Stay in Your Lane

Hello again, y’all!  This blog finds me 2 days out from my 39^th birthday.  I was meaning to write a post about it but considering that it fell on a Monday this year, nothing of note came to mind.  Stupid Mondays.  Anyway, something else of note did come to mind and I think it kinda intertwines with being another year older.

I’ve been realizing more and more that the older that I get, the more conservative I get with my views.  With that said, however, I don’t think that I’ll ever get to the level of some of the people I’ve seen who take the “holier than thou” approach to anything moderate and “left” of that.  I’m actually not a fan of being radically one way or the other, to be honest.  I think once you get too far past the tipping point of even, you start to lose prospective on things.  Well, that’s my opinion at least.  I’ve realized that I’ve experienced this on both spectrums a lot as of late.

For example, this damn “cancel culture” that we live in now is just sickening.  These people who are offended by every little thing make the tallest mountains out of the smallest of molehills and it ruins people’s lives.  I don’t understand how somebody can’t just be regularly offended, throw an insult out (even if it’s just to yourself about the offending person) and move on with their lives?  Is it that hard of a thing to do?  What’s the point of gathering a mob just to shame somebody over an offense?  Get over it.  Grow a thicker skin.  That’s what I say.  As wrong as that may be.  People need to learn to accept adversity in their lives.

On the flip side of that coin, though, some people are just… assholes!  There’s no other way to put it.  An example I was recently exposed to is a sect of traditional Catholics whom I tried to give their podcast a listen to, but just couldn’t get past the hatred in their message.  This group is Norvus Ordo Watch.  Let me set this up for you really quick.  As I’ve mentioned on a few blog posts here, I consider myself a traditional Catholic person.  I attend a FSSP (Fraternal Society of Saint Peter) parish that lives and celebrates the traditional Catholic lifestyle, including following the old liturgical calendar, and celebrating the Latin Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal.  I know it’s almost closed minded of me to think and say this, but the Norvus Ordo Mass to me is so… icky.  LOL!  That’s the only way I can describe it.  From the priest facing the laity during Mass, the laity doing priestly things (like raising their hands or opening their hands to pray over people), holding hands during the “Our Father”, the sign of peace, the complete lack of respect in the way people dress to go to church, not knowing the catechism of the church, holy days of obligation, the lack of availability of confession/the wanting to be in a state of grace, etc… I could go on.  Point is, I think it’s a big reason that so many people during the peak of the baby boomer generation left the Church and why there are over 36,000+ different forms of protestantism.  Nobody knew their faith enough to defend it or to try and stay with it and live a true Catholic life.  Anyway, back to Norvus Ordo Watch.  These dudes take my point of view and turn the volume up of that to like 99 on a scale of 10 as far as the things that bother them.  They are not quite like FSSP which is in full communion with Rome and has the blessing of the Holy See to practice the traditional rite.  Oh no.  These guys say that the Chair of Peter is vacant!  On this last podcast (and I actually unsubscribed after hearing the 50 minutes of hate speech), the guy who hosts the podcast was just spewing out his hate and just to show how spineless he is, actually put it out on front street that he was not going to give out his identity!  What kinda madness is that?!  Talking ALL this smack saying how “Francis”, (not even calling our Holy Father, THE POPE!) does this and that, and talking smack about the cardinals and bishops in line with Pope Francis doing all sorts of things but doesn’t have the guts to put his name behind his complaints.  I don’t understand that, by the way.  Complaining, but not doing anything about it.  What’s the point after complaining once or twice about something?  I mean, I do that, hell everybody does!  “Oh, this sucks!” but then we move on one way or another, you know?  These peeps are hammering their complaints to the ground, but don’t do anything about it.  They just want to keep making sure people know that “this ain’t EWTN. (said sarcastically)” and “Francis is the anti-pope.”  What the hell, guys?  Again.  Hatred without even any understanding of the other side.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  Like I said here before, I’m no fan of the norvus ordo faith myself, but I practice the faith the way I feel the best to do it and along the actual rules and authority of Holy Mother Church.  I pray that more people become enlightened in their faith, and want to actually learn their faith as I have.  Understand that doing the things that they do are wrong when it feels right (enter your mortal sin that you try to justify here).  I’m not trying to start a revolution and claiming that we have no pope!  I don’t like the things that Pope Francis does either, but I also have the assurance that no matter what “The gates of hell shall not prevail against” the church.  We may have shady popes doing shady things (and believe me, we have had many in the past 2,000 years), but that has never led to the disrespect of the successor of Peter like I’ve seen it.  Maybe it was that way with the real bad popes back in the middle ages, but considering the global world we live in now, it’s way more visible of a defiance from people that we see now.  I pray for the poor souls in this world and the next.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just me.   I’m not a line stepper.  I’m not one to raise my voice in opposition of anything.  I don’t like to rock the boat.  I keep my mouth shut and my head down and mind my own damn business.  I wish a lot more people would do the same.  But that’s just me.

Holiday Trip-Up

Happy Monday to you all!  Here in the United States the holiday season has just begun to kick off.  This Thursday brings Thanksgiving and the slightly less than a month wait to Christmas.  As my last post indicated, I was pretty excited about it until last week put my excitement in check.  To make a long story short, my best friend in the whole world drove down from Salt Lake City to here in El Paso with his parents but for a sad reason.  His paternal grandfather passed away.  He knew it was coming, as his grandfather was in hospice care and they gave him just about the amount of time it ended up taking for him to pass away.  It was still good to see him as we ended up having a great heart to heart on Sunday, and I ended up spending time with his family on Monday.

If that wasn’t bad enough, after pretty much feeling like death thanks to the severe lack of sleep all day Tuesday, my day went from bad to extremely bad by the afternoon.  I found out that my grandmother had fallen at home and ended up fracturing her left hip and on the same day, one of my best friends/bandmates drove himself to the hospital and ended up being admitted for what ended up being nearly a weeklong stay.  Tuesday was the worst, however, because there was a lot of despair and confusion when it came to my grandma’s situation.  We, as a family, had to decide how to proceed with first the immediate medical issue, then later on, how to deal with the overall grandparents situation.  I can’t remember if I blogged about this or not last year, but when grandpa went down with his many health issues last year, it was very difficult emotionally for me to handle.  Ever since my last stint with hotel work I’ve had emotional issues, to be honest.  I used to joke about things like that about being emotionally scarred or people not being able to handle something or a job making people crazy, but my experience has proven those jokes wrong.  I’m now left with anxiety and panic attack issues and I cannot handle stress very well.  I avoid it and situations that cause me anxiety or stress like the black plague.  In an odd twist, I’ve found that I cannot handle any sort of family emergency well either as all cool I may have I lose really quickly.  So, with all that said, when my sister told me that my grandma had fallen and fractured her hip, my already fragile emotional state went into a tailspin.  I went straight to the hospital after work and did my best to keep it together when I went up to my grandmother’s room.  Thankfully she wasn’t displaying pain, so that made me feel better, but the “future tripping” of mine started to kick in quickly.  What does that mean with our situation with grandpa?  He isn’t self sufficient anymore and we all work.  Who’s going to take care of him?  And now grandma is down for the count for a while… will she be able to recover?  Will she be well enough to go back to the way things were before the injury?  If not, what do we do?  *insert panic attack here*.  It was bad.  I stayed at the hospital for a couple of hours then I drove home in the steady rain, which did nothing for my desire to race home to my safe zone. We, as an entire family, decided that surgery was the way to go, and her surgery was scheduled for the next day.  I took half the day off to be there for my family, and it was there that I found out that the bit of discomfort my dad had in his neck and shoulder had gotten worse.  He couldn’t really hide it at the hospital as we waited for grandma to get out of surgery so I had yet another thing added to my plate.  Grandma made it out fine, but my mind didn’t.  I lost my cool a lot during that day.  I was very short fused and I did all I could to fight off the anxiety attack that was just under the surface.  After talking to my sister once we all left grandma’s bedside, I felt better as we both apologized for being jerks.  I stopped to visit my friend in the hospital and once I saw he wasn’t bad off, I felt better about him.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the story, but I’ll say that now my anxiety and panic attack levels have kinda decreased a bit.  Speaking of decreasing, my excitement for this holiday season has also done the same as I’m really broke to the point that I won’t be able to get anybody presents this year, my dad is in some sort of crazy chronic pain that medical science can’t pinpoint the cause of so he’s even in an arm sling, grandma is half a week into a couple of weeks of rehab, grandpa is being taken care of by family and friends of our family, and I’m left trying to keep my positive spirts intact through it all.  What a festive time, right?  So, wish me luck and count your blessings this year.  Things could always be worse, my friends.

BFFs

Hi y’all!  We’ve made it to another week.  God only knows how I made it to this week.  I feel like I overextended myself this weekend, but at the same time felt like I needed to reach out to the friends who first reached out to me.  I’ll explain.  Oddly, on Friday, the wave of depression just hit me hard and all I wanted to do was to pick up the film I rented from Redbox, go home, watch said movie, and hibernate.  Well, that didn’t work out as I planned because a good friend of mine sent me a text asking if I would like to go over to hang out.  This is the guy that I usually say yes to going to his house 1 out of every 5 or so invites.  I was sleepy and exhausted (both mentally and physically), but decided to power through and go anyway.  I ended up staying there pretty late, but had an enjoyable time.  That stunt, however, threw off my Saturday because my plan was to tidy up just a bit, do laundry, and relax.  Well, I ended up watching the film I rented first thing, didn’t feel too hungry so I just ended up drinking two cups of coffee, and I ended up relaxing for the rest of the morning to early afternoon until band practice.  That’s another thing that I wasn’t looking forward to, actually, because I still haven’t gotten my rest yet.  Of course, I went to practice anyway, and we ended up staying late after practice just hanging out and talking which caused me to miss Mass yesterday morning as I thought sleeping would help me out to not be totally out of energy for my bi-weekly visit to my dad’s.  I feel bad about that, but this weekend was just too weird for me.

Things took a different turn yesterday morning as well, as my best friend who lives in the greater Salt Lake City area sent me a message telling me that he was 78 miles away and arriving back in El Paso shortly.  This didn’t come as a huge surprise as he had called me last week to tell me that his grandfather was in hospice care and wasn’t expected to last more than 2 weeks.  He asked if he could see me later on in the day, and of course I said yes as I was excited to see him.  After a few hours at my dad’s house, my friend messaged me to see if I was ready to hang out, so I told my dad that I needed to go, and raced home.  My friend was about 10 minutes behind me, but we had such a great conversation.  That’s really what triggered me to write this post.  See, my dude here has been gone from the area for 20 years.  We became acquainted during our sophomore year of high school and really became good friends by our senior year.  His dad got a job with a company that wanted to relocate him to Salt Lake City, so he ended up moving at the end of 1998 and left his wife and 3 kids back in El Paso for the next half year to allow his oldest (my best friend) to finish high school and graduate with his friends, and then the whole family would move up to meet him there.  I got to spend the summer with my friend before he moved out and we stayed in touch via telephone (this was pre-social media) pretty regularly after that.  He came down a few times the next few years and I went up to see him after I graduated college in 2004 and had a blast seeing the Salt Lake valley and some of the new friends he made.  Anyway, I say all this to say that even though our bond was pretty strong, him being up in Salt Lake City, a 14+ hour drive from here, made our friendship a lot stronger.  Out of all my friends, I can say that I feel the closest to him.  We have similar family backgrounds, and have similar interests.  It’s as if we are truly brothers from other mothers.  Our visit last night was no different.  It was kinda funny because one of the things my boy mentioned twice was how crazy it felt that even though I hadn’t seen him since last April, being there with me felt like no time had passed at all.  I have to say that I felt the same way.

Another part of the conversation we had actually made me tear up.  I forgot what we were actually even talking about, but I expressed the fact that he was family to me and I would do anything for him and I loved him deeply.  Just having him around filled my heart with joy, even though the reason that he was here was for a bad one.  Without hesitation, I lent him my air mattress so that he wouldn’t be sleeping on his brother’s couch, and we got to talking about family.  He’s a relatively new dad, so he’s seeing the other side of things when it comes to just pure love for somebody else.  It was a great heart to heart, and we ended the night in a hug with the knowledge that even though we have hundreds of miles and countless hours of distance between us, we’re going to be friends for life.  The viewing and rosary for his grandfather is going to be tomorrow and he’s going to fly back out by himself on Thursday, so there might not be a chance to see him again on this quick trip, but I was glad that I was able to spend at least those couple of hours with him last night.  It’s always good to have heart to heart’s with those who you care about.  I can’t wait to be able to drive up there at some point hopefully in the near future to finally get the chance to meet his kid and tell him that I’m the crazy “uncle” his daddy talks about sometimes.

Until next time!

Happy for the Holidays

Hi y’all!  Can you believe it?  We’re two weeks away from Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and the full swing of the holidays is upon us.  It’s been a very quick last half of the year by all accounts.  It feels like it was just yesterday that it was the beginning of July and now we’re halfway through November.  Where does the time go?  I mean, I’m a believer that time starts to fly by faster the older we get, but holy smokes, this is the fastest time has passed by in my memory.  I can’t complain about it though, I love the holiday season.  I enjoy watching the holiday commercials on TV (yeah, I actually watch over the air TV sometimes.  Well, it’s mainly NFL Network and whatever networks the sports I love are on, but still!), and my favorite morning of the year, Thanksgiving, brings about the excitement of said day coming at us very quickly.  I actually have the majority of the day already planned out yearly.  I get up at around 6:45am, fire up the TV, and tune it to the local NBC affiliate as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade begins at 7am.  I either enjoy a cup of eggnog or coffee while watching the parade, and about midway through it I set up my Christmas tree too!  I purposely bought a Peanuts Charlie Brown Christmas Tree that I made extra snazzy with a small set of white string lights that I have wrapped around the branch.  It looks cool!  Once Santa Claus brings up the rear of the parade and the hosts of the show wish us all a happy holiday season, I tune to the football games on and get the kitchen cleaned up and prepped for the traditional thanksgiving meal.  By that time my favorite NFL team, The Dallas Cowboys, game is on, so I make sure to watch all of that.  About halftime or so is when I set the oven to start up so that by about 3-5pm, the turkey and ham are warmed up and ready to go.  Then it’s dinner, more eggnog, and Christmas music.  I love it so much.  It breaks my heart that I see a lot of my friends hate on the holiday season so much and Christmas music even more.  I know at least some of these friends of mine are atheists and I’ve almost been tempted to tell them to stop giving their kids gifts on December 25^th because if they don’t believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, what’s the point of taking part in one of the acts of celebrating His birthday?  Then again, I’m super non-confrontational, so I just let bygones be bygones.  I think I will start posting Christmas songs on Facebook, though!  Somebody has to keep the Christmas spirit going, right?!  Oh man, speaking of Christmas!!!  I think I’m going to really try to watch as many Christmas movies as I can this year.  There are so many to choose from on Netflix and now Disney+!  That doesn’t even include my annual Christmas Day personal film festival that I throw myself.  In no particular order, I watch the following films annually on Christmas Day:  Batman Returns, Friday After Next, Gremlins (sometimes), A Christmas Story, Polar Express, and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (the original Rankin & Bass production) while wearing comfy attire and drinking eggnog and coffee.  I don’t really know why, but I really feel to be in the holiday spirit this year.  I’m not going to complain, though.  It feels good to feel good, if that makes any sense.  I must take advantage of the good feelings while I got them, right?

Well, if you celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s Eve/Day (which I haven’t even talked about either!), I hope and pray that the holiday spirit has hit you too!  What are some of your traditions for the holiday season?

Talk again soon!

I’m Broken

I’ve needed to write out a lot more lately, as y’all have noticed.  Today’s topic is something I’ve actually known about for 2 weeks coming now.  My heterosexual lifemate’s last day at our workplace is today.  For 13.5 of those days, I was actually pretty cool with it.  Not much is going to actually change with us.  Hell, I’ve known the kid for 27+ years and counting.  The only things that are changing are going to be the walks to and from work to our vehicles and our talks during lunchtime.  Camping, roadtrips, and playing in our band are still the same.  With that being said, just this morning, after everybody was asking me if I was going to miss him, etc… the thought occurred to me about me leaving this place one day.  The thought of it almost induced a panic attack.  Seriously!  I did it once, 4 years ago when I went back with my old boss to this current job to go back to the hotel life and the 9 months I was there gave me severe panic attacks, pretty bad anxiety, and now a lingering problem with said anxiety.

I had always been more of a loner, but after that madness I became even more of a recluse.  Talking on the phone gives me anxiety, being around too many people for long periods of time gives me anxiety, and I generally want to be left alone most of the time.  It’s the only way I’m comfortable.  I guess one can make an argument that it’s a bad thing, but I just find a way to manage.

So that brings me back to the present.  I’m now the last one standing of the old crew at this place.  I’ve seen everybody else come and go.  I don’t even know how to feel about that.  I’m not going to lie, it’s gonna be nice to be able to stay indoors every day and watch stuff on Hulu and Netflix for my free hour, but now I’m not going to have the outlet when I need to get something off my chest.  Maybe I’ll blog more!  Actually, I should.  I feel like I’ve been neglecting blogging on a more consistent basis.

As far as the future goes, I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave my gig.  I love doing what I do.  I’m kinda left alone even though I’m around people here, and I enjoy my work.  It’s a Monday-Friday gig and I live 15 minutes away.  I can make rent, pay my bills, and never go too hungry so I can’t ask for much more.  I’ve never been materialistic or greedy, so it all works out for me.  The thing that gives me anxiety and is almost inducing a panic attack now is the thought of me having to find a new job for one reason or the next.  Honestly, I don’t know what else I can do and still be able to support myself.  I don’t know if I can handle the public or not.  That’s kinda scary, isn’t it?  This sounds so bad, but if I were to ever get let go for whatever reason, I honestly think I would try to get disability.  It’s getting harder and harder for me to function semi-normally as it is.  Just this past week I was just burnt to a crisp emotionally.  I was dying for at least one day to be left completely alone and with nothing for me to do.  I was irritated, and annoyed, and was very short fused with everybody.  It was bad.  And worse yet, it almost felt like a new normal for me.  Even this week, I’m going to force myself to clean my house and do laundry today to give myself the 3 day weekend to do absolutely nothing aside from going to Low Mass on Sunday morning.  I need to.  I need to just get away from everybody for my own sanity.  And that’s the end game too, to put it bluntly.  If it were up to me, I’d just stay home and never leave the house.  It’s what I need to be happy, but I can’t do that, so I force myself to go to work.  It’s a messed up existence.

So, wish me luck, my friends.  I’m going to need it.  That and my old buspar pills.  I feel a damn anxiety attack coming on.  Ugh!

A Great Reunion and the Decay of Society

Hi y’all!  I hope this post finds you in good spirits and good health.  As for me, what a difference 24 hours makes.  Let me get right down to the biggest news.  The hood cat IS BACK!  Old habits die young with me, so at about 5:30 this morning, I opened up the door to my flat and there the hood cat was, by the stairs waiting to see if I’d open up the door.  She immediately meowed and came inside.  I can’t begin to tell you how my heart quickly filled up with happiness at just seeing her.  She was meowing for a good two minutes, which I hope tells me that she missed me as much as I missed her.  I had sadly put her food and water bowls away in my closet, so I got them back out and poured her out some breakfast.  Poor girl was hungry!  So she let me pet her a bit and let me ask her where the hell she had been for the past 6 days, then I told her that I had missed her dearly, then she had her breakfast.  It was great to have her back.  She has no idea just how much she has helped me out emotionally and if she would have let me, I would have hugged her.  Petting her and telling her that I missed and love her were good enough, though.  And with that, I think she’s earned a new name from me.  She’s no longer “Quick” (as in Eddie Murphy’s character in the film Harlem Nights, specifically the opening scene when the character was a child), but now she’s earned the name “Bunny Lebowski” from the film The Big Lebowski.  *Spoilers*, but the main plot of the movie involved the ransom kidnapping of said Bunny Lebowski by nihilists, only to have her show up at her mansion towards the end of the film on her own after going to party with her friends in Malibu.  I wouldn’t know of any confirmed people to party with my favorite comedian, the late Sam Kinison, but he joked in his last special Live From Hell that he’s had parties that lasted longer than a skirmish the Kurds had in the early 90’s with another military force and people were lucky to be alive after said parties.  I was joking to myself that the cat found herself at one of Sam Kinison’s parties too, considering she was gone for 6 days.  HAHAHAHAHA!  Either way, I’m glad to know the girl is still around.  Maybe now I’ll get an inexpensive cat tree for her with a scratching post and see if she wants to hang out with me some more and stay out of the cold.  Time will tell.

Speaking of time!!!  Here’s an interesting topic to me that has come up today.  I’m going to get ranty here, so if what I say offends you, then I apologize.  Here’s what is grinding my gears:  People’s attire and the changing of said attire in our times.  This has come about because my heterosexual lifemate has been complaining all day over the fact that he has to wear a tie to work today.  He’s one of those people who despises any sort of formal wear and if it were up to him, he’d wear denim jeans and some beat up looking shirt every day.  He finds clever ways to insult men like me who enjoy wearing dress shirts and ties, and suits, and calls the actions antiquated and disingenuous.  I just don’t understand it.  Granted, this dude wasn’t raised by a good father figure, or actually the way he describes it any sort of good parental figure of any sort, he rebels against any form of authority, hates authority and rules, and can’t see the value of appearance and how it affects people.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m rocking out a suit to work or anything, or like I don’t have casual, damn near bum looking attire, I do, but there’s something to be said about going to work with dress shoes on, dress pants of some sort, and sometimes a shirt and tie and if not a polo shirt.  It’s just the adult thing to do in my opinion.  You gotta dress to the occasion, you know?  I mean, I can go from wearing a heavy metal band t-shirt (specifically Metallica, Pantera, HELLYEAH, and Damageplan) or a sports team t-shirt with some Nike shorts and Nike shoes, to wearing a suit and it wouldn’t faze me at all.  I know how to dress for time and place.  I don’t mind wearing a shirt and tie either, I don’t complain about it… actually I express the fact that I enjoy it when I do!

Question is, what’s changed from the 1950’s where men were in suits and hats every day of the week to now where guys can’t even bother to respect God by showing up to their church of choice in a shirt and tie.  The example of this sad state of affairs happened one of the last times I was forced to attend a Novus Ordo Mass when I made a brief return to hotel management.  I couldn’t attend my FSSP Traditional Latin Mass as I was still on duty at work, so I had to attend a Sunday afternoon Mass at a parish near work.  What I saw appalled me.  Where do I even start?  Drop down screens on either side of the sanctuary (what’s wrong with people?!  YOU SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE SANCTUARY AT MASS!), little girl altar servers (umm, alter serves should be boys who at least possibly have the intention of becoming priests one day, so that should disqualify girls), nobody showing reverence before taking their seats at the pews (lack of knowledge in their faith), and the thing that really got me, the “choir”.  UGH!!!  I had forgotten about Novus Ordo “choirs”.  Guitars, drums, and other instruments that shouldn’t belong in a Catholic church.  That aside, the choir leader was wearing cargo shorts, some casual looking short sleeved white button up wrinkled collared shirt, and FLIP FLOPS.  DUDE!!!!!!!!!  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!!   This is the respect this guy showed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Read that again.  THE RESPECT this guy showed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  …NONE OF IT.  I know the counter argument to that… “God doesn’t care what you’re wearing…”  We don’t know that for sure I guess, but it damn sure is a sign of respect to try to dress your best in front of those who deserve our respect and the king of kings without question deserves that.  This dude couldn’t have cared less and that just broke my heart.

But that’s society these days.  Nobody has any respect for others.  It’s all about me, me, me, me, me.  Who cares about the other person?  It’s beyond me.  You know, I say that and remember my own words to friends when I say I treat everybody as equals, as I do, but there are a few people who I treat with greater respect than others.  People of authority (Priests, my elders, law enforcement, etc.) are given more respect by me than other people, but I also expect the respect to be reciprocated.  I know I’m a nobody, but I hate to be talked down to or made to feel inferior.

Back to the point, though.  It’s just a sad state of affairs to see where society is at right now.  As President Obama wrote about recently, we’re in a “cancel culture” where people are having to apologize for every single thing that offends people (which is dumb by the way), everybody is so self-righteous and shows no respect towards anybody or anything anymore, and rules are being thrown out the window.  Man, what a difference the world would be if we all just learned that it’s not just about us.  It’s about showing respect to those who deserve it and it’s about showing reverence by our actions and dress when appropriate, just to name a couple of things.  Maybe this world would be a better place than it is now.

Anyway, have a great day y’all.

Sadness, Loneliness, Depression, Exhaustion, Burn Out, and Malaise: My Life’s Journey.

Happy November, y’all.  We made it to the end of the year.  Whoa.  Wait a minute.  2019 is almost over?!  I never did get quite used to knowing that we were living in this year.  If that makes any sense the way I put it, I suppose.  I guess it the year still feels like it’s too far in the future when I actually think or say the year to myself.  What can I say, I’m one of those people who think of the 1980’s when people say “remember 10, 15, 20 years ago when…”  Yep, that.  I think “yeah!  Hell yeah I remember 1987!”  To think, 1987 wasn’t 10 to 20 years ago.  Nope.  1987 was 32 years ago.  Whoops!  Hahaha!  So, yeah, 2019 is like flying cars future to my brain, not the present.  Now I’m going to have to get used to 2020 in less than 2 months!  I’m sure my brain is going to explode come January.

Anyway, I’ve been having a rough go at it lately.  I’ve been having a lot of times of sadness, loneliness, depression, exhaustion, burn out, and malaise.  I can’t really pinpoint the source, though, and that is making things a little bit frustrating.  All that is causing me to have a general bitter and angry baseline when it comes to emotional status and I don’t think a lot of my friends out here in the non-digital world are liking it too much.  Can’t say I blame them, though.  Seeing me not be a cheerful, joking dude must be a bit of an adjustment.  If I allow myself to think of it, I think I can put a finger on the cause of my problems.  In no order, I think I just have been overextending myself lately and not giving myself enough time to just rest.  It’s been a band practice here, visiting a friend’ house there, play some stupid gig for an hour (not even a full set) on two different occasions here (no, not worth it for me), family obligations there, all the while try and fit in me time into there somewhere.  I knew it would come to this too.  I would tell myself, “Dude, you’re gonna hit the burn out wall and you’re not going to like it.  It’s coming, dude.”  Sure enough I was cruising along at the speed of sound when out of nowhere came the unmovable wall and I hit it straight on.  All of this is compounded with my financial situation of living check to check, and my love life which is in the landfill section of life, so yeah… all of those negative feelings (and probably others that I can’t quite put a name to but they are there) just came out in large flooding event and I’ve been fighting the waves since then.

In a small moment of happiness, however, I befriended the strayed/probably abandoned cat that had been hanging around my apartment building since about May of this year.  She was God’s small gift to me…  Another living object to show compassion and love to without reservations or questions.  Spoilers, she’s been gone since last Wednesday morning which leads me to believe that somebody took her or the maintenance peeps at the complex called animal control and they picked her up.  In any event, the 3 weeks that we became friends helped me out during some of my dark times.  Her and I got into a routine where I’d let her into the flat in the mornings, she’d have a bit to eat, and she would spend some time with be before meowing to be let back out, then she’d go along the rest of the day while I was at work and she would show back around in the late afternoon/evening where she’d have another snack and we’d hang out some more.  I would like to think I was giving her comfort and compassion and even if she didn’t intend to, she did the same to me.  In the days since she’s been gone, I’ve joked to myself that she’s been a typical woman in my life.  Shows up, everything is cool, but the minute I show love and provide a meal, she bails.  L O L!!!!!!!!  It’s sad but true.

Anyway, this damn black cloud of mine has started to affect my energy levels to the point that I am sure that I scared my grandma and my dad.  Last week, during my weekly Tuesday visit with my grandparents, I told my grandma that I have been just tired every single day lately and no matter how much I sleep I still hit a wall of exhaustion.  My CPAP machine of doom should have fixed that up, but so far it’s had no effect at all when it comes to feeling refreshed.  The thing that came to her mind was the possibility of me having Lupus.  My mom passed away of the disease 11 years ago and it runs in her family, so naturally I could also be stricken with said disease.  I told her that I had gotten tested for it a few years back and came back negative but it was enough of a worry for her to tell my old man about it.  Yesterday was his bi-weekly visit, so one of the first things he asked me was about my health.  He suggested me eating something during the day to keep my energy level up since he knows I don’t eat lunch, and also possibly just resting more and taking a Tuesday off from seeing my grandparents to allow me to rest, but then I told him I couldn’t ever take a Tuesday off from the grandparents because the minute they are gone I know I’m going to have that regret of “hey lazy ass, remember when you chose to stay home instead of seeing them?!  How rested are you now, you jerk?!  You can’t see or talk to your grandparents anymore, so you can have all the time you want!”  I don’t want to live with that on my conscience, so I’m going to spend every chance I can give myself with them to live without that regret.  To hell with being tired.  I’ll deal with it later.  I don’t know when, but later.

Personally, I think I just need like 3-4 days straight of just staying home to recharge with no responsibilities to have to tend to.  Wake up, clean the parts of the CPAP machine that I need to on a daily basis, fire up the TV to watch Good Morning Football if I wake up early enough to watch it, if not some sort of streaming app, make myself an awesome breakfast when the hunger hits, clean the kitchen after said meal, then just relax.  Listen to music if the mood strikes.  Lay in bed, watch movies or shows.  Don’t even open the front door or open the blinds in the living room.  Just be me, alone, for 72-96 hours, and pray that it fixes the thing that’s broken inside of me.  Sadly, I don’t think I can pull this feat off anytime soon, but I can sure as hell try to squeeze in a day or two this long weekend that’s coming up.

And hey!  My favorite time of the year is here.  Thanksgiving is 24 days away; Christmas is next month, as is New Year’s Eve!  Happy times are ahead, God willing.

Keep on keeping on, my friends.