Have you ever had that sensation like you knew you were supposed to be doing something that you weren't doing? And I’m not talking about that feeling you get when you really have to pee, or that feeling we associate with anxiety or nervousness. No, I’m talking about that gut-talking, ear ringing inner siren going off telling you you’re doing something wrong. Maybe I am being unclear here. Maybe this is my fault for not being more detailed. Let me try again…
What are you supposed to be doing right now? An hour before midnight on the 1st of January, and I’m getting myself all prepared for another 1AM masturbatory session before I fall asleep alone with jizz-stained hands and warm fluffy thoughts on the mind. Normally, I’d smoke at least a bowl of some medicinal grade cannabis to help lubricate myself into that dreamy lust-filled phase I often find myself in right before I get ready for bed, but unfortunately for me, the bank has put in an extra 219 dollars in my account and I’m afraid if I touch it, I’ll end up with a negative account. Maybe I forgot to mention I am unemployed and have been so for over a year now. In fact, it is now January 1st 2015, and I was laid off on October 16th, 2013, and then again in the beginning of November from my internship. At first, I admit, I wasn’t really eager to jump back into the blue collar circle of life. I don’t mind working and I don’t mind contributing towards the greater good, but it seems unfair that no matter what job I go to, no matter how much goodwill I can extend and build, I’m always walking away empty handed, outside of a lousy wage and a few “perks” like 30% discount on all medicinal cannabis products, although even that discount was short lived once I was laid off because someone there didn’t like the way everyone liked me there. I was fired and subsequently held to the burner because someone with a personal vendetta put more effort into getting me fired than they did trying to make it work. I’m a natural born mediator; I want everyone to come to the table and I want everyone to leave as friends. Unfortunately life is not always that way and sometimes we find ourselves at the end of a pointy stick that maybe we even helped sharpen a little. I can admit now that I made a lot of mistakes and said a lot of dumb things that frankly I shouldn’t have done and shouldn’t have said, but when you get caught up in loyalty and what things look like instead of what they really are, it’s easy to lose your way and forget how you got there to begin with: I was hired to help others in a medicinal cannabis facility because I enjoyed helping others and I wasn’t afraid to be patient and hear people out. As soon as I worked my way to a management position, it became less about enjoying the job and more about keeping it, kind of like how everything is fresh and new and exciting in a new relationship, but months, years down the road, you can find yourself struggling to remember what made it all work at the beginning. The sassy mouth and outspoken qualities all of a sudden turn into someone sarcastic and condescending, someone that rubs you the wrong way and knows it. All of sudden I find myself sweating to go to work every day, paranoid that every day is my last. I’m sure they’re going to fire me or let me go after they’ve demoted me from floor supervisor back down to “budtender” the dumbest of nomenclatures for a group trying to make themselves appear more legitimate and having more medicinal qualities, because we know when you think of “patient care” you think of someone standing behind a bar waiting to serve you some cute bright and bubbly over-priced drink. I didn’t mind working with people again, but the shooting leg pain from having to bend over for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, and the messed up stomach from all the stress and anxiety was causing me more and more trips to the restroom. You see, if you work at this dispensary, they will cater to your every ailment and discomfort SO LONG AS you’re a younger more attractive young lady, of which I am not. Being in my later 20’s and having the set of genitals that I do, I can honestly say all the accolades and advancement that occurred I earned and not because of how my face looked or how perky my tits were, as if you needed perky tits to sell weed (you don’t; shit sells itself). There was the pretty young thing with the sick dog that got company money to take her dog to the vet. Also, a wonderful employee suffering through some sort of autism or Asperger’s, I’m not a licensed professional so I won’t diagnose which one she had but it certainly felt like something in that area, but in any case, it didn’t matter if she spilled three grams of $40.00 a gram concentrate or spill bud all over the counter or complained all day about how sick she was feeling, feelings that most of the people that worked there had at some point during one of their shifts. This amazing soul was afforded so much leniency and understanding, but God forbid I ask what we’re doing for mental disorders in a group meeting. Mental disorders are too confusing and vague, the head guy in charge said. Okay, if you say so. Can I have a day off for mental health? Sorry, no, if you don’t come into work, we’re going to have to fire you. Okay, if you say so…
Now I’m seeing the people I managed and supervised promoted above me and managing and supervising me, telling me how to do the job that I was telling them how to do no more than a week or two ago. People all give you those looks like, “Sorry this is happening to you dude but nothing we can do about it, right?” And all you can do is a give a look back and say, “It doesn’t bother me, let’s just get back to work,” even though everyone knows it bothers the shit out of you and you can’t stand being there anymore. Reoccurring nightmares become commonplace; you’ve been fired so many times in your sleep that when it finally does happen, it’s almost relaxing, like a weight has finally been lifted off your shoulders. “Got a minute?” I knew the moment I was asked the question, I was being put down. I even remember weighing a sack, any sack, all the sacks, thinking maybe this is my last one, so I better make it look as nice as possible and hook this person up even though I don’t know them. And then you look up and the supervisor that told you seven days ago that you were safe and they weren’t going to be firing you is now ushering you into the room where they traditionally let people go. Human resources is nowhere to be found because she’s sitting in that room at a desk waiting for you to come in so she can hand you your final check, with paid vacation time because you never took any vacations, just a couple sick days from when you caught whatever was going around the office. They’re looking you in the eye and trying to honestly explain to you that it’s a budgetary thing and nothing personal, but the way they’re crying and looking at you like you just got a death sentence hung over you let you know it’s all personal. I did my best to tell them it was Okay, I wasn’t upset or mad at anyone, that I understood and embraced the change but deep down it was a hurt that I probably still haven’t got over to this day. On the day they fired me, they fired something like 6 to 8 people total. And because I am a huge sap with masochistic tendencies, I kept going to that place to get my medicine and noticed they hired back not one, not two, not three, but four people that they had fired alongside me on that day because of supposed budgetary issues. Former coworkers immediately after would hit me up and try to get together to talk about it or inform me what was going on at my former workplace, but now, a year and a quarter later, I can say I don’t talk to any of them on a regular basis and most are nothing but “Facebook Friends”, the type of friend you know at a distance but haven’t really seen or been around in a long while. The type of friend to post Happy Birthday on your Facebook wall but never call, text, or see you to tell you in person. They’ll ask for rides but then never invite you to anything or offer reimbursement; you are there for them to use, for rides, for emotional support when they go through break ups or layoffs, simple phrases like, “Don’t worry, you deserve better just stay with it!” or “That job didn’t deserve you anyways; you’ll get so much better!” Only time goes on and you don’t. You wake up to the same social media posts, the ones where everyone is getting high and smoking tons of weed. The facebook posts about marriages and job updates and baby announcements. All of a sudden you’re so caught up in everyone else’s lives you can’t even remember why you thought your life was so fucked up anymore. But spend just a few minutes away from all that noise, and slowly realities start creeping back in: I’m thirty and doing nothing with my life. I have no family. I have no career. I have provided nothing to this world to make it better. There’s no patent in my name, no life-altering device or technique that I can offer you. The video games I used to be good at, I now suck at and can feel my reaction times being trumped by more inspired and focused younger gamers, or maybe gamers who take their games seriously. For me, games were a means of escape, something to distract myself from the terrifying realities of life: had a bad panic attack? No worries, Diablo is there to draw you into a world where fast reaction time and imagination will help you not hinder you. Now all the games I can play have hackers, cheaters, kids sponsored by Mountain Dew and Doritos, turning what I love into a money making, bottom line oriented business. Now it’s no longer about who has the most fun, but who has the most wins/kills. It’s not that games are particularly hard or challenging, it’s just that other people have devoted themselves to playing just that one game and therefore mastering it whereas I enjoy pursuing many different titles.
We’re nineteen minutes away from midnight and I’m not sure I am any closer to being who I want to be. I don’t want to be the guy who has to drink or smoke weed just to be comfortable in social settings. I don’t want to be the guy who tells everyone he loves writing and telling stories but then never actually writes or tells stories. I don’t want to get to January 1st 2025 and have another long, sad tirade about how this or that passed me by and how I avoided my calling my whole life. After my last breakup, I’m pretty confidence that my unique skill and gift is NOT procuring and growing relationships. I don’t talk to any of my ex’s and my last ex broke up with me via ceasing all forms of communicating with me and blocking me on social media which was the most unique way of being broke up with. Nothing says I never cared about you or meant it when I said I loved you like completely ignoring someone. Want to show your ex that it’s over and you want to move on? Never answer one of their texts or messages again, and it may be a week, or month, or few months, as was in my case, but eventually they’ll get the message and move on. I constantly think about what if in that department too but it’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t even really matter: we had the time together that we did, and I enjoyed it, and if I want to ruin the image I have of her and destroy her as a person I have all the ammunition in the world that I would need but I would rather remember the softer more gentler moments we had together, like when I had a cold and she brought me some cough drops and cold medicine to help me feel better. Moments like that make me feel better about the whole thing compared to the moments I think of where she was using me to get meds from the dispensary I used to work at; she’d have me drive us there, or pick me up, offering just enough to get her some wax and telling me I was on my own if I wanted bud. We’d get back to my place, smoke a bowl, and she would always, ALWAYS have to leave right after we smoked, never having time to hang out or spend time together outside of going to the dispensary, coming back to my place and smoking a little bit before she left. I even remember the last time we made love and how shallow it felt, how little she wanted me and how powerless the sex felt. I even remember her laughing as I was trying to initiate the moment and put my hands on her; clear signs of guilt or discomfort, now, but in the moment it was all too confusing and disheartening. Maybe it’s for the best we don’t talk and I don’t know what happened. Maybe knowing what she really did and who she’s really fucking would hurt me badly, and me just thinking about the possibilities are harmless because I’ll never truly know.
I’m tired of not knowing though. I am sick of questioning myself, questioning my purpose, questioning my abilities and talents. There is no rule anywhere that says you have to be the perfect person to tell a story and if you tell a story it has to be perfect. For the longest time I told myself only if it’s perfect. The thought of being critiqued and panned by readers terrified me into a sedentary life style: not really living, not dying either, just kind of floating from day to day without any real goals or plans other than to survive, to put food in my belly, to make sure the pain wasn’t too overwhelming, or the loneliness too lonely. The last time I went out for fun was a week before my ex broke off all communication. It was at this point I had kind of already decided we had broken up by the way she was acting, telling myself if nothing changes by the start of the new month, I’ll just have to break it off myself. But then the new month came, and I thought I saw progress, small progress, and told myself if the communication doesn’t get any better, I’ll break it off at the end of the month. Well, I didn’t even make it that far. A night out on the town was much needed, and moments after sitting at a table wondering where all my friends had gone, I found myself on the dance floor with an attractive woman grinding herself all over me. I had images of my ex flash through my mind as this young lady brought out warm feelings I hadn’t felt in a long while. Before I knew it my eyes were closed and the two of us in the middle of this busy dance floor were teasing each other’s lips playfully and seductively. My eyes opened and I saw her there, looking just as glassy eyed as me. The songs changed and people got in between us and I lost her. That was the last time I was kissed, and that was almost four months ago. Nevertheless the feelings of guilt and shame about my actions overwhelmed me, but even more, my ex didn’t seem to care what I was up to or who I was with. Maybe it was a cry for attention, but I was turning to the wrong person as she didn’t really seem to care. A few mornings later is when I discovered she’d blocked me on everything. Weeks later I wished her a Happy Thanksgiving, message “Seen” but no response. Okay. Wait another month. Wish her a happy birthday. Message “Seen” but no response, and that was a few weeks ago. Safe to say I’m the only asshole who hasn’t move on. But this is me trying. This is me trying to make sense of it all and move on with my life and my aspirations. I have always aspired to settle down and build something worthwhile with another person, someone like minded and gentle like me. Now I know I have to settle myself down and build something inside that will last, otherwise, it’s too easy to fall for nothing. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” My English teacher repeated this quote to my class one afternoon, and out of all the lessons and analysis and literature, his point about being pointless stuck with me and to this day reminds me of what is important in my life: If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything.
I am a writer. I am an entertainer and a store teller. I cherish the thought of making other people laugh, maybe even make them think every once in awhile. And the moment that I allow myself to stop doing that, to ignore the side of me that is a creative and eager writer is to kill what little drive I have left in life. I’ve never aspired to wake up at 6AM to get to my 8AM desk job on time, and I’m not knocking those people as I have tried extremely hard in the past 11 months to land some kind of stable and consistent desk job, but it’s just not happening and I’m running out of patience and money. I have to write. I can’t give up on this. Maybe I’ll never earn a cent from all my efforts and jargon, but, when the lights are dimming and the sun is setting, I want to be able to look back and say, “You know, I tried. Maybe I wasn’t the best or most interesting. Maybe a lot of the stuff I write has already been written, and by people who are more articulate and well thought out than I am. But I still have to try and fulfill this need I have deep in myself to keep writing and perhaps one day thrive off of it,” but now, today, on January 2nd 2015, it still feels like a resolution that is unobtainable.
Today I start out to prove just how wrong I am about all of that. It is extremely obtainable, I just have to try a little harder and put more effort into writing well. There will be hiccups and self-doubt along the way but I’ve been rejected so many times that I’m starting to wonder if I really am good at writing of it’s just that I’m that damned stubborn/persistent. Maybe it’s both. In any case, thank you for taking the time to read this if you did. I mainly intend these as outlets for me to feel better about myself and my position but that doesn’t mean that other people can’t read and take away something from all of this.
