The Steve Stevenson Experience

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Some ideas to take with you through the holidays and into the new year.

"The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you."

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness’s of other people. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

Carl Jung

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Your mama so old her chiropractor is a paleontologist.

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Turn toward the approaching Darkness and find out what it wants from you! - Carl Jung

If you only do one thing today. . .

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"In America anyone can grow up to be the president."

Is not the flex it used to be.

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Lyrics of the Day:

This might be the night that I die

I don't want to die alone

So come a little closer

I don't even need to know your name. . .

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So, Colorado passed a new law stating one cannot drive and have a cellphone in one's hand. But, I can eat a banana while driving. Or, open and eat a candy bar. Or, drink coffee. Or, any number of things that are equally distracting. Granted, texting while driving is a whole other thing, but talking on the phone is not any more distracting, IMHO.

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"Violence Never Solved Anything!"

Except all the times that it did.

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I have a theory. Or, a hypothesis, if you will. People driving like assholes are not as good of drivers as they think they are, and the only reason why they don't get into more accidents is because the people around them are better drivers than they are. It's only when you get two or three equally shitty drivers around each other, that you have accidents. And as with anything, there are exceptions.

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Why does autocorrect come up with non-existent words? At least correct them to something that is an actual word. All it ever really does is tell me I'm wrong. No bitch! That's the word I want!

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"Some society we've built." - My thought as I wait for over an hour at the DMV after getting up early and being there before they open.

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Reckless? I'm not reckless. I'm dangerous. There is a huge difference. Reckless is unthinking, without compassion, rude, and I am none of those.

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One of the things that confuses me, and ends up causing me lots of anxiety, is when someone says they're going to do something nice for me the next time I stop by or something like that.

As an example, when I was delivering FedEx I was a holiday FedEx guy. Which just means I was temporary over the Christmas holiday delivering packages. I had a mountain route, and delivered packages up to these houses that were up in the hills and in the mountains, and they were hard to get to in the winter time when it snowed. And starting on Thanksgiving or right around there we had a big snowstorm, a blizzard. And once a week for like 3 weeks we had a blizzard. So by the time I got hired on and was ready to go, FedEx was way behind and delivering packages to these people in the mountains. And at one point in late December early January you could smell the rotting fruit in the boxes that have not been delivered in the warehouse.

There was this one couple that had a house and they had just moved there. And I delivered a couple of packages to them and they asked me about some other packages of theirs. then I said I think I've seen them at the warehouse, and they said there was one in particular it was like silverware and dishes and things. And that they needed those really badly. I said next time I come up I will make sure to bring as many of your packages as possible. I had limited space, as I was driving a rented suburban. Not a big box truck like most of the FedEx guys were driving. Anyway, I delivered their boxes and they were very thankful. And the woman says to me, next time you stop by I'll make cookies for you. And I thought do you really mean that, or are you just saying that?

Because part of this thing for me is that when people say stuff like that in my past, as is my experience, they're just saying that. Cuz I've stopped by for stuff and they didn't have it. so then I turned it into where they're just saying that and I never would swing by again or whatever, and I would find out later that they actually were expecting me. so this time with these people I couldn't figure out whether they were being nice or they meant it, and I had no more packages to deliver to them for several weeks, so I thought well I'm in their area a lot, and I wonder if they're expecting me to swing by because you know I'm down the street or something.

Now up in the mountains in Colorado everything looks like you're in the mountains but they're actually neighborhoods and there's houses like every you know probably a hundred 200 ft they're very close to each other so I was close and I swung by just to let them know that I did not expect them to make me cookies. Well somehow the translation got off and I'm at the door talking to both of them saying like remember when you said next time I swing by you would have cookies, and they're like kind of yeah, and then I said well I'm here to say I'm not here for the cookies I'm just here to say you don't have to do that I don't know if you really meant it or not and a bunch of more awkward talk and then the next thing I know the wife goes into the kitchen and comes out with like a cookie that she had scrounged up from somewhere.

So I don't do well with shit like that.

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MY thoughts as I fly from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta

So, you have to take your shoes off to use the emergency slide.

From the air the traffic in Mexico City looks terrible. Jesus, how old am I? Checking out traffic from 10,000 feet.

I had to check in at the ticket counter when I left Denver. Even though I had already checked in online. I needed to get a printed boarding pass because the one on my phone wasn't working right. I had a connecting flight that also required a printed boarding pass. I wasn't thinking about it, and the ticket agent was also not thinking about it. He didn't offer to print my second pass, so I'm in Mexico City, running around the giant airport trying to figure out where I need to go because nothing is in English, and what was in English wasn't intuitive enough for me to figure out. I have a two hour layover, and used only about 30 minutes of it going through customs, getting another boarding pass, and going back through security. Imagine if I had a shorter layover. I mean 30 minutes isn't bad at all.

On the flight to PV: We've been flying for 10 minutes and I can still see Mexico City below us. How fucking big is this place?

I spent a little bit of the flight from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta watching the chick sitting in front of me scroll through her thousands of baby photos, some other equally boring pics sprinkled throughout. I could see her phone in the reflection on the window. It was more boring than looking at the back of everybody's heads. So, I alternated between the two. I don't like the woman sitting in front of me. We haven't had any formal contact. Maybe it was how she aggressively put her seat bavk., And kept bouncing around. 

The announcement just said we have begun our decent. In my head my automatic response was, I feel like I've been doing that for years. 

Yep, now that we're landing she is pissing me off.

Me and the guy who is sitting next to me have not spoken a word to each other. Why is it so easy to, not so much ignore, but distance ourselves from other people? I think I might make it a standard practice to introduce myself to people in situations like this. But, I'll start next time.

I don't know what the other side of the Puerto Vallarta International Airport looks like, but the side we just rolled up to looks deserted.

On the way to the condo we drove past three Office Depots and two Office Max's.

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Sometimes, better than nothing is as good as it gets.

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I feel like I'm running out of time. I don't feel that I'm going to die sooner rather than later. I just know if I don't do something, all of a sudden I'll be laying in a hospital bed in my living room waiting. A slave to Death.

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Happy New Year. Now, get over yourselves and instead, make the world a better place because YOU were here!

"Let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people."

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I bought linen sheets. They came in the mail today. I was reading the care label on them, and it says to wash them inside out. They're sheets. I can turn the pillowcases inside out, and one could make an argument that I could wash the fitted sheet inside out, but once it's in the washer it kind of just goes back and forth. I'm really hoping I don't screw this up.