Mental Health

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Gratitude For A Second Chance At Higher Education

I am fortunate enough to have parents who will help pay for my tuition after years of struggle, personal growth and development. When I was at the age that most people are when they first start thinking about attending college, I was not interested in earning a degree, in fact I got kicked out of school for writing an angry poem that expressed some concerning feelings towards somebody whom I wrongfully resented at the time. Fortunately, thirteen years later after becoming an addict and alcoholic and then entering into Recovery, I am blessed with the chance to start again. It’s a wonderful feeling to realize that it’s never too late to get an education, earn a degree and start making your dreams come true.

I know it’s a long road ahead but I am happy to take on the work and the training that will be necessary for me to move forward into a career in Counseling. Hours spent at coffee shops, editing, researching, completing assignments and essays. It’s weirdly nostalgic for me, knowing that’s in my future. I might even be able to repurpose some of my assignments as blogs after they’re graded! With access to tools like Grammarly for editing and the ability to use dictation tools and working internet to allow me to conduct research, I am well equipped for success before I begin in school this semester. I am grateful that I saved my Amazon stock until now so that I could sell it and afford to support myself temporarily, allowing me to focus exclusively on school for a short time so that I don’t have to do Uber, Lyft and Gigsmart shifts right away. I was wise to save my resources to prepare for such a time as this, though it probably won’t last long when I factor in bills and basic necessities, even on a tight and carefully followed budget.

My Sociology 101 course should be very interesting. I’m sure I’ll be introduced to some new ideas and facts which I can then use to sharpen the appeal of my writing here. Not just the assignments themselves which I can repurpose. Will I be writing long formed, well researched opinion pieces? That remains to be seen but whatever I gain, I want to share it here with my readers as I go through my learning process. Because I have decided to take on more schooling, I am that much closer to doing something I actually want to be doing as opposed to being stuck as a manual laborer for a large coorperation that doesn’t give a fuck about me or anyone else. Some might say staying as an Amazon fulfillment warehouse worker would’ve been easier but I disagree wholeheartedly. Cheers to anyone who has already found a way out of that trap and never has to go back again, may all your endeavors be fulfilling without the soul sucking monotony that comes with moving packages for ten hours a day!

College offers me structure and discipline, keeping me accountable to deadlines and responsible time management. This will be essential considering I’ll be a full time student for several months. I’m typically not the greatest fan of structures and schedules but even I recognize their necessity and see the good that can come out of implementing them. Going back to school means I get to exercise my critical thinking skills, after many long months of absorbing useless social media propaganda, doom scrolling the internet and feeling like the world is falling apart each day. If I have other things I am forced to think about, I can put my mind to better use and not get so worked up about internet politics and debate bros baiting me into wasting my time on their nonesense.

***Special Thanks To My Readers***

I genuinely appreciate every one of you who takes the time to read what I write. You give my voice purpose, and I’m deeply grateful to have an audience to write for. I love doing this, and that’s why I’ll keep showing up-regardless of whether it ever pays monetarily.

If you do feel inclined to support my work, I’ll include an Amazon affiliate link below, which helps me earn a small commission if clicked. I’ve also included my Buymeacoffee link for anyone feeling generous. Support is always appreciated but never expected!

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A Beat With No Rhythm 

A Passionate hard worker who cared about showing up and doing his best each day, I remember getting up two hours too early to go to work and unwind my zombified mind in the parking lot. I always needed my music and meditation time to take on the day. Never could simply go to work, actually had to have these little “rituals” to untangle my broken brain so that I could find the inner strength to do what needed to be done. I gave them the very best I had day after day but there was never any reward or acknowledgment. No raise or praise. Sometimes I would even come back from break early to jump right back in or on rare occasions agree to stay behind and take a later lunch in order to help out the managers. When you push yourself to be the best that you can because you believe in showing up as the best version of yourself, you risk burnout but you eventually realize too “Hey, I’m not going anywhere with all of this extra effort, I’m just burning out early like the winter sun!”. 

Some people like routines. They like preditability and would rather nothing changed but I’m not that way. If something stays the same for too long I begin to wonder what I am doing with my life. I start to question why nothing is challenging me anymore, why am I still here? It’s not just boredom, it’s the fear of dying without having truly lived. 

 A Change Of Plans  

At a certain point I felt myself aging by five years in a matter of months due to the stress, in fact I went through a time when I was in such poor health that my hair started to grey prematurely. I had to reprioritize and take time off to get my health back on track. I was an Amazon worker for five years and until approximately the last year that I was there, I loved every minute of being there. At one point I even decided I wanted to make Amazon into a career. However the stress and physical exertion pushed me to a point where I realized I needed to rethink my decision. I was overperforming for nothing and our raises were already predetermined, with rare exceptions. I had to start asking myself honestly “Could 45 year old Bobby do what 30 year old Bobby is doing right now? Could 50 year old, 55 year old or 60 year old me do this and keep doing it?”. It didn’t take long for me to reconsider my direction. I knew I had to go back to school to start earning a degree so that I could change my destiny. 

 Today And The Plan Moving Forward

It hasn’t been easy but I know it will one day be worth it. After many months of making adjustments both small and major to my life, I’ve now positioned myself to where I can have more of the things that I want in my life. I have a new homegroup in Alcoholics Anonymous that is less than a mile away from where I live on Saturday nights so my driving anxiety won’t get triggered as much plus it is more convenient. I’m prepping to become a full time student and have the ability to do Gigsmart, Uber and Lyft shifts and my blogs are in the beginning stages of becoming profitable financially. I just sold all $1,300 of my Amazon stock last night in order to help make this transition much easier and more manageable. I also am lucky enough to have parents who will support me in my pursuit of higher education by paying my tuition so I have most of what I need to be successful. I will do whatever it takes to take my life to the next level. I know there’s a hard road ahead but I have faith that if I am wise with my time and money, I can reach new heights and eventually escape the monotony and soul crushing insanity of blue collar work. I’m only getting older never younger, so I know how valuable time is. I hope to be a counselor by the time I hit my mid thirties. 

  Go After It

If you’re anything like I was and hate doing entry level work then I would suggest finding something you’re passionate about and going after it! Especially if earning a degree is part of the plan. I have no problem working hard and aced my first class and finished with a B+ in my second class. School is only days away from starting again and I couldn’t be more excited. Don’t let yourself stay miserable or lost for too long. Those years fly by so quick and especially to those of you in your twenties, don’t be afraid to change your major in college. My father Dan switched his two or three times before he settled on dental hygiene, which he was successful at for many years before he retired. 

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Listening Habits From A Millenial’s Perspective

I began listening to music on regular Compact Disks in the late 90’s and into the 2000’s. I rememeber being five years old, jamming out to Van Halen’s Best Of Van Halen Vol. 1 album on my CD player in the backseat of my parent’s car during long road trips to Denver, Texas and Glenwood Springs. I was just five years old and my parents were already tellng me to turn down the volume on my CD player because the music was too loud. I listened to everything from The New Radical’s album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too to the compilation movie soundtrack of Scary Movie, which was a parody of Wes Craven’s Scream franchise. I wore those bulky over-the-head headphones with the headphone jack that you could plug into the CD player. With me I had a CD case that carried multiple other disks so that I could switch to whatever I wanted to listen to at any time.

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Back then everything was a process. You could change songs but it had to be on the disk that was in your CD player. Otherwise you’d have to hit “Stop” on the player, wait for the disk to stop moving, remove the CD itself, put it away carefully so it wouldn’t scratch and then replace it with another CD that you wanted to listen to if the music you wanted to hear wasn’t all in one disk. It was the best I had at the time so I didn’t mind it too much, but there were times when I had to fumble around my disk carrier to find the music I really wanted to listen to if I ever felt like switching things up. It wasn’t until l was around seven years old that I was introduced to itunes and not long after, would learn how to take songs that I had purchased online and burn them onto a single disk. This was a game changer for little me, as I could finally have a more manageble way of enjoying my music! This however did not change the fact that I still had to take care of my disks.

If your disks got too scratched up, the CD player couldn’t read the songs and your listening experience was severely affected depending on how damaged the disc was. A scratched disc could produce a song that didn’t play well or not at all. Maybe it would skip or get stuck in a loop and your music session wasn’t very smooth. I probably ended up throwing down big allowance money on shitty CD repair kits that promised to restore quality to a few of my worn out CD’s that either got damaged from mishandling or from being overplayed to death more times than I can count. Even fingerprints and smudges were capable of interfering with the playback quality, so an audiophile’s CD collection was to be protected at all costs from all manner of threats.

The Introduction Of The MP3 Player And iPods

In the early 2000’s, I wanna say around 2005 MP3 Players started to make an emergence onto the music market transforming the way that people interacted with and enjoyed their favorite records. If memory serves, 2005 was the year of the iPod. Specifically the ipod shuffle which was my very first digital music player! It was a smooth, white USB like object with a headphone jack that didn’t have a screen. For some reason I remember it coming with a lanyard but it may not have. You could plug it into your computer or laptop and download your purchased music onto it. It had something like 312 MB of storage which to me was alot at this time.

After buying one of my own, the shuffle became my best friend as I was now free from having to juggle endless CD’s or decide which of my top three favorite ones I wanted to take with me on a walk. Apple also released those white wired headphones that were very fragile and could get tangled up easily that same year. I cannot overstate how many pairs of headphones I accidentally broke by sleeping on them or jumping around on my bed or trampoline, as I danced to my favorite music. My parents always had cheap backups waiting for me because breaking headphones was a regular occurence for me. I believe that you had to charge the shuffle for at least an hour to get a decent amount of use out of it before you had to charge it again.

Having the freedom to carry around your music collection on a small device that lasted on a full charge for several hours was a big deal. You were no longer restricted or forced to be careful what activities you did while listening to your music. You could ride a bike and listen to music at the same time, you could have your whole collection in your pocket. No more scratching of CD’s and everything was on a single device. Next I set my sights on buying an iPod nano which had a better battery life and actually had a screen, meaning that you could visually keep track of your musical library, which was now neatly organized by artist, genre, album and song. After many weeks of saving I upgraded to a black ipod nano and became as addicted to the screen the same as I am to my iPhone 16 Pro today! I could create my own playlists, turn the volume up even louder than before, even had the option of audiobooks and podcasts (which I never took an interest in). The ipod nano had a touch sensitive click wheeel which you could use to easily scroll through menus nearly effortlessly.

Why Instant Access Isn’t Always A Good Thing

Since 2005 the way that we have listened to music and interacted with our entertainment has grown exponentially. Now we can connect to cellular networks to watch Youtube videos on the go, download or stream music without having to be home and tethered to the whims of a spotty wifi internet connection, rent or buy movies, purchase and listen to audio books, play games, download applications, take pictures with our phones, blog, even make money by signing on as an Uber or Lyft driver. As someone who had an opportunity to experience older media and watch everything evolve, I’ve enjoyed and become comfortable with the conveniences that it has allowed me to experience when enjoying music or Youtube.

That same comfort though has absolutely impacted the listening experience in ways that aren’t always positive. For example, on a whim I can scrub through any song to re-listen to my favorite part of that song over and over again. I think any music lover out there can agree that even our favorite songs have those moments that are absolute highlights. Moments where our favorite music peaks and gets us the most excited. We want to relive them over and over again-and we can, but what about the rest of the song? What about the rest of the album? Having options means we can take what we like and leave the rest behind like a buffet, but back in the days of the CD, you couldn’t exactly “rewind” to your favorite part or you would risk damaging your disk! This search to recapture that perfect moment and experience it over and over again at any time has caused a certain type of fatigue to set in. A realization that we don’t move with the music like we used to, it moves for us on our command. In doing so some of the magic is lost and what was once beautiful and chronological now becomes average and overused.

What Problem Does Old Media Fix For Us?

More Than Just Words

When you hear something often enough it’s easy to assume that it must be true, especially when it is repeated many times over by parents, teachers, youth ministers and coaches while maturing as a child and young adolescent. You may have had posters in your schools like the one with the cat hanging from a tree branch with a caption that reads “Hang In There” or the one with the basketballs in the background with a caption that says “You Always Miss 100% Of The shots You Don’t Take”. Hearing something and experiencing something are ultimately two separate situations. Having experience transforms knowledge into understanding which accumulates into wisdom. 

What is the difference between the two? To simply “know” something is to strictly have an intellectual grasp on it. It is cold, sterile and disconnected from humanity. Pure logic can only take you so far in your journey of grasping how the world and other people really work. This is why AI cannot sense patterns in the same way that human beings can. They can have a mathematical and statistical insight into a problem and be able to break it down rationally but they are incapable of insight which comes from situational awareness based on previous experience. 

Real experience comes from challenge. From challenge comes experience and learning through trial and error. We each only have so much patience and time in our day to spend on a given activity or on trying to solve a problem. Often, it is easier to hand off a car with a broken engine to a mechanic than it is to learn the skills necessary to perform maintanence on our own. Even if it would cost us less money in the long run to learn how to be more independent and so it goes with so many other things in life. What we can’t or are unwilling to do on our own, we will gladly pay somebody else to do it for us. But what happens when we are attempting something which we are personally invested in that requires long term, consistant and sustained effort over a long period of time? How many are really willing to follow through on their vision? 

 Patience And Mastery Of A Skill

As a young boy one of the skills I wanted to learn how to acquire was the athletic art of doing handstands, which requires learning balance and a certain amount of arm strength to support your body weight. Especially if you want to learn how to walk on your hands. I remember my father holding my legs up as I would balance my body against the cold, wooden door in the foyer our home. I used this to help me begin learning the basics of balancing the weight on my body on my own, which I didn’t fully realize I was doing at the time. 

I was inspired by the athletic feats of Goku from Dragonball Z and wanted to be as strong as the characters in the show, as well as having six pack abs (something I still have yet to accomplish, though the interest in that has faded with time). I joined a trampoline park called “Art Sports” which was a gym that was semi popular in my area growing up and even took a few classes there to sharpen my athletic abilities. To top it off, I eventually saved up enough allowance money to purchase a trampoline from my art teacher and practiced tucking, rolling and doing flips at home which I recall took a very long time to do and many hours of dedication in overcoming the fear of falling off of the trampoline. 

I don’t know how long it took me but I do remember at some point being able to do handstands for at least thirty seconds and walking a foot or two on both of my hands. Learning how to master this skill was probably the only thing that kept me from playing video games and watching television to the exclusion of everything else. I developed an obsession with it and wanted to reach a high level of mastery. Practicing handstands lasted a couple of years, probably from age 10 to age 12 or somewhere around that time frame. There was a point when I abandoned practicing handstands to learn how to do backflips on the trampoline. I would receive advice from my friends at the time who would run me through these imaginary “bootcamps” where they had me climbing up and down fences, doing pushups and trying to help me reach a point where I could finally manage to do it. Once again I don’t recall the exact moment of how or when it happened but I did eventually managed to learn that skill as well as front flips. 

When it comes to writing, a big part of Mastery in this area is going back to school to become a better wordsmith and communicator. Chances are I could benefit from a higher level of education so that I can improve the quality of my craft and have more to offer my readerbase. Not only am I ready to take this on, but I look forward to it and see it as an investment in my confidence and a big boost to my reading and writing comprehension. Perhaps one day I can even manage to write well researched and carefully thought out pieces with greater depth that has more value attached to it. 

 “Getting Real” About Rewards & Motives   

During my childhood years, I had all of the time in the world to “waste” in order to spend many hours working on one particular thing that I was passionate about. Of course because I enjoyed what I was doing, it didn’t feel like a waste of time to me. Imagine how that might look today as a thirty-two year old, out of shape man who is not exactly in the prime of his life? Certainly not impossible if I really wanted to go for it and to be sure if it was something I still wanted to do I would begin making the necessary adjustments in my life in order to more thoroughly pursue it, but make no mistake the process would look very different today and there would be more hurdles to overcome. I’d also want to consider what I might hope to gain from relearning these old skills, because now there’s a bit more of an expectation that I will be compensated for my time and effort. Let’s be real here; we live during a time when a passion project-even something like playing video games online can net you some cash if you beat some gnarly odds and learn how to garner a following. 

If you are an adult, you don’t typically have the time to spend on things that don’t yield any tangible rewards. Maybe for some people in some rare instances there could be an exception, but for the most part we are all on that “Big Green Chase” because there are bills to be paid and in some cases families to support. I don’t think acknowledging this reality defeats any kind of perceived authenticity. To be sure I would be writing even if I didn’t think I could get paid for it because I enjoy it, but since there are opportunities to turn writing into something potentially lucrative, it only makes sense that I would try to sweeten the deal of pursuing my passion by also persuing the potential rewards that could come from going after it. I started writing for fun as far back as my mid teens and even back then I craved to be heard and get feedback on my writing, which I never did and so I ended up quitting, though I always knew I would return someday in the future to pursue my passion again. I don’t just want to write without feedback. It’s like shouting into a cave and only hearing your own voice echoing back at you. Unfulfilling and unsatisfying, I would rather here back something negative than nothing at all, which is what brings me to where I am today. 

I dont’t expect to be the most famous writer on the planet, the most insightful or the most skilled author or even the most well paid, but I hope to achieve some level of personal success which I fully expect to be an uphill battle with many ups and downs along the way. After all, how many other people in a culture of hundreds of millions or even billions of chronically online people have precisely the same goal that I do? If I expect to find any level of personal satisfaction with what I am doing, I have to be realistic about the odds and how much competition there is out there. Presently I don’t know how much really sets me apart from the many aspiring writers out there who are probably better at what they do than I am. The only thing I can be sure of is that I cannot allow myself to be bogged down by these realizations and I have to have some faith that there’s an audience of people out there who will see value in what I have to offer and will follow me anyway. 

As recently as last night I remember flipping back and forth between my Beehiiv, Substack, Medium, Mastodon, Tumblr and Bluesky accounts to post my old and recent work and scan for new notifications that might have popped up since the last thirty seconds that I checked. I was very discouraged most of the time and wondered if I should “Hang It Up”, then I came across an article on Medium where another author posted an article addressing the feeling of being an aspiring writer who is experiencing the feeling of wanting to give up. She didn’t say a whole lot that was particularly insightful or interesting, but it revitalized my spirit and motivation to keep going. I woke up this morning to discover that through my ads here on Beehiiv, I had managed to earn seven dollars of ad revenue from clicks that were produced through my articles! Words can’t describe how excited I was to see that some of my effort has in fact been paying off! Maybe not in spades but that’s the most money I’ve ever seen from my writing and I can’t tell you the level of excitement that I feel. I am ecstatic to the moon and back to receive these emails and my day has been incredible ever since! It’s through these small victories that we learn to keep going. 

 There Can Be More Than One Reason For Doing Something

I think the possibility of never experiencing external success does raise the question of how many people are really willing to spend every waking moment of their free time dedicated to something that may never be successful at and could even lead to repeated disappointment because they are not seeing any fruits from their labor? How many people can accept the reality that nothing in life is guaranteed even if you do everything correctly and stick to it without cracking under the self-imposed pressure and doubt for weeks, months or even years? In my case the thing that is most painful is the realization that clicks by themselves don’t result in a payday for me, but rather the willingness of an audience to click on some stretegically placed ads that pay me per click. How often do people really want to click on an ad when most people-myself included would even go so far as to pay money just to avoid the hassle of ever having to interact with one? 

One of my goals is to eventually become skillful enough of a writer that people see real value in what I offer, not just to the point of donating money but also to provide insightful, emotional and personally meaningful articles and thought pieces that people can access for free! As it stands now, I’m not entirely confident in my ability to do this but I do feel that by branching out to topics outside of addiction Recovery and mental health, I can and have been experiencing a degree of success by doing that. Validation comes from relieving my restless mind like taking a mental and spiritual dump, seeing people interact with my work and hopefully making some money along the way. If I can be helpful to people with some of what I write, I consider that to be a bonus! Ideally I would like to see that both myself and my readers benefit from my writing and appreciate what I have to say, as well as being bold enough to disagree with me and challenge my thinking. As of yet I have not had enough interaction to consider this as accomplished. Is what I’m writing simply too dull and not provocative enough to be worthy of a response or are readers just reading and not actually participaing with what I write? 

  Love What You Do Or Find Something New

Horror is a diverse genre based on the premise of “What If Something Happened To Me That I Had No Control Over?”. The genre is like a buffet; pick your favorite fear and surely someone somewhere has written a story about it. Our world is quite dark and we don’t need to be murdered, lose someone we love or have a cinematicesque experience with demons in an allegedly dark and empty room to know this. We live during politially turbulent times where political figures can become martyred through assassination, financial hardships sweep us off our feet and real life horrors can be caught on camera and shared via social media (think the assassination of Charlie Kirk or the murder of George Floyd). As human beings we are continuously reminded of how temporary and fragile our existence on this planet really is, one reminder after another. So then why would we be interested in exploring the very subject of being eliminated off of the planet against our will? 

Relatability

Relatability is a cornerstone of empathy. It is how we cringe when we experience second hand embarrassment when viewing a snippet of someone’s life on a youtube video or watch a small child falling off of a bike and scraping his or her knees. Sometimes relatability comes in the form of an insightful joke that forces us to confront reality through word play or subversion of expectations when watching a funny scene in a movie, skit or show. Even in a comedic atmosphere, not knowing what to expect next subtly puts us on edge and creates a tiny panic in our brains that we tend to embrace rather than reject. Subversion removes the comfort of knowing what to expect and that in itself is a small form of horror. This is how horror ultimately exists everywhere, even where we least expect to find it. It is more than Nazi dentists, serial killers, warewolves, vampires, zombies, famine, war and pain. Sometimes it comes in the form of anxiety like harm related OCD striking the fear of a driver who catastrophizes the slightest odd sensation that might come from hitting a pothole and imagining that they hit a person instead. Maybe the fear is of roaches and rats, which it doesn’t take a germaphobe to be put off by these little creatures. An introvert’s fear of talking to another person because they are overly concerned about how a person they approach may think of them for some kind of perceived social faux Pas. Empathy and relatability form the very foundation of horror. We are exposed to a situation we cannot control and are challenged to face it or run away (Fight Or Flight). 

Self-Examination

One of the most interesting things about fear when seeing somebody (or hearing about somebody) going through an unusual life threatening scenario is monitoring ourselves and our reactions to it. How close are we to the monsters we hate? What if we found something we related to in a Hannibal Lector or other antagonistic force of evil? How might we reconcile that, even if we knew we couldn’t commit similar atrocities ourselves? Being able to identify or understand the villain of any story on a personal level is a terrifying thought, even if we simply understand the logic behind their actions while still abhorring their behaviors from a moral standpoint. Beyond this, the second level of testing is figuring out how much you can stand. What is your threshold for tolerating a violent scene in a movie? How about in real life? What does your reaction to it say about you? Would you dare even open up that particular can of worms to journey into the darkness within your own soul? It’s equally fascinating as it is horrifying and much like the thrill of being on a rollercoaster, you are subjecting yourself to levels of uncertainty that you may not be able to tolerate, especially if you are forced to look inwards at your own darkness. In a strange way it’s sort of like a game you’re playing with yourself. 

Classic Tropes Of Villains In Horror

Killer doll Chucky from Child’s Play represents the fear of small objects or people having an unusual advantage over their victims. Small things may not be as powerful but they can hide more easily. Think of the kid in the movie Pet Cemetary slicing the man’s achiles heel from underneath the bed. What they lack in power, they more than make up for in strategy and elusiveness. You can’t kill what you can’t see and the doll can hide anywhere in dark rooms, underneath beds, in car trunks and other small areas and crevices normally inaccessible to people of ordinary stature. Plus he has a soul which can essentially reincarnate into other bodies, adding a level of invulnerability and uncertainty. 

Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees and Leatherface embody the trope of having unreadable facial expressions. A person’s face communicates emotion and hiding this eliminates your ability to guage or try to predict another person’s mood or even their next move. Facial features are like books, they tell us alot about what a person might be thinking and feeling. In these cases, the eyes in particular are the most inaccessible features of the face, leading the imagination to go wild, being unable to sense any kind of humanity behind the mask. Additionally, these characters are brutes-huge, tall, broad shouldered individuals with athletic builds that let you know you will not be outrunning them! Leatherface stands out the most above the other two given that he substitues his own face with those of his victims and also happens to be a cannibal. To top it off, Leatherface is especially threatening considering his weapon of choice-a chainsaw which we know has very sharp, fast moving blades which far exceed anything resembling a mere papercut as far as injuries go. Despite being human and lacking any kind of supernatural ability, Leatherface is actually in some ways more frightening than most villains which is why he is my favorite fictional horror villain. 

Hannibal Lector is so close to behaving like a normal human being that it would be easy to let your guard down around him. He has the added benefit of being equipped with near god-like psychological manipulation tactics that he can use to run mental circles around just about anybody. His demeanor communicates normalcy, but his behavior betrays your expectations leading to unexpected consequences if he decides to make you his next victim. Hannibal Lector subverts expectations, but most other villains in the genre do not. Pennywise is a clown and perhaps the reason why clowns have become hated by so many people, aside from the “Killer Clowns From Outer Space” movie, “IT” probably is the biggest reason behind this fear. Pennywise perverts the archetype of clowns being friendly characters and twists it into something demonic and evil, also subversive by nature. John Wayne Gacy was known to dress up as a clown, which adds an unsettling hint of realism to the “killer clown” trope. 

Real Life Horror

Growing up I was a big fan of shows like Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries and Cold Case Files. Each of these explored real life murder mysteries while giving intricate backstories about the victims, what happened to them and how the killers eventually got caught. South Park even had an episode poking fun at these types of shows and the people who enjoy watching them. I believe the episode was called “Informative Murder Porn”. Indeed, for horror fanatics like myself, such viewing experiences are even preferred over porn, though I don’t get off to the idea of people getting killed (I promise guys!). They always had a way of finding the right people to narrate the stories and give you goosebumps. It was the sort of thing you couldn’t understand why you liked it so much, you just kind of were along for the ride because it was thrilling and spooky. I’m sure some of my fellow Millenials out there were fans of these shows as well and also can recall fond memories of watching late night murder mysteries with their moms late on a school night. These shows did not hold back, they even introduced gritty and unsettling details like marital affairs, life insurance scams that motivated spouses to kill each other and sometimes BDSM was mentioned as well. I probably got introduced to a whole world of darkness a few years before I should have, but I don’t regret it whatsoever. Though if I ever had kids, I would honestly exercise a bit more discretion on what they could watch or play than my own parents did. I remember reading true crime books and learning about the horrors of BTK, Aileen Wuornos, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and many other infamous killers. The whole thing was just so facsinating to me. I couldn’t imagine who would ever do those types of things and just wanted to know as much as I could about it all. 

Horror: More Than Just A Jumpscare Genre

Some might say that for a thirty-two year old man to still feel affected by children’s cartoons from a generation ago, I must be pretty immature. I won’t lie, I still have some growing up to do but I will also be honest about how some of these stories helped form my sense of identity from my formative years. Cartoons of years’ past tackled subjects such as racism, Descrimination, drug addiction and compassion as well as the value of doing your best and pushing past your limitations. Among them were Teen Titans, Dragonball Z, Samurai Jack, Courage The Cowardly Dog, Powerpuff Girls and some others as well.

Many of these lessons were so inspirational from a story telling stand point that once in a blue moon, I still think about them. I’d love to think that we could return to a time where cartoons could be as respectable as they once were, though to be fair it’s been quite awhile since I’ve watched any cartoons. I just remember in my late teens and early twenties how much of what I saw became a trend of neutered, watered down, soft and easily digestible garbage. Perhaps things have changed for the better and I am simply not aware of this yet. Without further ado, let’s explore some favorite episodes from cartoon’s of the past and identify the lost gems that people still remember to this day!

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Teen Titans: Teen Titans was a 2003 cartoon which followed the lives of a team of superheroes living in a “T” shaped tower on an island. Interestingly, Batman was excluded from the team and I don’t recall any origin story explaining why this was. The main cast of characters consisted of Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Beast Boy and Robin. For a children’s cartoon it was very mature, but not in the sense of pushing the boundaries of what is appropriate for kids. Moreso that it explored themes of attitude, perserverance, racism, loyalty and hardship in a realistic and entertaining way that you may not have appreciated at the time had you been as young as I was in the years of 2003-2007. With that said, I’m going to talk here about some of the most standout episodes of my favorite childhood cartoons and why they impacted me so much, even years after their cancellations!

“Only Human”-Season 2, Episode 4: In this episode Cyborg beats an opponent online in a video game and is overly braggadocious of his victory. However, the pridful foe on the otherside of the connection demands a rematch and Cyborg agrees. Upon picking up the controller to begin a new round, the overly ambitious and self-important Atlus uses some kind of electrical wizardry in order to tranport himself from inside the video game to confront and fight Cyborg in person, whom he manages to overpower quite easily and defeat as well as make quick work of all of Cyborg’s friends, whom he then traps inside of yellow orbs and kidnaps as trophies. Cyborg puts up one Hell of a fight to get his friends back, but Atlus makes quick work of him while also putting him down verbally, thus wounding his self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

After his defeat, Cyborg decides to track down Atlus for round two. Once again, Atlus puts down Cyborg like a typical school bully and essentially calls him worthless before the fight even begins. Just before the second fight is over, Cyborg hears a beeping coming from his robotic arm, displaying how much battery power he has. It reads “100%” but Atlus still beats him, leaving him more psychologically wounded than before the first time he lost. Cyborg’s friends beg for him to try again, but he glances at his robotic arm panel which still says one hundred percent and sighs before telling them “No…I can’t”. He sees that despite being at one-hundred percent battery power, he is still not able to be victorious and so he leaves the battle grounds in defeat once again! “Fool, did you believe you could beat Atlus? I am All robot and you are All human!” Atlus says, as he exits the stadium.

Sometime after the second fight is lost, Cyborg is shown talking to himself and resigning any confidence he once had saying “Atlus was right, I am a loser!”. As he says this he happens to be passing by a window downtown where his reflection gives him a peptalk of the ages; “So that’s it man, you’re just gonna give up?” his reflection retorts. “I gave everything I have, one hundred percent” Cyborg says in response. His reflection replies “Give More, your friends are in trouble. You have to go back, you have to win!”. “I can’t win, Atlus is stronger, Atlus is faster-he’s just a better robot!”. “BUT YOU AREN’T ALL ROBOT, HALF OF YOU IS HUMAN AND THAT’S THE HALF THAT CAN BEAT HIM!” the reflection says. At this point Cyborg stares back down at his arm panel, which now says “50%” and then says with a look of determination on his face “Time to take it up a notch!” before leaving to face Atlus one last time.

This third time, there’s definitely a noticeable psychological shift taking place on the battlefield as Cyborg seems to have gained a true and newfound belief in himself. Credit to him as he manages to land some awfully heroic punches and even pulls a DBZ, Android 16 style rocket punch upon his ass during the fight! The mechanic who was Atlus’ sidekick and friend throughout the episode finally betrays him for the lack of respect shown and sets Cyborg’s friends free, but instead of joining the fight, they sit on the sidelines to cheer him on and show their friend some much needed support. As his friends cheer his name he starts landing some even gnarlier punches as the comic strip style of the show displays the intensity with which he beats down the once dominating and intimidating bully with relative ease.

The most inspirational moment of the episode comes when towards the end of the fight, Cyborg and Atlus are locked into arms combat and Cyborg’s battery arm panel is showing 98% as he grapples. Just then even with Atlus clearly having the edge, the 98% suddenly goes up to 100%. “Ahh, you have clearly reached your limit!” Atlus mocks as Cyborg is brought to his knees during the grapple, but then Cyborg says in a strained tone of voice “YES…I…CAN!” and the 100% goes up to 110%, 120%, 130% and beyond as he pushes and struggles until he lifts Atlus off the ground by his stomach and throws him clear across the stadium, in a fashion that looks nearly effortless! Beastboy, Robin, Starfire and Raven are seen and heard cheering for his success on the sidelines. He then approaches the crator sized hole in which Atlus is begging for mercy and says to Cyborg “No more, I am defeated. You are a better robot” to which Cyborg calmly replies “No, I’m a better person!”.

This episode has a very simple and straightforward premise; everybody falls and we are all capable of experiencing failure and loss in life, but we can always go just a little further than we think we can. What better lesson could you ask for in a children’s cartoon?

“Troq”-Season 4, Episode 6: Starfire who belongs to an alien race known as Tamarainians encounters a bigoted character who calls her a “Troq”, which in this fictional storyline is an ethnic slur against Tamarainians. Starfire educates the other TItans on the meaning of the word after the prejudiced alien from another race named Val-yor starts calling her that. By the episodes’ conclusion, Starfire makes a speech about how there will always be people who don’t like her because of her heritage, but with the unwavering support of her friends who stand against the once admired Val-yor, she is able to obtain support and avoid rejection as the rest of the crew express their regret for not being there for her while the space “hero” mistreated her for simply being different. I’m struggling to find the full episode online and I’m mostly going off of memory and Youtube reviews here, but I do recall it being a very informative, mature episode exploring a taboo and touchy topic in a brilliant way!

Hey Arnold!: This show from the 2000’s followed the adventures of a fourth grader named Arnold with a football shaped head and his best friend Gerald. This show had some strong emotional gems that still hit close to home and leave a lasting impression on yesterday’s kids and today’s adults. Facebook and Twitter memes have kept the memory of the show alive many years after it was cancelled, proving that a timeless show like this one never truly becomes irrelevant, it simply lives on in internet culture.

“Pigeon Man” Season 1, Episode 18: A character named Pigeon Man who is said to be a freak obsessed with birds lives on a roof where he tends to his feathered friends. Pigeon Man is someone who faces social isolation and ridicule as a result of rejection and relentless bullying, even by the neighborhood kids. All of the characters in the show misrepresent him and make him out to be a monster to be avoided at all costs, but like the voice of reason that he is, Arnold seeks out the avian fanatic to get down to the heart of the matter and figure out who this mysterious bird lover really is. As it turns out, Pigeon Man is a deeply sensitive person with a heart of gold named Vincent, who has lost his trust in people and now only trusts birds. The episode shows the ways in which arnold tries to create new opportunities for the misunderstood man to successfully rejoin society, but ultimately all of Arnold’s efforts fail as Vincent “flies away” to be with his friends. As adults, we now understand this actually meant suicide. Of course in a kid friendly show, such topics have to be dealt with, with extreme vagueness and care but in a manner that doesn’t take any power away from the core message. Arnold was the only person that believed in Vincent and even though one person wasn’t enough to save him from himself, the episode still showcases the power that we all potentially carry within us to transform or even save a life! Powerful stuff.

“Stoop Kid” Season 1, Episode 3: In this episode a child known as “Stoop Kid” is too traumatized to leave his turf, the stoop of his townhome due to a traumatic experience. Essentially, Stoop Kid has agoraphobia and just as Pigeon Man did, suffers immense mockery for being too cowardly to step outside of his comfort zone. The other kids laugh at him, steal from him and treat him poorly by fabricating elaborate backstories that make him out to be some kind of supervillain. Arnold once again challenges the negative stigma by befriending stoop kid and eventually by the conclusion of the episode, Stoop Kid overcomes his self-imposed limitations and grows as a person thanks to Arnold. A truly inspriing episode about what it means to overcome our fears and truly face them with success!

Courage The Cowardly Dog: An anthropomorphic dog who is scared of everything faces off against different entities in order to protect his caretaker Muriel from danger.

“Perfect” Season 4, Episode 13: A nun-like entity manifested by Courage’s own insecurities appears in order to chastise and criticize him for failing to pass her outrageously impossible tasks, including balancing books on his head while walking up a stair case with “perfect posture”. Towards the end of the episode, a mysterious bathtub fish gives Courage an uplifting lecture about how nobody is perfect and that he is “Perfect just the way he is”. A true masterpiece of story telling with a valuable lesson attached about how our insufficienies can ironically be our greatest strengths. Self-doubt destroys more people than failure ever could so this episode changed alot of young Millenial minds as it’s among one of the most fondly rememebered episodes of the show.

“The Mask” Season 4, Episode 3: A masked cat who attempts to escape an abusive relationship from another dog to be with her lesbian lover (another cat) shows up to Courage’s house and stays there as a guest, displaying bigotry towards Courage for being a dog saying things like “All dogs are the same” as she berates and insults him at every turn. Courage spies on the cat and gets a sense of Kitty’s backstory and seeks to set her free from the abusive Mad Dog, so that Kitty can finally be free from her abuser. Upon doing so, Kitty realizes that not all dogs are bad. This episode feels like an exploration of sexism. More specifically radical feminism and how some women come to hate men (cats being the females and dogs being the men). The episode explores bigotry through a lens of compassion by demonstrating Courage’s desire to help Kitty rather than hold a grudge. In the end, all is well and Kitty rides off on a train with her lover to start anew.

What Is Quality Entertainment?

Before I moved to Thornton, Colorado in 2019 I had several friends in Narcotics Anonymous in the Springs that I had known for a few years. N.A was my first exposure to any kind of Recovery related group. It was first introduced to me in 2016 after being warned that I’d get kicked out of my parent’s house, unless I became willing to get help for my problem. I remember hating the experience initially wanting nothing to do with any of the people there and feeling that this “drama” surrounding my drug addiction would soon blow over if I just went to one or two of these meetings. However it was soon made crystal clear that this was not a short term expectation and so with a looming dark cloud over my head I continued to attend. It took some time to go from feeling like a hostage being held at gunpoint to someone who actually wanted to go to these meetings. There were many months of quiet relapses before I finally started to listen and take in what this program had to offer.

I don’t remember exactly when it started to happen but I think by the time I was nine months in, I really started to connect with the other people there and form genuine friendships. One misconception I’ve heard about addicts is that they can eventually reach a point in their recovery process where they no longer need to attend meetings, but this is not true. According to “The big book” (as they call it in both A.A and N.A), “addiction is a progressive disease that never truly leaves us” meaning that we can never successfully drink or use drugs again for the duration of our lives. This is something that is a fundamental thing you must believe in, in order to truly “get” the program. Another thing; these meetings aren’t “classes” but simply are there to reinforce the communal aspect, which is supposed to be the glue that holds everyone together, who is going through the Recovery process. 

Friends in Recovery are a vital thing. Many people have criminal records that bar them from getting higher paying jobs and/or have been disowned by their families, meaning that their “friends” in the program become more like family members. Unsurprisingly this causes bonds to become much stronger than simple friendships. This is why meetings are available all 365 days of the year, as not everybody has the luxury of being invited to family get-togethers and holidays can be very depressing for many members of what I will refer to as “The Recovery Community”. People like myself have had relationship ruining experiences surrounding drugs and alcohol during Christmas so extra support is often needed during these times. 

We celebrate various lengths of clean time with either chips or keytags, depending on which program you attend. Alcoholics Anonymous uses plastic chips (actually coins) which represent 24-48 hours of clean time for the newcomers who are considered the most important person in the room, 30 consecutive days (one month), sixty consecutive days (two months), Ninety Days (three months), One Year, eighteen months, Two years, Three years, Five Years and Ten Years. Then fifteen years of continuous sobriety and onwards often have specialty made, custom designed metal coins in both programs that people recieve from their sponsors as recognition for their hard work in Recovery and staying sober for multiple years at a time. Narcotics Anonymous does the same thing except instead of plastic coins, they use fancy, fashionable keytags that you can wear and attach to your beltloop to show off your clean time. People like to show them off in a variety of ways. Some just keep them at home in a drawer and others in display cases. There are even wallets and cellphone cases designed to hold these specific coins! 

Meetings are typically one hour long and there are many different types. There are “Opened Meetings” in which people who do or don’t identify as addicts are allowed to attend and then “Closed Meetings” which are only for people who self-identify as addicts or alcoholics. There are also literature meetings which tend to focus on reading exercpts from literature in the program, discussion meetings specifically designated for sharing on anything you want (although sometimes topics are picked at the beginning), Speaker Meetings where a person spends the first half hour of the meeting sharing their story of their background in alcohol and drug abuse and how they got where they are today, Step Meetings which focus on a specific one of the twelve steps, Tradition Meetings which focus on a specific one of the twelve traditions of the program, Newcomer Meetings for newcomers or those coming back after a relapse and then there are Men’s Meetings, Women’s Only Meetings, LGBT Meetings and so on. 

Members are encouraged to pick a Service Commitment which helps them stay accountable to something called a “Homegroup” which is a group they are making a personal commitment to show up to each week. Service Commitments are reserved for Homegroup members and they can range from being greeters at the door to making coffee or helping setup the meeting room or cleaning up after the meeting, even agreeing to bring snacks is considered an act of service. Service helps addicts learn to become disciplined and responsible to show up, which is not something most of us have down when we first come into the rooms. By having a commitment, there’s something that keeps us coming back so that we continue to show up for ourselves and for others. Donations are often collected halfway through meetings as part of the seventh tradition which states that we are fully self-supporting. Money goes towards paying for things like rent so that we can continue to hold meetings in different buildings (usually churches), but can go to things like coffee, new coffee machines and other necessities that support the group. 

My father Dan was (and still is) one of the kindest, most gentle souls you could ever meet. He was always the type of person who could talk to a complete stranger in such a way that you’d think he knew them for years! Outgoing with a love for socializing (the total opposite of me) and loving, compassionate with a saint like paitience (both of my parents honestly), he was always there for me. Encouraging me to pursue anything I loved growing up. I was a spoiled child and to be honest I took advantage of my parent’s hearts of gold. They were naive to a fault, especially dad. Even at my absolute worst growing up; he seemed to more than tolerate my negative, destructive tendencies and bought many of my excuses. Of course in retrospect while I admire their kindness, if I had kids of my own I would not be nearly as gullible, just from knowing how I was as a kid.

One thing to understand about my adoptive parents Dan and Kerry is that they essentially rescued me from a bad situation. Neither of my biological parents were fit to be guardians, in fact I would not be surprised if I was a broken condom baby. They both had personal issues that made them uniquely unqualified for parenthood. I was Possibly a happy accident, yet they still loved me or so I am told. It takes a beautiful soul to take a child into your home that isn’t your own and raise them up with unconditional love, especially when they come from a world of devastation and a background of tragedy. That is why until the end of days, I will always see them as if they were my biological parents. Yet despite this, I still have always struggled with powerful and confusing emotions that have kept me attached to my birth parents Mary and Bob.

In the early 2000’s, Dan was diagnosed with lung cancer even though he wasn’t a smoker. A part of his lung was removed, rendering him more lethargic than he would otherwise be. He and Kerry were both in their fifties by the time I was adopted by them and I was only 7 years old. By that time I had been taken from my mother Mary by my father Bob and then went to live with my grandmother Louise Woodford. As a kid at such a young age it was an awful lot to adjust to. I felt like I had no control over anything happening in my world and struggled to understand anything. I think I held so much resentment for the people who should’ve been there for me from the beginning but could not get their shit together enough to actually be able to do it.

Dan had once been in the military and then transitioned to a career in dental hygiene. He retired from dentistry around 2001 to become a full time stay at home father while Mom became the breadwinner, working at CTU (Colorado Technical University) as the Dean Of Engineering for many years. She eventually retired in 2018 to help take care of my father whose condition was worsening as he was notiecably losing his mobility, meaning that we had to move out of my childhood home, since he found it difficult to climb stairs anymore. Those were only the initial signs of what was to come later on. As the years progressed, Dan’s leg muscles deteriorated and he ended up having to get surgery for his kneecaps a couple of times. He also could no longer stand on his own, his speaking became slurred and he would occasionally hallucinate. As these symptoms started appearing, the stress on mom became more noticeable.

“Somehow, some way, some day”. That is what it means to have hope. To believe that there’s a “Maybe” behind every tightly locked and closed door. Sometimes that comes in the form of believing you’ll see a dead friend or relative again someday in between moments of agnosticism and doubt. Sometimes it means believing that a family member who has disowned you will one day give you that second chance you’ve been waiting for. For me it means time to breathe, to think, to grow, to change and to believe again. This is the hardest part of any grown man or woman’s struggle. Believing means seeing the world through a child’s eyes, naive to failure and disappointment. Believing again is to return to that mindset like Benjamin Button learning to be Peter Pan after loss and failure become his best friends.

Once you’ve been tainted by these experiences, you never fully go back to how you once were. There’s scar tissue that will always be there. It may heal to a point where it no longer hurts, but you can always see it and in the back of your mind you will always know it was there. There’s a new sensitivity, like an abused dog learning to trust people again after being adopted by another owner. Instinctive and proactively self-defensive almost like it was second nature. I am a control freak by nature twisting every nob, pushing every button and pulling every lever trying to have my way, even knowing that none of it will work. I practice self-deceit in an effort to undue trauma. I would bring back the dead if I only found the right prayers to say or the right deity to pray to. So despite knowing better there’s an ongoing effort to ignore reality if it is unacceptable to me.

Hope isn’t just uplifting it’s also toxic and manipulative. It convinces you that “if only” this or that, surely you would have your way. But that’s what makes it so dangerous. Healing to me means letting hope go because all of the hope that is still there keeps me stuck running in one place like a treadmill with no off switch or speed adjustment going at a high speed. If you stop running even for a second, you’ll surely fall off the damn thing and injure yourself. Why even get on it in the first place if you don’t have to? Our delusions keep us alive to our own detriment and that is an important thing to consider sometimes. Learning when and how to let go is very difficult but crucial. For me, to heal is to be willing to let a part of me die so I don’t have to live in Hell everyday. The part of me that says “There’s still a chance!” when I already know the truth is opposite of that. It’s called “The Sunk Cost Fallacy” for a reason. Sometimes energy and time wasted are just that and nothing more. Stay on the sinking ship and you’ll drown. Get off the boat now and save your own life for the sake of whatever remains of your sanity.

Think of the case of Terry Shiavo who was left in a vegetative state on feeding tubes after suffering from a severe case of cardiac arrest. Her husband wanted to allow her to go peacefully but her parents still clung onto hope that the technically deceased woman would one day recover. However, Terry’s life at that point was reduced to simply existing. No joy, no laughter, no love. Everything that was her had already disappeared and been taken away. Like Shiavo, I feel that in some instances, holding onto hope is alot like that. At a certain point you just want it to be over because you’ve held on so strong for so long that you no longer see the point. I am finally crossing over into that space when it comes to my older sister disowning me and me holding onto hope that we will ever speak again. It keeps me sick. It makes me bitter and weak. I cannot afford to waste another year of my time being wrapped up in that whether it be in the form of a year’s long lawsuit that my stepfather Larry and Sister Mary are still fighting. Demoraliation in this sense is more of a super power. It heals you by releasing you from grief and thus offers you a new shot at freedom. Real freedom. Not the fairytale.

Hoping to see those you love who have passed away however is a positive hope. It may not seem realistic to some but I say anything that gives a reason to keep your motor going (staying motivated) is a good thing. The worst that could happen is that you are wrong, but plenty of people are wrong about many things and are still happy despite it. Find the right things to be wrong about and it will probably pay off well for you!

Thanks for checking me out. I write honestly about addiction, mental health, and the mess in between. Have a read, leave a comment if something hits home, and stick around if you want to see how this story keeps unfolding. Here’s a Link to my beehiiv newsletter: https://magic.beehiiv.com/v1/5cb698af-63c8-4a62-9ed7-cb4b61775ebb?email={{email}}

In 2019 I left a janitorial job that paid $12 an hour in Colorado Springs for a warehouse job that paid $15 an hour at an Amazon warehouse in Denver, Colorado. I remember walking out from my job at Goodwill janitorial services with a hunger for something greater. Something more ambitious. I swore to myself as I sat in my car in that parking lot minutes after leaving that today would be the day I would finally write a book and make some serious cash so that I could leave behind the uninspiring, insipid existence of being a simple blue collar worker without a degree. I could see no other escape that seemed acceptable to me. I followed directions just fine and performed my duties well with a positive attitude. I may not have been the best of our cleaning crew but I was at least always trying my best. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter how fast, well or positively you clean a toilet when it gets dirty again that same day. I had the respect of my co-workers, most of whom I considered friends. None of this however, was enough for me.

So I sat in my car and allowed my mind to roam, scanning for ideas of what I might write about. Hours went by as I watched the spring sun go down and car headlights turn on as the nighttime darkness fell upon me. It was nearly night time before I had to admit to myself that maybe I had made a mistake in leaving my job so hastily without a backup plan or job interview lined up. Something that conventional wisdom and common sense tells us we should all do anytime we prepare to depart from a job position of any kind. In my mind however I had recalled how a co-worker of my, Lorenzo had told me weeks prior about Amazon hiring people at fifteen bucks an hour and I remembered that, holding the idea close to my chest “just in case” the day ever came when I knew it was time to go.

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Keeping this in mind and without a job interview lined up, I told my parents about my plan and they begrudgingly agreed to help me complete the online survey required to begin the hiring process at Amazon. After I completed it and got hired, my parents decided to chip in some money to help me move from where I was living in a place called “Cheyenne Village” to an apartment in Thornton, Colorado. This was the beginning of my journey of independence and a true taste of freedom! Moving to Denver to live on my own for the first time was like a dream. I remember hearing the police sirens as I lay in bed in my new home that first night. This time I was living much closer to a city than before and while I had occasionally heard sirens at night at Cheyanne Village, it was nowhere near as common as it was in Thornton. I remember feeling intimidated by the amount of police presence too, seeing the cops knock on someone’s door on the balcony above mine, the smell of marijuana in the air, the sights and sounds and overstimulation that frightened me. Yet I knew that my first day of work was tomorrow and I somehow had to find the strength necessary to close my eyes and rest up for my first day at my new job!

I woke up the next morning not really knowing what to expect. I had my badge that I needed to clock in and out and gain access to the building. It was time to get going and see what this Amazon thing was all about! I remember how intimidating that short first drive to work was and marveled at the enormous size of the fulfillment center as I entered the parking lot. Truly a beautiful and intimidating spiritual experience I simply cannot describe. I knew nothing of the opportunities that awaited me or if I was fit to take on whatever might be expected of me, but I wanted to try. I wanted to put my best foot forward and do my damnest to keep this chance at a new life alive. There was something thrilling about being my own man for the first time ever. I remember walking in to the building with a profound sense of amazement at the loud factory sounds, the stressed bells and whistling noises that the conveyors made as they transported yellow totes all across the inside of the building.

That first day, I was introduced to the equipment that would be necessary to know how to operate in order to do the job. Myself and a handful of other new hires learned how to use pallet jacks, the intricacies and nuances of the various processes that kept this massive mega machine of a coorporation alive and thriving during all hours of the day and night. We learned about safety, staying hydrated, the flexibility of Amazon’s time off options, the basics of performing different types of job positions and everything that one would need to know in order to perform their work efficiently and correctly. There was so much information overload and I was intimidated at first, but determined to retain every little bit of knowledge that was laid at our feet so that I could thrive and succeed in this new environment. One which was easily far more impressive and interesting than anything I had ever seen or been involved with before!

Due to a non-disclosure agreement that was part of the hiring process I won’t explain the specifics or the inner workings of how amazon conducts their buisness, but I am able to say that I learned some new skills including order picking, scanning and organizing items and boxes alongside the physical rigor of transporting pallets of boxes into truck trailers. I started off in the stowing department but was mercifully transferred to the Inbound Shipdock portion of the building when I failed to meet the rate requirements that would have otherwise gotten me fired, had a very nice man not intervened on my behalf. To this day I am grateful to my supervisor Ben who saw that I was struggling to meet the requirements of that department and show me the best grace any boss could show a low leverl worker such as myself, by offering to transfer me there! After I agreed to let him transer me there, I started my two year tenure on the inbound dock team-a time which I consider to be the golden era of sorts at Amazon!

No longer was I just simply bending or squatting or climbing a latter or organizing repetitiously in one small confined space, but now I was participating in a more diverse assortment of work routines which allowed me the freedom to work while being able to move around more freely. Now I was building walls of boxes in trailers, wrapping pallets, moving entire yellow totes from conveyors and scanning things with a scanner gun. It was here in inbound that I made some really great friends; Jose and several others whose names I unfortunately no longer remember besides Edwin. Work wasn’t just work, it was now a place where I could see my favorite people each day and look forward to unexpected opportunities to go home early; sometimes even with paid time off! I was much younger then and Amazon was still very new to me. I learned to even like my managers and others in charge. At some point it really did begin to feel more like family than just co-workers scraping by inside of a billionaire’s sweatshop.

Working at Amazon was very easy for me and at the time when Covid had hit, I made big boy bucks by accepting endless amounts of overtime. Unfortunately though with time-as with all things, the fun had an expiration date I could not have foreseen. As someone who has worked at five different amazon buildings for various lengths of time, let me just say that it does eventually wear you out! By the time Peak Season (Christmas and Thanksgiving, which is considered the buisiest time of year for Amazonians) of 2024 had come, I went from deciding to make Amazon my lifelong career to suddenly realizing that I did not have it within me to continue this line of work forever. Not only was I feeling more fatigue with aches and pains in my back, legs and feet, but that same old feeling of being stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be came back with a vengeance. I started to hate Amazon, even with all of its unique benefits and opportunities, all I could see and feel was constant stagnation and chronic dissastisfaction at what my life had turned into.

By this point I had used Amazon’s Career Choice benefit in which they pay a generous portion of your tuition to get through a couple of classes, both of which I passed and did very well in. The first one I ended with the highest grade possible and was planning on completing more school in order to work towards becoming a therapist-something I have always wanted to do. I remember my last day there, I was so “tore up from the floor up” (as they like to say in A.A) that I just couldn’t imagine continuing any longer. I remember saying goodbye to one of my friends before walking out and essentially quitting my job on the spot. Same as before with Goodwill. I suppose this may sound unbelievable but I do like warehouse work or maybe it would be more appropriate to say that I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Today I am working with a charity group and I stand in front of stores collecting donations to help save animal lives. I choose not to publicly align myself with any particular organization on an individual level but I will tell you this; you know the people in front of stores who raise money for different causes? Yes, they do get paid a percentage of it for their time, some (like me right now) do it as a full time job! So please be nice to those people and maybe throw them a dollar or two. In fact, over ninety percent of the funds actually goes to the causes we raise money for and the other five perent goes to us with the last five percent or so being split with the charities we work with.

I’m in a really odd space right now. I don’t quite know yet if or for how long I will be doing this for. I’ve been at it for two weeks and I guess it’s alright. Amazon is a Hell of a trip for those who decide to stay. I would say it’s a good job that has the potential to be great. At one point I even joined a Union when I was still working at Amazon and made good friends with some of my new co-workers here in Jersey, but at some point the Unionization effort seems to have gradually faded away as people have lost interest or just simply quit altogether. It’s a funny thing in life how one day something can seem so important and then after enough days or weeks go by, you realize it’s been a minute since the last time you did something you used to think was important. Now it’s just a memory and you can’t even remember how or why you stopped doing that thing or talking to that person. It just kinda…happened, ya know?

In closing I would say that Amazon is definitely worth working at and everybody should try it once. It’s probably best for high school and college kids entering into the workforce for the first time. I’d say those are the folks most likely to prosper in such an environment and one thing that’s ubiquitous in nearly every amazon I’ve ever worked at is seemingly ninety percent of the people there are potheads. So if you partake in the devil’s lettuce, chances are you’ll fit right into the culture. It was a good time for those first couple of years, I even met my second girlfriend there! But just like the job at Amazon, she eventually went away too for reasons we won’t discuss here.

Having just gotten back from a meeting at my new A.A Homegroup, I feel a new clarity has come to me. I must write about it before it goes. I know that it’s my fault that my mother’s family did not stay connected. First the drunken incident where I chose to drink, which lead to the disasterous end of my relationship with my older sister Mary and began a long and complicated relationship with my mother that I kept ruining due to insecurity and not being able to let the baggage of the past go and finally for chasing my youngest sister Jenna out of our lives through my cruel words over facebook messenger in 2018. 

One thing I loved about drugs was that they helped me unlock that part of my brain that would not allow me to see people and situations for what they were, yet for some reason accountability is not my favorite word. More often than not, the answers we’re looking for are already inside of us but for one reason or another we can’t face them so we may turn to complex psychological explanations, scientific facts about the chemistry of the brain and even religion to help us find an explanation that suits our purposes. To avoid the answers we know to be true because we can’t face them with a sober, rational mind. I write this to acknowledge that this is my reality and that I’m not sure what to do with it. 

My avoidance of truth is not driven by ego. It is driven by shame and self-defense. Especially if I created a situation I cannot fix or do anything about there’s a part of me that wants to see it from a “But there was nothing I could’ve done, it was out of my control” point of view. Unfortunately, I wonder if that causes me to suffer more than I need to. So how do I face reality without it crushing me? This is the question I really need to answer for myself. I don’t like thinking in this way but I see the necessity of it and why it matters. I used to have a habit of intentionally ruining good things if I didn’t have any hope that they could be saved or fixed. From relationships to all other types of things, I came down with a big case of the “Fuck its!”. 

Today I have hope that I can try to repair something that is broken, but there is always that one thing I can do absolutely nothing about and it bothers me more than I can describe. So then the problem I have is acceptance. What can be done about that? I know it’s impossible for anyone to go through life without taking any L’s. We all get them and some we deserve. I want to think of myself as innocent and totally deny any darkness inside of me. Another lie I like to tell myself because I don’t like acknowledging my own failures or being seen as evil or bad because that’s how I see me. Having it confirmed by someone else would hurt too much. 

The first job I ever had was at a Marriott hotel in Colorado Springs, CO. It was 2013 and through some connections from my father, someone put in a good word for me so I guess you could say I was hired through nepotism. I had such a poor work ethic back then, especially for someone who was not attending college. At this time I was around eighteen years old and was starting to experiment with smoking cigarettes. This was also before the age of smoking and nicotine products was raised to twenty-one years of old. I used to smoke at least two packs of Pall Mall menthols a day but occasionally would smoke Camels, which reminded me of my grandfather who had been a fan of the brand. I remember getting into chewing tobacco as well and trying Skoal mint, peach and cherry flavors, Grizzly Wintergreen and Copenhagen Long Cut. I got hooked on oral tobacco as well.

At the Marriott I worked in the laundry department where I learned how to wash, dry and fold towels, sheets and duvets in a specific way. They had a dirty laundry chute in the ceiling in which dirty towels and assorted fabric goods were sent down by the housekeepers. I was regularly assigned there and tasked with sorting towels, sheets and bedspreads into different carts and then putting them into the washers. It was a filthy job and these were all stained with various bodily fluids (I still cringe just thinking about how many germs I must’ve been exposed to on a daily basis). I didn’t like the job much but it gave me something to do and was the only opportunity I had to make my own money at the time.

I fondly remember how on my lunch breaks I would use the elevator to go up to the employee kitchen and order a burger and fries for lunch. Sometimes a quesadilla or some other fatty food. I had this job for three years before drugs came into the picture. I remember on one occasion meeting with my friends in the parking lot during lunch break for a dose of heroin before going back into work. I remember thinking to myself as I stepped back into work to continue the job “Do I look fucked up? Do I look fucked up? Can they tell that I’m high right now?”. My drug use eventually escalated to the point where I left for rehab for the first time and when I came back months later, I got my job at Goodwill janitorial services.