Discovered: Depressive Pattern

July 1st, 2018

Happy Anniversary. This journal started exactly one year ago in July. Still in school. Still on track to graduate. Law school? It’s on the possible horizon and it’s something I still want. Getting there has been a lesson on early strategy. Like, I need to follow another path JUST to afford to follow another path.

What this journal also does for me is chart a pattern that I always kinda knew was there. I needed to understand when and why moments of depression happen and, through this journal, after looking back at each entry that I posted with a tag of #depressed purposely, it’s clear once a month, every month, there are a few days (average of 3-4) that the feeling of depression cycles through.

A feeling of lifelessness, drained, zero-desire to do anything (including live), emptiness of value. A moment where I feel nothing is going right, will ever go right, and I need to end it.

Then, almost miraculously, that feeling goes away. Like a cloud lifted. New ideas. New desires. I feel confident to accomplish something. I desire to do things. Even meet people.

Once a month.

A fucking cycle.

Christ —- I got a fucking period. A male menstrual cycle.

I got to fix this. But how? Chemically uncontrollable. Based on my record from this journal, it happens around the middle and end of the month. Depends on what I am doing kind of holds it off into the later part of the month.

Like now. I was feeling VERY depressed yesterday and into today. So call it the end of June, into July. But I am not working at the moment. When I was working last month, it came around, but I was too distracted by work and school work to really let it swallow me. I’m home at the moment, so it’s having its way with me.

Work, satisfying or not, seems to be enough to subdue its effects—but don’t get it twisted. It does come regardless.

Knowing its cycle helps in knowing how to balance life moving forward.

Do I think other people have the same issue? Of course. Without a doubt. Most people deny their issues. Do nothing about it and end up shooting up schools or businesses.

My growth toward better education wasn’t going to be linear. I’m learning about myself along the way. Who can say the same?

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.

The Art of Portions

You know, I’m feeling good. Genuinely ‘happy’. To think: If I stayed in school the first time around, and understood what I know now in my 40′s, I could have been happy earlier on.

But that’s the thing with life. Sort of a reversal of traits. Kids back in my school days that were doing great in school; becoming valedictorians and going off to college did not ‘live life’ as I had. Now in their 40′s are asking where life went.

I, however, know where life went — been there done that — and now looking to scoop up where my education went; scoring big A’s thus far in the process. By my early 50′s I’ll be so fucking well-centered it’s crazy. (Smile).

Here’s something I figured out recently.

Coming up through life, I thought my writing would save me. Write a few books, sell scripts, maybe even direct a few films. Done. Life sealed and accomplished. As you know, it didn’t work out that way.

I had to rely on whatever job I worked at to pay bills and latch onto it as some sort of ‘meaning of life’ — my purpose — since the original purpose wasn’t working out. I tended to do well at any job I was at provided I didn’t get depressed about my failed writing career. And I did. I would end up losing the job. On and on.

You see, ‘writing’ is who I am but it wasn’t paying my enormous debt. It’s hard to love your passion with overwhelming responsibilities on your shoulders. So, its back to work all the time. An endless circle.

The problem was: writing, being an author or any artist, especially self-taught, was a talent with no definable, concrete future. The goals were set and wanted, but depended on too many loose variables: money, talent, audience.

Going to school and getting a degree, backed with financial aid, creates a solid specific goal, timeline, measurable path that is time-tested defined. Even if you have learning disabilities, there’s a class for that. Get your degree/diploma, get into the industry of your choice.

Of course, it’s never that easy. Many other variables to consider BUT, generally speaking, that’s how a person with an engineering degree gets to work for a consulting firm without using an ounce of engineering making 6-figures (true example).

And someone like me without a degree, but a talent for storytelling, makes nothing.

Well, I’m at Walmart now and it came to me that I am successfully portioning out my quality of work this time around. The idea was, since I had no other successful career (i.e., being an author), I use to put all the eggs into the basket of whatever job I’m at. Giving the job my all and feeling hurt when the job didn’t pan out, or depressed that I’m at a job I didn’t want to be at.

Since going back to school, there’s this positive disconnection I’m feeling. Still giving my all, but I know it’s temporary since the true goal is working (i.e., Lawyer). In the past, and a little even now, I would be thinking of ways to make the job better. Be a frequent visitor of the job, even if I was on my day off. A genuine interest in perfecting the job. There’s a guy at my job even as I speak. He was on disability for awhile — hurting himself or something. He would show up to the job every other day just to commune with his friends at the job and talk about the job. Personally, I thought he was in the way.

Down the line, you realize places like Walmart don’t really give a damn how much care you put into it —- then the feeling of having nothing sets in. Like being cheated on in a relationship.

What I’m feeling now is spectacularly easy.

Walmart will never give me the level of money/achievement I want. Mostly because, even in the store I’m in now, the politics and characters working there are backstabbing idiots.

The longer I work there, the more I realize it’s a game of ‘survivor’.

I will continue to keep my momentum to get as much money and title as possible. The difference is, I have no depressive feelings about a lost passionate writing career to fall back on when I leave Walmart and WHEN Walmart screws me over. I know I will achieve this Bachelor’s Degree and, at minimum, leave Walmart for a better job based on that alone.

Honestly, ‘Walmart’ isn’t in the business of screwing employees. The inner management and employees themselves are part of that mosh pit. We have a new store manager and co-manager. I’m already feeling the lack of confidence that anything will get successfully accomplished with them nor will anyone achieve advancement. I’m actually considering leaving this store if I plan to be department manager anytime soon. That’s another story.

The point is: I’m at ease giving Walmart 100% while I’m there, and 100% to my educational goals. Walmart provides the paycheck. The education, clearly defined, will provide the future that my writing failed to do — allowing me be happy when I walk through the doors of Walmart when I start my day. I know, this is temporary.