Even Better

April 7th, 2019

Life for me has improved.

I look back at the year and a half of misery, confusion, suicidal thoughts, etc and need to ask myself what changed to get me centered. I don’t even take any nootropics. No adderall. No drugs. Nothing.

Not even meditation.

What I do know about life is, there are “up’s and downs’…feast and famine. Normalcy and insanity. Times where life is good and when times are bad. Don’t get me wrong, these things are still happening.

The difference is the length of feast over famine …the amount of good days over bad … that I am controlling. Yup, it all circles back to ‘me’ and how I handle it all.

Let’s start with the first easy workable change: I’m working consistently.

Not exactly an IT job — more like a whole lot of grunt work — but I’m paid weekly good money. Also have a second job opportunity with another company to work with the census soon. I’ll have to drop one for the other if I decide to take it. I’m going through the application process. Jumped through a few of the usual federal application hurdles already so it looks good.

Both jobs will have me traveling. Both jobs have ups and downs to them.

But this journal entry has nothing to do with the jobs as much as how I have been handling life with these jobs and the people I work with.

As you know, I can’t stand people and that still stands.

So, the job I’m working with now has the largest collections of jerks and assholes anyone could possibly work with.

How do I manage? That, my friend, is where I reveal the good stuff.

It’s a little bit of everything I learned over the year especially during my time at Walmart. Remember that time I expressed the best way to ignore the people around me is to use my height and look above and beyond them?

The idea was if I looked above the heads of people and not AT people, I can focus on what’s important and stop worrying about who’s looking at me. Of course, it worked and over the year I’ve removed needing to have eye contact with anyone unless I need to speak directly.

As a result, i carry myself as arrogant, I’m sure. But guess what? The expression of arrogance and unapproachable works for me and it works on the job place.

I work with grown-ass men and they like to pick on one another. Stupid jokes, etc, etc. Some people are worse targets than others.

In past jobs, I would get mad and say something and create enemies or quit if people tried to label me as a target to joke on.

Quitting jobs put me in this financial hole. Then I’m looking for work. The circle goes round and round.

In order to keep a job, I had to improve how I handle people.

The trick for me is the ‘above and beyond’ routine — expressing a singular focus to do the job I am working on. No socializing. No joking around. Anti-social 100%.

It sounds terrible, but even my expression emits “If it isn’t about work, don’t fuck with me”

And it’s working.

People talk to me, immediately and on first contact, with cautious respect. Do you understand how much that means to me? To be left the fuck alone, but when they need to say something, it comes from a place of joke-free respect?

The problem up till now has been I left myself open to be non-confrontational, friendly black man. Not too unlike President Obama, who was disrespected every hour of his presidency by even high ranking leaders.

It’s a sad world — where you need to be considered a bitch/bastard to gain respect. And trust me, it’s never that people give respect that’s earned. You could be a Black president of the United States and still have another world leader NOT shake your hand in public.

Or you could be a new employee, greet people and do the job, and someone will find a need to say something smart-ass.

The focus on doing the job also provides consistent good results toward my financial needs so why the fuck would I care what anyone thinks of me if I’m just doing the job and keeping to myself?

The secret to my current success, believe it or not, has been a healthy amount of “Fuck everyone” and “leave me alone”. The results are showing in my freedom of thought and clear mind to get what’s important to me done.

Still haven’t been on Facebook in going on two years soon. I really have nothing to say to anyone — and I’m happy! Money is rolling in. I’m writing a little here and there and I have an animation project I’m eyeing at the end of the month to start.

People do suck — so let them burn.

Which kind of brings me to my wife’s grand-kids.

As you know, they were staying with us and these ghetto trap kids are about to go home soon. Thank god.

I had a recent heart-to-heart with my wife about what led up to this and how it will never happen again.

She literally blames me for saying “Yes” to allowing these brats stay here. No lie. if we talk about it, the conversation flow is always “Well, you should have said something different.”

This goes back to being the ‘non-confrontational asshole I was a year ago.

Her daughter’s third child was sick. She needed help with the other two. Where else were the kids to go? Of course I said yes. I didn’t want it. But what else could I have done?

Now I know what I could do: fuck no.

Especially if, being her husband, she’s telling me saying ‘no’ to help her family was on the table. That it even an option???

Then fine. Fuck it.

She has a son in New York. Age 22. I hear he’s fucking up. When we go to New York to drop the fuck-brats off, she will want to consider the idea of bringing her son back with us.

I was already over this and talked to her a few weeks ago and said: It can’t happen. Sorry about what your son is going through, but when we go to NY, it needs to only be us coming back home. I can’t live with another person under our roof no more.”

I said it politely. I know she’s troubled. Hell, it’s her son. I feel like a dick because it is her son.

But fuck it. No.

I hear her daughter is going though some shit, too.

Fuck it. No.

Not going to happen.

The price for being sane and happy is to be an asshole in the eyes of others.

What you are experiencing is the death of the “nice guy” and the birth of a person I never knew.

Someone happy.

Ex-Wife Disease

March 19th, 2019

What do you do when you love your daughter, but she’s growing up to be a fucking idiot like the ex she’s living with?

My daughter is beautiful and has the potential to be smart; but every word and everything she does drips with the stupidity of her mother. Like a fucking disabling disease, all that makes the ex is plaguing my little girl and I can’t stop or change it.

You boneheads will go about and say “well, then you shouldn’t have married her.” That line can only come from people who never been married or had a long relationship. To enlighten your own stupidity, the first rule of getting married is you don’t find out the depth of someones idiocy until after the “I do’s”.

Until then, the courting and bullshit is an Emmy award winning performance.

So, after divorce, and if the child lives with the ex-spouse, you start seeing everything that makes the ex scum start to infect your child. It’s like watching a slow death. especially if you can’t get custody.

My daughter, the eldest anyway, is a fucking idiot. Keeps locking out the debit card I gave her and wondering why these things happen.

Brainless like her mother.

Which is why it hurts twice as much.

Step-Grandchildren

September 9th, 2018

This is going to sound really evil, but … well, it’s just going to sound evil.

My wife had children young, so naturally, her children have children so she’s a grandmother. Relatively young, but that’s the pattern of fuckery. My children are younger by a few years but it could happen to me any day now. I think my children are a little smarter and less ghetto, though.

So, since my wife and I been married, almost every year there is some ghetto trash drama with her kids that they need to stay with us for a short amount of time. It’s short because I end up kicking them out because either they end up getting arrested, or we need to bail someone out, or they get some girl pregnant or their in and out of the house running in the streets.

Naturally, I don’t take to that shit and end up kicking them all out in one way or another. So I’m the bad guy of the family because they’re shit from the streets and I’m not. Fuck them if they try to bring hot mess to my home. They can get the fuck out.

Yeah, it puts a strain on my marriage but I’m successful at bringing my wife above the ghetto — if not financial — line. How we live is a stark difference than how she used to live. Not financially better but morally and just common sense better. I don’t surround myself with drama. As you know, I don’t surround myself with people so it balances out.

Anyway, her grandkids are staying with us now. It won’t be for much longer though.

The scenario is like this:

My wife has a daughter. She has three daughters. Ages range from 7, 10 and 15 or something.

The fifteen-year-old is an evil bitch. I may type a lot of shit in my journal but I can be a way nicer person than that bitch in my sleep. She and her siblings came over in the early part of summer to visit and she was just into everything, acting the ripe bitch she was. Even tried to hack my computer when I locked it. Bitch failed, of course, but at the time, I was happy it was just a visit and they were leaving in a few days.

So, mid-way through summer, come to find out the fifteen-year-old has some sort of cancer. And it’s serious. Literally, they left here from a visit, went to a doctors appointment and they found something on her lungs. Just like that. She seemed fine when she was here. Just a common bitch that I wished would die.

Next thing you know, she’s likely REALLY going to die and, well, I still think she’s an evil bitch. Good fucking riddance.

So, anyway, the mother has to go to the hospital every day to be with her…thus leaving the other two at home with no one watching them. She has no support system to watch the girls. My wife tried to get her second daughter to be proactive but she’s the high-exalted ghetto tramp of the year and couldn’t be trusted to simply pick the girls up from school. So that fell apart.

So, the idea sprung up that the girls stay with us while their mother goes through all the cancer-bitch treatments. From when I last heard, her chemo isn’t working.

The 7 and 10-year-old aren’t half as bad as their dying sister, but they are the symptom of the cancer-bitch’s bullying. The 15-year-old tormented the other two and just said and did bad things….making the other two reactionaries of a bad life.

The ten-year-old is fatter than my wife! 250+ pounds!!!

You read that right. A fat fuck that was given free reign to eat anything she wants because her mother, also fat, just gave up.

Nothing is worse than listening to a fat fuck ten-year-old complain about being hungry. NOTHING. Fat ass shit can’t possibly be hungry when she weighs almost TWO of me! Vile, nasty fat fuck.

The 7-year old gained weight from the time she first visited to now and she’s just mouthy and won’t listen. I spent most of my time threatening to slap the shit out of her than I’m used to speaking to kids her age. With my children, I’ve never had to be this cruel to get them in line.

They’ve been with us for over a month now and, the upside, we’ve gotten the fat one to lose over 7 pounds since she’s started staying here.

The little seven-year-old is a slick, sneaky bitch that can be fixed to get in line, but I’m telling you … I hate all of this.

I told my wife that I hate being this babysitter for kids that aren’t mine, that doesn’t really want to be here and is eating us out of house and home.

Now, I’ve been looking for work STILL….bothers the fuck out of me … so having these kids and my wife the only one working has been hard.

Well, last night, she made the decision that we’re sending the grandkids home.

Part of me is relieved. I do not want them here.

Another part of me is … well, let’s face it: relieved. I do not want them here.

I mean, I got a little weepy the other day that this might be my chance to be a father full time. Something I don’t mind being ……. TO MY OWN KIDS.

But when you have Fat and Stimpy ignoring your instructions, sneaking food in the middle of the night, crying for their mother…

OH! And let me tell you another thing. We’re struggling to get them into school because we don’t have legal guardianship. We tried, but it costs a lot of money and a lot of paperwork and this whole thing became an enormous hassle.

So, my wife said we’re sending them back.

I was FUCKING relieved.

You see, my wife and I fit a comfortable living where no drama, no extra people and, once I’m working, can live quite nicely.

We do NOT have the living or financial space for others. Maybe to visit, like my daughter does on weekends. Maybe a summer, like my other kids do annually. But to live and stay is not happening.

Honestly, even I can’t take my own kids for the length of a summer.

Look, I love my children. I really do. We just haven’t had the pleasure of living together and I designed my life around ‘visits’ not staying.

Any day now, one of my kids could have an issue like my wife’s children and they might want to stay with me.

Well, for one thing, my children will are just better people and trained better so the circumstances wouldn’t be the same…but space is space and extra people taking it up just doesn’t work. We’d need a bigger place.

I need a satisfying and paying job.

Do I think this experience with my step-grandkids created a rift between my wife and I? Probably. I’m sure she wished I was working so we can afford these kids.

But even if I had an excellent paying job, I don’t see myself as wanting to raise someone else’s children. Her daughter needs to let the fifteen-year-old die and take her fucking brats. She’s taking up vital resources.

How evil is that?

Which reminds me. One of these days, I’ll have to discuss my experience with attempting to use ‘sigil magic’. Yep…where did that come from? It may have relevance here because a few unexplained NEGATIVE things happened since I used it — to my wife specifically. I’m speculating here, but it was a set of uncanny events that forced me to stop using sigil magic that caused things to happen to my wife and I’m thinking it also translated to the fifteen-year-old and her cancer situation.

Look, I’m not saying I totally believe the use of sigil magic, but I am 100% aware of the negativity that happened when I did. Not toward me, either. Once I stopped, the negativity ended. How that explains the fifteen-year-old, I can’t say. Just that she was the only truly offensive one to come into my space since I stopped and she now has cancer while the other two don’t.

May have totally nothing to do with me.

But you don’t know what my wife went through when I was using the stuff.

Makes you wonder what my wife was up to that drew that negativity her way.

I’ll devote a journal entry to it next time. I didn’t say much about the results because nothing really happened FOR me directly.

Strange shit. Next time.

Purpose Theory

July 11th, 2018

I’ve been struggling with wondering what “this is all about”. This being my life. I’m struggling with this College Algebra class. I’m going to fail it and it’s going to bring my GPA down. I’ve tried everything but beg online for help. No one I knows even uses this stuff.

So, if I am going to fail in this, and I have no idea what happens to my grades and momentum moving forward, and I can’t find a job that pays well that I can stay at — destined to keep moving from job to job as I have — not liking what I do. Not successful in my writing as I would like. Getting older. Weaker.

What was all this about? What was my life for if people who are doing bad things and say bad things can still succeed and be president — and self-righteous white supremacy fucks can say and do what they want and still claim a sense of being — or any dreg from any race on the low end of the mental equation —- why can’t I? It’s like I’m struggling to just ‘be’ and find a place in this ugly world.

Then, the other day, my daughter asked me a question about inventing things — and she listened.

No, I mean, really listened. Like I was telling her absolute truth.

It took a day to realize I’ve been so selfish.

There was a time, long ago when I was her age, that I believed strongly I could help the world with new ideas, stories and fall in love with one woman and help people.

My mother was bitter and angry and would tell me it’s a fantasy.

No, I don’t do that to my children. There has been a place still untampered in my heart to still tell my children life is great, make a lot of friends of all races; no matter the person, help everyone and anyone.

It’s a small place but it’s reserved for them. Because I don’t want to give them what my mother gave me: no support for my ideas.

I didn’t know my father.

My children know me.

So my ‘purpose’ theory is really simple: Don’t be the dick your parents were.

I know it’s all relative and everyone has their own parenting styles. But I feel the universe tries to teach us to be better along the way. Like granting me the heart and mind to go back to school. There is a common way everyone can be as one, love each other and make the world better. I believe it. It’s just humans don’t want it.

As you know, I can look inward and report when I’ve been wrong. As I said, I have been selfish. On low days, feeling I’ve done nothing successful when, in fact, I’m contributing to a better world every day I teach my daughter the beauty in it. I’ve been so concerned about what I was leaving the world when I die, that I I didn’t realize I was leaving children like my daughter who still have a pure heart to want to build, invent and tell greater stories than me.

I’m not working, but I have a job.

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.

Department Manager

Man, am I exhausted.

Today is September 26th 2017.

For the past two days, I’ve been getting to work earlier than my shift scheduled. Usually about 3:30am or 4am. My shift is scheduled 6:00am to 3pm.

Why? Because they finally allowed me to actually start working my department, this close to the forthcoming holiday season and a store-wide inventory approaching on October 11th. They originally gave me the position around September 20th, as mentioned earlier.

The department was without a manager for a month. So, I come in with inherited work undone. 500+ price changes. All sorts of other issues. Naturally, they wanted everything completed when they finally got around to getting me installed.

Slow, fucking Georgia. That’s all I gotta say.

I’ve had to gone in early to get work done without being disturbed by customers and endless extra requests by other managers. Oh, and don’t forget late CBL’s (Computer based training).

Again, through all of this: I’ve been here before. I know what I need to do to cover my ass and get the work done. Yes, it means a few days of going in early to play catch-up. The difference is, I am remembering that this is all temporary. What I’m doing toward a law degree is more important.

My grades are still sharp though, I admit, with these early days at work, I’ve almost let a few assignments slip. Nothing terrible. Whereas I do my homework a few days in advance, I almost got caught with two assignments due the next day. Cut it too close.

I’m not planning to do early days for long. I have Tiffany here with me for the week so it’s not fair to her that I’m tired all the time. Still, things need to get done. I foresee another week of this and I’ll be right on time for Christmas prep/Inventory.

I took Donna and Tiffany to dinner at Legal Seafood the previous night. Kind of a celebration of both their birthdays. I usually can’t afford to treat anybody anything. I felt good to be able to do so and still have some money in my pocket.

If working like this is providing me the means to do something for my wife, I’m okay with being this tired. Just as long as I stay on track with the prime directive: Walmart is only about making money, gain leadership credibility. Pay for law school. Get the fuck out after the LSAT.

What’s that? Around the year 2020? Shit. I better be a goddamn Store Manager by that point if it’s going to be like this.

How much do Store Manager’s make? Six figures, from what I understand.

Fuck it. Go for it. Jump to law and do that and more.

If only I can keep my eyes open.