Cold Hard Facts

So Unemployment got yanked out from under me unexpectedly.  This happened about 6 weeks ago.  At this point I don't think I can get it back.  I need to find a job in a hurry.  Something I have in the past insisted I have always been good at.  However now I have to do it in an economy far crappier than any I have experienced before.  So now at a time when I have to put my money where my mouth is, I have to do it with no gas money to get anywhere to even look for a job...perplexing.  I am quite certain I will be able to do it, I just have no idea how...yet.....wish me luck people.

Directions

I have been throwing things at this blog sporadically for weeks now.  I know it need to exist, but can't figure out exactly what it needs to say and how.  Tomorrow I am going to try to go in a different direction with it.  I hope there will be some people watching.  Yes watching...I have something to say that needs to be said.

Decision made

Deep breath

Concentrate. You ready?

The past few days have been on the surface very low impact days.  However the last few days, have been anything but.  You see beneath the surface the clock in my head was telling me I was drifting well past the amount of time I needed to have certain decisions made.  It has been a battle of reality versus aspiration.  I presently lack the confidence that if I am able to aspire I will be left to do so.  The events leading me here to this present, where the hardships seem insurmountable left me with no choice but to doubt I can be kept safe from all of it happening again.  The more I worked the more they took until I had nothing left to lose and found myself in the one place that I should NEVER have been, I cannot allow that trap again.  I worked as hard as I could, and paid literally tens of thousands of dollars, and then went to jail and lost my job.  The outcome was unpleasant, and only a fool would repeat the same experiment and expect a different result.  The fact remains that I will not allow that to happen to me again.  Only one of my paths will virtually guarantee that what happened cannot be done again.  So that is the path I will take.  Please for those of you that think you might know me I AM NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING VIOLENT.  I can picture someone reading this and saying ‘Oh no he’s going to go postal, or commit suicide.’ For God’s sake I’m not the type to kill myself or fly off the handle and do something that rash.  Don’t get me wrong there have been times when I have felt in every bone that ending it would be easier.  Likewise there have been times when I have been SO furious at the people who fought for what happened to happen, and for those who handed it down, that I have been able to taste blood and see nothing but hatred and means.  Believe me when I say that I probably came dangerously close to a dead end without fanfare or regret, probably closer than even I want to admit.

The problem is I want to rise.  There are things I want and need.  True that list is smaller now than it was when I thought I was middle class.  However I know that I want for pride and a decent ride.  I will never give up.  I also won’t walk with my chin up and faith in the system.  I did that once and paid dearly for it.  I am going to see to my immediate security, and rework who I am, what I do, and how I do it until I find a combination that cannot be taken away.  From a position where I know I will have a roof over my head and food in my stomach no matter what, I will work to expand on that, with little tiny, safe, well protected, and fiercely guarded steps.  It might take me years to rebuild the life I lost, but when it’s done it will be a seamless construct without cracks or weaknesses or even the possibility of defeat.

So yes I have made a decision and the results of that decision have yet to be realized so during that process, facts about where I’m going and why will be made evident.  For now little I feel lighter, and this blog sees my cryptic hope.

The twist

Running down who I am and what I need to do to straighten out

is like chasing a ghost.  I’ve been looking back over the past 20 years.  I’m seeing where I have been and trying to recapture where I was mentally and financially at each stage of myself.  Trying to see where I have felt as though my accomplishments were real to me.  Seeing it I feel as though I only briefly made it into the spectrum of citizen.  I fear that I only was able to taste homeowner, that I didn’t belong amongst those who blend, and that I was occupying a ruse, a well-executed, but not sustainable ruse.

At first the feeling was scary and deeply unsettling.  It didn’t feel right, I felt cheated…I had EARNED those things, they were mine.  Then I started retracing my steps.  I saw the cracks, and lies…lies to myself included.  I looked at who and what was waiting for me at that home.  The friends, the neighbors, the roots; none of them felt right.  It was because I had never belonged.  It felt wrong to me because I never learned how to exist in that world.  I did my best to belong there…came close to pulling it off, but it was hollow, and eventually the wrong began to show.

I think I might finally see where it was I was going wrong.  I wasn’t being myself.  I was conforming to what I perceived I needed to be to succeed.  However at heart I didn’t know how to be that person.  It was destined to fail.  If I am going to find success it must be using only tools that I know and understand.  Only the weapons my upbringing and learning did give me.  The good news is that I didn’t use most of these tools and options the first time I climbed the ladder.  There were times that I felt they would have been appropriate, but somehow knew they didn’t belong.  It’s time to do it all again.  I think this time it will be harder, but once I get there, I won’t be susceptible to having it pulled apart.

I didn’t do it my way.

But clearly I should have.

Found it…

the music?

I remember my musical journey fairly well.  My mom used to let my sister and I get a tape once in a while.  My first few tapes were, Born in the USA, Duran Duran~Arena, Dire Straits~Brothers in arms.  Later I remember riding my Bike to Disc Diggers in Davis Square to buy used tapes.  This would have been 4th or 5th grade.  I bought myself License to Ill, in 6th grade.  I used to tape songs off the radio on a GE cassette player.  I saved up and bought myself a stereo with paper route money in 7th grade.  It had 2 tape decks, a CD player, and a record player.  It was awesome.  One tape deck would auto flip and play both sides, the other would then start playing.  I remember setting up 2 tapes to play so I could drift to sleep to music.  In High school I used to leave my stereo on all day I would walk in my remote was always by the door, and I would just turn it back up when I came back in the room.  My only prized possession in my late teens were my stereo and the several hundred CDs I had.  The apartment my room mate and I lived in when I met my ex had speakers in every room, including two 15" Rockford Fosgate Subs in the living room hooked up to my 240 watt Aiwa.  Even the bathroom.  It was so cool to walk through the house because as you got further from and closer to speakers the sound would surround you and get closer and further away.
I lived in a house that filled with music.  Now my computer and it's 3 speakers do their best to keep my mind occupied all day with songs...by mood...I always sorted my CDs by mood.  angry, moody, happy, deep, soft, mellow.  I always sorted by mood...other people hated looking for CDs but I knew where they all were.

maelstrom unedited and raw

I live in a house that’s filled with music.

I once wrote these words, in a different time and place.

I look at the stages of my life as they have been broken up.

Tewksbury-

I lived in Tewksbury when I was first born, I don’t remember much of the house, or my life within it.  I know my parents lost it, and moved to Somerville in to the 2^nd floor apartment above my paternal Grandmother and Grandfather.

Loring Street (the top) 

My Nona, as we called my Grandmother was an amazing woman.  She barely spoke English but worked her ass off as a seamstress.  My Grandfather was a pedophile, philanderer, wife beater, and first class asshole, he never touched me.  He was also crazy.  Certainly paranoid, but I would surmise, bi-polar or borderline personality more so.  We lived at the top of Loring Street in Somerville.  My Grandfather by my mother’s account was a constant psychotic nuisance.  Having lived in the same house with him later in life, I have no doubt believing this to be true.  My mother, left my father and moved in with her adoptive mother…at the bottom of Loring Street in Somerville.  Maybe 5 houses away.

Loring Street (the bottom)

My mother’s adoptive mother, was the woman I will always know as my maternal Grandmother.  My Nana was a tall outspoken Irish lady.  She did then and so far as I know still kicks ass.  I have a sister.  She was born not long before my parents divorced.  She was without a doubt too young to have any memory of my birth parents being together.  I have a handful, not many, none clear, but glimpses, feelings.  In the spirit of being myself and not over sharing I will simply move on to my next house.

Main Street Somerville.

Right off Broadway, at the top of Winter Hill.  The second floor apartment was old.  So was the woman who owned it.  My mother drove a 1969 Rambler Rebel station wagon.  It was yellow, it rarely ran, and stalled a lot.  I have a handful of memories from this apartment.  Watching The Empire Strikes back, walking back from the grocery store in a snow storm because the car wouldn’t run, grilled cheese cooked with the iron, my Uncle staying with us, my sister and I hijacking the car when my mother left it running to go into the liquor store.  My sister was driving while I gave directions on how to get to Child World.  The first turn would have sent us down the back side of Winter hill, from Main Street towards Meadow Glen.  From what I’ve been told my father told the landlady that my Uncles were my mother’s boyfriends and she was thrown out.  I don’t want to try to ascertain validity.  I was in Kindergarten, I went to St. Catherine’s in Somerville.  My daycare was Charmagne’s I had to walk 2 blocks from St. Catherine’s to daycare after school alone, my mother was at work.

Mt. Vernon St., Arlington

Mt. Vernon St.  was down the road from Bracket School.  I used to walk, crossing Gray St to Robbin’s Farm, across the park and to school.  This is when I began taking the bus to Vermont alone during February and April vacations.  My Uncle got me my first bike, it was blue, a no name yard sale item, but it was a good bike.  The kid out back took my training wheels off and I learned to ride by running and coasting with my feet off the pedals until I was comfortable enough to ride.  Halfway through third grade my Nana married a guy, and they both owned a house.  So we moved into an apartment in his house.  Grandpa skip was a good guy.  So for the other half of third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades I was back in Somerville.

Montrose St. Somerville.

I fought a lot in Somerville.  I had some good friends.  I was an altar boy.  There were no rapist priests at that parish so I was safe.  I once skipped day camp.  I went to after school, I went to Summer camp, I rode my bike all over Somerville, and wreaked havoc accordingly.  My mom got remarried.  We moved to Cambridge to her new husband’s mom’s house.  Skip is a good guy.

Haskell St. Cambridge.

I lived on Haskell St. for 7^th and 8^th grade.  I started working almost immediately.  I got a paper route, at the Boston Globe office when it was still on Day Street right outside Davis Square.  Then I started assembling the Sunday papers at the Pemberton Market, and answering phones at the Rectory for St. John’s.  Again no rapist priests.  Either that or they sensed that I would never be their victim.  Who knows.  Either was I was making money.  I used to ride the 77 bus to Harvard Square every Saturday to buy comics.  Usually just me, sometimes me and Paul.  I had regular stops.  Million Year Picnic, all the book stores, Newbury Comics, sometimes I would walk to the Americas games arcade down by Central Square then walk back to Harvard Square to take the bus home.  I remember that I would always see the bus pull up on the upper floor platform and sprint up the mezzanine to catch it from the bottom of the escalators.  I worked at the Cambridge License Commission between 7^th and 8^th grades.  For 9^th grade I chose to go to Matignon.  A parochial school and way smaller than Rindge and Latin.  My mom and Step dad bought a 2 family in Arlington, and my Birth father was arrested for fucking with his 2^nd wife who he had just divorced.  He was driving to her house arguing for visitation with my sister, he was stopped near the house and had an unregistered gun in the car.  This was right about the time I started high school.

Highland Ave, Arlington.

I went to school, I worked, I was still delivering papers.  I averaged 5 W2s every years of high school.  Badger, Dolan, Parker, and Cohen, McDonalds, D’Angelos, Ames Safety Envelope, Sheepskin and Leather, Ann & Hope, White Hen Pantry, Magic Dragon, Olympic Pizza, The Globe all the way to my Senior Year, Herrel’s Ice Cream, Discount Records, I delivered comics to about a half dozen stores between Watertown and Natick.  After high school I floundered, couldn’t deal with Community College, had a car, but didn’t know how to make the next step.  I joined the National Guard.  I did it myself.  I didn’t ask my mom, I went in took the Asvab that day, talked to a recruiter alone, and signed up.  I needed to get away.  I was angry, and I hated everyone around me.  I wonder now, despite the fact that I could always work and was always a decent employee is there wasn’t something so fucked up inside just waiting to help me unravel.

That was 16 years ago.

After Basic Training…

I worked more, Papa Ginos, Fiberspar, Friendly’s, Autozone, SeMass, Howie (laborer) Realty Development (I had a real estate license but worked on the construction crew), Moved to Maine bought a house, with my ex and my son.  Landscaping (raking), More Carpentry, went back to school, delivered pizza, was a substitute teacher, more carpentry, more pizza, got hired at the Jail.  Got divorced, went to jail, washed some dishes.

What the Fuck am I supposed to do now.  Because I can’t for the life of me make myself move.  I’m angry, I’m lost, I’m tired.

The trainwreck

Anyone out there still tuning in?
I get maybe 3 or four peeks a week.  I have a feeling they're the same persons.  However there are random hits in Russia, and Canada, and Europe.  Who are you folks?  Why does this little sliver of tortured existence interest you?  I'm not prying or discouraging you, please join in on the day by day struggles.  As an American the crap I'm going through is fairly new to me.  However I realize that in other parts of the world this is the norm.  Feel free to comment with your story(s)...I'll listen.  I will also point out that if anyone is interested in buying a ticket for the trainwreck...the donate button over there is just paypal...I won't steal your information or tell you about my Nigerian money laundering scam.  Give a dollar, give 50 cents.  Paypal is the only bank account I have at the moment...pretty crazy.
If things in America get crazy...I'll be right out there in it...but I'm not crazy or random....I'm waiting for the opportunities anarchy might bring... :)

Affirming defamation

I am all that I am.

I live and breathe.  A myriad of life experiences have shaped my abilities and shortcomings.  Who am I really?  I have since my youngest childhood memories experienced violent dreams.  They continue to this day.  As such when I experience real violent experiences I am hardened to them.  I don’t suffer debilitating fear, I don’t panic at all.  I have proven this fact several times during violent or traumatic situations at the jail.  I have responded without hesitation on several instances, and never once failing to act quickly and deliberately.  When they are over I am in great spirits.    I have conquered in the real world a demon from my subconscious. 

I am not a genius, or a mathematician.  I will say that I am smarter than many of my peers, however the way in which my mind works is what gives me the edge.  I don’t think I’m as smart as some of the testing indicates.  I think I test well.  However the reason I test well is because I fundamentally understand the nature of the test and the reasons behind the questions.  Therefore I am more able to anticipating the answers, it isn’t about knowing the answers, and it’s about understanding the need the question presents.  I carry this slightly askew thought process with me into conversation, work, and life.  I see things in motivations and rhythms and I enjoy understanding them.  In this way I tend to infer more from many situations than someone else might.  I am particularly comfortable with picking up on subtle inferences in spoken language.  Not lies or truth, that’s not how I work, I am good at picking up WHY someone chose the words they chose over other words.  You get an idea of how someone talks then listen to them relating things and you will get a sense of their attitude, motivations, and intent from how they say what they say.

I am comfortable standing in front of a group talking, and have prepared lesson plans and followed through on them.  I have been a long term substitute teacher. 

I am comfortable building things.  I am not a mechanic, but I can do brakes, change switches, doors and body panels, bolt on engine components, I can name most internal engine components and explain their function and placement within the engine.  I have framed houses, and done basic finish work, like hanging doors, installing and trimming windows, doors, and baseboard.  While rusty I have the basic skill set and tool familiarity to not look out of place in residential or wood commercial framing.  I can drive scissor lifts, aerial boom lifts, off road forklifts or lulls, front end loaders, small excavators, bobcats, and bosses crazy with bad jokes.

I can do things behind the wheel of a car that probably should NEVER be done.  I have paid some healthy fines because of a few of them.  However Age gradually slows me down and smartens me up a ‘little’ every year.  I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I have only driven a 5 speed a few times and really am not good at it.

I am not a salesman.  I am not comfortable trying to coerce someone into making one decision over another.  However if someone presents me with a problem or idea, I am very good at coaxing enough details to really solve the problem well, or providing a solution that is optimally ideal.  Oh yeah and I’m probably crazy but in the right circumstances I am a dynamic, creative, highly capable, fearless employee.  I don’t get intimidated, I know my place in a hierarchical structure, I am comfortable with policy and procedure, and know how to cover everyone’s ass.

Even though I can pass the PT tests, and have the ASVAB scores for most of the military positions I would like to go for I am ineligible due to age, and circumstances surrounding my civil contempt conviction.  This to me is very ironic.  I am as fit physically, and far more seasoned than so many of the candidates that would be considered ideal.  I don’t know what I’m suited to that I am still qualified for.  The help wanted are maddening.

Last but not least.  I learn very quickly.  I understand systems and am quickly able to find and optimize my place within them.  I have little doubt I could learn any job, on the job simply by looking on with or shadowing someone else doing the job for a fairly short period of time.  Not that any of that matters.  I am unemployed, and saddled by future support obligations, and a myriad of negative circumstances making any initial impression worthless over the multitude of candidates with less baggage.  The job hunt is beginning now, however simultaneously preparations must be made in case the job hunt is not successful due to the aforementioned baggage.  I present…dawn creeping over the horizon…the next few weeks should be enlightening.