my future’s end

Hello all!

I hope that I can type this out in the short amount of time that I have remaining in the day to do so.  Let me just say that it’s been an interesting weekend.  It was filled with family time, coming to the aid of one of my best friends, witnessing a moment of domestic violence (female to male, believe it or not), the revelation of two blossoming romances of friends, a visit with one of my 3 doctors, with 4 Low Masses sprinkled throughout it all. 

That’s a lot to take in, right?!  The main part that I wanted to focus on in an attempt to allow the emotions to leave my system are the budding romances of two couples of friends of mine.  Well, I should probably clarify it by saying that one of the couples belongs to a group on facebook that I’m a part of.  We’re a very small group of people from literally around the world and two of the members met up here in the United States this weekend.  The other couple are 2 very good friends of mine whom I actually know in the real world. 

Let me put it right on front street for y’all.  The majority of my emotions are very positive towards this.  How could it not be, right?  But, if I’m being honest, a significant part of me is sad.  I’m not sad that I wasn’t the suitor for either one of the women.  Not at all.  I’m sad for me, personally.  All I’ve ever wanted in my adult life is to be married and have children.  I know, crazy idea, right?!  I never had the desire to fornicate with as many women as possible.  I never desired to play the field.  I never desired to have more than a couple of girlfriends in my life before finding my wife and having children.  Ever since I was a teenager, I wanted this.  I’m 42 now and I find myself 3 years removed from my last failed and toxic relationship and although the term I’m about to use is offensive when speaking of women, I’m going to say it about myself.  I “hit the wall”.  I’ve reached the age where going younger than let’s say 35 years old in a partner is kinda creepy.  The creepy factor increases the younger I go.  The window of healthy childbearing women however starts to close the closer to 40 they get, so therein lies my problem.  Well, that’s the problem on that side of the equation.  The problem with me is probably extensive.  I mean, I can tell you right up front the physical problems that women have with me.  First off, I’m fat.  I know, that can be fixed.  But as it stands now, it is what it is.  Secondly, I’m short.  Now, there’s nothing that I can do about that.  After that, I live a very simple and quiet lifestyle.  Also, I’m ultra introverted, so I don’t want to be out anywhere.  On top of all of that, I don’t care about money.  I don’t seek it, don’t worry about it, and I have just enough to keep me very comfortable.  I have no desire for social status or wealth.  That’s not important to me.  Finally (and this one shocks me every time it bubbles up to the surface as an issue), I’m very religious and dedicated to my faith.  That’s been an issue with the last 3 girlfriends.  Who would have thought, right?!  A dude who wants to be a better man and live his life for God and that’s apparently a bad thing.  Yikes.

So with all that said, I’ve been praying every night for roughly 2 years for our Lord to bless me with my wife.  As you can tell, that hasn’t happened.  It kinda staggered me when I saw my facebook friends get together from the distance of the Atlantic Ocean, but getting the confirmation that two of my friends were officially seeing each other knocked me out.  I finally got the message that God was giving me all along.  That message was “No.”  As was said in 1 Corinthians 7, it’s better to remain unmarried.  Specifically starting with verse 32; “32 I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; 33 but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. 35 I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.”  Message received.  God wants me to live for Him.  I have to suppress my desire for marriage and fatherhood.  If anything, that’s my cross to bear.  Now, I just have to mourn it.  I feel sorry for my dad.  He really wanted me to get married and have kids.  He never told me, but he told my sister and my grandparents that.  I feel like I let him down.  I feel sorry for me because I really did want that too.  I would have been a great father.  My kids would have grown up in a happy home filled with love and the knowledge of our Lord.  All of that has to be locked away now in memories of a future that will never come to pass. 

As of yesterday, I stopped praying to God to bless me with a wife and children.  It hurts like I’m going through a breakup, but it’s for my own good.  Now, I gotta shift my focus to my nephews and give them all the love I can.  I also gotta enjoy every new day that God gives me and rejoice in it.  He’s blessed me with so much.  I have to stop being sad with what I don’t have and be thankful for what I do.

Life goes on.

16 months gone, but i’m back

Hello and a blessed Holy Week to you all! 

Well, after taking a look at my last real post in December of 2021, aka 1.5 years ago, I wanted to fill you in as to what I’ve been doing since then.  Life has been… traumatic if I want to be honest.  I was fighting burnout and sadly I nearly talked myself into suicide again this past June after a 12-year serious suicidal thoughts break.  Burnout can be deadly.  I had to learn that the hard way.  Thankfully, I took a much needed vacation in August, going back to Las Vegas for the first time in 4 years and had a good time.  Well, a good time except for killing my feet wearing Crocs.  LOL!!!!! 

Yeah, guys, that finally happened over the Rona times too.  I was one of the people who became obsessed with Crocs clogs.  I don’t remember if I posted about it or not, but after getting my first pair of them sometime 2 or so years ago, I never went back.  I have something like 13 pairs of Crocs including LiteRide Flips, the swimming sandals, and 2 pairs of work clogs!  I know.  It’s crazy.  I do own 2 pairs of Nike sneakers just in case I need them for other things, and now I learned that I do need them when I visit Las Vegas, but otherwise, I’m always in Crocs now.

Anyway, back to my post, I’ve been on a real good ride since August with a bit of bad thoughts mixed in.  Allow me to briefly fill that part in about the good ride.  So, after the bad June with the serious suicidal thoughts, I was invited to play drums for a show for a friend of a friend for his album release party.  I was in an outfit with 3 guitarists, a bassist, and me.  Aside from the kid who put it together, I was playing with complete strangers.  Not only that, they were all 15-20 years younger than me.  That was a trip!  What was an album release party turned into being a full-on band thing.  At first I was excited, but very quickly there were drawbacks.  First of all, I was a hired gun drummer who wasn’t getting paid.  Now, let me be clear.  I don’t care about money, I’m not driven by money, and I don’t do things for money.  HOWEVER, I am a man of principle.  What’s fair is fair, right?  We did a number of shows and I KNEW somebody was getting paid.  All I would have liked would have been a fair share of that.  I’m not one to be completely taken advantage of.  Secondly, I had no say in the creative process of this group.  New music was being written, but there was no input from me about it all.  What kind of madness is that?!  I thought it was a band, and towards the end we actually did have a name to the band, but did it run like an equal say in 5 parts band?  Nope!  I’m sorry, but I can’t do that either.  If I’m playing music, I want to have ownership of that music.  I don’t want to feel like I’m playing some other person’s part.  That’s not fun for me.  On top of all of that, we’d practice every weekend in the evening for 2-3 hours.  Gone was my precious downtime that I sorely needed.  It all added up.  I had to go.  Yes, I played at venues I only dreamed of playing.  Yes, I was mic’ed up to high dollar sound systems, but with that said, it was for 30-45 minute sets and doing it for free… after taking the time and effort of loading up and building up my drums, only to break them down, transport them back home, and unloading and storing them back up again.  Too much work for that little of a time to play music that quite honestly I didn’t enjoy or take ownership of.  I ended up retiring from actively playing in a band as of 3 weeks ago.  It feels good.  I accomplished a lot and it was my time.  No regrets.

Another kind of downer part has been my family life.  Since the pandemic, I’ve rarely seen my dad, sister, brother-in-law, or nephews.  I mean, I’ve seen them, but not nearly as much as before.  Being in this band for the 9 months I was in, really hindered that as well, and I’ve realized that I’ve felt as though I’ve abandoned my family.  That ain’t cool at all.  All of this and more about it really came to my mind in earnest starting around the holidays of this past December as we had weekends off from the band.  This year was coming up and I was already dreading the Saturday night or Sunday morning practices where I’d have to load my drums up, set up for half an hour, then play music I didn’t enjoy for 2-3 hours, and break my drums back down, bring them back home, put them up, and be tired and disappointed that I missed a sporting event, free time, or both… and also miss out on possible family time.  I miss seeing my nephews.  I miss seeing my dad.  I miss talking to my sister.  All of that has played a huge factor in changing my life to quit music.

Now, with that said, last weekend I had a retirement lunch/dinner thing on Saturday that I had to go to, and this past weekend, I made it a point to do nothing to help my recovery from burnout and obligations… and this is Holy Week, so I’m booked up again this coming weekend, but after that it’s time to focus on family!  I’m really looking forward to what the future has in store for me.

Now, onto the main reason that I wanted to write this blog post.  Here, as far as I can tell, I only have 1 dude who I know outside of this website (what’s up dude!?), so I feel a bit more free to share the things that I would otherwise keep to myself, like loneliness for example.  Yep!  Super introvert, super INFJ me gets lonely sometimes.  Actually, what it really is… or rather how my brain is making sense of it all is a longing for something I’ve never truly had, which is a partner.  Sure, I’ve had girlfriends, but none of them ever really felt like they were going to truly stick around and make that next step.  My brain, however, has been haunting me with the happy memories I’ve had with each one of them.  If I’m going to be completely honest, I have a fair amount of jealousy for those I see around me who are married and have kids.  I constantly ask myself a variation of “Why didn’t this ever happen to me?  What’s so wrong about me that I was never considered?  I guess it’s never too late, but dang!  You’re 42, brother.  Your time seems to have come and gone.  You’ve already got friends who are grandparents for crying out loud!  And here you are… with nothing.  Poor bastard.”  …or something along those lines.  I feel sorry for myself.  I really do.  And to be honest, I know some main points as to why I’m alone.  First off, I’m short.  Secondly, I’m overweight.  Next, if a woman can get past those two things, they find an issue with the fact that I’m not money hungry or driven by financial success in any sense.  By then, they’ve already moved on and I’m ignored.  It’s terrible.  I keep trying to get my fitness in check, but I can’t do anything about my height or lack therof.  I wish I understood why money is a thing.  I mean, I make enough to live in a nice place, I have all the comforts that I enjoy, I’m able to take small trips every now and again, but I don’t care about money enough to buy flashy things, have a newer vehicle, or anything like that.  I live a simple life.  I live an honest life.  Oh!  And I haven’t even mentioned my love for Christ and His church.  That, apparently, is a turn off too and has been for previous girlfriends in my life.  So, anyway, point is that I’m alone.  I try not to let it get to me, but lately it has been.

It’s gotten worse lately too, by the way.  I finally got a great deal on a Catholic dating website for a year subscription, so I took it and of course after a few months, I’ve either gotten no replies to messages or a quick “I’m not interested” in so many words.  Am I really that unlovable?  It seems so.  Just so you know, I’m audibly sighing as I type this out.  We all are given our cross(es) to bear and this seems to be mine.  I’m really going to make an effort not to have that bit of jealousy creep in every time I go to Mass and see couples and families all around me.  It’s not easy, nor will it get any easier, but it’s just something that I’m going to have to bear. 

If things change in that regard, I’ll be sure to keep you all updated.  Speaking of keeping y’all updated, I’m really going to try to carve out some time on the weekends to continue to update you on the other things in my life that I’ve either forgotten to share here and/or new developments in my life.  I’m sorry for being away for those 1.5 years, but I’m back now.  Free to share the things that I can’t anywhere else!

Talk soon!

Peace OUT 2021!

Hi all and a very merry Christmas to you and your families!

I just wanted to drop by here to make some quick points and share a couple of related wonderful things that have happened to me recently.

So, first thing is first, the goal I set out to have the birthday that I wanted and the Christmas that I wanted didn’t quite go as planned.  Nothing was completely destroyed or anything, but they definitely did not go to plan.  I actually spent my birthday with my friends, which was pretty nice.  First off, I had a great dinner with a dear friend of mine, but when she had to go, I ended up going with my 2 remaining bandmates/brothers and had a few glasses of mountain dew and shot the breeze with them.  Oooo, that reminds me of another BIG topic to speak of in a second.  Christmas was spent starting off visiting my grandparents at their rest home for a bit, then I got to cleaning my flat which killed the rest of my pre-Christmas time day.  Christmas eve was mainly spent doing what I set out to do, which was do my annual Christmas movie marathon, but that was interrupted by going to my dad’s house to spend time with him, his wife, my sister, her husband, and my two nephews.  It was very awesome, but I had to cut the visit short in order to attend 11pm caroling followed up by midnight Traditional Latin Sung Mass.  I got home about the time that I thought I would, which was just before 2am on Christmas Day, and posted a very lengthy post about Santa Claus and love on Facebook and that caused me to go to bed just before 4am.  It was a long day.  Christmas Day went on earlier than I thought as my brain only wanted to sleep 5 hours but wake up super sleepy needing more sleep.  Stupid brain!  But the good thing is that I completed watching my 8 Christmas films that I set out to watch, plus some bonus shows and films!  So, overall, not like I planned the 2 out of 3 holidays in this month, but not bad either. 

Onto a diverted topic from above.  I’ll just put this on front street.  I think my band is dead.  The band that I, personally, was a part of for 11 years.  The band that existed in one form or another for more than 20 years.  Yep, that one.  Dead.  All over some petty crap too!  Here’s the cliff notes of my version.  Our bass player developed a bad case of alcoholism.  He was forced to quit the band, and the guitar player decided to go scorched earth with him.  I was on board until we practiced with a potential replacement player and realized that I was in effect abandoning a man who had turned from a friend, to a bandmate, and a brother.  On top of the bassist issue, the guitarist brought a guy into the band 3 years ago that is not musically talented at all and has too many projects going on at once anyway to be in the band without even asking the other 3 of us if we even wanted him in there.  I put up with for 3 years before passively-aggressively making my feelings known that this guy sucked and brought tension to the band until said guitarist put it bluntly to “quit pussyfooting around.  Either straight up say it or shut the fuck up.” So, I said it knowing it would hurt both of their feelings (it did), and then less than a month later the bassist situation came to a head.  Anyway, the day after the practice with the possible replacement, guitarist comes over for our usual lunchtime talk “guns blazing” ready to talk smack about his now former best friend and when I said that I wanted to reconcile with the guy and get rid of his musically untalented friend from our band, he flipped his lid big time and annulled our friendship and the band as well.  He went on a week later to say that in the time away from us, he’s lived a peaceful life free of bigotry, misogyny, and other stuff because we haven’t spoken as a band.  Now, let me point out that while outlandish things were said, they were all for shock value and stupidity.  Secondly, this guy had gone completely off the rails into far-left extremism and is an atheist.  Reason I mention these things is that when the off-color jokes got too intense for him, I politely asked him “ok, we’ll stop being stupid this way if you stop using the Lord’s name in vain.” Which of course he didn’t do and actually ramped up his GD’s and his constant Catholic bashing, and protestant bashing.  That’s not to mention the fact that he couldn’t understand my stance on touchy subjects like abortion, gay rights, transgenderism, and everything else that the far left, and even the left claim as reasons that Christians are bigots.  So, I let him know that I still loved him and for as much as he didn’t appreciate our poor taste joking, I felt peace too not having the blasphemy in my life anymore.  He said nothing after his little soapbox diatribe.  But that got me thinking.  This guy is a horrible person.  He’s a narcissist, a bigot, and a freeloader among other things.  I’m sure I lost friendships or had a bad light shown on me because of him.  We were the best of friends for 20 years and I put up with his shenanigans for that long because I truly loved him.  It was only after this what could be permanent fracture of our friendship that I realized just how bad of a person that he is.  Let me say that I’m not just talking trash because we’re on the outs.  I came to the realization after he basically told our bassist to go F himself.  Here’s why I think he’s a narcissist.  This article here is where I’ll point out his stuff from the 6 points it mentions in the section “Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder”:

1. Grandiose sense of self-importance – case and point, him bringing in 2 different guys into our band without even asking us, hating most of the music we’d suggest to only play his horrible music. 
2. Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur – This dude has a bad problem with love.  He is obsessed with his now ex-girlfriend and had this grand fantasy of this life that they were going to have.  He also hits on women no matter if they are married or not.
3. Needs constant praise and admiration – Oh man… on stage?!  Like you read about, this is him!  He’s suicidal and severely depressed as it is, but is always in need of constant attention and praise.
4. Sense of entitlement – Yep.  Kinda feels like this is a judgmental thing, but ties right in with what he does.
5. Exploits others without guilt or shame – oh man.  THIS one always gets me with him. Two glaring examples of this that personally involved me were 1: this dude just invited himself to my best friend’s wedding in Salt Lake City, Utah.  He said he wanted to go because he always wanted to see Utah and just assumed that it would be ok for him to go with me.  Of course, I’d be the asshole if I told him “Dude, you aren’t even that good of friends with him…” so he went with me.  Terrible.  2: While on a cross country trip (that his mom paid for, so that may skew some point of view on this… maybe?), we planned on stopping in two different places on the way back home from Annapolis, Maryland to El Paso, Texas.  One of those stops was with our mutual best friend in St. Louis.  He wanted us to go.  Cool. 2^nd stop we thought of was the greater DFW area.  I have a few friends and family there and he knew of one of them and insisted that we contact her to see about staying at her place.  Who the F does that?!  I felt so embarrassed, but considering that his mom flew us up to Baltimore and we had an all expenses paid roadtrip back down to El Paso, I felt guilted into doing something that personally I would NEVER do.  “…They don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends.” As the article says. THAT right there to the T!  Of course, I did it and felt horrible to ask my friend if we could stay with her, especially since she barely knew him.  As a side note, the bastard had the balls to ask her if he and his kids could stay there a year later when they drove up and did the trip again!  Really, man.  That’s just wrong in my opinion.  Terrible!
6. Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others – Oh man.  Here we go!  The far-left opinion of his?  THIS.  Very much THIS.  Oh, you’re not an “ally”?  oh!  You’re a Catholic?! Let me go out of my way to shame you, call you out, belittle you, and show you how I’m right.  This doesn’t even end there! ANY opinion that contradicts his?  Wrong.  Automatically wrong.  WTF!

The reason that I call him a bigot, by the way, ties into the narcissism.  He believes so much that his opinions on everything are right.  There is never any room for debate.  The one that always affected me is my strong faith in God.  Oh man, that was like lighting a can of petrol for him.  He would not only not respect my beliefs, but he would go out of his way to disrespect mine.  There are a lot of other examples, but that’s one right off the bat that I can point to.  Anyway, he’s out of my life now, and thank God for it.  He actually did the rest of us a favor.  We’re so much better off without him in our lives.  But with that said, the band is now dead. 

Now to a new topic that I just realized no more than 3 days ago.  I’m finally emotionally over my last ex-girlfriend.  Thank GOD for that!  Reason I know is that my heart no longer hurts when I even think of her name and now for sure when I see pictures of her that she either sent me or of us together.  Let me stop there and say that I wasn’t looking at those pictures, but when they’d come up on my google photos, my heart would sink, and I’d just feel like crying.  It was terrible!  Well, as of a few days ago, not anymore!  I’ve been going into my google photos to retrieve pictures of myself to post on an awesome group on Facebook that I’ve joined within this month and let me tell you that the compliments that I’ve been getting have been pretty awesome!  I have very low self-esteem, so to be getting compliments on my eyes, smile, etc.?  man, it’s been awesome.  If you wanna know a secret, I’m actually pretty attracted to one of the members of this group.  Her and I have a lot in common.  We are both self-professed nerds, physical movie collectors, love sports, we’re both really shy, and best of all, she’s beautiful.  We’ve been going back and forth on the threads in this group page since I’ve joined in there and even last night right away complimented a photo of myself in a suit by calling me handsome and saying a line that I always say, “I’m just telling the truth.”  HOLY SMOKES!  The only thing is that I’m in far west Texas and she’s in South Carolina.  We are really far apart geographically.  I would love to send her a private message and start to talk to her that way, but; A) I don’t want her to think that I’m just another guy “sliding into her DMs” to try and get her to do immoral things. And B) I don’t want to get my hopes up to think that if situation A doesn’t happen, and we really do connect even more, something may come out of it.  I know this is going to sound like I’m a jerk, but I’ve been burned twice in my offerings/attempts to move out to where my girlfriends were only to get my heart crushed by them both at the last minute.  What if me and this mystery woman connect more to a romantic interest side of things if I were to send this private message?  The best way to get to where she’s at is by plane and air travel is not only really expensive, but right now is a crapshoot at best with all of the labor shortages and COVID-19 madness going on.  Not that I’m putting the cart in front of the horse here, but considering that I’m not willing to completely drop my life to move way over there, would she be willing to move from there?  She’s not even from there and I don’t know how much family she does have in South Carolina if any, but that’s still a valid question.  Additionally, what if further feelings other than what I’m calling a crush on both sides develop?  I’ve always been of the mindset, even more so now as a practicing Catholic to discern marriage in a relationship.  If I’m not doing that, then I’m just wasting my time.  I do not want a relationship for, how would I say this, the physical benefits of said relationship.  That’s not what I’m interested in.  I want to find a woman to help me get to heaven with.  Who will grow with me in my faith.  Who will love me and desire me for such and desire the same things that I do.  As a practicing Catholic, that’s what I should be looking for.  Anyway, I hope I don’t come across like I’m already with this beautiful woman or anything, I’m just going through the possibilities of things if they were to happen.  Good thing though is that I know I’m desirable to at least a few women out there and my heart has finally let go of my past again. 

With that said, I hope all is well in your world, my friends!  Let’s end 2021 on a positive note and go into 2022 ready to rock!  Wear your mask, get vaccinated, and if you’re already vaccinated, GET BOOSTED!  And while you’re at it, start loving people.  There’s already too much hate in this world!

The Downfall of Meaningful Relationships

Good morning y’all and happy Monday!

I wasn’t really expecting to be writing something today, much less about the topic that I am going to write about, but I’ve been inspired by “The Counsel of Trent episode #455 – Catholic Dating Nightmares.”  Dun Dun DUN!!!!!!  Oh man!!!!  What an episode!  It is only 15 minutes and 22 seconds long, but a lot was packed into that episode.  A lot of truth, actually.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here, but I have been a victim of online dating a few times over.  The last two girlfriends I had were the result of online interactions, actually.  I didn’t meet them on dating sites, but our online friendships turned into romantic relationships, but they both ended in horrible disasters.  I have tried my hand at online dating as well with no success.  The thing that gets me about online dating is that nobody really wants to build a relationship.  Sure, they may type out on their profiles that they do, but really all most people want to do is hookup.  Personally, I think that’s part of the downfall of our current social world.  It seems as though everybody wants to forget about God and go into situations purely for their own gain and good, mortal sin be dammed.  It’s really sad.  People like me who are striving to live a chaste life pleasing to God are shunned and ridiculed, even amongst “religious” communities. 

It’s crazy, right?  It’s not just in the online world.  These opinions have bled over into the “real world”.  Wait.  This is the real world, right?  We’re not in a computer simulation, right?  Right?  Let’s just go with that, shall we? 

Anyway, I’ve been made fun of for a few things related to this topic.  Wanting to be married, wanting to have children, desiring Christ in my life, making God and His church the focal point of my life, not being materialistic, desiring a wife who wants all of those things as well.  Yep.  All of those things are black marks and I’ve been ridiculed for all of it.  It’s so wild to think that somebody who wants to be obedient to God is the one who is wrong.  Go figure. 

This is probably the main reason that I said a few blog posts ago that I have once again retired from the pursuit of a romantic relationship.  For what?  As Trent Horn quoted a woman named Meredith, a Tinder user, on his podcast; “Some people still catch feelings in hookup culture.  It’s not like just blind [sex] for pleasure and it’s done; some people actually like the other person.  Sometimes you actually catch feelings and that’s what sucks.”  W O W!!!!  Trent went on to say to that quote that feelings brought on by the marital act are an equivalent to an STD in this culture of ours that you don’t want to catch.  AMEN, brother!  How just terribly sad, right?  And boy, do I know about that culture.  My latest ex-girlfriend lives that life.  She didn’t understand why I was so emotional, and related to that, why I had an emotional attachment to her.  She’s been immersed in this hookup culture and could not understand that I wanted a long-term relationship built on an emotional bond and not some sort of physical, friends with benefits-esque agreement.  She even attacked my show of emotion when we had our one and only fight.  Gosh, how horrible, right?  Why subject myself to our horrible culture again when I know that’s what I’m going to find.  I’m really going to leave this one all on God’s hands.  He knows what is right for me.  He knows that I’m just trying to do the right thing. 

God help our society.  Things are more insane than I really realized.  I can see the Gabriel Iglesias meme dancing in my head right now of what I want to tell everybody… “You need Jesus!  That’s what you need!”

Talk later, my friends.

God Made US, But He Made Me A Little Bit Different

Good morning all and happy Friday!

Earlier this week I had started to write out a blog about vanity/narcissism and materialism, but I quickly went off the rails with it.  I trashed that writing and I’m going to try again.  Maybe if I put my opinion on front street first, I won’t jack this up.  Here it goes!

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been of the mind that money and whatever the current thought or trend of what attractiveness was is not what I strive in this world.  Now, with that said, heck yes, I play Powerball and Mega Millions once the jackpot reaches about 200 million dollars and more, but generally striving for an extra dollar an hour in wage or landing a job and immediately searching for the next higher paying one isn’t what I do.  Same can be said about my looks or the way I dress.  I’ve been wearing the same style of stuff forever and I’m comfortable with it.  T-shirt, shorts/pants, sneakers.  That’s about it.  Granted, the t-shirts have logos on them whether it be a favorite band, stupid saying, adult beverage of choice, or favorite sports team/professional wrestler or league, it’s always a t-shirt for me.  I’ve always been finding the comfort in the graces that God gives me and if He blesses me with more, that’s great.  If He doesn’t, I know that I have what He knows I need.

With that said, I’ve had conversations with a good friend of mine a few times over the months about desiring personal appearance alterations (trying to be nice in the way I phrase it), and from the perception that I see, her dating men with material wealth and basing a lot of her decisions of whether or not to continue dating these men heavily skewed on what they can provide for her monetarily.  Both of those things honestly make me cringe.  It’s messed up to even say that because I feel like I’m talking bad about my friend, and I hope that I’m not really coming across like I’m bashing her because I really love her and I don’t want to, but what I am bashing is this mentality that a lot of people in and around the generation that I was born in and going back to the baby boomers were taught.  That idea was best summed up in the film Wall Street.  “Greed is good.” 

I was born in 1980 and my parents at the tail end of the 1950’s, so then were in their mid-20s during the 80s when everything started to go about spending money and making sure you looked good doing it too.  Thankfully, my parents did not indulge too much into the idea, but said idea was all around us.  I’m a proud child of the 80s and still love the films and music that came out of it, but it did bring us the worship of vanity and the worship of money that still runs people’s lives today.

Money and the pursuit of it has never run my life.  As a matter of fact, I can go back to sometime in late 1998 to early 1999 when I had a conversation with my mom about what I wanted to do with my life.  I was set to graduate high school in the spring of 1999 and until my crazy two-day trip to see Metallica in Las Vegas on September 12^th, 1998, my plan was to become a locomotive engineer for what had just recently become Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.  That trip to Las Vegas right after a Friday night football game (my 3 buddies and I had one of the dads drive us up to Vegas, and we were all in marching band, that’s why we couldn’t go to the show the night before in Phoenix, Arizona) and getting into Las Vegas, Nevada early Saturday afternoon after a few hours of sleep in a motel somewhere in Phoenix, started to change the narrative in my brain that I was dead set on going into railroading.  What I saw when we first stepped foot into Circus Circus to crush their buffet pre-Metallica show changed my life.  I saw the teeming of excitement, the buzz that was people from all over the world coming together in this one city and having a blast.  I was immediately hooked.  I knew that if I couldn’t find a way to become a locomotive engineer for Santa Fe (I was still calling it that then because not too many BNSF liveries were yet making it down to where I could see them in El Paso), I’d want to work in Las Vegas at one of the big hotels.  I didn’t care what I’d do, as long as I was what I now know is called “the front of the house”.  From front desk, to change person, security guard, I wanted to be in the middle of the action.  The conversation that I had with my mom happened sometime after September 12^th and before my graduation sometime in May of ’99.  When I told her, pretty much, that I wanted to work in a host/security position for a major resort on the Las Vegas Strip, she said something to the effect of “They don’t make any money.  How are you going to live?”  and I told her something to the effect (might have been verbatim) “I don’t care.  I’ll find a way to live.  All I need is a roof over my head.”  I’m sure she just kinda shook her head and brushed off the idea, but I was holding steady on that idea.  I even wanted to have a graduation trip back to Las Vegas instead of choosing to go to Chicago to go see where my parents spent a few years of their life when dad was stationed there in the Navy and where my sister was born.  I told my dad that he HAD to go experience Las Vegas.  I remember him brushing off the idea because at the time he thought gambling was stupid.  He said something along the lines of “How the hell can putting money into a slot machine and probably losing it be fun?!”  Well, instead of telling me where we were going, he granted my wish, and we went to Vegas.  To warm up to the idea of gambling, he went to a casino that used to operate on tribal lands in our city and got hooked.  I think he had even more fun than I did on that trip and still goes to Las Vegas multiple times per year now (last year and up to now notwithstanding). 

Anyway, thanks to those two trips and the fact that at the time the National Academy of Railroad Sciences at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas required 30 college credit hours to even apply for the AAS degree (just looking at the page now, the requirements are very different and I would have been able to go right in after high school!  DAMMIT!), I had to choose something to fill up those 30 college credit hours.  I went to El Paso Community College and looked through their degree plans and stopped right at “Hotel/Motel Administration”.  AHA!!!!  “Hey!”, I thought, “I can get a degree in that and then apply at JCC and do that!  If BNSF falls though, then there’s always Vegas!”  ha!  Man, little did I know that to this day, I’ve never seen Overland Park, Kansas and my dream of being a locomotive engineer for BNSF has been filed under the “What could have been” folder of my life.  Damn, that folder has a lot of good stuff in it.  Perhaps I’ll talk about that in a later blog.  Remind me! 

I’ve gotten off topic again, but to circle myself back to the point, I never chased money.  I chased and continue to chase happiness and comfort.  I received my AAS degree in Hotel/Motel Administration in May of 2004 and I spent about 11 total years in the hotel industry.  I had 3 interviews at 2 different resorts in Las Vegas and didn’t get offered either job along the way, so I can’t say that I didn’t try to make my second dream come true.  You could say that I didn’t try hard enough, but I feel very much in tune with the will of God in my life and I felt that He told me that I tried enough… or maybe better said, Las Vegas wasn’t ever in my lifepath, and God wanted to show me that it wasn’t.

Now, for the past 10 years, I’ve been working in a Monday-Friday office job that I really do enjoy and want to keep at doing.  I’ve turned my love and passion of railroading into what it called “railfanning”.  I don’t take videos or pictures (I would love to, just haven’t yet) like most railfans do, but I love to find spots and watch trains pass by.  I especially love the special treat of watching AMTRAK’s Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle stop by here the few times a week it does heading both east and west along Union Pacific’s tracks going from Los Angeles, California to New Orleans, Louisiana or vice versa.  I get as excited to see a BNSF locomotive, a *clean* Union Pacific locomotive (hardly any of them are, sadly), the AMTRAK P40/42 locomotives an old school Santa Fe, Burlington Northern, or the special UP heritage locomotives each time as much as the first time I ever saw one as a kid.  I still love Las Vegas and get the thrill each time I walk or drive on the famous Las Vegas Strip too.  I just know my life has turned out exactly how our Lord willed it to be.  I feel very blessed to have been able to experience all that I have. 

Now, quickly to the other part of my topic in this post, personal vanity.  I’ve never really been that obsessed with looks that I can’t really fix with the help of diet and exercise.  I’m against cosmetic enhancements of any sort, whether it be the dyeing of one’s hair (unless you’re gonna go a crazy color like blue, pink, or any other unnatural hair color for the wild factor of it because I think that’s cool) or facelifts, tummy tucks, etc.  I think God has blessed us ALL with unique beauty and, for women, it’s all good to slightly enhance that with makeup (pretty much don’t go all drag queen with it is what I’m saying), but otherwise, age gracefully, you know?  I find natural beauty so much more attractive in a person than somebody who is constantly wanting to fix this or that.  In any event, my friend was telling me that she would love to go over to Ciudad Juarez to get a chin lift or whatever you’d call thinning out the beginnings of a double chin/drooping chin/whatever you’d call it.  Her sister did it and she says it looked great.  I thought to myself “Is this what really matters to her?  The way her chin might look in the future? “ I felt like asking her why she would want to do that, and furthermore why it matters.  Does she think a man might think she’s perfect aside from that one flaw (and mind you, it’s not)?  I get it, the first thing we notice about a person is their looks.  Why do you think I’m still single and never been married?  I’ll admit it, I’m a C.H.U.D., but that doesn’t change the fact that maybe I’m beautiful to the right woman, right?  A dude can dream.  I ended up telling her that she looked great, but whatever she wanted to do was cool too.  Something like that.  I’m not one to share my opinion about something to somebody that has the polar opposite opinion about it for the most part.  It still gets me though.  Why would she want a cosmetic enhancement?  Why do most women dye their hair too?  Age gracefully.  Trust me, ladies.  If you think that a guy will find you more attractive looking younger or whatever, chances are you’re looking for the wrong qualities in a guy.

But that’s just me.  What do I know?  Again, this is why I’m single.  Hahaha!  The important things to me (pretty much in this order) are:

1. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the church that He established here on earth, the Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church.
2. My family
3. My friends
4. Sleep
5. Music
6. Movies

Sure, there are others on that list, but those pretty much are my top 6.  You don’t need money for the first 4, and they bring me the most joy, so take that how you will.

Have a great weekend!