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.

All is Well and Getting Better

April 21, 2019

The bitch children that live with me will be going home in about 30-days. I can’t express how much I hate co-habitation with brats that don’t listen and put their grubby little hands on my food (without washing them), and generally leaving a mess. You can say all you want about needing to have a bigger heart for unfortunate children — until they live with you and don’t follow your house-rules.

So fuck ‘em. They’ll be going back to their ghetto lifestyle and I can finally eat a decent meal and walk around my place naked if I want to.

Plus I get my office back. The moment they leave I’m getting it fumigated.

Aside from that, and I appreciate this space to vent, I’m working still and building on things I wanted to do since there’s a semi-consistent paycheck rolling in.

Looking at AWS certification and A+ certification (Network + down the line as well) to get better jobs/pay.

Animating again. Writing again. Thinking of picking up audio theater production again. Looking at film again.

All this to say I’m feeling myself regardless of past complaints that being myself got me nowhere. I’d rather be going nowhere but happy than not doing the things that I love and suicidal. Therein lies the secret to personal happiness.

This is why these bastard kids need to leave.

They interrupt my personal space happiness. It is a commodity I should never EVER have to put aside for others for their benefit. Shit, I barely have anything else. I deserve to live in a place where it’s not fucked up and dirty by nasty fucking children that won’t listen.

Why don’t I make them listen?

Cause I’ll fucking kill them in the process of doing so. In order to save us all the grief, get the fuck out.

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.

Customer and Management Scum

December 16th 2017

Having a hard time with being at Walmart and I don’t know why it’s so bad. More than ever.

Actually, I know why. The usual: it’s Christmas season. The customers are assholes. The management are assholes. I’m not ‘managing’ my department the way I would like and I’m constantly fighting over creative control of how to put a fucking box on a shelf with the other management.

Really. I could set up a display or feature of items, and the next day, it’s taken down. Fuckers. If I can’t come to work with a desired purpose to get work done, without it being re-worked every time I turn, then it’s no wonder I feel the way I do. So, I come to work focusing on my own work (i.e, school, writing, etc) and Walmart just gets ‘enough’ during my shift.

It needs to be said, I never started into this position feeling this way. I wanted to give my all, but management is playing by a rule book that doesn’t allow me to be a leader. So fuck ‘em.

That said, for the past few days, I’ve been leaving early.

I’m on lunch now, but I already scheduled PTO (Paid Time Off) to leave at 1pm. It’s 11:28am. The goal is to go back to work after lunch, work an hour, and go home at 1pm. I’m off tomorrow. I was scheduled to 4pm. It’s not a cool environment to work on a Saturday at a Walmart during the holidays. They have no cashiers so their asking Department Managers to come up front. Bad enough I can’t stand customers as it is.

Speaking of customers, let me give a snapshot of the shit I commonly have to deal with:

* An associate buys an un-assembled bike. She brings it back because she wants the one that was pre-built. No problem. I bring her the exact same bike and she thinks its too small. Fine, she goes and gets another pre-built bike. It’s the same maker and name, but bigger. The original bike was 12 inches. The new one is 20 inches. She’s wanting the 20-inch bike for the same amount of money as the 12 inch. Myself and everyone else are like: “No.” But she, again another employee, is looking to speak to management to get the price changed.

* Customer is looking to buy her son a weight set. She wants the tilted platform with rack. I tell her the “Weights and the bar for the weights do not come with the rack, but we sell them separately.” She doesn’t want them separately and scoffs at the price of the weights and bar against the rack. Of course the rack will be cheaper than the weights. I told her to shop around for cheaper weights but this is how they sell them here. If the bitch wanted the weights included, she’d be paying three times as much.

What I’m finding is many adults really hate shopping for kids. And they do the worst thing possible: a slow inspection of a toy they’re going to buy and judging it based on whether or not THEY would like it. It’s ridiculous to see—watching people study a fucking Nerf gun and making decisions if they, themselves, would like it. It’s true. I hear them all the time: “Oh, I don’t like this toy, but it’s on their list.” or “It’s for my daughter. I wouldn’t play with it.”

Another issue is the customer that comes in asking me “Would I get this toy for a 5 year old kid?”

First of all, you got to be an asshole if you think every five year old kid is the same as your bratty fuck kid. The fucking kid down the block will want different toys than another kid. What does YOUR specific kid want?

Second, when I DO give a recommendation, why the fuck would you tell me “No, he wouldn’t like it.” Especially if your ass doesn’t know what a five year old wants in the first place?

To all fucked up customers that shop at ANY retail, I say this: Stop asking for recommendations for your kid. We don’t know your bastard ass sperm-result. We don’t want to know your fucking kid and if anyone dares to even suggest an item for your kid, stop acting as if you know if your kid would like it or not.

If you DID know what your kid likes, you’d just get the fucking toy and stop being cheap bastards. Cause you KNOW the kid asked for Xbox in the first place so you’re just trying to dumb down.

Sigh.

I’m off in an hour. Off tomorrow. Will finish the last of my school work for this term and focus on what’s important because Walmart and the customers suck ass.

On a brighter note, I’m fleshing out another novel concept. A story I have had for years (in addition to the hundreds of others locked up). But I feel this is the right time to work this particular story. I’ll try not to make the mistakes of the past novel by planning it better, get it done faster and with tighter edits the first time around.