendly. She’s of the type and age that to be friends with, you either have to say nothing to her or keep your conversations brief.

In the past, we’ve been contentious with each other. Never agreed on anything and she never really believed I was adult enough on decisions or the ability to do things. Seemed it shocked her that I wrote a book.

Lately, as long as it’s hi and goodbye from texting, we’ve been good. When I started school, I didn’t tell her. I revealed my ambitions only after I started getting awards. You see, if I told her I was going back to school I wasn’t going to get anything encouraging. She’s the type that encourages only after evidence of success. Now, if you waited only for your child to succeed at things before you believed in them, well, that would be a problem.

She would bring up things in the past that I gave up on. True … I started and stopped things in her mind, like, when I was between 5 years old and age 16. I don’t think my track record with finishing projects is any worse than anyone else. I know I had trouble executing things…but always tried. Honestly, I have a lot more successfully finished things than I tell her because she just doesn’t deserve to know. If you weren’t with me when I started…

Anyway, she’s selling the family house. A place in Jamaica Queens that was first bought by my grandparents, her parents, back in the 40′s. She grew up in that house. When my grandmother died, she took over and it rotted from the inside. She sent m,e pictures recently and I couldn’t believe the way she let it fall apart. I’ll post pictures later. It was horrible.

So, she’s selling it as is. The last I spoke to her about the whole selling process was she was going to sell it, living in a small apartment and then move to Vermont to retire. I don’t even think that plan is happening because I don’t think she got the money she wanted for the place. She’s not telling me but there are holes in what she tells me that make me feel her plans aren’t happening as she would like and now she’s out of what was the family house. The place that was supposed to be passed down.

I didn’t agree to her plan of selling the place but I didn’t tell her that. With my mother, you can’t discuss things with her because she only listens to whom she deems ‘smart’. In her mind, I’m not one of them.

Her only son, by the way.

She’s the originator of those in my life that don’t listen to my advice, but more than willing to hear the SAME advise from someone else who either has money or whomever she believes in. I’m very sensitive to people like that in my life. Very resentful of people that do that to me. Discounting what I have to say in favor of same or BAD advice from others. My ex did that a lot.

So, I had to watch the sale of this place happen before my eyes. And it gets worse. She only moved five houses down to someone basement apartment and she’s giving away a lot of the furniture and paintings that were in our family …well, since the 40′s. Stuff that was legacy of our family. Things that mattered to me. In that house, I wrote my greatest stories. Had many of my first experiences.

All gone. Without even asking me what I thought or should do.

So, I should be sleeping but I want to cry. I want to yell. I want to blow up on my mother for, yet again, not listening.

The question is: did I speak?

The answer is no.

I did not.

I did not question her judgment. I did not ask her questions to challenge her decisions. I did not ask her to save anything for me because I love and miss my grandparents. Why?

Because I sacrificed the legacy for the comfortable relationship with my mother we’ve had this past year. We were not fighting. We were not angry. She genuinely cared about my academic success and I finally got my mother to love me for my accomplishments.

That’s no way to live. To only speak to your family ‘in a certain way’ in order to have a relationship with them. When it’s time to speak to them openly, you can’t. I missed an opportunity to salvage my grandparent’s things. I regret that.

You see what this journal is all about. It isn’t just about me making a highly probable shot at going to law school. It’s the regeneration of a once deflated, depressed man making global changes in his life by being aware of his failings and what needs to be changed. In order to get there, the raw unfiltered ‘who I am’ needs to be revealed, addressed and reshaped. Most of all, documented.

The documentation is for me to purge my thoughts. A therapeutic move.

But mostly for you. Someone who might be trying to dig your way out of a hole of depression and your life needs changes. Maybe even suicidal as I have been, and want to see if I can make it, so can you. Change is possible.

I am not the same man that started this journal last year. Lord knows I am not the same man from years ago. With academia and learning the guitar (by the way, I also started ‘Fender Play’ to practice with intentions of getting ‘in class’ tutorials in a few weeks. The guitar is going to arrive next Tuesday), archery coming back again and joining this tech frat, “who am I” is a fair question. Certainly not last years guy.

That said, what did I learn from this experience with my mother?

I need to save my family home. I’m told it’s sold already. Right now is a good time to win the lottery. I’m playing first thing I can today.

Aside from that, I keep doing what I always have been doing with my life and my children. For me, making greater strives to be a better man. For them, talking to them honestly and letting them speak to me openly. No judgments. I save everything they make or give me. I have stuff they made for me since they were babies. A form of legacy items. I’m saving things of my own I will pass down to them.

The guitar will be one of many guitars I think I’m going to buy. The bow is another. Then there are the comic books, figurines, collectibles, etc, etc. LOL.

Working on actual ‘money’.

I need a family home of my own.

Some place they can come to and know they can get a fresh start, or recharge. A place they can always go to as comfort.

As of right now, I do not have that. My family home safety net is gone.

I will have a home that will be our family legacy.

You can guarantee that.

Guns II: Fear in Government

February 21, 2018

The recent school shooting apparently disturbed me more than I thought. You would think I would be desensitized by now. CNN listed a report of all the mass shootings between 1999 and now and we missed, like, four years of zero shootings. Something like that.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts/index.html

What really disturbed me was the response from government. The children that survived the shooting went off to protest; wanting a ban on the rifle used. Swiftly, the government (Florida) voted down even the discussion of banning the weapon.

Then, the president spouted off about banning a ‘part’ of the rifle. A bump stock. Just a part of it.

The protests were dead before they got off the ground.

The problem is clear: Politicians are afraid of losing the zealot gun-owners, money and endorsements, voters, etc.

It reminds me of another addiction problem in this country: cigarettes.

So, we know without a shadow of a doubt — cigarette smoking causes cancer. It will kill you.

But ads persist. Sales are ongoing. No one will stop smoking and, generally speaking, they are just allowing the ‘smoking thing’ to run its course. If you don’t smoke, fine. If you do smoke, fine and when you die from your smoking related disease, that’s fine too. Whatever.

But we won’t stop selling cigarettes and making money.

We won’t stop selling mass destructive rifles and making money. The worst part of the rifle is that it’s not necessary to anyone unless you are in the military or some sort of law enforcement.

No. One. Not one person.

Why won’t there be an absolute ban on this rifle? Because, as said above, people are fearful. And greedy. The fear comes in two parts: afraid because they think they will need it. Fearful that they will lose all the things mentioned earlier.

Of course, they start spouting the second amendment and I had an interesting thought about that.

Did you know there is nothing in the constitution that specifically says you can own a ‘gun’ or ‘rifle’? As I pursue this legal career (or job, depending on how things fall), the art of wordplay is very important. Also, the second amendment implies you need you to be in a ‘militia’ also:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The term ‘Arms’ isn’t legally binding to the any particular weapon. Could be a knife, a gun, a rifle, a sword, a tank, a nuclear bomb.

You may own a weapon.

But you can’t own a tank. You can’t own a nuclear bomb.

You should not be able to own a AK-47.

Simple as that. I challenge you to show me the legal aspect that can stop me from banning a specific ‘arm’.

Additionally, a well regulated Militia — ‘regulated’, meaning organized and controlled, is the right of the people and those people of the militia can keep and bear arms.

Not in a militia? Guess what? No guns for you. Nothing specific that allows you to bear arms outside of a militia. At the very least a ‘regulated’ one.

You’re reading this and thinking that arms certainly means guns and you’re right. It implies guns and any other weapon. But legally speaking, there is nothing in that statement that protects ‘specific’ arms.

It’s very much like “You are allowed to drink” … if you want to fuck around and drink alcohol, motor oil, pond water, gasoline — that’s up to you. But for your protection, I will ban drinking motor oil and gasoline. I can do that and it will be successful even if a bunch of you are pissed that I stopped you from drinking motor oil. Yes, Americans are dumb asses to think that. If you don’t believe me, I’m in a generation that is eating detergent pods.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01/25/at-least-14-utahns-have-called-poison-control-because-of-exposure-to-laundry-detergent-pods-some-related-to-tide-pod-challenge/

Continuing this example, the problem in government is: Politicians are getting paid lovely by motor oil producing companies that see that, in addition to sensible sales of motor oil, they get bigger money from the fools that drink it. Also, the fools that love drinking the motor oil themselves are demanding no one infringe on their rights ‘to drink’. Even as more and more people are dying, they will vote against the motor oil drinking.

Common sense — or logically speaking — we either just wait for these fools to kill themselves off and let the generation of non-motor oil drinking/non-gun users come into affect; to eventually vote out cowards —- or just wait for another school shooting.

Whats funny is, about a year or two ago, some senator or politician was shot on a baseball field. He was someone who opposed gun control measures and that still hasn’t changed things.

I would say the death of a president would be fantastic, but that happened a few times already and it got clogged with conspiracy bullshit that the discussion of banning weapons wasn’t even brought up.

This is a sad country when you get 17-18 people murdered and our politicians, the supreme court and our own president are like, “It’s sad, but …”

I think a concerted effort to simply replace ALL politicians and this fool in office is mandatory. All politicians. All aged and weathered supreme court judges. Wipe it clean and start with fresh ideas cause this ongoing shit of the same old thing is pathetic.That’s why we have a democratic voting system, you say?

How did that work out in 2016? Ask the Russians. By the way, odd coincidence that the AK-47, a Russian weapon, is so easy to buy as well.

We’re being socially fucked with and I would say the Russians are the sole masterminds, but the reality is people are in their pocket and he door is wide open. Well played, but fuck Putin. I would bomb the fuck out of Russia in a heartbeat — or expect another Chernobyl to humble their asses.

One other interesting thought: funny how America is so set on illegal possession of drugs more than these rifles.

Which one can the common man make money off of?

Think about it and see what’s going on.

Update: This article supports my position on the constitution’s 2nd amendment and how it doesn’t protect anyone from banning certain weapons. See? I’m not totally off the rails. For Christ sake, I AM trying to be a lawyer.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/opinions/banning-assault-rifles-would-be-constitutional-pate/index.html