Everyone goes through times where it's hard to get out of bed and do what you need to do to pay the bills. I've had those times for the past six months. I wake up and don't want to do the same thing as i did the day before. I look at the clock and think just one more hour and i'll be ready to go. Ready to go hasn't happened and i'm still waiting for it.
I'm 39 years old now and almost over the hill. It's all downhill from here and all that jazz. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder where the time went. Seems like just yesterday i was shooting hoops and scheming to get liquor and weed. Now i'm wondering how long the cable bill will wait till it gets shut off, and if the car will make it to work on what little gas i have in it.
Tonight thinking about everything i just said i realized that it's not the everyday same shit different day bullshit, it's what you do to get out of it. It doesn't even matter if you do ever get out of that mindset but working towards getting out of it does matter a lot.
Last month i finally achieved a goal i set for myself almost 6 years ago. Through doubt and issues that made me think i would never achieve it i worked. Through waiting and not being able to study when i needed or wanted to i still worked. Through my boss telling me i don't have as much to do as everyone else, i worked. I achieved what i worked for.
I realized tonight that working hard to achieve a goal isn't a reward but motivation to achieve the next one. To keep working towards getting out of Custodian hell and into being comfortable. I don't even want to be rich anymore i just want to be comfortable. Having the bills paid and the money to give the kids and my wife whatever they need is all i want. I'm willing and able to work towards that goal and i'll keep working towards it till it happens and then i'll work some more.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Friday, January 22, 2016
Life
Then i realized all of that was going to be hard and a lot of work. You see i have been the most motivated and hard working person the last 4 years and now i am just tired. I have to fight through it and realize that this rough patch is just gods way of saying hey you've got a long way to go don't stop now and keep going. I thought about quitting my College classes and now decided nah that's not going to happen.
The reward will be worth it in the end and even though i feel jumbled i'll be able to concentrate on detailed learning later on down the road. have a good night all and keep working towards your dreams they wouldn't be dreams if they were easy.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Father of Mine
Well this month isn't even close to what i thought or even wanted it to be. In the matter of a week and a half the family has had a flat tire, blown brake line, plugged main drain, and numerous little spats and arguments. Adding that to my usual day of take care of my daughter, go to work, come home from work and study for my bachelors degree and/or A+ certification, my stress level was at an all time high. I had up until that point never felt so stressed in my entire life. Well that was until today. To give understanding to how i felt this 17th day of October i need to give everyone a little back story. I am 38 years old and my father is 69. In my 38 years of life i only remember two things that my father did with me and i also remember those two times my mother telling him to do them. One was going to the dirt track races at Woodhull raceway. The other was a "family" trip to Darien Lake Amusement Park.
I realize that that is probably two more things than a lot of kids including my own step children have done with their dads, i'm not a dick and realize that most fathers wouldn't know how to be one if there really was a guide but that's the thing nobody knows how to be a parent and the key is in trying to do the best you can. Anyway, my household went like this i had an upstairs bedroom since i was 8 years old. The bedroom was converted from an attic space and well wasn't much of a room. I liked it though since it was private and i could do what i wanted there because i didn't have much supervision or prying eyes being an only child.
He took the room for his ebay business as soon as i left the house for college by the way.
I went to school normally as most kids should do and my weekends were spent having to keep myself busy while my father watched the newest nascar or busch or truck race on TV. This meant that usually when other kids had issues with their bikes their fathers would show them how to fix it. Not me i had to learn it on my own. I started to play basketball with the other kids in the neighborhood, i would ride my bike too and later on would play video games. Whatever i could do so i wouldn't be bored. It wasn't just the weekends my father would come home at 5:30 every night and demand to watch the news and fall asleep on the couch doing it, so that was my cue to go find something else to do since the only thing he heard was the sound of the tv channel being turned to something interesting, so added to the list above was A LOT of books and horror movies when i purchased a tv with money from a paper route. Mind you i was paying him unknown to my mother 50 bucks a week in rent from the time i was 14 and could have a paycheck about that size or larger.
As time went on i gained a great amount of weight and was an obese kid. Yes that dreaded obese word that i heard about a million times for the next 30 years of my life. That meant that i got made fun of and disrespected quite a bit. The teasing led to a massive amount of anxiety that left me not wanting to go into restaurants or gatherings of more than 3 people. I had a fear of crowds knowing that the probability of getting made fun of or embarassed increased a great deal the more people you had in a room. Plus my fathers personality was one that made others feel inferior so that he could feel better about himself. He didn't bully me per se but made it quite known that my best wasn't good enough.
My junior year of high school i decided to do an experiment. I would lose weight and get into good shape and face all my fears and see how my life changed. I did just that i lost over 100 pounds and got down to 180 which for me was quite a feat. I also defended myself and found that confrontation wasn't my thing and found more success in making people laugh and being a friend than fighting. Usually it worked, sometimes it didn't and i would get my butt kicked but i found the experiment a success since i made more than a few friends and even had a few girls talking to me.
The only thing that i couldn't crack was my dad. He treated me the same way up until last year. My mother after years of waiting on him hand and foot while he watched his races and took his prescriptions finally decided to leave him. I don't know if in a desperate attempt to get her back he wanted to have a relationship with me. I never had one with him before and come to think of it it could be his age too. He started asking me to go to lunch and talk and to see my daughter which in a way is good but having two other kids that although not biologically mine i think are mine kinda pissed me off.
Well, he put guilt trips on me that i hadn't brought her to see him as much as he wanted and that he didn't feel welcome at birthday parties and so on and so forth. All this when he has just bought an 8000 dollar vehicle, and goes to visit friends in a town 15 minutes away and another about a half hour away weekly. Oh and friday the day after i blew the brake line as a last resort i ask him to give me a ride to work he says no because of an appointment and a lunch date that i'm almost positive ended before my 2:30 start time. Seems to me he could put some effort in and come to us every once in awhile but oh well. Well today finally comes and i'm exhausted as usual when i wake up. My vehicle is getting brake lines done, and a revving/timing issue that makes it accelerate when you don't have your foot on the gas mysteriously only happening when the family is driving it is supposedly getting checked as well. My father after a night of picking me up at work at 11pm started to make it known he doesn't like doing it so friday i decide to have my wife come get me even though she begins work at 5am. Thursday night he says that he would like to take me to go get my vehicle which only has the brake lines fixed at this point and no notice of the revving issue. I tell him i'd like the mechanic to check and make sure there is no issue with the revving and that my wife and I need to go to Human Resources at my place of work and have the rest of the family added to my health insurance since we have 30 days to do it after getting married and he says ok this weekend.
Mind you beginning tuesday of the same week the main drain issue started. He offers no help or advice and i believe i am on my own with it since those that said they would help just don't show up and don't communicate when they would be. So knowing this information i go to lowe's hardware in town and get some sealant and everything i need to fix the what we thought was just a toilet seal issue at the time. I get a call from my father and decide to call him back later on in the day so i can spend some time with my older children who i don't see monday through friday. I call him back and he has asked a friend of his to come work on the main drain which is fine but also asked if i would be home. I did something wrong i guess and say and i quote "we should be i just have to pick my wife up from work at 2". He replies "well if you want your f****** plumbing fixed you'll be home won't ya." Which is exactly what i got 37 out of my 38 years of life and thought had changed.
I go pick my wife up and get some milk for my daughter. While there i get a text from my mother in law who was watching the kids that my father had shown up with his friend who has back issues and from what i hear repeatedly can't get out of bed till about noon everyday from the pain. I get down in the basement when we get home and start helping. They say that it's not the toilet it's the drain being plugged and that i need to take already filled buckets outside and dig holes to put them into so that the yard doesn't stink, YES DIG HOLES TO PUT OUR CRAP INTO. Then i get to ride to a hardware store with the friend and rent a power snake to try to get rid of the clog. Well we get it down and it doesn't work, so he tells me to go get my shovel which wow i knew exactly where it was thank god (because i was digging shit holes with it 15 minutes prior). I come down and at this point it's my father, his friend, my wife, her friend, and me down in the basement so i hand the shovel to my wife so i could get over to the spot he wants dug up so he can tear the hell out of our basement to fix the drain, well my wife takes it and all hell breaks loose. First the friend says to my wife "you do better than Chris does" when she starts to use it before i could get there, her friend says "Yeah she probably does", and my father starts his addition of "yeah Chris was a mommas boy she never let him do anything or showed him how to do anything", all with me right there. Probably because of the stress of the week and what he said to me earlier on the phone i took it pretty hard and went upstairs and out the door LOUDLY and took a walk.
Well i never went back down and am seriously thinking about telling my father i am perfectly fine without having a relationship with him, i've gotten this far without one and can continue on doing and learning things on my own. I'll just have to budget my money better since he thinks if he pays for something he's god. Honestly, i wouldn't take the money or let him pay if it didn't have ramifications for the family if i didn't. It's pretty bad when you can relate to people who didn't have a father when you had one around all along. Well thanks for letting me rant and vent to you if you read this. Getting it all out relaxes me a bit and i might be able to sleep well tonight for the first time in quite awhile.
I realize that that is probably two more things than a lot of kids including my own step children have done with their dads, i'm not a dick and realize that most fathers wouldn't know how to be one if there really was a guide but that's the thing nobody knows how to be a parent and the key is in trying to do the best you can. Anyway, my household went like this i had an upstairs bedroom since i was 8 years old. The bedroom was converted from an attic space and well wasn't much of a room. I liked it though since it was private and i could do what i wanted there because i didn't have much supervision or prying eyes being an only child.
He took the room for his ebay business as soon as i left the house for college by the way.
I went to school normally as most kids should do and my weekends were spent having to keep myself busy while my father watched the newest nascar or busch or truck race on TV. This meant that usually when other kids had issues with their bikes their fathers would show them how to fix it. Not me i had to learn it on my own. I started to play basketball with the other kids in the neighborhood, i would ride my bike too and later on would play video games. Whatever i could do so i wouldn't be bored. It wasn't just the weekends my father would come home at 5:30 every night and demand to watch the news and fall asleep on the couch doing it, so that was my cue to go find something else to do since the only thing he heard was the sound of the tv channel being turned to something interesting, so added to the list above was A LOT of books and horror movies when i purchased a tv with money from a paper route. Mind you i was paying him unknown to my mother 50 bucks a week in rent from the time i was 14 and could have a paycheck about that size or larger.
As time went on i gained a great amount of weight and was an obese kid. Yes that dreaded obese word that i heard about a million times for the next 30 years of my life. That meant that i got made fun of and disrespected quite a bit. The teasing led to a massive amount of anxiety that left me not wanting to go into restaurants or gatherings of more than 3 people. I had a fear of crowds knowing that the probability of getting made fun of or embarassed increased a great deal the more people you had in a room. Plus my fathers personality was one that made others feel inferior so that he could feel better about himself. He didn't bully me per se but made it quite known that my best wasn't good enough.
My junior year of high school i decided to do an experiment. I would lose weight and get into good shape and face all my fears and see how my life changed. I did just that i lost over 100 pounds and got down to 180 which for me was quite a feat. I also defended myself and found that confrontation wasn't my thing and found more success in making people laugh and being a friend than fighting. Usually it worked, sometimes it didn't and i would get my butt kicked but i found the experiment a success since i made more than a few friends and even had a few girls talking to me.
The only thing that i couldn't crack was my dad. He treated me the same way up until last year. My mother after years of waiting on him hand and foot while he watched his races and took his prescriptions finally decided to leave him. I don't know if in a desperate attempt to get her back he wanted to have a relationship with me. I never had one with him before and come to think of it it could be his age too. He started asking me to go to lunch and talk and to see my daughter which in a way is good but having two other kids that although not biologically mine i think are mine kinda pissed me off.
Well, he put guilt trips on me that i hadn't brought her to see him as much as he wanted and that he didn't feel welcome at birthday parties and so on and so forth. All this when he has just bought an 8000 dollar vehicle, and goes to visit friends in a town 15 minutes away and another about a half hour away weekly. Oh and friday the day after i blew the brake line as a last resort i ask him to give me a ride to work he says no because of an appointment and a lunch date that i'm almost positive ended before my 2:30 start time. Seems to me he could put some effort in and come to us every once in awhile but oh well. Well today finally comes and i'm exhausted as usual when i wake up. My vehicle is getting brake lines done, and a revving/timing issue that makes it accelerate when you don't have your foot on the gas mysteriously only happening when the family is driving it is supposedly getting checked as well. My father after a night of picking me up at work at 11pm started to make it known he doesn't like doing it so friday i decide to have my wife come get me even though she begins work at 5am. Thursday night he says that he would like to take me to go get my vehicle which only has the brake lines fixed at this point and no notice of the revving issue. I tell him i'd like the mechanic to check and make sure there is no issue with the revving and that my wife and I need to go to Human Resources at my place of work and have the rest of the family added to my health insurance since we have 30 days to do it after getting married and he says ok this weekend.
Mind you beginning tuesday of the same week the main drain issue started. He offers no help or advice and i believe i am on my own with it since those that said they would help just don't show up and don't communicate when they would be. So knowing this information i go to lowe's hardware in town and get some sealant and everything i need to fix the what we thought was just a toilet seal issue at the time. I get a call from my father and decide to call him back later on in the day so i can spend some time with my older children who i don't see monday through friday. I call him back and he has asked a friend of his to come work on the main drain which is fine but also asked if i would be home. I did something wrong i guess and say and i quote "we should be i just have to pick my wife up from work at 2". He replies "well if you want your f****** plumbing fixed you'll be home won't ya." Which is exactly what i got 37 out of my 38 years of life and thought had changed.
I go pick my wife up and get some milk for my daughter. While there i get a text from my mother in law who was watching the kids that my father had shown up with his friend who has back issues and from what i hear repeatedly can't get out of bed till about noon everyday from the pain. I get down in the basement when we get home and start helping. They say that it's not the toilet it's the drain being plugged and that i need to take already filled buckets outside and dig holes to put them into so that the yard doesn't stink, YES DIG HOLES TO PUT OUR CRAP INTO. Then i get to ride to a hardware store with the friend and rent a power snake to try to get rid of the clog. Well we get it down and it doesn't work, so he tells me to go get my shovel which wow i knew exactly where it was thank god (because i was digging shit holes with it 15 minutes prior). I come down and at this point it's my father, his friend, my wife, her friend, and me down in the basement so i hand the shovel to my wife so i could get over to the spot he wants dug up so he can tear the hell out of our basement to fix the drain, well my wife takes it and all hell breaks loose. First the friend says to my wife "you do better than Chris does" when she starts to use it before i could get there, her friend says "Yeah she probably does", and my father starts his addition of "yeah Chris was a mommas boy she never let him do anything or showed him how to do anything", all with me right there. Probably because of the stress of the week and what he said to me earlier on the phone i took it pretty hard and went upstairs and out the door LOUDLY and took a walk.
Well i never went back down and am seriously thinking about telling my father i am perfectly fine without having a relationship with him, i've gotten this far without one and can continue on doing and learning things on my own. I'll just have to budget my money better since he thinks if he pays for something he's god. Honestly, i wouldn't take the money or let him pay if it didn't have ramifications for the family if i didn't. It's pretty bad when you can relate to people who didn't have a father when you had one around all along. Well thanks for letting me rant and vent to you if you read this. Getting it all out relaxes me a bit and i might be able to sleep well tonight for the first time in quite awhile.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Defiant Beginning
For the first ever blog here on
Defiant I have decided to give a little back story about myself. I
am a 38 year old married man and father of three. I am also a custodian
which doesn't pay worth shit but I’ll cover that quite a bit in the days to come. I am also a student undertaking my bachelor
degree in Software Application Programming.
As you can see I can be very busy or very bored never anything in
between.
I decided to start up this blog to
see where it would lead. You see I love
to write and have kept diaries quite a bit when I was younger. Writing down your thoughts and getting your
opinions out on paper tends to lower the amount of drama they cause later
on. And man I wish I kept up with it as
the years flew by. Seeing as how I love to write and keep a diary I thought
that writing and showing people my life and hearing others opinions or stories
would be a great way to entertain not only myself but others as well.
Tomorrow I believe the family is
going to a pumpkin patch for the beginning of my favorite holiday and I will
document all the goings on (with pics and commentary in usual blog form and
hopefully without a queasy accident in the car from my daughter). This time of year is not only my favorite but
also my wives favorite time of year as well so there will be many blogs about
black cats, Halloween costumes, and scary movies oooohhhhh.
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