09 Sunday Apr 2017
I ran some errands this morning and ran over a nail – due to the nails location I had to get a new tire using money that I don’t have.
Life really is not going well for me right now. Every ounce of optimism that I try to conjure up gets stomped on.
I wish things would start going right for me… for once.
09 Sunday Apr 2017
The last of the remaining water in the basement I just finished mopping up. I would not be surprised if there is a bit more in a few hours, however I think the worst of it is over.
Until the storms move in on Monday that is.
Although there was no precipitation yesterday or today, and there isn’t supposed to be any tomorrow either, I’m not sure if the ground is dry enough to take on another surge of rain. So I’m hoping that the storms we are supposed to get on Monday aren’t as heavy as the predictions are saying.
I don’t feel like dealing with another flooded basement for at least a week.
On Friday morning when I first saw what I was up against in regards to the water in the basement, I didn’t think that I’d ever see an end to the battle. Maybe because there is enough bad luck coming my way this year, this new challenge just didn’t seem too promising. But with a mop, a plastic tote box and a lot of persistence, I was able to prevail.
It did take a few sessions because once I got the basement dry, the water would slowly seep back in. But each time that I went back down there and did more mopping, the task took less time and became less frustrating.
It was something that I could deal with – despite it feeling overwhelming.
That will be the case for quite some time from now on as I try to figure out this new situation that I’m in. I’ll need to discipline myself to stick to a tight budget in order to cover the portion of the mortgage that my [former] best friend stuck with me. I’ll need to stay focused.
Will I have tough times in the days and months ahead? I’m sure of it.
Considering that my [former] best friend left EVERYTHING of his that he’s ever owned since childhood here at the house – I do believe that he will, someday, try and come back for it. That day I perceive, will be a tough day.
Does he know that I’ve gotten rid of at least 50% of his belongings? (And I’ll continue to get rid of more in the days and weeks to come).
How will he respond?
I’m not sure I even care any more.
His leaving has left me in the position where I’m wondering if I’ll even be able to afford the house any more.
The waves of depression that I get hit with aren’t as strong as they were weeks ago, but they still come and they still pull me under. I just wish that he had given me some sort of notice before just leaving.
So I didn’t have to lose valuable weeks in trying to figure out what exactly had happened (and I still don’t know what exactly has happened!) Now I’m in this emergency mode where I can’t figure out a solution to how to come up with an extra $300 a month – and still be able to pay my other bills.
Right now I’m taking advantage of ‘grace periods’ when I can.
It’s the utility bill that hasn’t arrived yet that has me the most worried. Whenever I try to budget a certain amount for it, it’s always higher than I anticipate.
I won’t be able to handle a high utility bill this month.
Challenges.
I’ll face them with the same determination and persistence I had when I was drying out the flooded basement. The waters will recede and things will return to some form of normal again.
27 Monday Feb 2017
I’ve been writing daily – in a notebook – my thoughts on world events. It is the only way for me to get my mind off of the fact that I haven’t seen my best friend for over a month now and how lonely I’m getting.
He did deposit his portion of the mortgage into my account the other day, and I’m still contemplating taking him off my car insurance policy on March 1st unless I see him first. The problem is that I get the distinct feeling that he is intentionally avoiding me. I think he is, once again, trying to get into a relationship with his baby-mama. I believe she convinced him that the reason it didn’t work out last time was due to me.
He’ll learn once again it was entirely her.
At any rate, I built a kitchen table over the past several days which is why I haven’t been updating this blog lately. I discovered that building my own would be cheaper than buying one. Menard’s had all the components, I just had to do all the refining and assembling. I think it turned out nice.
Both of my cats have been terribly sick all last week and after daily care of them, they are beginning to gt much healthier which is a relief. They both are sneezing frequently however which is particularly annoying.
In other news: this up coming weekend is when I plan on recording my first podcast of Bad Dinosaur. I’m both nervous and excited about this prospect. This weekend I also plan on buying 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster finally – after putting it off for at least a month now. I’ve been reading pages of it at the book store and I’m finally getting into his writing style enough that I think I’ll be able to invest time into reading it.
Someday I’ll write a novel – once I repair this damaged, lonely heart of mine.
17 Friday Feb 2017
Still no sign of my best friend.
This is getting upsetting. I refrained from removing him from the car insurance plan for the time being, but that will not be the case for much longer.
I am beginning to just not care at this point. Questions keep circulating in my mind like “why should I continue to do favors for him if he has no problem abandoning me when I need him?”
I’m dealing with too much and he is just becoming an added burden that I am losing the ability to carry any more. His absence is giving me depression. I am working so hard to try and set up this podcast and I’m so filled with uncertainty about whether my ‘best friend’ is on the verge of fucking me over or not, that I can’t focus on much of anything.
I made the mistake of thinking that when I got this house. the three of us would all share in the responsibility of it’s upkeep. I was clearly wrong. While I work nearly 60 hours a week, my roommates go out and play and I’m left with the task of doing… everything. When things aren’t done to their standards, they throw tantrums and leave. I’m just getting tired of all of this.
Then I find out this morning that the car insurance had gone up considerably and I’m unable to learn why.
My nieces first birthday party is this weekend but I’ll be unable to go because I volunteered to work because I’m unsure if my roommate is going to pay his share of the mortgage.
Things are falling apart – and it’s all thanks to my best friends ‘baby mama’ who, once again had to manipulate her way back into my best friends life.
15 Wednesday Feb 2017
During the house buying process this past summer I did a favor for my best(?) friend – I put him on my insurance so that he could get a better rate and have to pay a lower premium for his vehicle. This little favor I did cut his car insurance payment in half. He was paying just under $300 a month, and when I put him on with my insurance, his monthly payment dropped to $160.
That was going well for awhile, but then January happened – and I had to pay his car insurance because he “didn’t have the money” and the payment is taken out of my checking account. Then this month, February, it happened again. So for two months in a row I had to cover his insurance payment AND on top of it, he’s been gone for well over three weeks now. He told me that he was going to spend “just the weekend” with his daughter at his baby mama’s house, but it’s Wednesday and I haven’t seen or heard from him.
So I’m giving him until tomorrow and if I don’t see or hear from him, I’m taking him off my insurance plan.
It’s really beginning to feel like he is using me and I’m just getting sick of it.
Although I WILL be taking him off my insurance tomorrow, I’m not going to give him the courtesy of knowing. If he want’s to fuck me over, I’m going to give him a taste of his own medicine. If I have to, I’ll see his stuff to make up for his portion of the rent. I’m really getting angry about this bullshit that he is putting me through.
13 Monday Feb 2017
For those who aren’t aware – I’ve always been into politics, especially geopolitics. I realize this blog – so far – has not really shown that. The reason for that is that when I began this blog – which was around this time last year – I was in a very transitional part of my life.
At the beginning of December 2015 I had collapsed at work and had to be taken to the ER. I spent four days in the hospital and had to have three blood transfusions. I quite honestly nearly died. My hemoglobin levels were at 4.8, the doctors were surprised to see that I was even conscious.
I have an internal bleeding problem, and at the end of 2015, it had caught up to me.
After I left the hospital, my life was in disarray. I began re-evaluating everything. Things I had once found interesting no longer were and my ability to focus on stuff had diminished to the point I didn’t even feel like myself any more. I didn’t feel like a “new” person but rather, I felt like my life had shattered and I was having difficulty recognizing the pieces.
Meanwhile my best friend lost his job and was putting himself through a whole bunch of needless drama which I inevitably got pulled into.
While I was going through all of this, I realized that I desperately needed a change in my life. The apartment that I lived in for nearly a decade no longer felt like home and the community I was living in continued to make me feel alienated. I came to the realization that the only way I’d be able to collect myself was if I completely uprooted my life and changed my entire environment.
And over the course of 2016, that is exactly what I did. During the summer months I went through the process of buying a house (which is loosely documented in this blog) and moving an hour away to an entirely new community. Instead of living alone like I had for eight and a half years, I was going to move into a house with two roommates.
I would have to share my living space with two other people. On top of that, I would take on new endeavors as well.
Basically 2016 – the year that I turned 32 – was the year that I decided to start over and begin to actually pursue my dreams in a much more aggressive way. The situation that I ran into however is that the people I live with don’t share this renewed desire I have to get stuff done. I feel like their laziness is becoming an impediment to the things that I want to do.
…and the things that I want to do include:
The booktube channel of course would focus on books, the weekly (or monthly) publication would focus on politics AND books which the podcast/radio show would include talks on books, politics and include short radio drama’s written by me.
(All that while maintaining this blog and working 40+ hours a week. Ugh!)
So, as I was stating at the beginning of this post, my interest in politics (or “anti-politics”) will begin to be more evident in my blog postings. Don’t be alarmed, “personal” type blog posts will dominate most of the entries, but there will be times where I’ll have to completely rant about something our Cheese-puff-in-Chief has done.
So, no – this blog isn’t “changing”, this blog simply documented a life change I was going through and now that my life has re-aligned itself to some version of normalcy of what my life used to be like before I started it – this blog will simply be reflecting that.
So, until next time….
10 Friday Feb 2017
My best friend is treading on the fine line between asking for my help and blatantly just using me.
My best friends work had two weeks at the end of January where they were closed down with out pay. The employees at his work were told to go and apply for short term unemployment for that time period. The problem is that in order to qualify for that unemployment, you had to be continuously employed for 18 months. Unfortunately my best friend hasn’t been “continuously employed” for an entire year yet.
So he told me that during those two weeks off he’d spend that time applying for a second job in order to help cover his bills. He’d do this because his shift at work would go from a third shift 10pm – 6am schedule to a second shift 5pm – 1am schedule. He explained to me that this would allow for him time to sleep and work a part time morning job.
Those were the plans that he made.
But he didn’t do that – at all.
Instead he spent those two weeks with his baby- mama. Then when his work started back up again, he continued stay at his baby-mama’s place. When I am finally able to talk to him earlier this week (Wednesday) he tells me that he will not have enough money to cover his bills.
I told him that I would help him with his bills – I even went as far as telling him that on payday (TODAY) I would deposit some of my paycheck into his bank account so he can get by.
But… when I get home from work this morning, he’s not here – he’s [probably] at his baby-mama’s place.
I’m just getting irritated of digging him out of messes that he puts himself in (out of his own pure laziness) just for him to push me aside like my time is something that is OK for him to waste. If he expects me to go out of my way to put money in his checking account while he is off somewhere else – he is deeply mistaken.
Anyway I’m trying to find the motivation to set up a pod cast. I have all the (rudimentary) equipment that I’ll need, but the energy required is difficult to conjure up. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how to execute everything. Hopefully by early March I’ll have something put together.
Until next time…
06 Monday Feb 2017
I’ve been living in my house since late July 2016 and since that time I’ve been able to develop a routine of sorts.
I work third shift which means I get home from work at approximately 7:30am every morning. Typically I’ll pick up a cup of coffee on the way home. Once I reach home the first thing I do is clean out the cat’s litter box – which they both instantly go and use. Since the litter box is in the basement where all my plants are beginning to grow, I’ll go and check them as well.
If the plants need watering, I’ll water them.
Next I make my way up to my bed room where I take off my work shoes and read one page out of THE WRITERS DAILY COMPANION by Amy Peters. I’m on week 28 in that. IF my best friend were here, I’d go and join him where ever he may be and talk to him for a few hours or so as I finish my coffee.
After this I’ll do one of two things, either read for awhile OR write in a note book about what is going on in the news. It should be of no surprise that Donald Trump is the focus of these writing’s as of late.
I’ll include an excerpt of yesterday’s essay for an example:
“It has become almost too exhausting trying to keep on top of the latest Trump related out-rage. By the time you’ve learned about one thing he’s done, he has gone and done something else equally troubling and equally deserving of ones attention. I am beginning to wonder if the desired effect is to get people so jaded in regards to what he is doing that once he absolutely crosses the line into dictator – people will have become complacent.
New massive, worldwide protests erupt daily on behalf of Trump and his big mouth and ego. He seems to have something to say about everything and little understanding of anything. He recently wrote and EO (executive order) that put in place essentially a Muslim ban that restricted people from seven primarily Muslim countries access to the USA.
Clearly he wasn’t aware that this type of action is illegal and unconstitutional. Therefore a federal judge overturned his EO causing Trump to have a temper-tantrum – on Twitter.
HE’S ONLY BEEN IN OFFICE FOR TWO WEEKS!
That deserved emphasis. Once complacency sets in among the American people, who knows what this whiny billionaire will try and get away with. Keep in mind that his so called “Muslim ban” was put into practice until it was overturned a couple of days later.
I’ve personally gotten tired of all of his bullshit to be blunt, but I think I’ll persist for awhile longer.
With Trump there is a large problem that continues to happen. There are people who hate him so much that ANYTHING he does immediately becomes a controversy – when in fact what you get are a whole bunch of nontroversies cropping up that act as distractions to real issues.
So weeding through all of that becomes a chore all on it’s own. It can get difficult to decipher sometimes what issue to spend time on. The news cycle changes so swiftly it is hard to know what is and is no longer relevant. Characters like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow inflate stupid, meaningless issues into things that they are not; sometimes to the point that you begin to side with Trump (which is a scary prospect).
…
This particular essay continues on, but you get the idea. I guess they are more like reflections of the day’s happenings. They rarely discuss personal things – I attempt to save that for this blog.
But yes, now you’ve got a small taste of my daily routine. In the future I’d like to be able to do weekly podcasts and be MUCH more active on this blog.
On a side note: I don’t know if this would be a good place for my more political stuff. Politics lately has a tendency to alienate people and I’m not sure I have the energy to deal with some things along those lines…
So, until next time.
29 Saturday Oct 2016
It is almost 70 degrees outside and all I am doing is sitting around for some bizarre reason. I guess I’m just apprehensive about potential financial issues I may face if my roommate loses his job.
I’ve been kind of a busy body this morning and did a lot of cleaning. My best friend is out helping his grandma move from an apartment to a condominium and my other roommate is still up north with his dad.
I am almost done with CROOKED KINGDOM and hope to complete it shortly after this posts.
23 Sunday Oct 2016
I’ve been binge-reading the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo this weekend. I just started Crooked Kingdom and I’m about 150 pages in. I’m enjoying this story very much.
I have a tendency to put myself on very strict reading schedules sometimes. I want to have this duology finished before November and I feel that I’m, perhaps, on schedule to do that. Basically I’m also trying to give my body some adequate time to heal, so sitting around reading books sounds like a good way to do that.
Anyway, I’m unsure how exactly my best friends date went. He seemed to have come home early from the little get-together that they were supposed to meet at.
Our weekend was pretty standard I guess. He, once again, spent his entire paycheck in two days, and I took him out to a nice Italian restaurant for a fancy dinner meanwhile wondering how the bills are going to get paid.
He spent quite a bit of money on weed this weekend and forgot about his other obligations – like normal. So me and the third roommate are going to split the utility bill and try to live off the small remainder of our own paychecks.
So things should be fun I suspect for the next week at least. My best friend forgot about his phone bill again, so he’ll have no service for about two weeks.
Grand.
Now I foresee his babies mama texting me a billion times in order to have me pass along messages to him.
That should go well.
I’m going to go take a nap before work tonight. That sounds good.
