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…
As another year comes to its natural conclusion, I sit and think about it for a while. Many things were going on this year that I wanted to analyze and reflect on. This year was not the best or most remarkable, even though many great things did happen, and overall it has been an improvement to the year prior. I think nothing will and could ever compare to 2020. That’s how fucked up that year has been for me and for all of us. 2021 has been a little bit better. In many ways, similar to 2020, not much improvement, although one could feel a bit of a relief. Something that was so mysteriously dangerous and everyone was holding on to just got out of the way. We all took a long deep breath and moved on in our lives. I think this is how 2021 will go down in history. It was time to move on. I am so fucking happy I moved on.
I am always fascinated by how fast a year flew by, and usually, that would make me a bit nostalgic and sad. This doesn’t happen anymore because these were some crazy two fucking years, and I cannot wish more to have them behind my back and fucking forgotten, thrown out of my life and mind. Fuck these crazy times. I am very hopeful for the future days to come. I do hope for a much better and prosperous future. I am the fucking future. I will make it all work starting right fucking now and onward. This is how it should be. Each of us has to own it, take our lives into our hands, and make shit happen. Nobody else would do that for you or me. It is all in our fucking hands.
I remember how desperately I’ve been waiting for the end of 2020. That one was a motherfucker of the year and such a turning point in, I believe, everyone’s lives. How many of us will never be the same after all that crazy shit? I think all of us have changed our life’s dimensions and priorities since 2020. I don’t know how much longer we all will be in this pandemic and how much longer we will be getting forced into vaccinations, masks, limited capacities, shortages, and all that other shit. One thing I know for sure, we all have to move the fuck on. We all have to own our lives. We all had to improve our lives, relationships with one another, and our health because otherwise, there is no movement forward. I made my choices, I made up my mind, I know what the fuck is what the fuck. I also see that many people are still living in this never-ending wait, for the directions, waiting to be told, waiting not to die from the virus, waiting for another fucking shot. The shot we all should be taking is our own shot at this life, not some fucking half-backed chemicals that might as well fuck up your health even more. And of course, even the fucking science doesn’t know the long-term effects and consequences or what else will the new variant bring on.
Reflecting on this year of God 2021, I think it’s been a rough one, but overall not too bad. I did spend too much time waiting on something to happen, and everything seemed to be a drag. I’ve been trying to take ownership and make things move around but with little success. Some fucking things just take their time. I have finally left the big Corporate America world, which was a very long-time coming and fucking finally came to fruition. Around February, I realized that I could not make things work and that there was no return from that fucking hellhole. The only option was to run as far away as I could. And I did. It took almost six months to run away and find a new job. There was so much fucking effort invested into this fucking job search that I almost gave up. I thought the month of searching would be enough at first. Then one month went by, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. How wrong was I? And then, all of a sudden, somebody reached out to me from the deep past and offered me a job. I considered the opportunity, and I finally got the new gig. I got all that I’ve been ever asking for, and I finally was able to say good buy to all that corporate bullshit. Searching for the job took away all the time I wanted to spend on writing, fitness, family, sleep, and the rest of life-important things. It only made everything more complicated and more painful.
We wanted to move to Florida this passing year as well, unsuccessfully. We started house hunting early in the year, and we were very close at times of getting one. It didn’t happen until late September, and I think for all the right reasons. Fortunately, we’ve got our new place right here in the Philadelphia suburbs. We did spend an entire month of May in Florida renting, and it was the highlight of the year. That really felt very much like healing, very rewarding, relaxing, and just fucking awesome. I am considering going there next year as well. There are some things to consider prior but fuck the things. My life, my family’s life, and our well-being are top priorities against everything else. Everything else can go to fucking hell as far as I am concerned. There is always something in our way preventing us from going after our goals. Some fucking last-minute, out-of-the-blue fucking emergency that will fuck up the big plan. Here is where we need to be laser-focused and cut that bullshit right out. If you know what you want, go and get what you want. There is no need for waiting, crying, trying, or asking somebody for something. Just fucking do it, as Nike said.
This year I’ve lost my dear lifelong friend. It is hard to write about your best friend who is no longer here. There has been so much between us that we went through together that it will take a novel-sized book to capture everything. I don’t know if the words I am choosing are the right words, and indeed, they are not enough to capture the loss and the sadness. I have a ton of memories of him that I will always treasure, as well as all the things we did together. He’s been in poor health the last three years of his life since the diagnosis, and he’s been a true fucking fighter, fighting this thing to the end, until his last minute. Unfortunately, his illness was stronger than him. Unfortunately, all these other things got in a way, impacted him and his health one way or another, and in the end, he was gone. There was so much of him in my life, and now there is just emptiness. It is very unusual to realize that and confirm this new reality. How will this life go without a person who’s been so close to me all these years? We went through so much shit together. We have been together since the day we’ve met. Life did not prepare me for this, but this is something that, when it happens, leaves you with no choice. It leaves you broken up there, hanging confused and shocked, wondering what the fuck just happened. Rest in peace, my dear friend. I love you, I miss you, I will never forget you. As Warren Zevon sang, “I’ll keep you in my heart for a while,” and forever. Take care now. I hope you’ve found your peace up there in heaven. May your soul be comfortable for once and until we see each other again.
Job is something I seem to always struggle with. It is either the job search is challenging and complex, takes too much time, and there are no opportunities, or, when I finally lent a job, I feel like I am not in the right mindset to deal with it and I am thinking about the escape. And on the other hand, getting along with a bunch of strangers at work and pretending that you like them all and enjoy their company even if you don’t care, and even if they treat you like shit, is a full-time job on its own. Sometimes it feels like there are no great jobs for me or at all. It seems like everywhere I go, I own somebody something. That owning is what fucking drives me crazy. The minute I start feeling all those eyes on me watching, waiting, wanting me to jump out of my skin, wanting me to break, and all these fucking never-ending expectations and constant not enough’s are killers for anyone’s soul, not just mine. My soul is small and humble, and it doesn’t need much comfort or requires anything unusual. It is in a much better place when all the necessities are covered and paid for, but there the problems begin. I am a free spirit, and I like to think I am independent, and I like to think I have a don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, but that only goes for so long. At the end of the day, I love to have my bills paid on time and have certain comfort in my life, certain financial freedom, certain life qualities that I think a normal human being who works hard deserves to have and should be enjoyed effortlessly. I don’t like to count every single fucking penny. I don’t like to shop for savings and discounts, and I don’t give a fuck about savings and overthinking my retirement budget. I want what I want and when I do want that, and I am getting it right there and then. Not because I am a spoiled lunatic, but because this approach, in my opinion, takes away the pain of letting go of the hard-earned money and the stress that comes along with not having enough or spending your last dollar. I also don’t like to spend too much time worrying about stupid shit. I’d rather pay more and have nothing to worry about. Life is short. I wonder, when we die, what will be the biggest regret, our retirement budget, or all the missed opportunities in this life?
This year will mark the fifth year since I’ve seriously decided to write. Back in 2016, after reading Charles Bukowski’s poetry for the first time, I felt something that I had never felt before. There was this crazy urge to write, create, be a poet, and a writer. Everything I observed around me, every thought that entered my mind, I was trying to somehow put on the paper in the poem form. I remember that fire burning inside of me. I have never felt anything like that before or after. Bukowski’s poetry initially seemed too simple. I felt like even I could do that. I can write my thoughts as Bukowski did. This is why he was a genius. This is why he has inspired so many and keeps inspiring new writers today.
It wasn’t all that simple when I tried to write something myself, but at least I tried, and I’ve got something. It was the beginning of everything for me. My poetry wasn’t good, and there was no prose early on at all. Somehow, I wrote over two hundred poems in some three-plus years and self-publish that in 2020. Since that time, I haven’t published anything else. Last year, I finished writing a novel which I started writing back in 2018. This year I was planning to final edit it and start looking for representation as I was planning to have it all done professionally and officially.
The editing process stalled early in the first half of the year, and I could never finish it. There was always something in a way. Mostly my job or my new job search, which took away too much of my fucking time. I do feel like shit to yet again put my writing career on the back burner for the sake of comfortable and worry-less living. Looking back at it now, I don’t think it was all that comfortable and worry-less as I thought. Life is full of fucking surprises and challenges, and it keeps to fuck me up at every corner with every bit of opportunity it has to cut me off. I know this and expect this to happen, but this will take my focus away from my writing and my true passion. Am I disappointed? Yes, I am a little. I feel that this unfinished business is hanging over me. I feel like I didn’t hold the promise I’ve made to myself to finish that novel this year. But, with some challenges, I was able to make many improvements in my life and career, and hopefully, that will help me move forward and spend more time on my writing. I do hope to finish that fucking novel this upcoming new year and hopefully find somebody to push this to big guys in publishing to have a traditional publishing release. It would be great. At least it seems like it. There is a lot of shit I will have to go through as well, but I’ll deal with it when I get there. For now, I have a lot of work to do, and I need to have my priorities straight and set my mind on them.
It is not so cold and snowless on this Christmas Eve of 2021. It is dark and quiet outside, and nothing is happening in the suburbs besides Santa, who has a lot of work to do tonight. All kids are asleep, waiting for tomorrow’s morning to come faster so they can finally see their gifts. My wife and son are upstairs sleeping, and I am here downstairs, drinking great Irish whiskey, listening to a great Irish guitar player Rory Gallagher on vinyl, eating pistachios ice cream, and typing this final blog post for the year. Life is not all that bad. It can be bitchy at times, though. Everything that I have now, today, is not luck. I know that. I can recall too many sleepless nights and never-ending workdays and never-ending struggles and sufferings. I survived all that, and somehow I am still here. I am in a much better place and space and keep moving forward. Just like Rocky, I keep punching and moving forward. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow or after tomorrow or the next month, next year. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I have learned the hard way to survive, and I will survive no matter what happens. I will break the fuck free and breakthrough all that bullshit. I wish we all did just that in the new year. Let’s make this new year the best one yet for all of us. Life is too short to spend on stupid shit hopeless dreams. There is so much more to live for and to accomplish. I want to raise my glass tonight to all the new great beginnings and a better life for everyone. Cheers, y’all, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever you celebrate, and a Happy New Year! We all fucking deserve it.
Here I go again. This is another birthday. Another year went by, another lesson learned and too many not learned. It was thirty-four years ago when I was brought to this world, and I cannot believe how fast the fucking time passed. In a heartbeat, I become a grown man. Not so long ago, I was just a small boy, playing carelessly in my parent’s house, enjoying my cared-for and straightforward living. Everything was great, as I can recall it, back then. Our lives were happier, more eventful, more organized, more engaged. Everything had a purpose and a meaning, or it didn’t have to have any. But we all lived the life, smiled, played, had fun, met friends, celebrated, and reminisced.
The time was prolonged then. I remember always waiting for something to happen, whether I wanted to be old enough to go somewhere or wait for the holidays, birthdays, new gifts, new visits by our family friends and relatives. I recall friends of the family and relatives were coming over almost every weekend. My mother would cook something, then serve the table full of her delicacies. We all would dress up in our nicest, newer clothes and be waiting for our guests to come over. They always did, and it was the happiest time. They always brought something for my brother and me like some new treats, toys, clothes, chocolates, anything. We felt so excited and happy and appreciative. Back then, this was true happiness to me.
As time went by and I was growing older, I remember that point in time when our guests would stop visiting. Their visits were rare and not even on all major holidays or birthdays. Every time my parents told me somebody would not come, it made me upset. It felt like the holidays were ruined. I always wanted these good old days to go on all the time, never stop no matter what. Everything good and bad eventually comes to its end sooner or later. My childhood did come to an end, and all these neverending visits by our relatives and family friends. My family is now thin-spread across the globe. We don’t have those happy childhood days at the house anymore. We don’t even own that house anymore. We become adults and parents ourselves, and now we are in charge of our lives, children, friends, and relatives. Live came full circle.
Many things have happened in my life over the last thirty-four years. I’ve been around a corner a few times. Somehow I remember all that shit, and it is still affecting me to a certain extend. Things started to go sideways somewhere along the line, and more often than not, nothing was great anymore. However, I keep looking for my purpose, for my new motivation, for another thing to do or accomplish all the time with little or no success. At this time in my life, I realize that this is not the game anymore and that there are some serious responsibilities I need to assume. Having a wife and child and elderly parents should make you take that responsibility, want it or not.
I know that I am on the right path; however, I feel like this path is too fucking annoying for me. I am too tired to follow it. I need something new, something fresh, something more purposeful and more enjoyable. I love to have certain comforts in my life, and strangely enough, my shitty office job is helping me to have them. On the other hand, this fucking job and this corporation with all their bullshit are driving me fucking insane, killing my soul, and shitting on my brains. I now spent over three months looking for a new job with 0 success. There haven’t been too many interviews, to begin with, but this economy, this fucking pandemic, these new job requirements, and constant chaos all around is just making it all weird and challenging to navigate as fuck.
I no longer know what I want to do and how to get there. I don’t know where I should go to find any fucking purpose in this chaotic and ridiculous life. I don’t know how to feel happy again because nothing or nobody except for my child makes me happy. I am lost as I ever been, with no directions, no purpose, no satisfaction, no goals, lost goals, no motivation, no desire to do any fucking thing. How did I get here? How to get the fuck out of here? Where is the recipe for this nonsense? How long is this misery going to last? Should I be getting used to it, is what life has become nowadays?
I don’t know, like so many other things. I just don’t fucking know. I just live my life like a fucking soldier on the mission, waiting for the next day to come while trying to survive today. What kind of life is that? Why has all the joy left me? Is this depression talking to me again? How many fucking times can a person be so depressed? It seems like this fucking darkness came last year and never left me. I felt for a very long time that my job was the reason for all my misery. And for the most part, it has been. That fucking soul-crushing-god-damned-fucking-shitty-office-slavery job has been down my throat for quite a while now. I mean, it all began all well and good, and somehow all the satisfaction and motivation went to shit. Somehow I am on the lowest of the low again. Oh, Fuckness!
Now, I am trying to find a new job, and there is just so much shit happening on my way that I don’t even want that new job. All these new jobs sound like a fucking disaster. There are no great jobs anymore. Everything has its limits, its course, and its fucking time. And it’s all about how much of somebody else’s shit are you willing to put up with.
I am talking to recruiters and managers trying to sound happy and knowledgeable, but I cannot even pretend to be interested in anything. I don’t give a fuck. I just don’t give a fuck! Meanwhile, I don’t even have an alternative. Stupid shit pops up in my mind like taking a physical job, get away from that fucking office and corporations. But that is not a solution. That is just another fucking trap. And I even know today that doing that for a bit will drive me fucking bunkers very soon. Somehow I need to find this golden middle. Somehow I need to figure it all out.
I am always a happy person as I know it. I am trying to be always on a positive note. I know that I have had something happy and positive and exciting waiting for me shortly. Everything takes too much time, and the time seems to be flying over our heads like a fucking tornado. I don’t know how long I can or will be waiting for anything to happen. I need to take action, but I don’t know what these fucking actions should be. I am stuck in this fucking misery with no way out, and the fact that I am kind of paralyzed in this situation, I am not able to make any moves or progress in my life, drives me fucking crazy! I don’t know where I am going, and I don’t know what the fuck to look out for.
I will continue to take care of myself, my family, do all the right things, and spend time with them. That will always be me and my mindset. They need me, and I need them even more. They are my love and joy, and they are everything I need in this life. I want all the best for them. Right now, I cannot afford all the best for them, except my best intentions, but I will be able to one day.
I go to the gym as often as I can. I will work on my body, my character, my overall well-being, and my fucking mental state. I will continue to look out for these fucking new and better jobs until I will finally get one. I will spend more time with my family and my friends, as I always should’ve. I am going to write more regularly and write more, and write fucking good. Writing does make me feel better, more fulfilled, and productive. There is a shit-load of writing to be done; there are books to release and publish, self-publish whatever. All I need is to actually sit down and do it. Do it for my own satisfaction, for my own sanity.
Happy birthday, mothafucka; you’ve made it this far and to so many more! Make sure you don’t fucking waste your time. Make sure you stay in your right mind and stay strong. These motherfuckers out there are not worth going crazy for. You have many people who are worth living for and trying for, which should be your reason and motivation. Fuck the rest! Cheers, you fucker!
Jobs are different kinds. There are full-time jobs, part-time, contract, contract-to-hire, passion projects, soul-crushing jobs, there are self-owned businesses, gig jobs, freelancing, and whatever, you name it. As many as there are problems in our lives, as many there must be jobs because all jobs should help solve the problems we have. We all need jobs. We all should get jobs. We spend our lives working jobs, making careers, busting our balls trying to make it, or making ends meet. We are always told that “It’s good that you have a job”, “It is good to be busy”, “Busy is good, right?” I guess it depends on what you are busy with and how much of it you really care about. Most of the time, we all hate our jobs, but we have our obligations, debt, family, kids, bills, loans, and we work and work and work until we die.
I am one of those “lucky privileged bastards” who finished college, and now I have had quite a few years of professional work experience behind my belt. I am considered middle-class or somewhere near that based on my salary, and I am supposedly the one “who made it.” I came to this country, and I’ve got my education, and I’ve got multiple jobs over time, and now I am who I am, a professional. I followed the traditional path to “normal life” by getting a four-year degree and working my many career jobs so I could be promoted over time and move from one position to a better one. Back in the day, that sounded like a great plan. Back in my early college days, that seemed like it was the only way to “make it.” I didn’t want to work at factories and construction sites all my life like most people that I knew did. I wanted to be in the office, working clean and safe jobs and getting promotions as time goes by. I guess now I’ve got what I wanted. As this became my life now, I started wondering, what the fuck did I really achieve, and why am I so fucking miserable all the time?
There are a shit ton of people out there who, with or without the proper education, made a tremendous success in life, whether it is building a business or creating a new product or service or new app or whatever. Most of them never got a proper education; most of them were college or high-school drop-outs. Most of the people you know or see hitting the road to work every day on the highway, are with an excellent education are just fucking office people who none of us will ever know or hear from or notice them amongst the crowd. They are the masses, the masses who followed the plan. It is not always bad to have a secure job and steady income and keep on “growing” and living a “normal” life. The problem is the cost that you pay for it. It is not the price of your salary. It is never just those fifty or one hundred thousand dollars in school loans that you’ve borrowed because you were led to believe that you are investing in your life, your dream, or your future. Sometimes it is true, but it is so fucking false in most cases. Once I get a decent job, I think that it will take me about a year or two to pay my debt off, and then I will be free and happily living my life in peace and comfort.
