Hello and welcome to my blog. I am John Loraine and I am a poet and a writer. Check out my new book, a collection of short stories and poems “Nicetown”. Thank you for reading. Cheers!
( This piece has no literary value. From the late-night beer-infused Saturday night rant series)
The cold beer feels great going down my throat. I actually feel fucking great. I fucking love my beer. I fucking love to just sit back, play some music, drink my beer, knowing that there is nothing else I have to or want to do. There is a vinyl record spinning on the turntable. I realized that I hadn’t used the turntable in a while. What a shame. I have over two hundred records collecting dust, but I am not doing shit about it. I know I have them. I know where they are. I realize what a bunch of great fucking record collections I have, but I’m just too busy dealing with life to enjoy that music. I just keep forgetting to get back to it, to enjoy it a little bit. There are records that I acquired years ago, and I still remember where I bought them and sometimes even how much I paid for them. Certain memories stay with you forever. They might not always be the most important memories, but there is something special about them, so I still have some recollection of the time and space, my life then, my experiences, and my thoughts… Music is one of the greatest things in life. It can be both tangible and intangible. You can just sing the song out loud, and it would make you feel happy. But also, you can have a 180 mg vinyl playing on the turntable, which would bring the greatest joy and satisfaction. I am not a hoarder, but I do love collecting certain things. I love to have them, to see them, to touch them, to smell them. I am a young fella, but I do love the old shit. The old music makes me feel great. The black and white movies make me happy as well. It seems like back in the old days of black and white TV, or when music was pressed on vinyl, life was so much fucking better. It seems like life back then was more fun, it was more real, and authentic, and you could feel and smell things and get a great sense of the past life. I get some sort of weird nostalgia while experiencing the old things, the old school, the old way. I think that even cigarettes were a hundred times better for you back then. Somehow, the more we advance as a civilization, the deeper we get into the nowhere. Somehow the things are so fucking dull and tasteless and surreal that I don’t even what to be part of any of it. Fuck it all. I want to be real. I want the real shit. I want good wine or beer, a good piece of meat, a good cigarette, and fresh morning air filling my lungs. I want the smell of a freshly printed paperback. Nothing smells better than a fresh, brand-new paperback or a cup of great, freshly brewed coffee. I mean, how much do you really need to be happy? If you really think about it, it is not that much. The little things always make the man feel alive, feel like a man, and that life is worth something. These are the nights in white satin, and there is so much about the nights, and satin, and music, and beer, and life, and cigarette burning in your hand while you sit back and let go. Just go on. Let me take a little breather. Let me take a little break from all the fucking madness, for fuck’s sake. Do I have to be present, worried, and responsible for everything? Sometimes, I feel like I can move mountains. But sometimes, the opposite is true. Sometimes, I just want to fuck off. I want to sit on my sofa in my basement, endlessly drinking my beer while listening to music and writing down all my nonsense. One day, I decided I wanted to be a writer. And I became one. I don’t write all that much, but I have written a lot. I am trying to be to stay productive. Before, it felt like a foreign concept. It felt like a dream. And then, some days later, I made that dream come true. I made that dream come to life, giving me something to live for and strive for. It usually takes me a lot of time to come around, but when I do, I am on it. I love watching myself becoming a new me. The old me was a dick, a confused nobody, a lowlife, a useless fuck. Once I overcame that mental roadblock and explored new territories, things started to move, to come about, and things started to happen. Good shit started to happen. And I couldn’t be more happy with that. I couldn’t be more happy with myself. And I couldn’t be happier seeing myself producing the words through poems and the short stories that eventually became books years later. Fuck. I fucking made it. I fucking made it happen. I became a true writer. Something that was just a dream and some sort of delusional obsession had become my new reality. I am a writer with two self-published books, and the third one is in the closing stages. I am doing something. I am being productive, maybe not as productive as I could’ve been, but slowly and surely, shit is happening. And now, looking back, I don’t feel bad at all. I feel satisfied. I feel like I made my dream a reality. I am a writer. Even though no fans are knocking at my door. Even though there are no sales and book lists. Even though there are no book deals, I still outperformed my old self from those early desperate years, and I have some proof to show for it. But mainly, I proved to myself that the dream is possible. A simple dream is possible for anyone, even losers, as I have been for most of my life. Dream your dreams, my friend, and go after them. It will open a new world for you worth something. It is definitely much better than sitting on your ass doing nothing at all, waiting for death to come and take you away, or waiting for the next day, just hopelessly hoping it would bring anything better. I waited a fair amount of time in my life this far. I have no fucking patience no more. I want it all, and I want it now. I have no time to waste. I have no time to lose. The only fucking thing I do have besides my sorry-ass is the time, and I am on that fucker all the time. I hate to waste time. I hate to lose it. I hate somebody else taking and wasting my fucking time. I guess there is a reason why I own ten watches. I do fucking have a deep appreciation for the time and watchmaking, indeed. I cherish every minute that goes by, goes sideways, into infinity as I get older and wiser or dumber, or whatever. Time is a fascinating thing. It comes through you and leaves scars on your soul and face in the form of sadness, anxiety, deep wrinkles, gray hair, and bad eyesight. Time is all we have…
Silver Mercedes-Benz E-class pulled out of the parking space and slowly rolled out of the huge rectangular parking lot towards the gates on the west side of the corporate building. The twenty-year-old car was well polished, with clean, shiny rims and tires, and with original light-blue window tint, and it never looked true to its age. Behind the wheel was a man in his mid-thirties with a mid-size black beard and dark aviator shades. The man was dressed in a nice, white-crisp dress shirt, black jeans, and black dress shoes. His name was John Brahmovski. He was exiting the company’s parking lot and heading home. It was time. It was five minutes past five o’clock.
One after another, cars pulled out of the parking lot, exiting the premises. The working day was over. Now, people were living on their own time, at their own expense, heading home thinking about the rest of the day, their homes, families, bills to pay, dinner to eat, friends to visit, kids to take care of, or just get home and binge-watch something on TV. This is our modern life, and we are all part of it in one way or another, and there are many ways to live it. We all have our choices, and we all make our choices. As long as we all have a job, we are good. There was at least one less thing to worry about on those warm, sunny, late-summer evenings.
The man in his mid-thirties pulled closer to the gates and waited for them to open. The motion sensors on the black metal gates triggered and pulled to the left, letting cars exit the parking lot. The man hit the right turn signal and joined the early evening post-work traffic. Inside the car, loud rock music was playing from the CD through the half-open window, and the man searched around with his right hand for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He hasn’t smoked all day. He was dying for a cigarette. This has been his first day on the new job. This might as well be the first day of his new life. Just yesterday, he’s been unemployed or unemployable, as he often joked about himself, and now he was back in business.
The new job was with a respected car company, and the pay was decent. His new team seemed like a bunch of good people from first sight, and the first day overall went pretty damn smoothly. There was nothing to worry about. It was time to relax, take it easy, and enjoy the ride while it lasted. He knew damn well that there was no security with any jobs anywhere anymore. There was no hope for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. There is only one hope to make it home to see your family, have dinner with them, have a glass or two of red wine, and smoke a cigarette before going to bed, forgetting about the day passing. As he joined the traffic, he lit his cigarette and exhaled a huge cloud of smoke through his window and into the evening traffic. It felt liberating. It felt really good. Smoking is never fucking good for nobody, but also are so many other things that make a man feel great. Somehow, the only healthy things are the ones nobody wants to do or consume. Paradox. There was always this side and the other side. He was too young to think about the other side yet. Life has just begun. Fuck it all. Live and let live, man. Just keep it simple and keep it rolling until the wheels come off.
Mercedes was rolling on the highway, switching lanes frequently, depending on the traffic. He was an experienced driver. He saw, reacted, acted, and made his moves smoothly, feeling the traffic, reading the road and the lanes, and feeling for those who didn’t know how to drive in that evening madness. He exhaled the thick white cigarette smoke up in the air as the music blasted on the car speakers. Cigarette, music, speed, new job; he had plenty of reasons to be excited. Life wasn’t fair to him for a while, and it almost felt strange to see it change in such a new and much better direction. Why not be happy for once? Sometimes the sun shines through the rain, motherfucker, he recalled the quote from an old classic rock song. Here comes the sun over my head, he thought, driving seventy miles per hour with his front window half open and the five o’clock sun warming his face from the West.
At home, his wife and their three-year-old son were waiting for him. He was excited to see them again after a long day at work. They’ve been inseparable for a long time, and now daddy has a new job. John was unemployed for the last five months as it was a pain in the ass to land a new gig. The prior job fired him based on poor performance. John disagreed with that conclusion as he always worked his ass off working long and late hours to get the job done. No attempts of his to make it all work were appreciated. He got no support on that job, only criticism. Fuck ‘em all, he thought. He actually thought about that firing a lot over the months that passed. He knew those fucks hated him, and he grew up to hate them back. Feelings were mutual, and the firing wasn’t a surprise to nobody at the end of the day. He had no choice. He accepted that, knowing that he was used and betrayed. Yet another corporate bullshit he had stumbled upon. That kind of shit just never ends. The saddest thing was that he was his family’s primary and only breadwinner, and they enjoyed living off his six-figure salary for the last two years. There was never a concern about grocery shopping, buying things, month-long vacations in Florida, going out to dinners, or meeting friends, and countless evenings around the family dinner table with light jazz music, a nice meal, and a top-shelf bottle of nice red wine. It all ended in one day, and they had to readjust to a new, humble, conservative life. As time went by and the countless job searches led nowhere, his shit was out of luck. He thought about his future and his family’s future more than ever.
John wrote in his journal about the day he received Food Stamps.
“I checked my mail late in the evening after taking out my trash, and the Food Stamps card came in the mail. Inside, opened the letter, and there it was. The help from the government to me because I have fallen so low in life. I looked at it, and within seconds, I felt both sadness and embarrassment, as I had not felt for a very long time. There was more embarrassment than anything else that I felt at that moment, and I feel the same fucking embarrassment right now thinking about that Food Stamps card that has been untouched on my island table since it came yesterday. It needs activation. I need re-activation in my life as never before. I came from a six-figure salary down to this, a Food Stamps card, and two-and-a-half-month delayed unemployment compensation, which I also received earlier this week. I had to cash out my 401K plan savings from my old job a few weeks ago, losing around 4K in that transaction. And that is my life now. I never worried about saving money or spending while I had a job. Now, I have nothing, and nothing is even close to a potential future opportunity. I have fucking hit the rock bottom yet again. How did I get here? Where did I make the wrong move? I always thought I was following the rules and doing the right thing. I have signed up to do the right thing since my early days. Now, this right thing is no longer required, needed, or helped me in any way.”
Interstate 95 was busy that evening, and John navigated the traffic as well as he could. He was not in a rush. The rush was over for him. He enjoyed this great new feeling that overwhelmed him. That was the feeling of new beginnings. The feeling of hope, new life, and a new chance, a new journey. He felt worthless so much and so often that knowing that there was a job now that needed you and paid you well, and you could be great at it, and you could build your fucking career, as a result, was a great feeling. Also, he was mainly happy because he could provide for his family again, just like in the good old days. Over the last five months, we felt like shit often. His hands were tight, nobody needed him at the job, and there were no decent jobs to get into. All he had was his loving family, his balls, and his persistence. Sometimes, there are no other options but waiting. Wating is a killer of the soul. He’s been waiting forever. There was always something else dragging him down, staying in his way, other people who were just shitty fake people he had to deal with. There was always too little or too much of everything happening at the same time. There were a lot of great moments, but there was very little to no time to enjoy them because of this or that; mainly, there was too much job bullshit in his world, and he had to make it work somehow in the name of providing a great life for his family. He would do anything for his family.
“I do feel sad somehow. I do feel sad and useless that I am unemployed. I know that having a job at least makes you somewhat important to society and makes you feel better about the opportunity to provide for your family. I am living on my last dimes, and I don’t give a fuck about society. But I still feel down. I feel like after 50+ applications that I’ve completed and the interviews I’ve done this far, all went to shit. I don’t even feel like joining a professional workforce, but I know that I have to. The longer I am unemployed, the worse it is for me. I wish I could be as happy as I thought I could be, but I am not. The unemployment checks have not come yet; I would feel more secure once they get through. That is not much, but it is something. Right now, I will run out of money in about a month. My credit card is getting filled with more misery each day, and I know I have to spend money. I need to spend money, but also, I know that that shit will be hanging over me like a fucking seesaw. I want to be in the moment and enjoy this present moment, but I can’t. I am just not. I feel like a loser without a job or income and not much money left to live on. I would have to spend my mother’s or my son’s savings, which breaks my heart and makes me feel even more miserable. I don’t want to spend all this precious vacation time applying for jobs. I just do a bare minimum to satisfy the unemployment claim, but these fuckers haven’t completed a single of my claims yet. I don’t know what to do. I sent them an email today. I need to be more proactive with that shit. I need that misery of compensation regardless.”
It was about an hour and ten minutes commute home. It was just enough time to be with yourself and process life while driving. John’s car turned onto his neighborhood’s street, where everything seemed familiar and felt like home. The sun was still up and shining through the window of the car. He smiled, happy to see his house down the street, the second to last house on the right. Other neighbors returned from work, filling the street with their cars. John parked by his house and went inside. His three-year-old son heard him coming in and ran towards him, screaming excitedly and smiling. John picked him up, raised him high, and hugged and kissed his son. He missed that kid so much. It was always good to be back home. There was a smell of something cocking coming from the oven, and he knew that his wife was cooking something good for dinner.
“Hey, welcome back, daddy,” said John’s wife. “How was your first day at work?”
“Hey, I missed you guys,” John hugged and kissed her. “It was alright. Actually, it’s better than expected. I think this might be a good place to work overall. I work with nice people, have a nice office and a friendly environment. I’ve been looking for this job for a long time, and finally, I found what I was looking for.”
“That’s great to hear. I am glad that you like your new place.”
“Yeah, I am glad too. I was ready for anything after such a long break from work, and I would take anything at this point, but thank God, this job doesn’t suck. Fingers crossed, I can stick around at least for the duration of the twelve-month contract, and then we will see.”
“Sounds good. I’m almost done cooking the salmon, and the rice is ready. Go change, and we’ll have dinner.”
“How was the little one behaving today?”
“He was good for about five minutes, then became restless. We went outside to play, we did shopping, we tried to sleep in the afternoon, but he couldn’t, so he’s been playing and running around all day long.”
“Got it. Hopefully, he’s tired by now, and we’ll put him to bed earlier today.”
“Fingers crossed. But that kid never seemed to be tired. I am ready to go to bed right now.”
“I hear you.”
“OK. Go change quickly. Dinner is getting ready. We are so hungry, and I hope you are hungry too.”
“Yes, I am. Very hungry.” Said John and left upstairs to change.
Family dinner around the table was his favorite thing. He loved seeing his family close together, eating, listening to light jazz music on the speaker, talking, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. He opened the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of red wine. It was a perfect occasion to have good wine for dinner with his family. It became a tradition in a way. John’s wife served the dinner, and they all ate like a small, happy family. People don’t need much to be happy, after all.
After dinner, he bathed his son in the bathtub, and his wife went to put their son to sleep. John cleaned the table and the dishes loaded the dishwasher, and sat on the rocking chair to relax. A nightstand lamp lit the room with a warm yellow light, and the classical music played in low volume on the speaker. John sat there and looked around. It was still unbelievable to him that he made it this far through all the bullshit he had to deal with along the way. Life wasn’t easy. It never is. One has to be strong to make it through and to make it work.
Plenty of times, his hope dissolved in the daily misery and chronic depression that overtook him occasionally. He knew that sooner or later, the job would eventually present itself. The only concern was the timing. Time was never on his side. Time was running out and running fast, along with all his savings, and then there were problems, concerns, anxiety, and depression. In two weeks, it would be his thirty-sixth birthday. Birthdays were not exciting anymore. The more you mature, the more you realize that life wasn’t easy with all the problems piling up, unbearable hangovers, there was no time for anything, and there always was too much to deal with every single day. But now, things would be different. Now, there is another chance. The chance he was waiting for a very long fucking time.
John smoked a cigarette outside before going to bed. It was a warm and dark summer night. He could see the stars above and the planes going back and forth about their business. John watched the nightly sky often, and often, he thought to himself how huge this world is, how infinite the sky is, and that there are so many things out there in the universe and the world. He was just so insignificant, almost invisible part of it. Since his childhood, he has always dreamed about his big future. He was always full of hope or just a hopeful fool. Life had its plan for him, and slowly, it unfolded before him. Just yesterday, he was a useless, broke, unemployed, miserable man, staring at the same sky, wondering and asking questions. Today, his world has changed. He knew it. He felt it. He changed inside, even though one couldn’t tell yet. Somehow, he felt a bit of sadness deep down. It wasn’t the kind of sadness that you feel when you are depressed. It was the good kind of sadness you feel when you know you’ve moved on to the better things, the new beginnings.
Back at home, he opened his laptop and wrote in his journal before bed. Tomorrow is a new day, and he will have another chance.
Journal, August 1, 2023
“Well, here I go again. My favorite month of the year is here. It is the month I was born. It is the beginning of a new life, in a way. It is the first day of my new job at this new company. The first day came and went pretty damn calm and easy. I loved the environment, and overall, the fucking office was the best I ever worked at. The people I will be working with all seemed to be nice. There seemed to be some sort of special and relaxed vibes in that place, which surprised me. I mean, the last company supposedly had a nice group of people, but something felt terribly wrong since day one. Here, it is not like that. It’s kind of relaxing. Or maybe I have matured and grown a pair of balls, and I am no longer an anxious and fearful little asshole, afraid of everything and everybody. The office, for the first time in my life, is not fucking freezing cold. From the fifth story, I have a beautiful view of Philly’s downtown skyscrapers on one side and the rest of New Jersey on the other. From what I’ve seen and heard, this job is definitely a few levels up from where I came from. I have to catch up quickly and well. I mean, I am new, and they tolerate that for now, but I have to step up so I don’t embarrass myself and don’t disappoint these nice people and myself. I will do my best. I mean, what the fuck else am I supposed to do? I’ve got my new chance in life and my career, and everything looks promising. I hope to evolve and acclimate fast and well. I am so fucking tired of constantly looking for new jobs, changing jobs, running away from my insecurities, and looking for something almost impossible to find. I mean, let’s make something out of this one. I have a twelve-month contract. They could fire me way before that if I fuck up. So I need not to fuck up or, at least, survive the next twelve months there, learn as much as I can, and my career horizon would expand significantly for any future opportunity. Well, will see how it is all going to play out. At the moment, I am happy where I am. I will try not to fuck it up. I will try to step up to the game in the best possible way. I am fucking happy I’ve landed this new fucking job at last. Thank you, God, and everybody who prayed, helped, supported, and contributed. I do have another chance at it. I am out of Business Analytics for good if this job doesn’t go well. But in the meantime, I am ready to take my chances and for this new life in front of me. Good things are fucking happening. Thanks God.”
It was a Sunday, the day of the Lord. I woke up with a major headache and wanted to pee very badly. I’ve been up late last night drinking myself to stupor, and now I am paying for it. I opened my eyes and looked around the room. It was the same room, nothing unusual. The room was still dark, and I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I assumed it was still night. It was hard to keep my eyes open, so I kept them closed as I rolled out of bed. I remember the way from my room to the bathroom by heart. I walked it so many times. We lived in this house for the last two years, and it was our new home. I went to the door and opened it. I was trying to walk through the door passage and hit the frame. Fuck. Why? I knew why exactly. I was still drunk as shit. I moved out of the room and into the hallway to the bathroom. My wife slept with our kid across the room.
We slept separately since the baby started to move around the bed more, pushing his way through the bed. There was not enough space for us to sleep on one queen-sized bed anymore, so I decided to move out. It was the right decision. I had to wake up early every morning to do some writing and then to start work. Back in the pandemic days, I worked from home like most people. Now, this was in history, and I had to drive to the office three days a week. Also, this was a great decision because I could get drunk or smoke cigarettes before going to bed, and it wasn’t a problem for anyone. Drinking affected my motor skills the most. I could still think well and analyze my surroundings, but my feet would not listen. With the next move, I hit the wall. Shit. I hope I woke nobody up. I was about two steps away from the bathroom. I opened the doors and hit the lights. The fucking fluorescent spotlights hit my eyes like a sucker punch in my face. My headache exploded, and I felt a sudden and sharp pain inside my brain. Damn. This red wine really got me this time. It was going down so smoothly last night. I wasn’t expecting this kind of abuse. The toilet seat looked at me, and I felt relieved. I pulled down my boxers and sat down to pee.
Sitting down to pee wasn’t homo for me. It was more relaxing, and I could really focus on the duty much faster and not miss the bowl. Also, it was more sanitary. We were busy people, and cleaning the piss smell every day was not an option or possibility. I had to work every day, and my wife had to babysit a toddler, which wasn’t an easy task, to say the least. My hard-on from all the drinking barely fit inside the toilet, but I managed to put it inside and relieve myself. The hot, smelly stream hit the toilet bowl, and my headache worsened by the second. I could feel my head pulsing. I could feel my brain on fire. I could feel my insides hurting. I could hear the loud piss stream for almost two minutes before it was over, and then with my eyes closed, I just sat there trying to get myself together and not to think too much because my head was exploding.
I felt great to get all that wine piss out of my system. It felt great to break the endless strick of the never-ending and super annoying dream cycle of the same fucking dream that rolled on and on, over and over for the last few hours of my sleep. I’m glad that my blodder decided to help me out. I glanced at my watch; it was five minutes before four in the morning. I always wore a watch on my wrist, no matter what. I wore a watch during the day, in the shower, and in bed. I am one of those people who should always have a watch on their wrist, even if you don’t actually need it all that much.
Four o’clock felt better. That meant that I could now go back to sleep and have enough sleep to fucking sleep off the wine overdose from last night before the new day began. I knew the kid would be the first to wake up every morning. He wakes up and goes downstairs to his playroom and plates. Sometimes, he gets bored playing alone and goes up to my room, wakes me up, and invites me to play with him. I love the fact that he does it. I love that my son wants me in his life, even if it’s just to play with him. As a first-time father, it is important to have, observe, and feel these things. On the flip side, I never have a chance to get a good amount of much-needed sleep. During the week, I can’t get enough sleep because of work, and on the weekend, I can’t get enough sleep because of my drinking habit.
I did some minimal calculations in my head, and I had about a good four hours of sleep before the new day began. I stood up with my eyes closed and pulled my boxers up. I flushed the dark yellow pee down the drain and walked slowly toward the door. There is a big mirror in the bathroom, and I glanced at it for a second as I was passing by. I didn’t like the look of the person I saw. The hair was all screwed up and messed up on the left side, and the face was all puffed up and swollen. I had huge dark bags under my eyes, and the eyes themselves were red and glassy. The person in the mirror was me. I hated that look more than anything. I hated to be that drunk and in so much pain. I did it to myself. I keep doing it to myself over and over again.
A couple more steps brought me to the doorway with a light switch to my left. I flipped the switch and walked the hell out of there and into the pure darkness of my hall. My room was to my left, and I rushed myself inside like I was about to lose control of my body and I needed something to lean on. Fuck. Why would I have to drink so much? I closed the door as quietly as possible and fell on my bed. I closed my eyes and dozed off in a minute. The booze was taking me over, and I had no control over it. All I could do was to sleep it off. And I slept until the morning.
The best thing about living in the suburbs is the dead quiet at night. It’s even better if your street doesn’t have street lights. Whenever the sun sets down, then the night comes. It is dark and empty outside, and also very peaceful. I love those peaceful evenings in the late Spring, throughout the summer, and early Fall when sitting on the patio outside was a pleasure. I spent a lot of time sitting outside alone in the darkness of the night and in the comfort of my backyard. I had my drinks and cigarettes keeping me company. That was the time to think, to reflect, to drink, and to forget.
I have always so much on my mind that it gets tough to pass through all that mental baggage I’ve accumulated over the past three decades. As an adult, the mental baggage never seems to go away or get even remotely lighter. There are only more shit to take care of and problems to deal with as days go by, as my youth vanes, as I am battling my demons trying to survive. I’ve had it worse. Much worse. Life was never easy on me, and I was never easy on it either. There has always been a gamble, challenge, and the next thing, whatever it was. There were days when I couldn’t fucking move, as I was so depressed and stressed out, constantly overthinking every stupid thing and making a problem out of everything. I made a slave out of myself, chaining myself to some weird, obscure thoughts and fears that paralyzed my brain, my freedom, and my thought process.
I used to be a mess for a very long time. I never had a positive thought all the way through my twenties and into my mid-thirties. Shit just could never align for me. I had to hustle all the time, and once I stopped, I fucking felt like everything stopped. And the next thing I knew, the world crumbled under my feet, and I was falling into yet another deep and dark valley of constant depression and anxiety. Maybe that’s why drinking was an easy way out. It helped me to forget. I helped not to care too much. It helped only temporarily because, on the next day, I always needed more, but the magic wore off, and the hangovers came, and I found myself as miserable as a person can be.
The sun was up and shining through the window into the room as I slept in the same position I had assumed some hours before. I fell on the bed after my midnight bathroom break. I heard the birds chirping outside, and I heard my kid running around the house, making noise, trying to get some attention. I couldn’t open my eyes just yet, but the minute my brain awoke, I felt every cell inside. I felt it through the numbing and still pulsing pain all over. The next thing I noticed was the bad breath from the red wine. Damn, how I hated that smell. I tried to flip onto the other side, and my internal pain flipped as I did that. Shit, why did the morning come so fast? I needed another night to recover from last night’s alcohol overdose. Let me stay here, in my bed, under my blanket, behind the closed door for a while and relax. Let’s just forget about everything. Maybe I could get another hour or so before somebody breaks into my room and wakes me up.
There was no liquid in my head, and my mouth was dry and smelled disgustingly of red wine from last night. I turned towards my nightstand and reached for the bottle of spring water. There always was a bottle of spring water on my nightstand. I still had my eyes closed as I didn’t want to wake up fully. Let me just sip on some water and get back to sleep. Even for another ten to twenty minutes. Fuck how my head hurt. My hand hit the bottle, and it fell out of the nightstand. Now, I had no choice but to open my eyes to pick that fucking bottle back up from the floor. I unscrewed the plastic cap and drank half the bottle right away. Damn. I was so dehydrated I felt like my eyes dried out. I put the bottle back on the nightstand and flipped on my side, closing my eyes and trying to see at least one more dream or no dreams at all. I don’t care for dreams too much. I don’t mind if I only see darkness while sleeping. I just needed another hour to pass out as I checked out in hopes of recovering better.
I don’t know how much time passed before I woke up again. This time, I was up for good. There was no reason to sleep anymore. I was tired of sleeping. I was tired of my hangover. I was tired of feeling sick. I heard sounds coming from downstairs. My wife was up there with our kid. My wife made breakfast, and my kid played as usual, refusing to eat and only asking for sweet treats. It was almost eleven o’clock at that time. I scrolled through my phone, trying to kill some more time. I checked some emails that came in throughout the week. I was so busy I couldn’t barely check them all out. Most of them were bullshit ads, subscription emails, newspaper emails, and some shit I couldn’t remember signing up for. There was nothing there for me. I checked my Instagram and Twitter apps, and twenty minutes later, I realized that I was not getting anything from any of them. What a waste of time and life scrolling through all that useless and short-lived mess of images, texts, and news, and just pretentious, miserable lives of others. What do I have to do with them? I have nothing to do with them. They have nothing to do with me. Why in the fuck were they all in my news feed at all? Life has got to be more meaningful than that. Where is the sense of looking at other people’s lives, never-ending ads, and always-toxic twenty-four-hour news cycles? Fuck all that, I thought. There is a life out there to live. There are things out there to live for. There is my family downstairs, and I am like a mental invalid watching all that bullshit with my sick head, trying to cure my own problems.
I rolled out of bed and walked towards the window. I opened the curtains and lifted the window up to get some fresh late-summer air inside. God knows, there was no air after last night in here. I walked slowly towards the bathroom. My son heard me walk and ran towards me, shouting happily. “Dady, let’s go play with me!” He said that with the most innocent and honest and brightest smile a person could have. Kids certainly have the purest and most honest smiles in the world. Adults all just pretend to be honest most of the time. I smiled back with my stoned, drunk, and still very sleepy face.
“I’ll be right down with you, son,” I said, giving him a little hug. He started to jump from excitement. He always loves to play with his dad. I wish I had that much enthusiasm to always play with him. There is never the right time. There is always something else to think or worry about. There is always the feeling of mental and spiritual exhaustion and a constant desire to be left alone in peace and quiet. Hugging my son felt great. I created that little human. He is my blood and soul. He is a part of me. He is my biggest love in this whole wide crazy fucking world. His small body felt warm and cozy against my bare skin. I felt grateful to have him. It has been my greatest joy to watch him grow, develop, and become a person. Why I was such a fuck up? I don’t know. I have my demons to battle. I am fighting against them all the time. Sometimes, they win, and sometimes I lose.
I took a cold shower, which sobered me up quickly. I wasn’t sleepy anymore; however, my face said the opposite. I washed myself really well, trying to wash out all the dirt inside of me. I believed a great shower would help me clean my consciousness and forget my sins. I brushed my teeth afterward from that annoying wine combined with a nasty morning breath smell. I really felt cleaner. I was getting back to my senses. I knew that I could start this day as a new person. I just wished that new person wouldn’t fuck up towards the end of the day like I tend to do usually. My family needs me. I need them. I have to try my best not to fuck up again. I will try today. I’m sure I can.
I got dressed and came downstairs to our living room. The kid was there happily, running around and showing me his toys, inviting me to play with him. I kissed my wife and hugged her. “Are you feeling better? Did you have a good sleep?” She asked. “Yes, I am much better now. Thanks for taking care of him and getting me a chance to recover a bit.” She knew the minute she saw me. She always knows. “No problem. We already ate. I have some hard-boiled eggs for you, and a salad is on the table. Want some coffee, honey?” She asked. “Yes, that would be great. Thank you, babe!” How lucky I was to have a woman like that in my life? One can only wonder.
The clock struck twelve am six minutes ago, and that’s how you know it is the beginning of another day. It is still very early or late, depending on how you look at it. How do you look at it? I haven’t slept yet, so it is getting late, and somebody might just be waking up. Who the fuck knows? It is five o’clock somewhere in the world. I am up and about my business, sitting around on my couch typing whatever nonsense comes to my head. What else is there to do? I don’t have a job to go to. It is Saturday, to begin with. The kid is asleep, and so is my wife. I am the only weirdo in the family who likes to stay up late and drink and write and ramble about random shit. So, here we go. Another shitstorm begins. I am listening to the greatest heavy metal playlist I have ever created, and it kicks ass. It has everything that I need this night to get me through. And I have plenty of beer to help me along. “I don’t believe in love” comes from the speaker by Queensryche band, which sounds really sad and romantic at the same time. Love is love. Love is us. Love is life. Love is losing your mind. Love is ruthless. Somebody must have had a bad relationship after all. Haven’t we all had at least one? Sometimes the shit goes sideways, and you know you are trapped here unless you make that tough decision. And sometimes you feel like, fuck, I might give it another chance. I just don’t want to act on impulse anymore. This still might work out to the best. And often, it doesn’t. I learned it the hard way. I have nothing to hold back. I have no regrets. Whatever happened, happened, what’s next is up to me. I moved on a long time ago because I wanted something new, fresh, authentic, and something that felt right. Not that same old annoying, soul-killing horseshit that I know would never end. We all should move on. Should you follow your head, or should you follow your heart? That is a question that has no right answer. Sometimes it’s the first. Sometimes, it’s the second. And sometimes it is both. I did both many times. I thought it was right to follow my heart because this is where the truth was. Because following your heart would make you happy. Many times it is just a bunch of bullshit. Many times, you should be wise enough to separate the delusion from reality. We all learn this too late after the fuckup settles down. I am looking at my typewriter, which I received for my 35th birthday. I only used it several times since last year. It is a sad acknowledgment. I still prefer my laptop for writing. It is much quicker and almost noiseless. That fucking machine is too loud, and the time is always wrong for me to use it. I think this machine could wake up my neighbors. I want my neighbors to be happy. I don’t want any shit from anybody. But that is not my point. My point is that I am not fully living the life I aspired to live. I want to be a writer and a great writer with that. I am not. A glass half full. I suck. But I still write. Some minimal improvements are happening along the way. I am just not letting it all go to shit. I still want to be here and to write and, one fucking long-time coming day, become a great American writer. What’s wrong with my wish? Nothing. It is my wish. I can wish for whatever the fuck I want. Not everyone was born with that kind of desire. Many people are asleep now or at the bar somewhere or watching the fucking TV in their beds, but I am here, typing, drinking, smoking, and writing. I want to be here. I have planned this moment for myself to be here and to do this, and l love it. And I do what I love and do not have much else to do. History repeats itself yet again. Nobody learned from history nothing. We all are repeating the same fucking lame mistakes or are falling into the same fucking traps as we all did back in the day. I have been fired from a job for the third time since my professional employment began over ten years ago. I am still young, sharp, and driven, sometimes or most of the time. I don’t give much shit about any corporate agendas. I am just trying to play the game right. And sometimes, you can get by, and sometimes you can’t. And I was just too fucking tired and annoyed with all that playing around and pushing it along with nobody else giving much fuck. At the same time, work consumed me and my life and my mind and my soul, leaving me with misery and stress and depression and bleeding. I knew this would happen to me one day. It always does. But I kept that bullshit going. I was too happy and comfortable to see a steady bi-weekly paycheck in my bank account, and I was all right with selling my soul to the devil. Am I a sellout? To some extent, yes. But why would anybody reject a well-paying job? Let me milk this cow until there is no milk left, until all the well dries off until I am sick and tired of doing it. My biggest problem was that I hadn’t spent enough time on my writing while busy with a fucking job. That’s why my typewriter wasn’t utilized as it should have been. That’s why I haven’t written as much as I had hoped. That’s how the comfortable living made me fucking lazy and made me a slave to the system. I partially gave up on anything near and dear to my heart and followed the dollar signs. Now, I don’t have anything to my name. All I have is just me. All I have are just my proletarian hopes, dreams, and useless inspirations. Why wouldn’t I follow my dreams? Why wouldn’t I bank on my writing career? Why do I always feel guilty when I have to enjoy every little fucking moment of my life because I am only going around once!? No, there’s no one home in my house of pain except me. I am sitting here and meditating on some deep life philosophy, trying to figure out where I did anything wrong, alone on my sad couch. It is really not that painful. It feels just about okay now. Actually, it feels fucking great not to go to work, not to work for a man, not to sacrifice anything of mine for the sake of others. I have my family with me. That is all I need. They make me go. I love them dearly. I don’t give a fuck about anything else at all. I just want to be around them always and be happy with them. I want to be a famous writer. I want to live and be completely independent no matter what I do. That is where the happiness is hiding, in that strange, obscure territory. Every time you tell yourself no or go against your heart, something slowly dies inside you, and the light turns into darkness, and a little piece of your life goes nowhere. I’d rather have my life be more meaningful and enjoyable, no matter how long or short. I want to live however I want, regardless of whether that plays against anybody else’s agenda. Fuck them all. This is my life. This is my beer. This is my writing. This is my soul. Life is great. I love it no matter what. No matter the weather, I am here, and I am alive, and I can always make shit happen. And I should always make shit happen for me. Sometimes, it is good to go away. Sometimes relocation is an option and a great one. Sometimes, you can’t move your brain somewhere else and forget about your existence, always pilling up more problems. Sometimes you just got to live that fucking life you’ve always wanted because there might not be another tomorrow. Or the tomorrow you will see will be full of shit and misery, and there might not be a place for you. Buddhists don’t rely on logic. They believe in enlightenment (nirvana) that comes from within, and no logic or intellect can do the same or explain that phenomenon. And I think this makes total fucking sense in my situation right now. The only way to see your life from a different perspective is to live your life like you never did but always wanted. And that means to go against the rules, against common sense, against logic, intellect, the rationality, against anything traditional or normal, against anything that others say or think, and just be there, enjoy that moment, live it fully, see it from the other side, feel the power of being you, feel the power of being a rouge, feel the power of a unique perspective and thinking and capture that experience forever, and let it remind you that you can do whatever the fuck you want and enjoy it because most of the others can’t. They’re too weak, too scared, too insecure, too normal, and too shallow. When do you think you should be fully living and enjoying this life? When you retire? How fucking sure are you that you will ever retire? How fucking sure that there will be any fucking energy or life or passion left in you when you fucking pushing 70 and you don’t have to go to work every day. But then, what do you do? Travel the world? Why wouldn’t you travel it now? Drink all the drinks, fuck all you can, smoke all you can, travel all you can, and do whatever fuck you want to do now while there is some light and life and energy, passion, and spirit inside of you begging for more and begging for freedom now. Why would you want to suppress that? For a steady paycheck? For job security? For healthcare insurance? For acknowledgment from others? For economy? For fucking what? “Your life is your life, don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission,” these great words by Charles Bukowski from the poem “The Laughing Heart” are so true and inspiring and so spot on. That’s why I love Bukowski. His poems have a lot of wisdom for an average man to understand, especially this poem. This is why I am writing. This is why I am still at it. This is why I often question myself about how to live this fucking life, so I don’t lose or don’t end up in fucking misery. I might not live forever, but my words and my wisdom can. As long as these are true worlds, as long as these words mean something, they will. They resonate with another lost soul and help it move forward, explore, take risks, and get that one experience that will change the life forever. I am one decision away from getting to where I always wanted to be. It is not a logical or not rational decision, but it will lead me to my happy place. Those Buddhists were on to something. I’m sure. Is the longing for something beautiful, truly inspiring, and relaxing worth the risk of hitting rock bottom? Is it worth risking the uncertainty of tomorrow for a few days of happiness? Is money always a major obstacle in getting to where you want to be? They say being scared means you’re about to do something really brave. Don’t let the unknown stop you from progressing. Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire. And that fire should keep you warm and safe all the time, and all other bullshit will go away. Amen!
It doesn’t take too much to be happy. Not much money and not much effort at all. My family was happy again while visiting Sarasota for the second time this year in July. I saw honest and pure smiles on my wife’s face. My kid was happy, too. He’s changed over the last twenty-four hours for the best. This is the place to be. This is the place to live and enjoy and be happy. Happy as one can be happy. This place, a thousand miles from our home, at the very South of the continent, is surrounded by water, alligators, snakes, golf courses, and the best beaches with the whitest sand surrounded by the warmest ocean with the most magnificent sunsets in the country, feels more like home than anything else. I fell in love with this place years ago, and every year, I cannot wait to come back there to just simply enjoy it. I think I found my home. It is here. It is in this ocean, in palms, in the humid air, sunshine, and the ocean breeze. My family loves to come down here. This place became part of my family tradition. This place became our new home. We are simply happy here. Period.
This year has been an interesting one, to say the least. Everything went a downward spiral, and I went down with it. I got fired yet again in early March and have been looking for a job since. The job search was, and pretty much has always been, a miserable experience. You are selling your soul to these corporate assholes for a stable paycheck and job security, and you try to stay optimistic and enthusiastic because you have to, and maybe somebody will say yes. Most of the time, you end up rejected. That is my story. Somehow I don’t feel like joining the workforce because I know sooner or later, I will get fucked over, fed up with all their nonsense and politics. I’ll be getting miserable waking up every morning hating my life, as the job is eating into my life, and the manic depression would settle over my head like the dark clouds before the hurricane. All those jobs, in my experience, ended similarly. There is no happy ending. There is no ending to that day-to-day working misery. It is always there. Fuck, how much I hate it all.
But the Gods were nice to me recently and gave me another chance. I’ve got another opportunity to prove myself in the corporate environment. I’ve got a new job at last. What will I do and how? I don’t know yet. Is that place the right place for me? I don’t know either. But I will be there. I will try yet again to make something work. I will try to do my best at it, and hopefully, if the stars align for me, I will make my history there and leave my mark. I hope everything is going to be alright. There is no reason to be upset. I am not upset at all. I am happy. I am happy because of this new chance and because I had another chance to spend time in my spiritual home, Sarasota, Florida.
In about two weeks, our lives will change. The change is inevitable, and it is coming, and we are expecting it to come and disrupt our family’s time together. I realize that as much time as I spent with my wife and kid this year, I will probably not have an opportunity anymore. In two weeks, each of us will have to follow our own direction, and our lives will be different. We are still a family, but life is about to happen, and it is about time to move on to the next stage of our lives. It is a healthy way of living. It is the way modern life works. We live here, and we have to follow those rules. There is no other way. I hope this change will be a great motivator for us, will bring us closer, and will make our time together even more pleasurable and precious. I know it will. I started to value my free time and my time with family only after I had the least amount of time to enjoy them. I cherished every minute spent, every occasion, every moment together. Sadly, when time is all we have and when you have all the time in the world, you don’t know what to do with it. It is only after the fact that you realize that there is not much time to spend on family quality time, and you know that you should focus on that more.
I am glad and fortunate that we are doing our best to be together and enjoy our life together. This is why we were in Florida again, and we were so happy there. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t have any positive or negative inspiration for the future, as I know too many things I just cannot control. But what I can control is today. I can control how I behave in all those situations and make my way out of all the pitfalls. I can control my present to the best of my abilities and make it something great to think and feel about in the coming years. Then I can look back retrospectively and reminisce about the good old days when I wasn’t prioritizing the modern society’s norms and all those rules of the establishment, and where I wasn’t concerned about the money or job situation, but I was simply focused on making the best of what I have and genuinely enjoy it.
Today, I am making my own history. Today, the history of my family is being made. I am in control of my life and my family’s life. I am trying to do my best to create all those great moments for us to remember, to make us better together, and to love, cherish, respect, and value every minute of our family time. And I think we are doing just great. So long as we are together, so long…
I am turning thirty-fucking-six today. It is not a big deal, I could be eighty, and that, I suppose, would indicate that there is not much left. But since I am still early in my journey and am still alive and kicking and smelling the roses, I got to make my mark on my anniversary. I forgot my age for a moment, and I had to count it all again to make sure it was thirty-six exactly. I don’t feel like it, luckily. I am always nineteen in my heart, which is the most important thing, always feeling young. This last year wasn’t the best I ever had, but I don’t have much to complain about. It had its ups and downs, but I’ve made it. Things are turning to the best eventually, regardless of how shitty they’ve got. I am going through some moments right now, and based on how life goes, with every year, the birthday day becomes less and less important and less exciting. However, it is important for a couple of reasons. One is to reflect on your life and see where you’ve been and where you are going next. Also, it is a good way to start things from scratch, leave all the past bullshit behind you, and focus on building a new life. It’s kind of like New Year’s resolutions, you know what I mean? So, in my honor today, and so you have something to read and raise your IQs, I compiled a list of thirty-six random quotes which were relevant to me this last year from random people who said something smart once. These quotes are both inspirational, meaningful, and funny. I am not referencing the sources because it is too many, I don’t have time for it, and I don’t give a fuck. Some of these quotes are my own, but most are from other people, mostly famous. Happy birthday to me, and you, if you were ever lucky to be born on the same day and until the next one. Cheers, motherfuckers!
1. Once in a lifetime, never again 2. Good things are fucking coming 3. Mondays are awesome. It’s your job that sucks 4. Life’s too short to wait for retirement 5. If you going to do it, go all the way 6. Fuck ‘em! 7. We should not forget our beginner spirit 8. Life’s too short to drink cheap wine 9. We are the people who can have breakfast at any time 10. Life ain’t no sunshine and rainbows 11. You only go around once 12. Enjoy the ride 13. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you’ll get what you need 14. Desperate times call for desperate measures 15. If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy 16. All those things that weren’t supposed to happen happened. What happens next is up to you 17. Discipline is what you hate to do, but do it as you love it 18. The dream is to die young, as late as possible 19. You are always one decision away from a totally different life 20. Survival has its costs 21. Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees 22. No, no, I don’t want to die. I want to live for the second time 23. The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them 24. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. If he’s still standing, he can fight 25. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it 26. Success is a journey, not a destination 27. Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working 28. Twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you did not do than the ones you did 29. There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little. And there I was, down at the ‘too little’ stage again 30. My heroes are dead, my ambition is quite awake, I don’t believe in tragedy anymore, I believe in mystery 31. Love life, people, you only get it once 32. The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for the cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one 33. It’s thrilling not to know where you’re going 34. Your life is your life, don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission 35. Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is 36. …and the dance continues – so, it does…
I don’t know what I don’t know, but I do know something. It is hard to tell if I am wrong or right most of the time, but I have a logic to my madness. I don’t even know where all the madness comes from, but it is there. It is near. I can feel it. I can see it. I am it in a way. We are all crazy in one way or the other, and this is how this world works, and this is how this life works. It makes us all fucking crazy, you know it or not. The chaos can drive people crazy as much as too much discipline. We all try to bounce left or right or up and down to keep our balance, but it is not always easy. It is never easy. Nothing is easy, and nothing is free. Somebody has to pay for your lunch. We have the wisdom there is. We have philosophers, writers, and so many smart people to guide us, but we rarely listen. We’d rather make our own mistakes and learn from them, hopefully. What is the recipe for a happy life? Who knows? Everybody’s life is different, and everybody should take their own path. Still, somehow we all wind up in the same pile of shit, madness, confusion, misery, depression, desperation, and so on. And then we are trying to get out, realizing what has happened to us. We are stumping on each other, pushing each other out of our way, making our way out, and then falling deep down into an even bigger pile of shit. That is life. It is crazy. It is chaotic, and we have to find our way, our path, our love, our madness, and some cigarettes and wine to make it a smooth ride home.
I’ve been going crazy for a very long time now. It is not just one thing that derailed me. There are plenty. Like losing a job. Losing the only income for the family. Not being able to provide anymore while relying on governments support. Losing people around me, losing friends, losing my mind and soul, to what? There was nothing to make me happy and nothing satisfied. All those books, meditations, warm summer weather, and the birds in the sky, nothing mattered. I always knew one truth. And the truth is that nothing will remain the same. Things will change. Things will turn around, and I will be a different man living a different life, a better life. I never knew when that moment would come, but I knew it would, sooner or later. And it fucking did. I never realized how much I was sucked into the system, the same system that was eating me alive, feeding me bullshit, and sucking me in deeper and deeper each day. Now that I have been out of it for a long time, I know that I didn’t matter, the system didn’t matter, the bullshit didn’t matter, and that you could live without all that shit. I couldn’t see clearly then. But now I do.
The dark clouds obscuring my vision have vanished, and the sun came up over my head, and while it was blinding me during the daylight, I could see like never before. My senses came back, the smile on the blank face reemerged, the meaning of life returned, or at least the feeling of one came back to me to help me get out of that hole. Today is a new day. It is a better day for many reasons. The main reason is that I am still alive and kicking. The other reason is that I have something to live up to and go after, and the realization that the writer inside of me was still there. He was scared, shy, not interested, and not willing to be present when I needed him, but he was back, and so was I. Also, my closest people are still with me, which means they are real, they are true, and they are my people. It means that life is worth living for.
And just like that, there goes another cold drink and another pack of cigarettes. This is all meant to help me get the fuck out of my head, take it easy, forget, ignore, procrastinate. Was it helping? Fuck if I know. Rather distracting. But that is the only way I know how to deal with tough shit in life. Countless bottles of alcohol and cigarettes and so many dark, long nights and dark, sad thoughts about my future and miserable present, and I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as of recently. I think I do. There isn’t much of light, but it beats darkness, as Bukowski said long ago. That is a perfect poem and a perfect line. I wish I read it sooner. I wish I had understood so many things sooner; I wouldn’t have to be in the same dark hole. I guess we all learn a few things about life a little too late after the fact. I think this is how life works for most people. Definitely for me. I have to burn myself, sometimes multiple times, to learn my lessons and clearly see what is what and who is who.
I am not a bad man, but I am a sad man. I am sad most of the time, and there is sadness in anything I see, good or bad. It is all around me. I am sad about the present because there is always too much shit to deal with and battle through. I am sad about the future because I can see none. All I can see is the darkness and nothing. I am sad about my three years old son, who was lucky to be born here in this country, but the future, just in general, is not promising anything good long-term. Somehow, as optimistic as I am, I try to stay true to myself and real and cold-headed, which leads me into darkness and sadness. Fuckness. Things just seemed so smooth and easy and fun when I was younger. Somehow, when you become an adult, and I think this is part of becoming an adult, is that you see things from a more realistic and also consider all the obstacles and dangers; you know that this world is just full of shit and madness. I don’t require much. I am not a selfish and delusional asshole; I know exactly what and how much I want in this life. The bare minimum, like a quiet and free life by the beach, worryless. I want to live my life, do my thing, and never worry about any bills to pay or economic crisis, recessions, crazy politicians, climate change, cancer, traffic, jobs, and misery of it all. I just want to live for a moment and be able to enjoy it fully. Is it that much to ask for?
The romance of the youth is a disaster plan for an adult. It takes time to realize those things. It takes time, casualties, years, broken hearts, hundreds of cigarettes, and gallons of liquor to figure it all out. There is no easy way to learn it otherwise. Nothing is meant to be easy. You and I had to face the real issues face to face and stay strong in our beliefs and push our way out of the bullshit and into a better life if we only could. Things that seemed so glorious and great at one point in time don’t seem so great all the time. Later on, many of those great things seem like a bunch of dumb ideas.
We change. Our thoughts and beliefs change. Our jobs change. Our life changes, and so do the stock market indexes and the weather and all those things. And who knows the real truth of it all? Who knows the right path anymore? I don’t. Maybe it is better not to know. Maybe living in constant expectation of a surprise or a disaster is the way to go. That is a good question to ask and look for an answer years from now. Time will tell. Time never sleeps, never rests, and doesn’t give a shit about you and me and our problems and issues. It always keeps moving. We should always keep moving. Movement is life. Life requires some basic movement. It’s that simple.
Sometimes, we all wish to go back in time and relive certain moments. I yearn to experience the rush and thrill of my younger days, even though they weren’t necessarily the best days of my life. I’m not interested in returning to that time because it has been difficult, but instead, revisiting how I saw the world then, the places I frequented, the people I used to know, and all the things I did or didn’t do. I want to understand how I managed to get through that difficult period in my life while searching for who I am. I want to experience those sparks of hope that ignited me back when I struggled mentally and professionally. I long to regain my beginner’s mindset in my mid-late twenties and see the world with fresh eyes once again.
I discovered something new about myself back then in 2016. 2017 continued in the spirit of an inspired writer who didn’t write much, but there was so much inspiration in me that I didn’t know what to do with it. I was overwhelmed by it, in a way. I loved being overwhelmed with all those new experiences and thoughts that occupied my mind. I was an inspired young writer then; I wrote a little at the time, mostly poetry. I wrote it on my phone often, as it came to me while smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. I felt great, cool, and one of a kind, seeing myself as a poet. Nothing of this sort had ever happened to me before. The list of poems grew over time. My reading list grew over time. I wanted to be like Charles Bukowski, my writing hero. That depraved old man inspired my young confused mind so much that after reading just a few of his poems, I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I looked around at things, people, and events around me, and poetry lines were composed inside my head. Some of them I captured, and many of them were lost somewhere deep inside my mind and down the history lane. What I got then was something I couldn’t even imagine doing before. I, a nobody, a confused dumb kid, could become a writer and a poet. That felt really novel and fucking great. That was a pivotal point in my life, one of the few that laid the ground for my writing for years.
I remember how and when I wrote my first poetry. I was on my bed in my mom’s house, in my room, with my MacBook Pro laptop. It was a lame and pretentious poem, but it was the first one, and many more followed shortly after. You can’t be judging that shit too hard. It gave me something to work with and to work for and eventually launched me as a writer. Everything great once started as nothing, many times as a mistake, and many times as an accident. This was one of the most remarkable accidents that ever happened to me. Still, I haven’t recovered. I like it this way. I want to write. Writing helped me over the years while dealing with life and its pitfalls. Jobs failed me, and I failed jobs; relationships failed me, and I failed relationships; people, in general, failed me and failed many people in my life, but I’ve learned my lessons, and I continued to write throughout all that time. Writing became my own very effective therapy. I woke up early in the morning, pulled out my laptop, and started to write. I often did not know what I would write about, but somehow ideas came, words formed, words turned into sentences, and sentences turned into pages of written material. Somehow I ended up with over two hundred poems and a handful of prose material, and I had to do something about it. And I did.
I revisited all the poems I ever wrote and collected them into my first poetry collection, “My Poems My Soul.” I came up with the name based on a poem with the same title. It sounded very poetic to me. It sounded like something Bukowski would have written or named one of his poems. I wasn’t trying to imitate Bukowski or copy his style, but so much of his influence poured out of me and into my writing that I couldn’t help it. I heard Bukowski’s voice in my head as I was writing my poems. It felt unusual. I felt like Bukowski a lot of times. I was reading his poetry and listening to his novels and short stories on Audible, fueling my creative mind and soul. Little did I know then that all that fascination would result in me publishing my own books years later. I self-published “My Poems My Soul” in 2020 during the pandemic. My second collection of mostly short stories and some new poems, called “Nicetown,” came out in late 2022. Today I am a real writer, not just some wannabe romantic with a temporary inspiration, but an actual published writer with a good amount of my work in the literary world. I also created a blog where my original writing experiments were posted. That blog helped me stay in shape and continue my regular writing routine. I knew I did that primarily for myself, and if other people find that interesting, that would be even better. But it all was done for a selfish me to keep me at work, keep me writing, writing, and posting regularly. This is why I stayed more productive over the last three-four years. This is how “Nicetown” book came up to be. This was a collection of all that blog writing, primarily short stories and some better poems I published since I created my blog in late October 2019.
Getting one thing started randomly on my bed with my laptop eventually launched me to become who I am today. I am not famous but rather very much infamous. Fame is great, but I the lack of it doesn’t bother me much. I haven’t achieved any accomplishments or recognition, my books don’t sell, and nobody but a handful of people in my circle know that I write. But that is ok. I have patience. I still think that the best is yet to come. I have yet to publish something that would eventually resonate with the general public and get my name out there. I am not an attention whore, but let’s face it, all writers are and want to be one and are continuously searching for and hoping for all the attention they can get. Most writers are egoistic, self-centered, and self-indulging assholes; all that writing is not there for no reason. We all want to be famous, great, and beloved, and we all want people to admire us, praise our books, recite our words, make movies based on our books, give us prizes, kiss our assess, and make us invincible and untouchable and superior in that fashion.
I don’t know what I want to do next in my life, hanging here, staying on the edge of the cliff, at the crossroads, or whatever the fuck I am today. I know one thing for sure, I will continue to write, even if that is just for myself, even if nobody in the world will ever see or read anything I wrote. I remember how excited and obsessed I was with the Californication show, watching it for the first time back in 2016. Based on the image of my beloved Charles Bukowski, the main character, Hank Moody, was a great visual of a modern writer with some complicated behavior and dealing with his struggles, but mainly inspiring me even more to write. I saw a writer who wasn’t a fucking bore. Hank Moody was a real man, a great writer, and he hated all that fame shit and the consequences of it, which continued to follow him throughout the show. That show was so great, funny, witty, and personal to me that even today, in 2023, I am still watching it on repeat, getting entertained, getting a good laugh, and learning something new each time. It is still, in many ways, a highly relatable show in both the writing and social world we live in today.
I discovered that show when I was going through the worse times in my life, mentally and professionally. I found my great escape in that show. It was not just entertaining but also a great escape from the brutal reality I was living in. It felt like the stars aligned for me back then in 2016, and everything I got my hands on, watched, listened to, or read let me into this new life, a life of a writer, the unlimited, crazy world of literature with all its complications and struggles. I can’t remember another time when all the puzzle pieces fell together for me and showed me a new life, a new perspective, and a world I hadn’t seen before. I am grateful to destiny, whoever it is, and a stupid random accident or sequence of events that got me writing. I am happy where I am and looking forward to a better future. The longer I stayed in this writing world, the more great things happened for me, the more I could do and create and write, and this new universe kept building up and around me. I am happy in this place. The real writing will stay. Real writing will live forever.
It was about two o’clock in the afternoon when he hit the local bar. This was not his usual schedule. He rarely drank in bars lately at all. He liked the privacy of drinking at home, and with that, once his kid and wife were asleep. That way, it was more peaceful and private around the house, and he knew that nothing and nobody would disturb his time alone with a drink.
It was the second day of March, and it felt that way. There was nobody at the bar when he came in. Four tall windows showed the small town’s street with people walking and cars driving by. He was at the local hipster bar on the opposite side of that street. Bar made more sense than anything else.
The bar was lit mainly by the daylight coming from the multiple windows. About six fans were mounted to the top of the toll ceiling, spinning mid-tempo, running the air in the old English-style building. Underneath the spinners were plain mid-size lamps with yellow lights. They did not add much to the bar’s overall situation, as it was still bright daylight outside. These lamps with fans would give somebody a spinning head once drunk and staring at them for too long. Several small private tables were scattered around the bar near the entrance and some against the walls. In case somebody did not want to sit around the square-shaped bar with a bunch of strangers and their looks and possibly get into unwanted conversations with them, these tables were the place. Bar is where if you drink for too long, you might acquire a few new friends, want it or not.
He was on his second Heineken now, looking around, his face serious with his thoughts. The bartender was a young hipster girl with short spiked hair, piercing on her face, and tattoos on both arms, one with a full sleeve. She was of unidentifiable age, but her face looked young, especially when she smiled. Kids, these days, looked so strange and confusing, he thought. She might have been anywhere near twenty-one and up to thirty-five. Who knows? She wore a bar uniform of black pants and a black short-sleeved shirt. She never introduced herself to him, and he didn’t bother to find out her name either, as long as beers kept coming without much wait.
“Want another Heineken?” the bartender asked. “Sure, thanks.” He would answer. That was the entire conversation he had at the bar all day.
He had a lot to process. A lot of things were on his mind these days. Once in a while, life brings these fucking problems, and there is no better place to go but a local bar to clear your head. He expected the bad news, but the timing was wrong. He knew everything would eventually come down to this but not this kind of suddenly. Not today?! Well, it was in the past now, and the future was still cloudy and obscure with anger, frustration, and general misery. I mean, he tried his best. He had to. There was a house, a child, and his family to care for. Want it or not, somebody had to hustle. It wasn’t always this bad, but somehow with time, things worsened, and he knew for a while that this day would eventually come. He was trying to keep his livelihood going for as long as possible. He loved to live a worryless life and not worry about the next paycheck or bill coming or how much groceries cost these days.
It was still daylight, and some new visitors entered the bar. A middle-aged lady was drinking her white wine and addictively scrolling through her phone screen. A hipster guy was sitting in the opposite corner, drinking who knew what. He couldn’t see him well because of the bar stand in the middle, but he could hear him well. He was having a friendly chat with the bartending girl. They seemed to know each other. Maybe he was a regular? They may have grown up in this neighborhood. Maybe he was there to make some moves on that girl with tattooed arms and face piercing with spiked hair?
He felt like smoking a cigarette. There was no smoking inside the bar. Not in this bar. Not in this neighborhood. There were almost no bars left where you could still smoke inside. You had to take it outdoors. He put on his leather jacket and strolled towards the entrance. He hasn’t paid for the beers yet, but that seems not to be a problem for anybody here. Each bar has its own rules. It wasn’t necessary here. If the bartender stopped him, he would tell her he would be back after smoking. The bartender girl was mainly involved in a conversation with a hipster guy most of the time. Nobody even noticed that he had walked out.
The air outside was fresh, and the street was tiny. The sidewalk was narrow. There was barely a place for two people to walk by one another on those tiny sidewalks. He lit his cigarette and exhaled the smoke in the suburban air. The cars lined up on the street at the red traffic light. He was trying to ignore everything and everyone around him. He knew these people were staring, and he caught a few of those looking at him as he smoked, then turning their heads around back to the street traffic once their eyes met. Did they all know what happened? Why did he get this feeling as they did? Are these their mocking looks? Or are those more sympathetic looks people in the cars gave him? Don’t worry about these cars and these people and the traffic. Don’t worry about the beer you are drinking today. You needed that beer for a long time. You deserved it. You didn’t deserve what happened to you today, for sure. Very few people deserve that. Not you. You did well. You were working hard every time and every day. You are a good man. You are a good man. You are the last good man on the planet Earth. You are a better man than anybody in these cars staring at you right now. You are better than anybody at this bar. Hell, you are even better than that Heineken you are drinking. The whole thing was just unfair. Life is always unfair. Somehow, after the highs always comes to the lows. Life has its balance.
Other pedestrians were walking around randomly on this and the other side of the street. They had their own business to do and places to go. They all looked like they had a plan. I don’t have any plans. I don’t even want any plans for the next few days. I am just a bit overwhelmed with life at the moment. Beer is helping, and so does the cigarette. But hell, it takes time to heal. There will be tonight, and then there will be tomorrow, and then there will be the next week and the next month, and the next year. Things will be much different a year from now. Life will be much different a year from now. It all could be so much better a year from now. There are certainly some great mysteries in the future for all of us.
People walking around did not look specifically weird except for a guy wearing a cowboy head and some cowboy outfit and the teenage girl with purple hair. In a hipster neighborhood like that, there are usually more strange people per capita, and they all somehow had to be on the street doing nothing but walking around, going about their business. There were no more blondes and brunettes, as most of the kids these days had their hair in a color of a rainbow. All had some weird piercings and hairstyles and lots of fucking tattoos. They were just some random strangers who he would never see again in his life. So, why bother? Please don’t stare at them. It’s their own thing. Why does it bother you? Don’t you have more important things to worry about? Yes, you do, yes you do. I don’t mind anybody. I don’t care. I am trying to distract my thoughts with something else and just trying to refresh my mind by looking around, smoking a cigarette, and wondering. I like to wonder. Nothing specific. I mean, sometimes you have to live. There is no need to overthink anything. There is no need to worry about anything until something terrible happens. And even if something terrible happened, you can still think of something good. You can still change your mindset. You have to try it sometimes. You can always change your life.
The cigarette was burning to the end, and he threw it out with his last long drag. He turned around, exhaling the cloud of smoke into the air, and grasping the entrance door handle, he walked back into the bar. Something changed inside of him. He felt better inside. He felt like he belonged there. He felt like he had returned home. A home, that only place where we all, no matter how fucked up, feel safe, warm, wanted, and all the troubles go away at home.
He ordered another beer and a shot of whiskey. Let’s speed up the recovery, he thought. The whiskey shot went down smoothly. It felt liberating. Sometimes people must fill themselves up with rough shit to feel better later. It helped. Beer chased it all down well, and the feeling of easiness overcame him. His problems didn’t seem to bother him anymore. The lamps with spinning fans on the ceiling looked good. The random pedestrians walking by looked better. It is what it is, he thought. It’s true what they say; the end of one thing is the beginning of something new. New life was about to start. It’s not dark yet. It’s too soon to feel that way. Life always comes at you in waves. Things change with time. Time changes who you are, and sometimes even you have to change at the end.
“You want another one?” The bartender asked. “Sure, thank you.”
She brought a new beer in about a few seconds, perfect service. He smiled and thanked her again after seeing the new cold beer on the bar top. There was this beer, and there were a few more. Then it was time to go home. It was getting late. He was getting lit. He had to drive home regardless. He had to be careful. Who needs more trouble in one day?
He paid his tab and put on his leather jacket. He went to the bathroom. The bathroom was a narrow room with a high ceiling and black and red walls. He washed his hands and looked at himself in the mirror. He was still there. He looked more serious and sad than usual, but it was him in that mirror. The man who just parted with his past and will be moving into his new life right after he leaves this bar. It’s going to be ok, he thought. You’ve had enough for one day. You did what you could. It was time to move on anyway. He knew it. He knew it all along.
He walked out of the bar and onto the tiny street. It was getting darker now and felt a bit colder too. He pulled out a new cigarette and lit it. He strolled towards his car, smoking his cigarette, not thinking about anything anymore. The wind blew a bit harder as he turned the corner of the street. Trees moved their naked branches, and the dead leaves from the last Fall along with his six-figure salary, were blown away just like that. He didn’t pay much attention to the wind, leaves, or anything. He just wanted to go home to his wife and son. Tomorrow will be another day. Tomorrow will be a new future – the future which we all always anticipate so much but also are so afraid of at the same time. He started his car. The twenty-year-old engine roared cold and tired. The white exhaust clouds came out of the muffler polluting the cold suburban evening air. He pulled out of the parking space, onto the street, and into his new life.
It has been some time since I sat down to write something new. Life’s been busy, you know? Life happens as we speak. One thing that changes as you grow older and become a family man is that time becomes more of an essence, is always short and passes by quickly. Back in my youth, I noticed time passing slowly. I always waited for things to happen; they couldn’t happen fast enough. Things have changed since then. I have changed since then. Once a careless lad with nothing to worry about but going to school, getting passing grades, and then making some money on the side from my never-ending restaurant job and now I have adult responsibilities like going to work every day, contributing to my 401K plan, feeding my family, raising a son, and making timely mortgage payments and so on. There is no time to smell the roses. There is no time to get a proper amount of sleep. There is no time to rest on the couch with a beer in my hand and a movie to watch for the evening. There is almost no or minimal time for writing. Where did all the youth go? Where are all the friends now who were so much around? Where is that warm sunshine of the good old young days that blinded us back in the day with its light and made us act on the impulse and live for the moment? Fuck if I know.
It’s warmer now outside. Mid-February feels like mid-April, and that makes me feel better. Winter depression seems to evaporate as the early warm sunshine fills the day with its presence, fooling us into believing that Spring is here. I wish this would be the case. The days are getting longer now, and there is more sunshine than I ever remember during winter. The temperatures are up across the country, and global warming doesn’t seem like a problem to most. This early warm weather makes me feel young again. I reminisce about the days of my youth when things just started to happen to me. All those things I did, and some I still do, made me the person I am today. I love to go back down memory lane, thinking about how it was. I never knew where I would end up in a few years, not even a few days from now. I enjoyed most of it. I knew that this was me exploring the world, getting my hands on and my thoughts about adult life, trying to become part of society, trying to become a grownup, trying to write my first lame poetry.
I got a few calls from different people I knew in the past since the new year began. We were all, in one way or another, close back in the day and had some shared history we lived through together. Each of those three represents a certain point in my past life, and it was interesting to go back in time in my head and recall the events from the past. I remembered how I felt about things and people back then, what was on my mind back then, what issues I had to deal with, and how I felt. And mainly, the most exciting thing was that I felt like I did back when I was young, and I just faced life straight and was trying to figure it all out.
Somebody from the past, whom I hadn’t seen or heard about in fifteen years, resurfaced in my life and reached out to me, and we chatted. It seemed that time was standing still between us all those years. I was happy to reconnect and revisit where we left off. Some people never change, whether good or bad. This person did not fucking changed at all, and I went straight back down the time capsule, and it felt great. We talked about the friends we knew and hung out with back in the day. Most of them are not friends anymore. There are reasons we do not hate each other; we just took different paths in life. If I met some of those friends today, we’d have smiles and laughs, and it would be cool to see one another. I was surprised to get these kinds of calls anymore. I was surprised that after so many years with no contact, somebody decided to reach out to me and was interested in reconnecting and meeting up again. I rarely get any calls from people I still am close friends with. But once somebody reaches out to me from fifteen years ago, it makes me wonder. It makes me feel happy in a way. Since we all grew up and became adults, most of us with families now and busy daily lives. Many things we used to do, and many people we used to hang out with, dropped off from our lives. It usually happens that way if there is no reason to or if there are no circumstances that keep us together; those relationships disappear with time. The more I think about the past, about my past life, the more I am convinced that regardless of how tough and uneventful it seemed to me back then, looking back, it was a great fucking life.
Music was always in my life. Music, just like the scent, has this incredible ability to bring back our memories. I often go back to listening to music I loved listening to in the past. I think of something from the past, and then I pull the album or a playlist or a song and play it. I play the shit out of it while I think and reminisce. I often go back to the older recordings or albums and revisit them repeatedly. A lot of time, I find something new to me that I haven’t noticed before. There is something closely relatable in the lyric, or there is a chord progression or a sound that I missed when listening to this song earlier, but now I cannot help but focus on that and think about it more and how it resonated with me and how it all makes me feel today.
It feels good to look back at my early struggles, whatever they were back then, and how things changed and I overcame all of that shit, and I am still around, with a wine glass in my hand, with a family in my house, and with two self-published books out there in the world. No struggles are permanent, and nothing will last forever. Shitty ones always follow happy moments, and they exchange one another repeatedly. I have noticed that during my shittiest moments, usually because of my workplace, my creative juices flowed like a fucking Niagara Falls. I wasn’t even thinking about any creative ideas as I so them everywhere around me. I thought about writing them down, writing my stories, my poems, and even thinking about my yet-to-be novel, but most of it just stayed in my mind then. I want to capture all of them somewhere in the box and use them as needed later. I knew that my job was shit, my boss was an asshole, my coworkers were not as nice as they pretended to be, and neither did they give any fucks about me, my life, and my career. I knew I didn’t belong there. I still don’t relate to most people or belong to organizations, and jobs, making me a weirdo and a more authentic individual. At this point in my life, I am very familiar with myself as a person, who I am, what I do, what I want, what I like, and where I want to be, and that is all that matters. I no longer depend on or give a shit about others’ opinions as I know I am not living my life for anybody but me. And I am going to make it worthwhile.
Sitting here today makes me wonder what the future is going to bring. Will the future be kind to me? How much more shit do I have to go through before I feel complete and fully satisfied? Am I on the right path? What the fuck is the right path anyway? The only way to find out is to live it and see it. Nothing will happen unless I take action. Tomorrow will be here regardless of whether I will be here. Tomorrow will depend on my decisions from today and from before. I am in charge of my tomorrow, and you are in charge of yours. I wish this early Spring weather stays here until the summer, but I know that the fucking winter is not done yet with us. There is always a proper time for everything. The day is always followed by night. Nature has its balance. Nature has its laws. It’s us who don’t have any of it or don’t follow any of the rules, and a lot of time, common sense, and we are all running around and freaking out about every little stupid shit. But while we are here today, we can all enjoy the incredible beauty of nature and the sunshine above our heads. It is a perfect time to capture and enjoy these pleasant brief moments of our lives and the early Spring and be young at heart as we once were.
Life goes. It goes down and up and sideways. But it always keeps moving all the time. And then, the next minute, you realize that you’ve grown old, and the person in the mirror is somebody else. You still feel young and think you are a young and careless lad, but you are an adult now. This happens in life. Life happens. And honestly, it is good to get older and to look older because you got a chance to be here for a while. It is unfortunate to see someone young go into eternity before their time. The fact that you and I have a chance to wake up every morning to live our lives and do our things no matter how dull is a gift. It is a gift that not everyone appreciates or even stops to think about. But we should. We all should just stop the crazy nonsense of the day and think about ourselves, who we are, what we’ve become, what we are doing, and how we spend our limited time here on Earth.
I always thought that I lived the most boring and uneventful life. The life that doesn’t even have too many stories to talk about. I never had anything out of the ordinary happening to me. I have never been to many exciting places or done too many great things. I have nothing to brag about. Sure, after thirty-five years of living, anybody has something to say. Anybody has seen or done something interesting at some point in their lives. It may not be the experience that wows too many people, but it is our life story. I spend the holiday time off reminiscing about the good old days. The young and formative days when my hair was down to my shoulders, the ear piercing, or even before that time, the days when I looked as I would today call a child, but then I thought I was the shit. These are some great memories. Watching all those pictures of young myself with my friends doing things back in the day was a great experience and much-needed time to analyze and go over the past to see where I came from.
I remember how everything felt like for the first time. The first time not spend the night at home. The first job. The first paycheck. The first love. The first sex. The first car. The first fight. The first major disappointment. The happy days and the sad ones. The best friends and the worst friends. Hanging out until late at night, getting drunk, getting yourself into trouble, getting yourself out of trouble. There’s just so much that we go through in life, and there is also so much to learn from. But whatever you did back then, good or bad, made you who you are today. I don’t think I would ever want to go back in time and fix my shit. I don’t think that would help nobody. That would change history, my life, and who I have become.
I remember my circle of friends back then in my young days. Very few of those friends remained good friends today. At one point, we lived together, did things together, and had ordinary day-to-day life and the same problems. Now, as we all grow up and are adults, things are very different. We have wives, children, mortgages, jobs, and our problems are real and serious now. There is no time to have a beer on a random day just because there is nothing else to do. There is no time to hang out late into the night, smoking cigarettes and telling chokes and stories. The saddest part is seeing the pictures of your friend who is no longer alive. Who would ever think of that back then? We all thought we would live together into old age. I remember when I was young, that time was never a concern or issue. The only problem with time was the wait. I always waited for something to happen. Waiting until I am old enough to drive a car, old enough to get a job, old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of booze. Waiting until I am rich enough to continue to live this worryless life and have fun all the time. Looking at those pictures made me sad. It brought a lot of great memories. I felt the same as I used to back then for a brief moment. The power of the past. It was hard to find any serious pictures of us. We always did something fun. We always smiled, laughed, made faces, and made funny postures in those pictures. This is how I will remember that time, with a bright smile on my face. We were so alive and happy, and nothing would take this away from us but time.
Teens and twenties are a fucking worst times to live through. I don’t think I am the only one thinking that. People say you’re young and have your health, youth, and so much ahead of you. But what do you really have? Or what does an average teenager or twenty-years old really have? They have a whole bunch of shit to deal with. That’s what’s ahead of them. On the one hand, yes, it is a great time to be young and careless and have fun at your parent’s expense, but on the other, you are just drowning in the shit of life deeper with every year trying to figure out who you are, who you want to be, what is your purpose, what should you be doing with your life. I went through so much bullshit, stress, and anxiety that I would not want to return to those days to relieve myself again. Fuck that. I am happy and fortunate to have come out of it alive and kicking, and luckily for me, I’ve made some right choices in this life. I don’t have tattoos on my face, and I am not in jail or living on the street corner. That’s not true for so many others, though. Life takes time to figure out. It takes your whole life to figure this motherfucker out. You learn as long as you live. Try to explain this to a twenty-year-old.
Most of them are in school or college or a university, trying to get educated, getting a shit ton of loans to get the education which might not work out in the end. When you’re young, you have to deal with school shit, deal with or without your girlfriend or your boyfriend, deal with anxiety, stress, depression, bad habits, your classmates, your teachers, your neighbors, your shitty jobs, your shitty cheap cars, and so on. Throughout my time in college, I had no idea who I wanted to be, but I had to pick a major that I thought would work out for me well and I will be able to find a job after. Back then, a hundred dollars was a lot of money. My tunnel vision was too fucking narrow and nearsighted. I couldn’t think too far ahead or see much of anything to have a better plan. I had to eat the shit, be miserable and somehow get up and move forward. I had to switch to part-time schooling because I saw more value in working a blue-collar job at the wood factory, manufacturing fucking tables, closets, and countertops by making sixteen dollars per hour. That was a low-hanging fruit for me, and I knew I had to show up and do some work from 6:30 AM to 4 PM and punch out my card. I could only see that far ahead. I couldn’t see too far looking at my education path.
I was lucky to get my shit together and graduate from a junior college to attend a four-year school. That was a different kind of animal, much more expensive, and so much harder to study and follow the all-new rules and keep up with the schedule and assignments and exams. I remember going to bed one night, shutting down the lights, and crying. Crying as I used to back in my childhood days when my father would beat the shit out of me for something I did wrong. I was crying because I was failing the class because I couldn’t keep up with the learning material. I knew early on that I was a fuck-up, and this school wasn’t in my league and wasn’t even close to my family’s ability to pay for it. And now, with all these thousands of dollars in debt and all those efforts my mother put into me by working three jobs at a time, I was failing her and myself. I gave up on myself that night. My tears were falling like Niagara Falls, but there was no way out for me. I knew I would be miserable today, but I had to get my shit together tomorrow and make it all work.
I also had to work part-time at a restaurant on the weekends and study full-time during the week. At the restaurant, the work seemed like nothing. It was fun. It was my time off from anything else that was going on in my life. Also, we could drink alcohol at work, and pretty much all those years were full of insane hangovers and sleep deprivation mix-up with cigarette smoke. This was my twenties, people. Then all hungover and tired, I would show up to my classes on Monday after a long, tiring, and drinking weekend, trying to educate myself. Fuck, these were some crazy times. I never knew who I really wanted to be in life. I picked the major, but it all was foggy and unclear and too difficult to imagine this adult life I was preparing myself for. I remember looking at the expensive car with nicely dressed and good-looking people and thinking, damn, they’ve made it. I want to be like them one day. I want to achieve something in this life. I couldn’t even realize what life would bring for me in the next ten years and how things would turn around. I guess if you were not born into wealth, you have a very long and exhausting road ahead of you. Few people can come from total misery and break into the rich men’s world. Many people are stuck in poverty with their proletarian mindsets, and they never break through anything.
Life is also a journey, and it ends whenever it does. Nobody knows when our time will come. Nobody should know this either. We all have to make the best out of today. Live to the fullest and enjoy every little moment because we have this great opportunity to do so. And no matter how much older we’ve become, we all should feel like those youngsters in those old pictures of us, smiling, happy, and free. They might not bring back our youth, but they will remind you how it was once. Amen.
It is getting cold here in PA, and even in this early December, we all knew that winter was here to stay. At night the temperature goes as low as the early twenties, and it takes about ten minutes to warm up my nineteen-year-old Mercedes in the morning. I fucking hate this weather and these low temperatures, and I cannot stand being cold all the fucking time. Who can love this kind of weather anyway? The holiday spirit is in the air right now, and a little snow would make the magic work. But as soon as we finish celebrating New Year, I want fucking summer. I like to see the good old happy, warm, and humid days again. I want to go to the beach and get sunburned. I want a cold beer in my hand and to wear my shorts every day. My shit’s out of luck for the next three to four months. And since I’m stuck here, I will have to wait until mid-April for the nice weather to come around. Well, I have patience. I wanted to summarize this year and analyze what it has been for me, what I have done or accomplished, and what went to shit in the past year. It’s been my little tradition to write some sort of year-end reflection and set myself up for the new 2023 year of the Lord.
I don’t have too many complaints about 2022. It always could’ve been better, but I have nothing to complain about retrospectively. Whatever happened, happened, and what was lost was lost. I’ve tried my best to stay on top of my shit, but it wasn’t always easy. Nothing is easy when you’re an adult. Nothing is easy when you’re a parent. Nothing is and will be any fucking easier in the future, either. This is life, and we are here to live it. If we are no longer around, somebody else will have that privilege instead. So, it just means that I shouldn’t take anything for granted, and I should be happy to open my eyes in the morning every day and close my eyes at night, knowing that I have a chance to live another day. How I spent that time is my fucking problem. Was there anything I could do differently? Of course. We are all humans, and we love to fuck things up for ourselves and then feel sorry about that. I don’t have too many regrets in general. Maybe because I am a selfish asshole? Or maybe because I am just too fucking pumped to be who I am and to live the life that I do? One thing that keeps me going and makes me happy is that I am not stuck in one spot. I always kept on moving. The pace doesn’t matter, multi-tasking is the fucked up corporate buzzword that I fucking grown to hate, and the movement in life, as well as the movement of our bodies, means life. So I was moving around a lot, at least I’ve tried, and some things came to fruition while others didn’t. Well, will have to deal with all that shit next year. We’ll have another twelve months of surprises and bullshit.
The beginning of 2022 was rough. It was fucking cold then as well, and I have been cold and stressed out and busy at work, getting used to a new job. I landed a decent job with decent pay, and my family didn’t have shit to worry about. I think that’s a win-win. I had to struggle a lot, though, and then the stress was too overwhelming, and then the depression came in, and I had to meditate like a fucking monk to keep my head above the water. The good thing is that it worked. Meditation always does the trick. Gotta love that shit. How simple and how powerful and liberating it is! A few months into the year, I went down with a fucking flu. Flu, the one and only, the long-forgotten beautiful flu, came knocking at my door and knocked me on my ass for a couple of days. I thought that shit died when Covid came around. I was mistaken. It came back stronger than anything. I hadn’t had that kind of fever for years. It all passed. I recovered. I am strong, even when I am not. This wasn’t my time to see the other side. I had another chance. I am one lucky motherfucker.
The war in Ukraine was the most unfortunate and depressing event this year. It began in late February, and as I write this, the bombs are still flying over Ukraine like seagulls in the blue sky, destroying the infrastructure, killing innocent people, and turning that place into hell on Earth. In my earlier blog post, I have written about my feelings and thoughts about this war, so I will not rehash it here again. It tears my heart to see my homeland going through all this today after going through so much shit in its history. It was a major fucking shock, not just in my life but for people in Ukraine and worldwide. How dare these fucking russians? Who allowed them to behave like that? Who can stop these crazy fucks? Why is the world so fucking unresponsive and afraid to step in and kick their little shitty drunken asses? The everyday peace of Ukraine is being destroyed and ruined, and people have returned to the dark ages. Literally, the dark ages, because now the energy infrastructure has been impacted, and people sit in their homes without heat, electricity, and internet, just fucking waiting on another day, just fucking waiting for this shit to be over already. My dear cousin has lost his life in this fucking war. There goes another close relative death in our family and another significant loss in my personal life. I hope his and all others’ lives were not lost for nothing. I hope that Ukraine will win this war and will bloom again.
Somebody once said you couldn’t repeat the past. They were full of shit. I did repeat the past in the best way possible. Florida is my spiritual home. Since I first visited that place, I have felt completely in love with it. There are so many great memories and great trips down there that I live and breathe to return any time I can. My family went to Florida in May and stayed there for an entire month at the same place we were last year. Everything was the same, if not better. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was living in a dream. The dream came true. I was so excited to be there again. I was so happy to go to the beach every day and enjoy the nice warm weather, walk on the whitest sand and watch the most beautiful sunsets while drinking my beer and smoking my cigarettes at the beach, thinking about life, listening to some great tunes, watching my family happy around me enjoying themselves. There is nothing better than that. These moments are worth living for. These moments are worth all the fucking money. These moments are worth twenty hours of car ride one way. These moments were so great that nothing else compares and nothing else satisfies as much.
I was happy to wake up early in the morning and start my days with my morning coffee while writing, which I kept doing every fucking day while there. The writing came down smoothly. After that, I drove to the beach for my morning run. I ran on the beach barefoot, listening to my music, the ocean’s waves and seagulls, the sun in my face, and the ocean breeze in my head. I was free and happy at once. I found my new spiritual home. I found the place where I wanted to live forever, and once there, I wouldn’t even want to go anywhere else. The place where I want my ashes to be scattered into the ocean so I can be there forever. Fuck the alligators and snakes and hurricanes. That place has so much beauty with the perfect climate, the bluest ocean, the good happy vibes, and the brightest sun ever. That fucking sun can cure cancer. That sun heals. These sunsets are unbelievable and worth watching every fucking day. They are just priceless. I am going back to Florida again next year for sure.
On the family side of the business, things have also been busy. The little one grows fast. He learns things fast as well, and looking at him now, and I wonder how smart this little fellow is for his age. I have been a moron for the most part of my life, and he’s already brilliant at three. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for him and us. I spend more time together with my son now. I always try to spend time with him no matter what, but this year, especially once I’ve settled with the new job, my wife is busy getting her education done, and we are handing out together like two great bodies. I love to see him smile and laugh and play with me. I love to see him develop and become a person. He’s already the best person I’ve ever known at three years of age. I am such a fortunate father to have a son like that.
The best thing about becoming a parent is that nothing and nobody matters as much as your child, and everything and everybody else can go fuck themselves. This is the secret power of a parent if you ever wonder how in the fuck they can handle raising their kids. They don’t give a fuck, that’s why. They have much more important things on their minds and real problems like raising new humans to worry about rather than freaking out about what other people think or say. Fuck other people. I cherish every moment I spend together with my son. I try to be there for him, play with him, and make him a happy child. I want to be his best friend. I know this will not last forever. He will grow up one day. He will change. He will not walk by me, following me around the house with every step. He will become an adult with his own problems and worries. The father figure will move down the line and maybe even stay there forever unless I do my job right.
Now about writing. I always have so much to say about writing, but my writing process could be more consistent. I have my moments where I was dedicated and focused and inspired and creative, and this shit was pouring out of me, and then I have plenty of downtime or no time for writing at all. Some days it felt like I don’t even know what the fuck to write about. But that’s the resistance. Once I am on it, I am on it, and the writing flows.
My foremost priority since late last year was to publish my second book. I had this idea in my head for about two years now, but, man, it took so much time to finally, piece by piece, get it done and be over with. The book was meant to be a collection of everything I’ve written and posted on my blog. So-called “Writer’s Blog” book. I was working on editing and rewriting a lot of material, and many changes needed to be made. I began editing early in the year and only finished by mid-November. I had to polish everything and make it shine for the book. I think I did a pretty damn good job with that. I am proud of finally getting this second book out of my system and into the literature world. I had my closure. Let that bird fly.
It was a heavy lift for me, editing everything I’ve written and published on the blog over the last three years, plus writing new stuff and regularly posting on my blog. But, at the end of the day, I did it. I fucking did it. My second self-published book “Nicetown” went for sale in the Kindle store on December fourth. The paperback is coming out soon. I need to invest in online promotion and advertising through my media channels. Who knows, maybe, this book will do something. I am hopeful. But if not, then fuck it. There is a novel in process and several other writing project ideas in my head. The hold-off is just me. I need to sit down and start working again.
I renewed my Bluehost contract and blog domain for another three years. It wasn’t fucking cheap, but I thought this fucking thing kept me writing all these years, and it was proven to be working for me. So, I will be there for at least another three years. I have also recently started my Substack page and will post all new material there. Substack seems to be the way to go. It is a new, more modern way of blogging that removes the pain in the ass of building and maintaining your own website and distributing your content. Plus, all the cool kids are there. This could be another potential to get my audience, whoever they might be. I don’t get much of anything by just running my blog. I do need to acquire some audience and write for them. I mean, I always write for myself first, but it is always better when you have a group of fans looking forward to reading your next shit. I am sure they are somewhere out there. I would’ve been willing to read some new, raw, authentic writing from a writer who doesn’t give a fuck. It is hard to find anything like that anymore these days because everyone is afraid to speak out and write open-mindedly without sugarcoating anything or being too safe, trying to appease the audience and not get canceled. A lot of people just blindly went woke. It may be about time to take a little nap for them.
As I said, this 2022 was decent, much better than the last two years, and I hope for an even better 2023. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what the new year will bring, but I do know that I don’t and can’t stop for anything. I must keep moving forward, work on my writing, create new content, and get some life. We only get one chance at life, so why in the fuck would I stay humble and not try new and different things? We all have to get some life before it ends. Nobody knows when that time will come around, but we all sure as fuck know that it will come eventually. There are no sequels. I need to set larger goals for myself. I mean, regardless of how shitty life can become and how busy I can get with the daily chores, I am always happy when I write. I am always satisfied when I can put out some great work. Great, in my understanding. I am not shooting for a Pulitzer Price; let me make that clear.
So, I am ready for a new fucking year. I have a little plan to go after, and I will be working my ass off. I know that the minute that clock strikes midnight on the first, the shit might go haywire. No magic happens in a new year unless we create it for ourselves. Unless we work towards getting something for ourselves and work hard to accomplish something, whatever it is. Sometimes even small victories can make your day. Sometimes even a small thing can be a major turning point. So, happy New 2023 Year! Don’t get fucked up too much. The date will change on the calendar, but all your bullshit will remain unless you decide to change something. Cheers to all of you, free people of this fair country, and let’s be kind to one another, open-minded too.
It’s been a while since I wrote anything here on my blog. I have a good reason. I’ve been busy editing and self-publishing my second book called “Nicetown.” That’s a good excuse, right? Publishing a second book is a great thing to do if you’re a writer, and it feels like a very fulfilling task. I’ve invested in this book for a very long time. The idea came to me about two years ago, and it took all that time until last week to actually publish this motherfucker. Well, it takes what it takes, and now this book will be out there in the world on the digital Amazon bookshelf for as long as Amazon will last. And I think that beast will outlive all of us.
The book I am talking about, “Nicetown,” is a collection of stories and poems, both fictional and autobiographical. These are all the stories I’ve been working on for the last five years. It is a random collection of stories I’ve written at different points in my life, mainly about my life and the shit I was going through at the time. There is a bit of a theme in that book based on my personal experiences, letting go of two jobs, driving for Uber for a living, trying to become a writer, struggling and eventually making it all work, becoming a father, and raising a family. This book covers a lot of topics and subjects. Some of them are series, and some are just random shit that I thought would be worthwhile to include in the book. There are some decent poems in this book as well. I think my poetry has improved over the years, and there is a lot of interesting and deep stuff readers might enjoy and appreciate. My first book, “My Poems, My Soul,” was a collection of early poetry. Mostly very mean and depressing poems written by a young wanna-be poet and writer, trying to write like Bukowski and suffering through everyday life, trying to find a meaning of it all. But these poems sound immature and naive in a way, even pretentious. They are essential in my writing life because this is where it all began. This is where it all happened. This is what I’ve been going through over the years, trying to fit my life into a poem. Poems in my latest book, though, are more mature and serious. I am taking it all to the next level here. I am happy about that material and am glad they got their new life in this book.
So how this book came to be? I’ve been writing and posting my stories and poems on my blog for about two years at the time, and approaching the second anniversary, I wanted to do something special. I thought about collecting and publishing everything I posted on the blog into a new book. The original name was “Writing Blog.” I started editing the material for the book, and I couldn’t get myself to finish it. There was always something in a way. It took too much time and effort. I felt fucking lazy to do it. Life got in the way. A lot of changes in my personal life indeed. So I had a plan, but I wasn’t going to follow it for some time. Eventually, in early 2022, I decided to finally get it done. It took me ten months to finish what I had planned, as usual, with multiple interruptions. Fortunately, I finished editing by late October, and this massive stone was off my chest.
There are a lot of stories based in and about Philadelphia and my life and my fictional character’s life, based in Philadelphia. I thought having this book framed around this town would be a great idea. This is my adopted hometown. I lived here for half of my life. So why the fuck not? The name Nicetown means what it sounds like it means. I decided to call this book a Nicetown sarcastically. There is a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Nicetown, and nothing is nice about it. Philadelphia is known to be a City of Brotherly Love. Based on my experience, it has anything but love. So many stories in the book are about getting lost and finding yourself. It is about making shit work, finding your purpose, finding the right way, getting lost, making a living, surviving, raising a family, struggling, and so on. At the end of the day, all the puzzles came together. The stories, the poems, the book title, and the themes inside the book all make perfect sense. They are part of me. They are part of my life. They are part of who I was and whom I became.
It all began mid-2017 when I was let go of my first job. I was lucky then, and I had a new job right after. That new job didn’t last for too long either, and I was fired for the second time in about four months. Fuck. Where do you go from here? I went to drive for Uber. Something that at one point felt scary and liberating, on the one hand, has become my curse for the next eight months and counting, on the other. I had no luck finding a new place for a while, so Uber became my primary source of income. I thought then this was my opportunity to become a writer and write all the time as much as I wanted. But this was a very short-lived feeling. The more time passed, the less money remained in my bank account, and driving for Uber was the only option to keep afloat. And after driving for fifteen hours a day, I had no fucking energy or creative juice to write anything. It all lasted for about eight months until I found a job at a company and industry which I fucking hated the most, but they needed me, and I needed the money and something to put on my resume, so it all began again. The short series of stories, “My Shit’s Out of Luck,” is all about that. There are also a lot of fiction and other stuff I’ve written over the years that are quite an interesting take on life, writing, life lessons, and searching for yourself. This book is dedicated to those who are lost and searching and to those who have found and keep searching. As this search in life never ends until life ends.
It feels good to have something done. It feels good to have a new book out. It feels good to have your second book published. It feels even better when you’ve done it all yourself. It is all yours; I mean, it is all mine. It is a piece of me and a piece of my life, and I am happy to release that burden out there in the world and take that baggage off my shoulders. Let it go. Let it fly. Let it do what it does. Let it live. The future is here. The future is near. The future is all the unwritten books out there in the world. And I will make this future more interesting, as there is just so much more to say and to write and to think about. Life has just begun.
He checked into Hampton Inn by Hilton in Florence, South Carolina, around 10 pm. He had to, and it was getting late. The highway was endless and pitch dark, his vision was getting blurry, and his head was starting to spin from driving all day. Rightfully so, he’s been driving from Florida for nearly nine hours straight, and it was only halfway to his hometown, Philadelphia. Nothing and nobody was waiting for him in Philadelphia besides a bunch of problems, frustration, depression, bad old memories, and the cold grey days which ate him alive slowly. Mark McGuire was at one point the greatest living writer in Philadelphia, turning into the greatest suffering and mediocre alcoholic. The lady luck wasn’t on his side this time.
Writers are better writers when they genuinely suffer; the more they suffer, the better their writing becomes. It was true for Mark. After a month of trying to find his muse in Florida under the bright warm sun, basking on the beach every day didn’t help him much. Somehow it was harder to write in that environment. Mark would wake up early, brew some coffee and sit in front of his laptop, wondering why his writing wasn’t coming to him. Back home in Philly, he wasn’t even thinking about that. Once his laptop was on, the writing came to his pages. It might not be the best of his writing, but it was something. He knew it. He knew he had to stay consistent. He knew he had to do his homework. It will be hard to outperform his previous legendary work, but there was always a bit of hope for him to get there. He was good at writing everything poetry, prose, blog rants, and pretty much anything while living and suffering in Philadelphia. The main problem was that he hated that place and all its people. This could be why he had so much on his mind, which came out of him in a sentence form on the page.
His retreat in Florida did solve, however, one problem. His anxiety went away. It was diminished almost completely. He wasn’t the angry middle-aged man anymore. There was some sense of balance and relaxed vibes about him. He felt it. He was relaxed, and his mind was of so much shit he usually had to deal with daily for a very long time. Even though he wasn’t that productive in Florida, he did write something. A few pieces were not much, but they were shaped perfectly. He needed to figure out where to take the storyline, but what he did have was a great beginning of something that could turn big. Something that might bring his name and fame back on the bookshelves in America and Europe. Who knows? This might be just it.
Hampton Inn and Suites was pretty quiet inside the lobby, and there was almost nobody there except the receptionist. She greeted him warmly and asked how she could help. Mark asked for the room. The king-sized bed was alright. On the first floor, no problem. She rang him up. He paid and went over to his room. It felt like his feet were not his anymore. They felt like they weren’t really listening to his mind. Somebody might think that he was drunk. Who cares? He was too tired to think about it too much. He just needed the rest, the shower, and a pillow under his head. The room was very conveniently located, not too far from the side exit, which was perfect since Mark could get back to his car and bring his stuff over. He also thought that this would be very convenient to go outside for a smoke. The gym room was right around the corner, but no energy was left in him for a workout.
He opened the room and, entering, flipped the switch on. The room was nicely designed and smelled fresh. He looked around with great satisfaction because he liked what he saw. The room was immaculate and well-designed. It felt like you wanted to stay there and chill. There was a bathroom to his right and the TV set to his left, and across in the middle of the room was the king-sized bed. There was also some sort of a reading nook with a lamp hanging over it. This would be perfect for writing and reading something tonight. I might even write something in this room, thought Mark. Like the good old guys, staying at some random hotel room late at night in the middle of nowhere, trying to get his worlds and soul on paper. He put his bag down and turned on the light everywhere. Shower first, he thought, and started unzipping his bag.
The bathroom looked pristine and modern. It has anything one might need in the hotel room. After the shower, Mark felt a bit more relaxed and refreshed. He looked at himself through the stimmed foggy from the hot water mirror. Man, you’ve come a long way, he said. Where are you going next? It was more of a rhetorical question he asked himself. There were things that he needed to think about and some priorities to set.
He had a sandwich in his bag and a beer with a small bag of Doritos he had just bought at a local gas station. This will be my dinner, he thought. He was hungry. It was too late to eat that kind of stuff, and he never tried to get his belly full before bedtime, but he didn’t care. I’ll eat this, and then I can relax and read, maybe write something, or maybe I’ll just watch some bad night TV? There was always something useless to watch on TV every time you turned it on. Whether you wanted to watch it or not was another question. Just something to kill time and switch the brains off for a brief moment.
Mark was alone and lonely. Not just in this hotel room but in life. Since his wife divorced him and his latest girlfriend was tired of babysitting him, he just ran solo. There was nothing wrong with being alone. It was liberating in the way. He could think straight now and focus more on his writing with fewer interruptions. But still, something felt missing. He was still searching for it.
He heard voices in the next room. They were man’s and woman’s voices and laughter. He saw a young lady walking into the room next to him earlier. There was somebody with her. They laughed, and Mark didn’t pay too much attention to it. Then it was quiet, and then the moans began. They were very passionate about it. The girl was not hiding anything and gave it all out. Mark could hear her very honest, loud, and unapologetic moans. He wished he would have somebody over. He wished he would be in that room with that girl right now, making her sound like that. The moans continued for the next five minutes before breaking into total silence. It was over. Now they both were satisfied. Mark imagined them lying in bed looking at the ceiling, out of breath, sweaty and happy, just looking and breathing loudly with satisfaction. I need a smoke, he thought and walked outside.
It has been a quiet night outside, and it felt pleasant regardless of the humidity. Mark pulled his cigarette out and lit it. He inhaled the organic tobacco deeply and exhaled the thick white smoke into the night sky. The cloud of smoke went up and over his head and into the air, moving slowly and heavily. Mark inhaled again and exhaled with a feeling of satisfaction and calm. This stuff will kill you, Mark, he thought to himself. Life will kill you, was the internal response he gave himself. That was true. You never know what to expect or not to expect these days. One day everything goes smoothly. Another, all the shit hits the fan, a wall, or something else. And then you find yourself with your back against the wall, gasping for another chance for another breath, trying to survive and live just a little bit longer. There was nobody in the parking lot except for Mark, which allowed him to focus on his thoughts. It has been a while since he could think in peace and quiet and evaluate his life situation. Many things needed to be worked out.
Yes, he wished for a comeback. Yes, he wanted to be loved again. Yes, the middle-life crisis was a real thing. Yes, Mark wanted to be a great writer again now or soon, not in the past. He was tired of trying to live up to his past. The past was good to him on the one hand and not so much on the other. He had it both ways. He’s been poor and broke, rich and famous, and now he’s just lost almost everything. The greatest living writer was drowning in his life and his bullshit with no way out. The people will wait, and the fans will stay if they care enough. Who knows if anybody still cares? Mark cares. But does anybody else care about what Mark cares? There was a shitstorm of thoughts moving through his mind while tobacco smoke was moving through his lungs. The “Don’t close your eyes” song by Kix repeatedly played in his mind. He’d listened to that song dozens of times while on the road. There was something in this depressing music and the lyrics that would cheer one up during the hard times. This one was helping Mark and making him feel like he’s not alone and other people are also in the fucked up situations. This thought calmed his shit down for a moment.
He finished his cigarette and exhaled the last cloud of smoke into the air. The lonely figure on the parking lot at night, full of his thoughts and nicotine, looking into the sky, asking for another chance. You’ll get it, Mark. Just wait. Just wait and write something and you’ll see the fans will be back, you can get your life back, and you can feel much better and appreciated like never before. You will be a great writer again, if not better. Just trust this feeling. Stay hopeful, you moron.
He went back into his room. The room looked empty and lonely. His laptop sat on the writing desk with the corner lamp on. It reminded Mark that he could use a bit of the time he had in this room to write. There is no better place to focus on writing than the hotel room, where you are all alone with no distractions and nobody who can disturb you, especially at night. He returned to the desk, turned the laptop on, and opened a new word document. The worlds came to him in no time, and he secured them all on his pages. One word after another, one line after another, he was getting somewhere. He knew this was his chance to stay productive. He once wrote about a successful writer trying to find his purpose and return to his writing, much like Mark these days. He was busy writing for another forty minutes, then he hit the bump. He looked around and up at the ceiling, thinking, I need to spice this up a bit. I need to get out there and get something to write about. You can only write so much about being lonely in a hotel room. He decided to go out. There were a bunch of restaurants and bars in the area, and there could be his luck somewhere. There could be his next story in one of those bars or restaurants, waiting for Mark to discover it.
The feeling of being tired went away quickly. Mark was ready to go out and see the local nightlife and live some life. This could be a good thing too. I am a stranger in a new city far away from home. There are some moments I can capture, he thought. The Hampton Inn was located in a very touristy area in Florence, and there were many other hotels, restaurants, and bars around. This area seemed like you could go out and not worry about getting into trouble. Mark went into the bar close to the hotel.
There were many people for the late hour of eleven o’clock at night in the middle of the week. All those people are probably tourists just traveling by or staying in South Carolina on their vacations. The bar had dimmed lighting inside. There was a small round table across the room, and bar seats were available. The pool table is in the far right corner, and a few people are at it. Quite a few people were sitting at the bar, and Mark decided to join them.
“Blue label, please,” he ordered a shot of his favorite scotch. The bartender nodded his head and turned around for the bottle. Mark looked to his side. Some women were sitting there, couples, some singles as well.
“How is it going?” The fellow to this right asked. He was pretty lit by that time, and since nobody was sitting to him this close, he decided to talk to Mark.
“It’s alright, man. How have you been?” Asked Mark, sounding disinterested.
“Going well, man, just taking it easy. It’s been a long week for me, you know?” “No, I did not know that, but I feel your pain, buddy.” Something about those lonely people at the bar who are always trying to share their shit with strangers. Mark never liked talking to anybody, but now this guy was stealing his attention.
“I was driving a truck from California and was on my way home and broke. The fucking repairs are taking a week to two weeks. There is nothing else for me to do. I am behind schedule, and the delivery has now been reassigned to another driver. Just coming here to this bar and getting loaded. You know? Fuck I hate when my truck breaks down. What can I do right? While I’m stuck here, I might take it easy and drink.
“Yeh, man, sorry to hear about that,” said Mark with a grin on his face. “At least you can relax and take it easy at the bar. Eventually, you’ll be back on the road, working again.”
“That’s right, man. Ok, I got to get out of here. I think I’ve got my doze by now. I’ll see you around, man. Take care.” He left some tips on the bar table and went slowly to the bathroom before leaving the bar.
Mark drank his scotch while watching a TV screen in front of him. He was glad the guy didn’t hang at this bar for too long, and he wouldn’t have to listen to his misfortunes. He was now alone, a loner in the strange City, in the strange bar, too far away from home. In these situations, you feel like you’re a ghost. You are here, and nobody knows who you are. Nobody really pays any attention to you. You came and left with no return to this place. It was almost perfect.
Then this woman came into the bar with her girlfriend and sat there. Mark glanced and nodded at them, like hey, hello, I saw you coming in and thought I’d say Hi. They made the same gesture in response. There was some laughter and some conversations that the two were so deeply involved in. Mark minded his own business sipping on his scotch. After a while, the two ladies approached him and said Hi. This was surprising, but it was also good to be around. Mark smiled back with this charming smile and introduced himself.
“Oh, you are Mark McGuire?! I cannot believe it. Lora, look, this is him, the famous writer! Wow, what a surprise! I thought you were just a random handsome, lonely guy sitting at the bar at night and looking for company.” Lady giggled and showed their white teeth through their smiles, looking at each other and Mark, laughing silly.
“And all of that was true, except for the “famous writer” thing. I’m still working on it. But thank you, very pleased to meet you as well, ladies.” Mark felt that now he must live up to his fucking image. One of these ladies was clearly into him. She was a fan. He was trying not to be involved with his fans. However, it was hard to manage since he was so famous and some women he couldn’t ignore. He had to have them and enjoy them while they came.
“The pleasure is all ours, Mark. I have read all your books. I wonder if there is a writer these days in America who can write well as you do. Something about your particular writing and its tone and realism just attracts the reader to the story and the book. And then you find yourself reading it straight through the night, and I love it.”
“I’m always glad to know that people are or have been enjoying my books. I was working on each and every one of them really hard. Not so much harder lately, but back then, back in the day, I was on fire! Thank you, though.”
“Do you mind a little company?”
“Make yourself at home, please,” said Mark. This night might not be so dull and lonely anymore. His writing will suffer, but he has to live his life too. He needs this. His writing needs this. His little writer’s soul needs this. To live. To create. And to fuck.
The next couple of hours at the bar went by quickly. Mark found out that the two women also staying in the same hotel as he. What a coincidence! One of the women gave him his room number on the way out. This is another fucking night of adventure in his lonely writer’s life worth living for. Great, Mark thought. I need to take it easy and relax. It’s been a long fucking ride home, and more is still ahead. The chances are high that I will be stopping by that room tonight.
He didn’t remember what led to this and how he ended up in the next-door hotel. It was one of those mornings when you feel every cell in your brain vibrating, but you are happy because you know it was worth it. It definitely was. The two naked women from the bar next to him were on the bed, sleeping peacefully. What a night, he thought?! Who would ever imagine I would wind up here? He looked around the room. It was a large room with a king-sized bed. There were leftover beer bottles with snacks and cigarettes all over the table. They sure got a great time last night. Fuck, Mark thought, it is time to get the fuck out of here before everyone awakes. They might wake up with no recollection of what the fuck happened last night. They may say it was all my fault. Or whatever might come up, I don’t want to suffer through this shit.
He got out of bed and picked up his clothes, scattered all over the floor. It reminded him of some sort of aftermath in a crazy sex-movie scene. He picked up a beer bottle and drank as much as possible in one shot. It felt so great and refreshing. Even the warmed-up beer felt great at the moment. Mark thought the beer was going straight into his head, and the last night’s buzz was resurfacing and hitting him in his brain again.
He left the room quietly. I need to get to my room now. He took the elevator down and walked down the hall toward his room. The hotel felt a bit strange, but he wasn’t too concerned. His entire life felt very strange as well. He tried the key, and it didn’t work. He tried a few more times, but clearly, something wasn’t right. If it feels wrong, it might be wrong, Mark. He went to the lobby and saw a lady at the reception. He wanted to come to her for a moment and ask about the key not working, but somebody had just entered the hotel and went straight towards the reception desk. Let me get some smoke first, Mark thought.
Where the fuck am I, he thought, standing in the parking lot. This is not the hotel I registered in, and where the fuck is my car? My car was parked right outside the side door. Shit. I am at the wrong hotel. He walked around the building, checking the nearby places. There were five hotels in this area, one next to another. He looked up and saw the Marriott sign on this building. Yeh, definitely not my hotel. He walked around and saw Hampton’s building, two buildings down. Hotel’s sign appeared on his face, and he exhaled the smoke with relief. At least he knows where he’s at. He strolled towards his room. I don’t feel like hitting the road anytime soon, he thought. He went into the lobby and extended his stay for another day. Then walked towards his room and collapsed on the bed. He stayed there till the following day.
He slept in late, and once he checked out, he knew he would have something to write about his adventures at home. It was always a good practice to let any new experiences and thoughts marinate in his mind for a little bit before they were ready to go out. He knew this was about a matter of time before he’ll get this shit on the paper in a novel form. The remaining ten or so hours went by quickly. He was excited to come back after a long time. This trip was indeed helpful. He realized a few things throughout. He’s changed. He couldn’t remain in the same place, doing the same things, and hoping for better results. The results were shit, and he felt like it quickly. And with time, it was the only thing he felt like. Someone had to give. Some things had to change.
Once in Philly, he was happy again. He realized that he missed his beloved fucked-up City, with all the homelessness, pollution, dirt, traffic, and shitty restaurants. I am home, baby. I am happy to be back. The new novel was written in record time after his return. Mark worked days, nights, and everywhere in between whenever he felt he needed to write something. It all worked out well. There was a press release from his publisher, and the world was excited about the new upcoming book from their local, famous writer-hero. He’s back. He was fucking back.
There are moments when I feel like I’ve exhausted my creative sources. The well has dried up. I don’t know what else to do. I sit and fucking wonder, and nothing will come to me. No ideas. No creativity sparks. I just sit there with my mind blank, blanking like a motherfucker. This must be resistance. That bitch is undoubtedly in the way, keeping me away from my writing. I have to work. I have to get something down. I have to keep going. Fuck resistance, I think, as I open a new document and start typing my useless thoughts in some weird, chaotic order. According to Mr. Pressfield, the only way to beat resistance is to show up every day and do what you have to do regardless of how you feel, how much you produce, and what kind of fucking day of the week it is. One sentence is good. One sentence is much better than nothing. One sentence written down shows you’ve overcome resistance, and you showed up, and you’ve written something, anything. That matters the most; no matter how strong that fucking resistance is, you have to work against it. Once that becomes the habit, you shouldn’t care about anything else in the fucking world. You know what to do, and you show up daily or regularly to work on your craft or whatever you’re working on. Why am I reciting Pressfield? I don’t know. I guess this is the main lesson I’ve learned from reading his book “The War of Art,” which inspired me in so many ways. And secondly, this is the time when I am really struggling with my creative thoughts and my new creative writing, and he’s the only one who provides writers and creative souls with a legit solution. It seems like nothing else or nothing new to write to me about. And the time goes by, one month after another, and there is no new material, and that fucking sets me back. I get used to producing nothing; hence, I produce nothing over time. And I start looking for reasons why I haven’t written and what has been on my way not writing. I am fucking looking for excuses while not trying to do the work.
I woke up at five am this dark and cold Sunday morning last September 2022. I had a plan. I needed to wake up early to spend some alone time on my writing, with no distractions. I’ve been slacking too much lately. I better cut the bullshit out before it becomes another annoying habit of mine. So, here I am. I am back to the old me. I woke up early, and I was ready to ramble. I am ready to write. I remember days when I wasn’t even thinking about writing. I opened my laptop first thing in the morning and started to type, and the words came to me effortlessly. That happened multiple days and weeks in the raw, and at one point, I thought, holy shit, I got it. I am on the holy writing trail again. I’ve cracked the code. My excitement lasted until that habit was put on hold several times, then life kicked in, and I was out of the loop again. And then, I was fucking lost yet again. Then, I struggled with getting my routine back in order, getting my stupid mind back to work, and getting my creative juices flowing again. It is hard to start over too many times. It hasn’t gotten old yet, but it is like fuck; I’ve been here before, and now I have to go through it just one more fucking time. Life isn’t perfect, and it is tough to build a routine or a steady schedule, and shit always gets in the way. I have to provide and be here for my family. That is priority number one for me. Everything else comes second.
I watched the new Elvis movie last night. There it was, the perfect example of how one great, super successful, and world-famous Elvis sacrifices his fucking personal life and his family life for his fucking show and career. He seemed to have all the right intentions to provide for his family, but in the process, the family was not the priority anymore. Not having a normal life. Not having any family nearby to care for him. He was not even able to leave the fucking country for his International tour. He stayed here. He was committed to his act. He was performing and performing fucking well. The show must go on regardless of the misery that went along with it. He’s sold his soul in Vegas. That fucking schedule and even dedication will destroy anyone. There was a chance to take a break, stop for a while, clean up, return to his family, start all over, and live to a hundred years, but it didn’t happen. He didn’t want it. Once he was on the move, it was until the wheels came off. The wheels did come off but sadly, at forty-two years of age, dying in such fucking misery. Even for Elvis, it was a too sad way to go away like that. His priority was his art. The family was not. My priority is my family. Then all the other bullshit in its random fucking order. But I am dedicated, and I am not self-destructive. I am continuing on. I keep up the good fight. And I will be writing regardless of how slow or good or bad. I will be doing this because this is what I love to do, and it makes me feel fucking great.
I have been into J.D. Salinger’s writing a lot in the last five years. I read all of his, at least, popular books. I am sure there is more writing of his somewhere, maybe not all on Amazon. I developed a deep personal connection with “The catcher in the rye.” A true classic novel that never gets old. There are several good reasons why this novel resonated with me and so many others. I think this novel based on its writing style, theme, and rebellious protagonist, could be a great and, in a way, helpful read for all ages. Salinger combined all his Holden stories in this novel and centered them around this young and troubled fellow. Holden is an example of everyone searching for purpose in life during our formative years while searching for himself, going through some shit while voicing his thoughts and philosophy and asking questions about simple things that have a much deeper meaning. Young folks may enjoy this novel because it is fucking interesting to read and learn about this young fellow going through something during the challenging teenage period. This time in life is tricky because as one learns more about life and slowly gets introduced to adulthood, one may dismiss the adult world as phony and stupid and many things adults do as unnecessary and without a good reason. Being young and angry at the world, rebelling against the social norms and structures and institutions, dealing with depression and stress and social issues, indulging in bad habits to escape reality, and so much more. It is a protagonist that most young folks would like to be or are, in a way, already like Holden.
I read the Catcher in my late twenties and learned a lot, even more, when I re-read it several times in my early to mid-thirties. This novel has some hidden passages that shed light on the philosophy of life from a teacher Holden was visiting. The drunk fucking teacher once talking to Holden, in his drunken state, voiced pretty much the central wisdom in that novel, what it is to be an adult and what it takes to be a man. “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for the cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” Holden might not be entirely ready for this wisdom, as any youth exposed to such serious talks might not get it the first time. It usually comes to most younger folks later in life. As it did come to me later in my life. I wish I’d read this novel back in my teens. But I am happy to have discovered it in my late twenties and early thirties. At different points in my life, I found something very true and relatable in the “Catcher in the rye” novel.
Holden’s philosophy of being the “Catcher in the rye” is very interesting when his younger sister asks him what he wants to be in life. Even though it seems like he has no idea what he’s talking about, his response made a lot of sense to me as a father. Realizing how phony the adult world is, Holden wants to prevent children from falling into it. He realizes how great and innocent young people are, looking at and admiring his little sister. Holden wants her to avoid falling into the phony adult life journey he’s going through, as well as all adults are. He wants to protect and catch these little children from falling off the cliff. Salinger’s idea of protecting innocent youth from the mean and unjust adult world is described this way in this novel. It took me a few years to really understand what he meant. When I became a father, I finally got it. It was clear why protecting children from falling off that cliff and into the adult world was crucial for Salinger and Holden.
Once on the playground, I saw my two and half-year-old son playing with other kids. My son ran around among all these other kids, some older, some bigger than him, some more crazy than others, and my little son was up there with them trying to be part of it. He was up there on top of this pretty tall playground construction with all the tubes, pathways, and other shit. I was watching him from the ground. I saw him out there. He was shy and just looked around, watching other kids. Sometimes, he would smile if he saw something they did that was funny to him. Sometimes he imitated what others did as he walked on top of the bridge up there or crawled through the tubes and climbed ladders. I worried he might fall. I worried other kids could push him out. I felt like snatching him out of there and taking him away from all of these kids and that fucking slider. I wanted to hold him close because he might get hurt out there. I felt like my heart was being torn apart. I did not know what to do. But I knew one thing, I loved this child more than anything in the world, and I wanted to protect him and keep him safe and close for as long as possible. I knew I was not able to help him then and there. He was there on his own. I called out his name, but he didn’t see me. I saw him looking down from the top of that structure, smiling, enjoying his moment. He did not see me or hear me, but he was up there with all these kids living his life. I realized then that he will not always be close to or near me as he has been for his first three years of life. As he grows up, he will be more independent, living his life, making decisions, getting into trouble, and making things happen. I will not always be there. I will not always be able to help him. Eventually, he will fall over that “cliff” from his childhood and become an adult. Eventually, his innocent youth will be over. Eventually, he will become a father and probably feel the same about his children. The fact that I would lose him to his own adult life made me feel sad.
For an older reader, the “Catcher in the rye” book can also be a fun read because it will remind them of how it was and how it felt when they were young. Holden’s voice in this book is the voice of youth. That semi-fictional character from the early fifties still sounds relevant and accurate today in the 2020s. Salinger writes the story from Holden’s perspective, but he has himself in his mind. I believe that Salinger and olden are very similar people with similar ideas and attitudes. Salinger combined all these ranges of emotions, themes, and ideas, which are relatable to just about anybody alive. This is why this book never ran out of print, and this is why this book is still popular so many years later and will continue to be relevant because it mentions the questions and issues that are part of being a human. Everyone is closely familiar with, younger or older, regardless. I am now seeing more and more and feeling more and more about the world outside and my three-year-old son and how I wished he always stayed this little and innocent and not fucked with that utter world with its nonsense and bullshit. Salinger felt that himself and described that in this Holden protagonist and a similar character in his other works. I cannot think of a more likable example in the literature that has been so popular and so prominent and appealed to so many people over the decades.
From the moment I read the first few pages of the Catcher book, I felt like, damn, this writing is something. It is written in Holden’s voice as he deals with his life and has all these different experiences, which help the reader see life and its phoniness from a teenager’s perspective. The writing itself is Salinger’s typical stream of consciousness which comes from the first person, from the protagonist. The language that he uses is the language of the youth. It is meant to sound that way. It sounds and reads pretty cool, even after it was cool to talk like that back in the fifties. This simple, casual, and sometimes even dull language is easily accessible and relatable to most people. Writing this way helps to deliver the critical message better. And it did, as we can see over the years. On a personal level, I do relate to Holden a lot. I felt like that many times growing up. I always wanted to be in that pristine, careless state, doing things that I liked to do, knowing that getting older would require shifting priorities and getting educated and getting a job, and getting married and dealing with like like all adults do. I wasn’t necessarily against it, but I knew the fun would be over soon.
When I was in my mid to late twenties, I had accomplished half of the required program that I had on my mind. I got my education, married, and worked jobs, but I wasn’t happy. The more I lived and experienced life, the more I knew how fucking rough and ridiculous it became. I read this book when I was twenty-nine, and at that point in my life, I was on the edge of being lost. I was on the edge of switching my life from a careless young lad to a young adult who had to support his family. I knew that many people my age were pretty damn fucking set up and organized and were much further in life than I was. I was always behind on everything. The book, even by accident, was read with quiet enthusiasm, and it felt very relatable and entertaining. I was about to be fired from one job, and I was working on landing a new job. My wife and I lived with my in-laws, on our last dollar, with no good prospects for the near future. I wanted to become a writer, but I knew I couldn’t just drop out of the professional world because we would die in poverty. I was trying to do my writing in my personal free time while making a paycheck to support my family. As I wasn’t any good or prolific writer, this lifestyle wasn’t a problem to maintain. The problem was that more and more, I felt like I hated the office job, corporate job, or any fucking job. I knew how things usually turn around, and I knew that no matter the excitement, in the beginning, every fucking job would be turned around to be a disappointment. Sooner or later, either by my or my company’s request, this fucking professional journey would end. Whatever I’ve been working on so hard wouldn’t matter to anyone anymore, nor to me. So, the question that I faced so many times was, why in the fuck do I need to suffer like that all the time? Why wasn’t I dedicated to doing what I love to do? Why wasn’t I writing?
There I was, feeling like Holden, unwilling to work, feeling down and experiencing the phony, dull fucking outside world, trying to escape it somehow by running away. Holden is raising the same question. Why bother with the real phony world if you could just run away and live somewhere further and outside of these typical social circles? He knew at an early age that adult life is not easy, and there is a lot of unfairness and bullshit involved, and he refused to be part of it. However immature, his thoughts always focused on little things, which showed how big his inner world was. He cares where the duck goes when it gets cold and the lake in the park freezes. He cares about the young children being fall off the cliff. He feels sorry for the poor nuns on the bus ride and gives them money. He loves his little sister more than life and cares for her. When he spoke about being a catcher in the rye and protecting children, he meant his little sister on his mind. He’s not interested in education, like probably 90% of young people, but he doesn’t seem like a guy who refuses to know things. He’s trying to acquire information, talk to people, and he knows many things as he’s coming along. His rebellious soul is always looking for something, for some purpose, that would come to him later in life.
We all want to live great lives and have everything we need, but we refuse to deal with the consequences and the struggles which make many people miserable. It’s sometimes good, however. This is how one learns about life, what it means, and how to make it all work. This is how wisdom arrives. This is how people learn about their purpose and the important little things which matter the most. And the main thing is that life is a journey, and everyone has their own. Some people are lucky early in that journey, and some later on. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the journey itself. It’s time to enjoy it. It’s time to live now. It’s time to enjoy every little moment because there will be no second times. Prioritize what you love to do and do it. Enjoy it. Enjoy all the great books and writing we have and learn from them. Books will help make one’s life more enjoyable, and the phony world outside will always be that way.
This October is the third anniversary since I started my blog. It is quite a new milestone for me personally, and it is this new activity that kept me going and kept me writing and trying and posting regularly. I created this blog with a simple idea to write regularly and share it with other people. I used to spend a lot of time trying to submit to other websites, publications, literature contests, and all that other shit, and as time went by, I figured it was such a fucking waste of time, money, and energy. I could’ve been creating more instead of trying to get some assholes to accept and publish my poems or stories on their sites. At one point, I looked up several of those publications and their shitty websites, and I thought, fuck them all. Who is going to find and read my stuff there anyway? I might as well create my own site and post there any fucking thing I want, as often as I want, and make this site as good as possible. And one sunny day in October of 2019, I fucking did it. I created my own website, and the John Loraine Blog was born.
I was still early in my writing life and was writing sporadically here and there whenever I could. I had my moments of inspiration, and I wrote a lot, but then I had some long holes where I couldn’t bring myself to write a fucking thing. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and I knew that a writer’s job is as little as sitting down and writing. I didn’t have any discipline. I lacked character. At times I didn’t know what to write about. I was overthinking everything. Then I waited a long time for the perfect moment to come to sit down and write, which never came. I wasn’t any fucking good, to begin with. Not saying I am any fucking good now, either. But all those years of writing weren’t wasted, and I’ve evolved as a writer. My writing has improved, and there is so much more of it now. So this blog became my new writing destination and the main reason to keep writing and posting regularly. In the “About” section of my blog, I wrote this, which pretty much defines the primary purpose of this blog and its identity: “This blog is a place for me to practice and share my writing, go crazy, pour out my inspirations into something, and primarily post shit that would never be published anywhere else by anybody. You might find typos, grammar mistakes, incoherent sentences, and random thoughts jumping from one topic to another, and that’s alright. Nobody’s perfect, and neither am I. The point is to share my personal experiences, struggles, hardships, thoughts, ideas, and whatever else comes to mind.”
Since the start, I have shared some stories that shaped me into who I am today. There is a three-stories series called “My shit’s out of luck,” where I describe some real-life events and my struggles with writing and life in general. These stories were to shape the theme of my blog, and they are very close to my heart, and they made me who I am today. The first story, or rather a rant, which I wrote and submitted online back in 2018, has been accepted by a lady from England from the New London Writers organization. She decided to post it on her literate website. That has been my main writing breakthrough moment. That fucking moment changed my life. At that time, I felt that I was being discovered and would be a public writer, so to speak. I felt super fucking hyped and excited after receiving an acceptance email from the lady in England. Then I started to freak out. I thought, fuck, this piece is such a crazy fucking thing to go public. How would people respond? How should I feel about this now being in the public eye? Should I change my name? I was out of the two corporate jobs around that time, driving for Uber for a living, and I surely didn’t want to fuck up my job searching process. So I decided to call myself John Loraine instead of my real name. The lady from the New London Writers didn’t mind me using a nickname for this publication. John is a prevalent name, and it also belongs to so many great people and writers. In my mind, I dedicated this name to John Fante. The Loraine part came from the one historic building I have been obsessed with since I first saw it, the Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia. I removed the second “r” to make it easier to spell. This is how my pen name came to be.
So this is how it all began for me. We had another conversation with New London Writers about posting regularly on their platform and becoming a member of their organization, but the conversation dropped off at some point. I am trying to remember exactly why and when. I think I blew it off. I guess I was too damned occupied, busy driving for Uber, and scared to get my work out into the free world. I needed more material to be published, and I already felt too much pressure from my future regular submissions. It was a mistake on my end. This fucking publication was off the hook. They would publish my stories with all my profanity as long as it was not “borderline illegal.” Where could you find a platform like that anymore? I felt like Bukowski for a moment. I felt like, fuck, this is it. Almost 100% of publications I was trying to submit and have been 99.9% rejected were super woke and polite and very fucking flamboyant platforms publishing flamboyant writers. In comparison, this place in England seemed to be groundbreaking. The New London Writers doesn’t exist anymore. I think they ceased to exist shortly after our partnership. Not because of me. I assume because there was no gas in the tank. They ran out of resources, and whatever they had going there probably didn’t monetize.
But I have survived. I’ve learned my lesson. In 2018, I had 0 experience with blog writing, writing, publishing, and creating anything on WordPress. A year later, I matured, and I figured out I could do this independently. I could create my website and blog and start writing and posting whatever I want there. I’ve learned from online videos how to create a blog and then looked up some other technical shit to make it what it is today. It was quite an undertaking for me at the time, but somehow it all worked out. JohnLoraineBlog was born in October 2019 and is still alive and kicking.
Since the beginning, I have been trying to post regularly, at least three to four times per month. I combined the prose with poetry to keep it more interesting for the readers and myself. My goal wasn’t to reach many people. My goal was to publish something as if many people were expecting something from me every month. That mentality kept me going through the last few years. I wrote a lot. I wrote consistently. I have the material. I wasn’t afraid anymore of sharing my writing with the world. It was OK. It felt great. I felt accomplished. And now, I’ve become a true working and published writer, an independent writer who wrote his mind and soul. I hated the idea of writing to support an agenda or try to fit into some establishment. I didn’t give two fucks about any establishment. It was me, myself, and my writing. Free as a bird in the sky.
Toward the end of 2019, I decided to publish my poems as a poetry collection book, of which I had over 200 in total. I knew that it would take forever and more to try to get some publication involved. So I’ve decided to self-publish my first book. With today’s resources, it is easy as anything. I’ve found a designer for a book cover who did a great fucking job. I reviewed, rewrote, and edited all of my poems. It took me a while to go through everything and put my manuscript in order, but I did it. In mid-2020, when the pandemic was roaming the world, I locked myself out and finished the book. In early July, “My Poems My Soul” was up on Amazon. I cannot describe how happy I was then. What an accomplishment for a struggling writer this moment has been. What an achievement for somebody who just a few years back started to write poetry, imitating Charles Bukowski and dreaming about becoming a published author one day.
At the time of this writing, I’ve already finished collecting material for my second self-published book. This upcoming book will include my blog posts for the last three years. The idea came about last year. I originally planned to publish this book in 2021 to celebrate two years of JohnLoraineBlog, but somehow I was never able to find time for it. This year I took it seriously, and I did the work. I went through everything I wrote and posted on my blog, edited and rewrote, and organized it all, so it is now ready to be published. Why did I decide to publish what was already posted on my blog? I felt bad for all the work I’d done over the years, and it would be an injustice to leave everything up there like that. It would make me a more accomplished writer if it all became a book. I needed to have it collected in a book to keep it alive. This blog might cease to exist at some point, but the book will live forever.
So what does the future hold? Fuck, if I know. One thing I know for sure is that I am not planning to stop writing. It will go on. I am increasingly convinced that I should be writing and trying different things and getting better at it. I know that this is a journey. I realize that life will come back at me kicking and screaming and fucking me over like it usually does. But I know something else. The more complicated my life is, the better my writing becomes. I have two drafts of two novels and three great ideas for three more books. All it takes is to sit the fuck down and start writing them all out. I will accomplish something someday. I want to become a famous writer. It is a crazy idea, but all the greats have started somewhere. I want to dedicate more and more time to my writing, regardless of anything else going on.
I also have a screenwriting project idea, which could become something great one day. As far as my blog goes, I’ve renewed my domain license for another three years, so that fucking thing has some more life in it, and I will be taking advantage of it. Depending on the circumstances, I’ll continue posting here at least a couple of times per month. I also joined Substack, where I haven’t done much, but that fucking platform seems to be something I wanted to create with my blog three years ago. It has it all in one place. I need to do some more work there as well. Maybe, at some point, I’ll move to Substack entirely to keep things simple and all in one place. Will see. Time will tell.
The sad thing is that I have yet to have a single subscriber from my website. I don’t know if there is one person that reads my blog regularly. Probably not. Even though I see around a hundred visits to the blog every month from around the world. Social media sharing did not prove to be any fucking useful at all. I keep posting on both Instagram and Twitter about every single fucking post, and I have no idea how many people that channel brought over. I get a few likes here and there but doesn’t mean shit. People like the picture for the most part, which is not even pictures I took. I get them all from Pexels. My point is that it is tough to break through even though there are so many fucking channels and all this technology available to make it so easy and quick. However, this does not discourage me. This only makes me work even more and work harder.
I do it all for myself first. I want to keep track and a trail of my writing and my progress somewhere where it is visible. At one point in time, I can say, damn, I wrote so fucking much, and it all can be found here on my blog. Joe Rogan once said about his podcast that it was never about getting millions of listeners; it was always consistent and honest work and real honest conversations. In the end, he has the number-one podcast in the entire fucking world. That idea was on my mind when I started writing this blog. It only has been three years. The world is changing every day, and nobody knows what the future holds. Maybe, at one point, this thing will come to fruition and become a go-to blog for many people.
In conclusion, I would like to say thank you to all who visited my blog, all who read anything on my blog, and the few people who bought my poetry book. I don’t give a fuck about popularity, although it would indicate that I have achieved something in my life as a writer. Again, this is my battleground and my practice field, and it makes me happy to post anything every so often. So I will continue writing and posting on my blog in the same spirit for the next few years. And even if this writing passion takes me nowhere, I will have a pretty damn good amount of material and evidence that I am a true writer with a solid book of work. Writing is all that matters here. Writing is all that makes me feel happy and accomplished, and I will move forward in that direction. Happy third-anniversary, JohnLoraineBlog! I raise my glass today to so many more productive and creative years and for a bright and free future for contemporary writing and blogging. Cheers!
Life? What is life? What is there about it? Why is it always have to go the wrong way? Why, every so often, does life take you to some weird fucking places and knocks you down? Where the fuck am I going? And all of us? You, me, and everybody? It is bizarre to figure out your own life. You only learn this as you go along the way and stumble and fall, down deep into the shit of it all. It always has been this way. I always thought that when I grew up and reached my current age, I would know all the tricks and have all the answers. How naive of me was that? The longer I live, the more questions and doubts I have and the more confused and puzzled I become. It is not easy to make the right decision or any fucking decision because now, as an adult, there are no small decisions. Everything has consequences, and I have to take full responsibility. Not because I have to, I could surely fuck around, but because it is the right thing to do, and this is what grown men do. They take responsibility for all their actions and decisions and fight every day to ensure that they do all they can today to make their lives better tomorrow.
I am no longer the young and careless lad I once was. I am not an old fuck either. But these are the times right now when I establish myself as a real man, my character and my personality and my lifestyle, to help me get through this fucking crazy life. I know I’ve made many bad decisions, and many things could be different today. I am not even complaining about anything I’ve done. I love my life the way it is, and knowing how others struggle everywhere in the world, I feel so fucking fortunate. And honestly, even if I fucked up a few times here and there, I wouldn’t mind it too much because I wouldn’t be the person I am today. This is all about learning that shit as you go and keep moving forward. One should never stop moving forward unless you’re not breathing anymore. That’s the only allowed permanent stop. All other times, you have no excuses. Whether you want it or not, you have to get out there and fight every day and be who you are, become a better version of yourself, and find your true passion or your calling or whatever it is you are looking for.
I remember waiting when I was younger. I remember that there always has been a lot of waiting involved all the time. Waiting until I finish high school, finish college, or university, waiting for the job, waiting for the pay, waiting to reach a certain age, a particular moment, waiting for my opportunity. There is still a lot of waiting involved today, but it is called work in progress. I am kind of waiting for a better life, easy living, more fun, less pain, and less struggle, but also I am buried in my life with my daily chores and responsibilities. I know that just by waiting, I will not achieve shit. I have to do something about it. I have to work hard. I have to work smart. I have to keep my eyes open and not miss the opportunity coming my way, sideways, or wherever direction that bitch is coming from. I have to be ready. I have to be prepared for anything.
One never knows what life will put you through until it does. One never knows what tomorrow will bring. So, the game is to be ready for anything and be strong whatever comes your way. We are all here temporarily, people you know today, your friends, relatives, co-workers, and neighbors. One day you might wake up to a phone call about somebody’s death. Somebody you wouldn’t even question living for a long time might pass away. Are you ready for this? No. Nobody is. I don’t care who you are and how tough you are. Life will keep throwing punches and curve balls at you all the fucking time, and you have to be strong enough to manage all that shit. There are battles at war, and also, there are battles in peace. The winner might not take everything, but the winner better be you. Otherwise, there comes another defeat, misery, depression, wasted years of life, and so many wasted lives. People can be kind or seem kind at first. You always find out too late about all the pitfalls and shit that come from others. Sometimes it even feels like you have nobody to lean on, nobody to have your back. You are here, all alone, on your own, with all the bullshit to deal with. Modern society is strange these days, super sensitive and very easily manipulated. You could be too. You have to be mindful and aware and have your eyes and ears open all the time.
I often sit in total despair and wonder, how could shit get more brutal than this? And guess what? Next time around, sure as fuck, it becomes next-level insane. I am learning to become kind of immune to that. I never expect things and life to go easy and smooth. I know it never will be. But I also know that I have to be stronger to stand against it, whatever it is. Something does hurt you a lot. I mean, some things will damage you profoundly and permanently, and you might stay this way for a very long time. Even if you recover, you must never forget your past struggles. They will make you tougher. They will make you smarter. They will make you more resilient. “To be alive at all is to have scars” – an excellent quote from John Steinback. That is what I am talking about. This is another way of saying, “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” However, as cliche, as it might sound, it is true as anything.
We all grow up. We all get older with time. We age differently and interestingly, and that is the fact. We get fucking old. All of us. Even if you have that plastic surgery, everyone, including you, knows you’re fucking old. With age, there comes wisdom. Some get it more and some less. I am not judging. The more I get older, the more stupid I think I become but also, the more I learn and see that I know nothing. There is just so much shit to learn and discover, so many questions, and even more questions without answers. We try to answer them all, but often we fail. It is okay to fail. It is not okay to give up trying. Plastic surgery won’t give you all the answers, either. It won’t give you any wisdom except a good understanding that eventually, we fail to be young and beautiful and full of energy as we once were back in our innocent and glorious youth. The thing is to keep up the good fight, whatever it means to you. To be as good as you can be today and try for the same tomorrow. It is hard. Nobody said it would be easy. But, if you want to get and achieve something in this life, you have to do it.
Love is there also for us. Love does not always have big boobs or a nice, round big ass. Love is a feeling. Love is the air. Love is an ocean. Love is the motivation, and love should be in our lives to help us get through everything. Many people fail at love or love somebody they shouldn’t. You can’t always tell your heart what to do, but you can make the right decision. There is always the right person somewhere out there for all of us. I’ve been fortunate to have found my love. She is always near and dear to me, my heart, and my soul. There is no price tag or expiration date. There should not be one, to begin with. Things do happen, and it might seem like the love has evaporated. It might be gone, for that matter, but also, it could be the wrong love. The wrong choice you’ve made somewhere along the way, and as time went by, it became more apparent. It is sad but true. I don’t know how to find the right one. I guess time will tell. I think you have to make a move and use the proper judgment, and then you’ll see if you were right or not.
Life wouldn’t be interesting if it wouldn’t fuck with us from time to time. That’s life. I don’t think one can be fully ready for all shitstorms that could come your way. One doesn’t know what to expect the next minute, which makes it all very unpredictable and very mysterious, in a way. I guess this fight never stops. It’s always on as long as you live, as long as you breathe, and if you want to take another breath, you should fight for it. So, it just makes perfect sense to sit back and enjoy life and every little moment. One day it is rough; another is a blast. So, what the fuck?
I do want to go back. I want to return to my emotional and spiritual home, the warm beach in South West Florida. I thought about it recently. I reminisced about the good old days and the time when my mind and soul were in total peace and harmony. There was no anxiety, depression, stress, or any fucking worry whatsoever. There is something in that sunshine that makes you feel more alive. The minute you get out of the car or a plane and look around and look up, you feel free and happy. There is no better way to get all the fucking vitamin D you can get out there. That is a secret ingredient to happiness. It does make me happy. It does make me genuinely happy like nothing else in the world. That climate is just perfect. It’s warm and consistent, and there are no significant ups and downs and fucking sideways with temperatures or anything else. Yes, it rains and storms like fucking hell at certain times, but most of the time, it’s fucking perfect. It is 85 on average every day. It could be plus or minus two, three, or four degrees. Who gives a shit? It’s still great. It makes one want to live and love this life.
The ocean. The ocean is magnificent by its nature, and it heals. It heals all the wounds that we get from the day-to-day bullshit. You know what heaven feels like when you sit on the beach watching waves, lying in the sand, or swimming in the warm ocean water. I loved to wake up early and drive to the beach for my morning runs. I ran barefoot slowly, listening to some music while still hearing the ocean and the birds. I ran with the early morning sun in my face, the beach to my side, and my bare feet feeling the wet sand on the shore like nothing else. It felt so liberating. It felt like freedom. It was not physical exercise for me. It was a joy and pure mental and spiritual joy. When my day started like that every morning, there was nothing that could upset me anymore or have any fucking negative impact on me whatsoever. I just didn’t give a fuck. I was in heaven. I knew I had it better than most. I was devouring every second of my time there on the beach every time, and I started to appreciate little moments like that more. I began to see life from a new perspective. I knew that there was a reason why I was alive and why I should love this life. I knew that I was so fucking fortunate to be there. I was so grateful for my life, what I have, and the people around me.
Sunsets. Oh, these magnificent sunsets can cure cancer, and they are perfect each time you see one. I cannot tell you how happy I have been to witness all the sunsets I did, how many thoughts ran through my mind, how much joy I had, and how much more alive I felt. There is something about sunsets that always intrigues me and makes me want to watch them more and more and more, and there are never enough sunsets. On the one hand, I could witness how the perfect day ended, how every day ended. How yet another day of my life ended but wasn’t wasted. That is the key to watching sunsets. You see them, and you realize that they will happen with or without you, and the day will become the night, the night will become a day, and life will move on, and so should we. There is the right time to start and the right time to finish. There is this time in the day to let go of all the shit that happened before and get ready for a new beginning.
On the other hand, it makes you think and wonder how insignificant we are and how much natural beauty there is in this world, and it is there for you every fucking evening for free. It is a shame that so many people take these great events for granted and ignore them or miss them even when they really can, take twenty minutes off their evening and see that magnificent and perfect scenery. I always took my time to be there, watch yet another sunset, say goodbye to the past, and welcome new and better life.
There is enough suffering and bullshit in life, but there are also many really great things here. If you focus on the wrong things, that’s what you’ll be getting, a shitty fucking, miserable life. If you choose to seek out great things, you will be happy. Truly happy as people can be. You are what you think you are. Choose to be somebody better than that person you were yesterday and see how things will start to change. There might not be a perfect life in your daily existence. There might not be an ideal woman next to you. There might not be a beach where you live, but it doesn’t mean these things do not exist and that, if you want and seek them out, you’ll be in a better place with everything you need that makes you happy. And honestly, there isn’t much the man needs to be truly happy. It is always the little things.
Today I have turned 35 years old. I am halfway there, as they say. If I somehow reach 65-70, I will be retired. An old, rusty, angry retired asshole. 35 doesn’t seem as old as I would think when I was younger. I am certainly not a fucking teenager anymore, but I am young at heart, and I kept myself pretty damn well. Honestly, I feel much fucking better physically and mentally than I did at 25. Fuck 25 and 20, anything. That was the most confusing, weird, challenging, and one hell-on-a-bender experience I assume most youngsters have to go through. I am glad I lived through that shit and didn’t have to worry about it anymore. At 35, life just begins. I am now starting to think straight, getting shit done, reaching new levels, and securing a decent life for my family and me. There is a bunch of shit I’ve learned over the years, and that is what I want to share with you. I’d like to look back at these 35 pearls of wisdom and see if any of them hold up to my older age. Who knows.
There is no time like the present. As cliche as it sounds, it is fucking true. Do not wait for fucking anything or anybody. Do it now. If you fail, fuck it. At least you’ll know. If you succeed. Great, well done, motherfucker.
Time is the most valuable asset anyone has. Time flies; the older you become, the faster the time goes. Wasting time means wasting your life. Do not spend your time on stupid shit. Today you’re a child; tomorrow, you are on your deathbed. Think about all the time you had in life and what you did with it. Do you have any regrets?
Always rely on yourself and your own abilities, no matter what. It is great if there is someone to give you a hand. This point might not be much required for you then. But in most cases, if you learn to be independent and rely on yourself, you will be better off.
True friends are always with you in the worst situations. There will always be too many people to have fun with, but there will be very few or just one who will stick with you and be around and sacrifice anything to help you out. That is a true friend. Others should not be invited to any of your BBQs.
Always be in great physical shape. Workouts are not just to slim down or become the next greatest fucking bodybuilder. Exercises train your body, discipline your mind, and make the real fucking man out of you.
Sleep is essential. Do not fuck up your sleep schedule for anything. It is as important as your overall health. If you are sleep deprived, you are fucked, nothing feels great, life is shit, and your health will decline. It is just not worth it.
Intermittent fasting should be part of the daily ritual. There is more science to that than just simply losing weight. Intermittent fasting will help burn extra fat, clear your bloodstream, clear and sharpen your mind, give you more energy, and lower your fucking sugar, cholesterol, and all other shit roaming in your body, making you feel like shit.
Marry the right woman. Anything else before or after this point will be accomplished if you have the right woman to share your life with. The right woman is not the one that has the most enormous boobs or won the beauty contest. The right woman is the one that will let you be you, a better you than you have ever been.
There is no more extensive and stronger love you can experience than the love towards your child. You can love your mother a lot. You can love your wife or girlfriend a lot, but when you become a parent, your love for your child will overwhelm you unless you’re a fucking robot.
Always learn from your mistakes and others. Analyze your life, decisions, and misbehavior, and fix that shit moving forward. Nobody’s perfect, but the less dumb shit you’d do, the better your life will become.
Being a parent is fucking cool. People who never became a parent will not understand. There is nothing to be afraid of for people who are not yet parents. You will enter a new level of your life. And it will be a better life. A life worth living and struggling for.
If you want to have a great time, you have to have a great watch. Be a true gentleman and always wear a decent quality watch on your wrist. I don’t mean the expensive thousands-dollar brand, just a good mechanical, automatic, or even quartz watch. Yes, you have your phone with you all the time, and you have your fucking Apple watch or some other shit. Wear something with a soul in it, some mechanics that help you go through your life and show you the good and tough times. There is no better sound than the ticking of a watch mechanism.
Clean your room, clean your house, clean your desk, clean your life. This will help you to get organized and know where your shit is at all times. Also, you will look like a professional and a responsible person instead of a constantly distracted asshole who spends half a day trying to find his socks.
Read books, always. Books are the best friends, the best companions, the best source of knowledge, the best therapy, and the best inspiration. It is always hard to find time, but if you try, you will enjoy every second of reading a great book and always look out and dedicate time to reading.
If the book you are reading sucks, put it away. Not every book should fit your soul and mind at the time, and some might never fit your preferences. There are so many great books to read and discover, so if the one you are reading is not keeping you engaged, fuck it. Pick another one that might open a brand new world for you.
Meditations are essential. There is no more and simpler way to clear up your brain and calm down your horses than as little as five minutes of meditation. Just sit back, close your eyes, and listen to your breath. That’s it. You got it. Do that whenever you feel like you’re about to lose your shit.
Most people are assholes, and you will have to deal with them all your life. That’s it, just remember that.
Never be afraid of asking questions regardless of how stupid they might seem to you. If you don’t ask, you might never know for sure. You might do something stupid. You might make a big mistake. Just ask. What that fuck is wrong with you? Asking cost nothing.
Always be friendly and courageous to other people. Even if people around you are indeed assholes, there are too many of them anyway. Be nice, smile, greet, talk, and acknowledge their presence. They might not be completed morans. You might find a new friend that way.
Always stick for and help those in need, those who are weaker, smaller, older, or unable to help themselves. You might go to heaven for that. Why not pick up somebody else’s slack?
If you don’t like your job, don’t stick around, leave. Fuck those jobs that suck the living soul out of you. There is always another job out there somewhere. You’ll get it. And if that one will not work out for you, you’ll find another one, and another one, until you retire or die before retirement.
Do not buy into the job family bullshit. This is a corporate trick to make you more loyal and stick around, depend on that paycheck, while they fucking you in the ass, taking away your health, your precious time, your sanity, your personal life, and then once you are no longer needed, they’ll fire your ass.
Family should always be first. If you prioritize your job or anything else, chances are high you are an asshole, you will lose your family, and you will never know what it is like to have a great family, to begin with.
Forgive and be forgiven. There is no happy ending in always holding a grudge against anybody. If possible, face that shit straight, face-to-face, figure it out, talk it out. If you are willing to forgive, you will also be forgotten, no matter what you did.
Enjoy every little moment. You cannot live this life twice. You cannot take anything with you once you are gone. Life is tough and unpredictable; what you have right now is not guaranteed tomorrow. You might gain everything in one day or lose everything overnight. Enjoy the little moments and remember how great they are.
Music is fucking great. Great music is even better. Always listen to some great music, whatever your mood is at the time, whatever music genre you prefer, it is all good. Just listen to some beats and sounds and take it fucking easy.
People don’t always say what they mean and don’t always mean what they say. Know how to separate honest talk from bullshit. Learn how to read people, and read between the lines. It is a critical skill that will definitely help you in life, whatever you do.
Sunsets and sunrises are fucking awesome. Try to see as many of them in your life as you can. Whether it is the beginning of the day’s end, the sky turning colors as the sun moves up or down, making a new beginning, or finalizing yet another day, it is so powerful and beautiful to see that missing or ignoring them is stupid. It is also a very inspirational and thought-provoking moment you will never be tired of experiencing.
Enjoy a good whiskey or bourbon with ice like a real man. What can be better than that?
Spend more time at the ocean on the beach. It is always a relaxing and therapeutic experience, and all the bullshit in your life will go the fuck away shortly.
Do not follow the masses. Have your own opinion always. Masses are dumb for the most part, and it is getting old trying to catch up with Joneses. Fuck them all. Live your life.
Always dedicate time to yourself to be alone. If you are not comfortable being alone, you have problems, pal. Everyone has to get away, even a little bit, to be in their own mind and thoughts and recharge before jumping into another social, family, or job chaos.
Politics is shit. Always has been and always will be. There is nobody to trust and nobody to rely on.
Always put yourself in somebody else shoes. Be compassionate. It is easy to see things with your eyes from your perspective, but everyone is different, and if you want to better feel or understand another person, you’ve got to see the world from their standpoint.
Life is too short to wait for retirement. Live now. Enjoy life while it lasts. We all have a one-way ticket and never know when this will end. Fuck it all. It is not all that bad, after all.
No matter how hard your shit is right now, we can be heroes just for one day.
Somehow these “socially-accepted norms” were developed that should potentially set you up for the future and on the right path. First, they send you to kindergarten, then pre-school, then high school, then college, the two-year institution first, followed by a four-year institution, and then you’ll have to find an internship followed by a job. Then life kicks you in the balls regularly until you retire, if you are lucky. That’s already so much fucking agenda through the formative years and into your early adult life. Damn, I feel fortunate to survive. I feel sorry for my kid, who hasn’t even gone to childcare yet. In his Working Class Hero song, John Lennon sang, “As soon as you’re born they make you feel small by giving you no time instead of it all … and then they expect you to pick a career …” John Lennon coming out of one of the most successful, famous, and influential bands in the world, in his post-Beatles life, was clearly not out of touch with reality when he wrote these lyrics. This song sounds like a pain, raw, honest, the real deal, the real shit. John Lennon felt it in his heart even though he was lucky not to deal with those social routines and principles. This song is as relevant today as it was fifty or so years ago because certain things never change.
I am at that age and presence of mind where I start to analyze what my life has been, and there it is going, and this analysis never fucking stops. I’m halfway through my best young adult years of life, and if I am lucky to live the whole second half of it, I’ll be right there on the edge of the retirement age, fingers crossed. If there ever will be such a thing as retirement when I grow old. Who the fuck knows? I like to look back at my life quite often and dwell on the past, comparing different phases I went through and the times when I struggled or succeeded. It is fascinating to see how things have changed over the years. I am not the man I had been two years ago, and sure, not the same person I was five or even ten years ago. If he were still alive today, I’m guessing John Lennon wouldn’t be the same person he was fifty years ago either. We all change with time. Small or significant changes are always happening. That is the fact. That’s life. Life changes. We have to change. But the kick is that whatever bullshit you went through before if that didn’t kill you, could potentially make you much stronger and wiser and make you who you are today.
One thing that annoys me is realizing that my life is full of things that don’t bring me much pleasure but are required to have or to do. Like jobs, for example. Like mortgage payments. Like job security. Like regular meals for the family. These fucking things don’t come from thin air, and somebody has to go out there and hustle. That’s what I do. I go out there and hustle. I can provide for my family for the time being, but on the other side, that imposed routine slowly eats me alive from the inside. I know that majority of my time is spent on the job and job-related bullshit, and that takes my physical time and mental capacity and fucking chips away at my young creative soul. It gets to the point where I can no longer live the life I used to and do things I love because there is always so much other work to do. There are all those needs and wants that I want to make sure my family has so we have a little chance to live without counting every fucking penny. However, there are consequences and sacrifices that one should be taking into consideration.
Will my son love me the same if I lose my job and all those perks? Would I be a better father if I became unemployed and just spend all my time with him while I can, while he’s still small, while everything is fun and games? He might love the stay-at-home dad option, but I know better. I know that I would never be able to focus on happiness, and I would never be able to be fully happy if I knew that I didn’t have any fucking money behind my poor little soul. I do try to spend a reasonable amount of time with my family regardless. I love spending time with my kid. I also hate when I have to work late and catch up on work at home while he’s knocking at my door asking me to let him in because he just wants to play. He’s a two-year-old child, the pure thing. He doesn’t know yet what life is about. He doesn’t know yet what it takes to manage this adult life. How many times did I hear him crying in the other room while I was working from home, and I couldn’t do shit because I was on some stupid fucking meeting, working, fucking listening to some douchebags about shit that doesn’t even matter to me anymore. It tears my heart and breaks my soul. Somehow this life keeps taking these weird turns and twists, and I feel like if not this, then there will be something else that will eat away my life. There will always be the next pain in the ass to follow, whether you want it or not. Why in the fuck, in this free and independent world, do I have to sacrifice the most valuable things in my life for the sake of some sort of security which supposedly helps us ensure a better and worry-less life? This social norm has been fucked up for a while now. The more you try to achieve to be more independent, the more you are enslaving yourself into your job or what have you, and that shit slowly occupies all your brain and soul and takes away all your free and precious personal time. This is the modern developed world we are living in today.
You probably wake up early in the morning because most jobs start early. If you have children, that’s even earlier for you. It doesn’t matter that you are tired, and the few hours you just slept did not help much at all. It doesn’t matter that you worked until late night or late evening, and there is still so much shit you need to finish by tomorrow. You want it or not, but you have to get up yet again and hustle one more fucking day. Your eyes are shot and red and tired. Your face has only one emotion, tiredness. You get older by the minute. The breathing is hard. There is this internal pain and discomfort that you have to drag with you around all day and into the night. Shit never goes right. There are always issues and problems at work. There are always problems at home too. You keep all that shit inside, and the more there is of it, the more it hurts. You hurt so often and so much that it becomes part of you now. You are the walking pain. You wish you could just walk the fuck away. Just quit that motherfucking job. Walk outside, breathe in the warm summer air, jump into your car and go. Go somewhere. It doesn’t matter as long as it is far away. Get out, get outside, enjoy the free blue sky and the birds, and the time you should have to enjoy always, but you never do. Go to the nearest bar and have a drink. Celebrate yourself. Fuck them all. Fuck those jobs! Your job has been a drag, and it always will be. And it always takes more and more of your life until you become a fucking slave. But then you realize that the bills are due, the bank account is running low, and the birthday of a loved one or a child is coming up. Your friends invited you to go out somewhere, and you just can’t afford to have your family going through the fucking government assistance program just because you don’t want to ruin your life with your job. You reminisced the good old and young days when shit was easy. Back then, you still could fuck off and walk out and change this around easily. Now, there is baggage. Now there is a family and responsibilities. By now, you are tired of fucking living with nothing and for nothing, and you want just a little bit of joy in this fucking life. I mean, how long can a person live in such misery? How do we get to live, period? Not much, as you will realize. There is just a little bit of life hidden somewhere behind all these fucking hustles and struggles and misery and depression.
Most people live this miserable “working-class” existence their entire lives. Somehow that becomes normal. That becomes your pride as a working man, your family, your fridge, your mortgage, your financed car, and all that other shit that people cannot live without. To have it, you must own it or at least go to work to pay for it. There is always a payment in our lives. Nothing’s free, pal. Everything costs money, stupid, ugly, dirty fucking money which we all are eager to earn and spend our lives making, collecting, investing, planning, spending, and dying for. I mean, not everyone can become a millionaire who doesn’t give a fuck about making daily life possible. There are so many hedge-fund babies the world can handle, and the rest have to be fucking peasants and physically work their asses off until they die, proudly like true working-class heroes. Somebody has to work to support all those rich fucks and everybody else. Somebody must work at the gas station, restaurant, bar, school, post office, construction, garbage company, etc. Today, we can clearly see that the great and powerful developed world as we knew it is not all that fucking great, and powerful, and invincible, and fucking A, not so much secure from pandemics and wars and shortages on so many things. And this is just the beginning, and this is looking to go only a downward spiral from here. Naturally, I am mentally well prepared for the worst, but I don’t know what to prepare for exactly and do not have the slightest idea about what the next day will bring. Sadly, I do not see the future at all of the bullshit going on in the world right now. It just seems like darkness all around.
I struggled a lot throughout the years with and without a job, and I know that I complain about the job while I have one, but I also know that if I lose this job, I will be fucked badly. Like probably half of the country, I am about two missing paychecks away from living on the street. All the things that now come for granted will be at risk or disappear quickly. The beauty of waking up and not worrying about paying your bills, rents, mortgages, and cars is very liberating. I think I can write much better when I am stressed about life, and the job is eating is fucking driving me bunkers, but if I didn’t have a job, my creativity would be evaporated, and all my thoughts would be about going and making some money. This is how this society is set up. You always have to work, and you always have to have that fear that will make you compliant. The fear of losing everything by sacrificing the most valuable in your life, your life. Somehow I need to and am still trying to figure out how to make it all work. How do I ensure that I can provide for my family, that we all can afford to live and do things we love, and that the fucking job is not taking away too much of my time, focus, health, and creative soul out of me?
The system was built so some will always live well, and some should always struggle. So many of these fucking mentors and entrepreneurs have made it in life, and now they are willing to share their secrets with anyone for a sum of money, providing lessons, books, podcasts, and all that other shit. One thing they all say that is the same is that you have to sacrifice everything, all your time, friends, family time, sleep, health, but you have to push through all the hardship, and eventually, you will fucking make it. Great fucking plan! Here I am sitting and wondering, how could I have all those things without killing my fucking life and soul? I guess that is the million-dollar question to be answered someday. The sacrifice has to come from somewhere.
Usually, the sacrifice has to be on your side. There is always an opportunity cost for anything. You have to decide which opportunity cost you are willing to take. What matters most to you right now that you should be going after, and what can be pushed to the side. I haven’t found a solution for that yet. I am still struggling. The more time passes, the harder the struggle becomes. The only light I can see is to enjoy this fucking crazy journey along the way, live for now, and be simply happy. There is no fucking reason to save all those millions for your retirement. I honestly think that once I am retired, I will not need anything, or not much would be necessary. I will be just like another constantly annoyed, grumpy old man complaining about life, the younger generation, and politics. If I am to miss any of these important life events just because I had a lot of “work” to do, I’d be fucking damned. If I had to bankrupt myself of every little joy in life just so I can live longer, what’s the fucking point of living longer without joy? You can’t take anything with you to the other side. The opportunity missed is the opportunity lost. Somebody once said, think, if you were on your deathbed; what missing opportunities will you regret more? It is always better to try and fail than not to try and regret forever. There will always be some work to do. There will always be somebody else in your place. There will always be the daily bullshit troubles. But there will only be a short period in this life when my son is two years old, and he is young and cute and funny and playful as he is right now, and he will be with me most of the time, and we can play and enjoy our time together. If I ever miss any of that, I wouldn’t be able to get that back at no cost. At retirement age or any other, all those precious things saved for later would be fucking useless waste of time and life. Life is too short to wait for retirement.
To all the working-class heroes out there, whatever you do, whatever makes you a few bucks today, remember one thing, it will not be like this forever, and anything will not last forever. The system that is banding you over will always be this way. Life will give you chances; you should be able to see them and take advantage. There will always be Uncle Sam, watching you closely and ensuring you have paid all your dues, but your life was not meant to be fifteen dollars an hour-for-ever. There are opportunities, other jobs, hobbies, solutions, and alternative ways of making a living. If you just keep looking out and thinking and voicing your troubles honestly to yourself, you will be able to notice the changes and see the opportunity for every problem. Life never goes in a straight line. There are ups and downs. We all should be aware of them. You must be honest with yourself first. Even if you are a restaurant worker, that can be your happy place in life too. You can make good money in a restaurant business, construction, office job, writing, painting, dancing, or something else. It is never too late to try new other things. It is never too late to ask yourself, what the fuck is making me happy? What matters to me most? How can I move along in life and make sure I stay afloat? There are so many sunrises to see.
The journey metaphor makes more sense than anything because you only live once. When this is over, there is nothing else and no second chance. Enjoying every little moment is the key. It’s the only thing you can control and must take full advantage of. Remember one thing, this is a one-way ticket ride, and once it’s over, it is over. There are no sequels. What would you be sorry for if today was your last day? What would you change? How would you live your life differently? “A working-class hero is something to be.”
We all, at some point, grow up and go on with and into our lives. Nobody is an exception. At one point, we are newborn babies, and we know nothing, and we cannot do anything but find and suck on our mother’s tit. Then we grow up and develop as a person and learn the language and how to talk. We sound funny and cute early on, then with time, we master communication skills, behavior, and ethics, and we become a part of society. I never thought about this too much until I became a parent myself. I look at that kid, and I see a younger version of myself, and I often remember what my parents used to do and, what they told me, how they raised me. I looked at them, and I thought they were adults; they knew everything, could do anything, and knew how to handle any problem. Now, at this point in my life, I’ve realized that they didn’t, and neither do I. I am learning as I go to be a parent. I am trying to be a great father, and knowing my upbringing; I want to make some improvements for my child. Like any other parent out there, I want a better childhood for my children, and I want them to have a better life than I had. I don’t know how it will play out long-term, but I hope for the best. As much as you try as a parent to bring up a child and raise a great person, I know that there is only so much parents can do. There is also life outside the sweet home that is unpredictable and unfair in many cases. My son will be growing up with other children. He will have caretakers at the kinder garden, teachers at the school, friends outside school, and the family circle, and they will be part of his life as his parents. The fear of any parent is to let our child go into this mean, unfair, rough, and crazy world we’re living in and watch them struggle, knowing of all the dangers out there that the little young mind is unaware of yet.
My son was born in September of 2019. Oh, it’s been just recently, and yet it seems so far away now. That was the last year when life was still normal. It was the last time the world has been as I remember it my whole life. Six months later, the world entered the global pandemic, and everything went to shit. Everyone’s lives changed during the pandemic, but the best thing for me was that I got to stay home with my family and my newborn child and be close to them all the time. I was lucky to get a great chance to watch him grow up, see him becoming a person, make his first steps, say his first word, and all other great things that came along. We decided we would not be sending him to childcare because everyone was freaking out about the virus. So we all had some great family quality time from his birth. He’s been home his first two years and nine months with his mother manly while his father was going to work and providing. There were great times. There were challenging moments, of course, but for the most part, we all were home, safe, and together under one roof. That’s what matters the most, staying together as a family. We all knew that the day would come, and we would have to send him to daycare, school, college, and his independent adult life. The only thought about sending my son to daycare scared us. Deep in my heart, I felt like I was giving up on my child. It felt unfair. I never wanted to do it. I wished he could stay home forever. Thinking about that moment, he would be away for a day felt strange and painful. My heart was tearing apart, and I felt the pressure in my chest. We both did. This is the feeling you get to go through when you love your child.
This child, in his two years of life, has lived through so much already: covid, recession, seasonal allergy, viruses, economy collapse, elections from Trump to Biden, housing boom, four round trip airplane travels, presidential elections, black lives movement, country division, his dead’s first self-published book, dad changing jobs, the war in Ukraine, national gasoline prices at an all-time high, what the fuck else am I missing here? There were some great moments in his little life as well. He’s got recently a newly born cousin-sister, we bought a house and moved out of our parent’s place, he’s been to Florida four times, he’s seen many exotic fishes and animals in zoos, aquariums and in the nature, survived covid without even knowing he’s got it, painlessly, he’s a bright, good-looking kid with the most loving parents in the world. Why am I bringing all of this up? This should explain how well-oiled and a tight family we are and how much time we love to spend together. We never get bored of one another and love each other dearly. When you have a family like that, you don’t give two fucks about the world outside, even if everything around is falling apart. Together we all always stand strong. We hate to separate, even for half a day or a few hours. Sometimes my wife and I go shopping or out for dinner, and it feels strange to be without the little one after a while. Shortly after living in the house, we both start missing our son. This is the kind of relationship we have going on here. It is painful to stay apart, and it is an abundance of activities, noise, and fun when we are all in one room. I am beyond fortunate to have a family like this.
When I was growing up, my family wasn’t the best but wasn’t the worst either. It is hard to criticize my parent now when I am a grown man with a child of my own and having the same issues my parents went through when they were younger. I remember my upbringing pretty well, especially when my younger brother was born. My parents grew up in a different country, a different world. I mean, it has been a different universe back then. Post-Societ-Union Ukraine wasn’t the top destination for most people, and the economic and social environment wasn’t what you would call promising. They both had to work. They both worked hard to make some money to provide for us, two boys, two crazy fucking boys who would beat the shit out of each other for no reason except that we were living under one roof. My parents bought a house, something that looked like a condo; we had a garage and a car. Not a fancy car, but it was brand-fucking-new when they bought it, and it was one of those classic Russian-made cars that half of the country was cruising around. There was no internet, gadgets, computers, home deliveries, yoga studios, or therapy practices. People had to get around however they could. People had to eat their own shit to survive. People had to be assholes to one another because somebody would fuck you over if you were too kind. And trust me, you never want to be fucked over in that country in those days or ever. My parents never knew about a healthy lifestyle, traveling, meditations, couples therapy, yoga, or gym workouts. They had to carry all that madness inside of them. It wasn’t even a norm to express yourself openly like it is popular to do today. And then, once the patience was running out, the alcohol came into the mix, the fighting, the cursing, the screams, and long nights when I was in bed wondering how in the fuck this would end?
My parents weren’t horrible parents or bad people. We had all the necessities, everything a child might need to grow up healthy and not a spoiled brat. We always had decent clothes, a lovely clean house, plenty to eat, a decent amount of toys, and proper discipline. We knew when we should be quiet and when it was better to hide away or calm down and stop doing stupid things. Otherwise, my father’s temper would not last long before he’d start beating the shit out of us. My mother was beating him and driving him mad. In return, he would transition all his anger at us, primarily myself, just because I was older. So, I know what it is like to be a responsible person from an early age because no matter what if my father wasn’t in the mood, I’d catch the fucking swing. Sometimes beatings were so hard that I often thought if he ever was concerned that I could get seriously damaged? I thought, how in the fuck am I going to survive this beating? What was my fault in his anger management or mismanagement towards the world and myself? One thing I learned early on in my life was the following. I knew that if I ever had any children, I would never raise them as my parents raised me. I’d rather not have any children at all than have them and have them suffering as I did through all of the bullshit and fury between two completely opposite and not compatible in any fucking way individuals.
Today, looking back at my own life, I cannot complain. Others had it much worst than I. What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. I believe it did. I survived. I grew up a decent human being. I know the wrong from right, and I know what kind of parent I will never be for my children. I know what kind of family I always wanted growing up, and I am doing my best right now to raise my family in the best possible way. I am a father myself and have great relationships with both parents. They have no relationships, but I stay close to both of them, and we see each other at least every week. They love their grandson, and I genuinely believe that that little child didn’t just change me into a better version of me but also changed them, the old dinosaurs, which I thought would never change. I guess people do mellow out with age, and now watching them laugh and smile watching the little one, I can see the pure love and happiness in their eyes I wish I could remember them showing to me when I was two years old. I do understand their strict position in raising my brother and myself. I know how important it is to keep your offspring in check and ensure they know what’s good and bad and how they should act.
With all that said, I want to continue with my point of raising children and letting them go into their own life. The world we are living in isn’t the best, safest place to be. Honestly, it wasn’t the best and safest place when I was growing up, and, as it seems, nothing fucking changed in the last thirty-five years. We all have to make it somehow. We must ensure our children are safe, fed, and secure and have everything they need. It is a complicated and critical job to be a parent. It is even harder to be a great parent. We are all people, and we all have our flaws. We all must deal with emotions, jobs, family, health, economics, etc. A lot of times, that socioeconomic pressure is just too much to carry around with you, and you start bending, getting angry, anxious, and depressed.
On the one hand, we are lucky to live in a day and age where it is very easy to get the products and services you need with a few clicks on your phone. It is relatively easy to make money, and you can achieve anything you want if you are a driven individual. We have all kinds of meditation apps, gyms at every corner, yoga studios, healthy organic food everywhere and everything is pretty much extensible to anyone everywhere. This makes the burden my parents went through so much easier. If I had been raised in America, our lives would be much better and more manageable, and my parents would still be together. People don’t need much to be happy. People think they need a lot, but it isn’t much after all. Somehow life gets complicated, and people go crazy, trying to live up to some standards, making all the money in the world, and hustling and sacrificing their precious time and health for nothing. There are too many sacrifices people make for fucking stupid possessions, for a fucking status, better neighborhood, better newer car, larger house with more useless shit if that house. This constant dissatisfaction with what you have and never have enough is fucking driving people insane; it breaks families apart and brings a lot of anger, sadness, and depression. Who needs all that shit? I’d rather stay poor all my life, but I want to make sure I am close with my family, and we are all as one, and we are all healthy and happy and love each other.
It was a typical weekend day, and my wife, my two-year-old son, and I went to a farm nearby to do strawberry picking. This place brings me back to my childhood, growing up in the country, growing ourselves fruits, berries, and vegetables. Many families with children come over to a farm playground where many parents like us bring their children to pick the strawberries, hang outside, play with other children, and have a great family quality time. There is a barn with a stage and a local band playing classic rock tribute songs. There is a fast-food joint making the best cheeseburgers and organic real-potatoes fries. There is a bar serving adult beverages and an ice cream place with some great homemade ice cream. There is a lot of fun and games and always something to do for the whole family.
My son is a bit shy. He’s shier than most kids are, and he’s careful amongst others, but he’s a child, a two-year-old. After picking some strawberries, we ate local fast food, followed by some ice cream. My son was running around, discovering the new place, bumping into people and other kids. Then he saw the playground. He looked at it and smiled with the most innocent smile. He looked at me and said he wanted to go there. He spends most of his time at home under his mother’s supervision while I work. He doesn’t have many friends and is not often when playing with other kids. He’s too domesticated and lived his first two years and eight months in a pretty safe and protected home environment. We went up there to the playground, and he climbed onto the slider, and there were a bunch of other kids. There were way too many kids for that reasonably small place, and everyone ran around chaotically and maniacally like a bunch of little ants. They all wanted to play, go down the slider, and do some climbing and jumping. They bumped into each other and pushed each other not maliciously, just mindlessly like children always do. My son was one of the youngest there, and he was being cautious as he usually is. He climbed up the stairs slowly, then over the wooden block, and climbed onto the little deck. There was a tube that kids would crawl into, come back, and go inside again. My son did the same. He smiled, looking around, watching other kids do things, and he tried to follow them as I was watching him from the ground.
At one moment, I lost sight of him. I looked around and couldn’t find him. I walked around and shouted his name as I couldn’t see him up there. Then he came up and just stood there smiling. The other kids were running around, pushing through, screaming, and shouting. He stood there quietly, and I called his name again. He couldn’t hear me, but I got relieved that at least I could see him now, and he was fine. He’s having his fun with other kids. He stood there watching others, turned around, and leaned onto the wooded fence, looking down. He did not see me, and I was closely watching him and getting worried more and more about him not getting pushed over by other kids. I felt like a ghost watching him from the side. He probably wasn’t even thinking about me at the moment. It was his life, and he was enjoying it among other kids. I felt something strange then. I felt the feeling of losing him. I feared that if something happened, I could be there and could not help him. I know he needs my support, I know he needs my help, and also, he’s out there on his own, living his life. I felt that this is what happens in life when your children grow up and become independent, and they go on in their lives. My son stood there smiling and curiously watching everything around him as my heart was bleeding because I just wanted to snatch him out of there and hug and never let him out into this chaotic and manic world of ours.
“The Catcher in the Rye” and Holden’s philosophy on children entering adult life came to my mind. It all made perfect sense to me there. I felt like Holden, trying to catch my child from jumping into adulthood or his little independent life without me. I wanted to protect him from the outside world. I want him to grow up a great, intelligent, respectful person, which will happen someday. But now, I only wanted to keep my child close to me and have full control and provide complete protection over him. I realized that this is what “letting your child into the world” actually feels like. He was up there, not realizing that I was watching. He probably even forgot that his father was nearby. He was living these moments on his own, at his discretion. I felt it all in my heart. I remembered how my father was furious at me for going out and doing things with my friends when I was a child. He was always so overprotective that he eventually became a tyrant in my childhood. I wasn’t allowed to do anything because everything was some sort of danger to me. I felt his pain in my young father’s chest watching my son standing there alone with no support from me.
I know he will grow up eventually and become an adult, a real man, and a father someday. But also, he will always be my child, my son, and always will be his father. Today he is two and change, and his life is all fun and games. His parents do their best to provide and support him and ensure he gets the best childhood possible. At one point, he’ll mature and this fun will turn to anxiety, and the games will become survival. I have time before that to prepare him for life and all the ins and outs. I will not always be there all the time. I will not always be near or available, and he might not even let me know about everything that is going on in his life. I will be then like I have been at the playground, just another observer, a father ghost. I would just be looking out and hoping for the best while life will decide what turn to make and what challenge to bring up for him. I will be useless and helpless, and that thought is tearing my heart. I cannot keep him as this innocent little boy who is always protected and has his parents next to him twenty-four-seven.
We all have to grow up, and we all have to deal with life. Not all of us get a fair share, and not all of us will be able to enjoy the life ahead of us entirely. But we all have to strive for a better life. We all, as adults, have to be able to set our children up for a better childhood and better life than we once had. Times are changing but usually not for the best. There are more and more issues and threats, and the future is always unpredictable and mysterious. Somehow we all have to deal with it. At some point, we all have to let our children go on and start their own life. There will be a lot of unpredictable and hopefully more fortunate moments in their lives, but they have to take that ownership of their own lives and live it. My son will start kindergarten soon, the first step into his independent life without parents nearby. He will have to make it on his own. He will have to grow up, become smarter, stronger, and more independent. I believe that one day he will become a great father and have the same worries I have for him today. Until then and always, I will be his loving father, my wife will be his loving mother, and we will never stop worrying about him because we live our lives for him, and we live him more than life itself. Parents will get it. They know how it feels.
