This BLOG is about talking about the past, reflecting on the past. This is sort of a part 2 to “Inevitability of Change.” This will explain further as to the why’s/how’s of how my life has coasted for so long. I am not one to linger in the past, but I think this one time I will envelope myself in it. I know exactly how I feel about my life, my present and how things in my past put me on this track.
For me, my current life as I know it began in 1990 when I moved to NorthPort. Before this, I was in Sarasota going to Gulf Gate Elementary and I was pretty much ready to grow up there when out of nowhere we built a house in NorthPort and moved there 6 months later. I had to go to a new school, make new friends and settle into a neighborhood that only had 1 other house on the block besides ours.
It was tough at first, but I settled in pretty good. I was a happy go lucky kid. I loved riding my bike in all that unexplored areas of NorthPort. Back then the area I lived in almost had nothing around. It was an hour bike ride anywhere of interest. Now it’s a clutter of corporate America… I would just grab some cassette tapes and go out for long bike rides and listened to 80’s metal. I didn’t play sports really. Back then everything was outdoor activities. Sure we had video games and such but back then you didn’t invest hours/days into games. An hour here and there or maybe two, that was about it.
Things started to change when I started lifting weights. My first weight set was from my neighbor. He owed me some money for mowing his yard. Said he had something for me and would drop it off in the evening. He shows up with an old weight set with about 150 lbs of weights and a bench. I was immediately hooked and for 2 years that was pretty much all I did after school. Come home, throw the football around. I had decided I would start playing in my 8th-grade year and lifted weights. Little did I know that I was too small to be very competitive. I was good for my size and weight and even excelled at the High School level. What was not made known to me is that I was short… I was small… Up until I was about 17 years old I looked at myself as normal. I didn’t feel short/small. I felt awesome. NORMAL… However, it was other people that gave me the constant reminders that I was too small, too short and would not amount to anything athletically.
If I would have had this foresight earlier in life I would have stuck to sports where I would only compete against people my size. Say Wrestling for example. I choose weightlifting. Back then it was Max Bench Press and Max Clean N’ Jerk Techniques. After High School, there was not much for college market for weightlifting. There was for wrestling. I choose with my heart and not my brain. With my strength and agility at my size/weight, I would have been a state champion for sure, probably more than once. I would have gotten loads of opportunities to go away to college. This is where things turn the page.
Right around my 8th-grade year I started caring more about what my friends’ thought, about being cool. Little by little I made fewer decisions and let my friends dictate what I would do, even for myself. I never stood on my own two feet. Even after High School. I got into trouble my Junior year and missed the 2nd half of the year. I learned a lot in 1996. I had to work a full-time job at a pay rate of $4.75 an hour. I worked hard to buy my 1st car. It was so hard to save money even back then. Again rather than making my own decisions I was letting others decide for me. When it was time to think for myself all I had was what was in my heart. I didn’t know the differences between Needs and Wants. I did what I wanted to do over what I needed to do.
Rather than just get my GED and go to school to get a decent paying job, which was a realistic possibility. I decided to go back to High School and graduate with my class. When I got back things were much different. I was so behind… I missed half my Junior year, I had to make that up, while working 35 hours a week and going to school full time. I was a hot mess. All my friends that were making my decisions were either kicked out or left. All the other people I knew pretty much alienated me. I had friends sure but nothing deep or even satisfying. I started hanging out with a younger crowd. That was pretty much dominant in my life up to present day.
I was one of the few kids in school that had tattoos. I had a real chip on my shoulder. I was pissed. More than pissed. I was disappointed… Sad… Not some of the time. All the time… I knew I made the wrong choice but I was already committed. By the time the school year of 1997 ended. I didn’t even go to my graduation. I was ashamed. I was disappointed. My Dad got in a bike accident so my mom was with him and all my brothers had their own social lives going on.
So, NO ONE… Would have seen me walk… What was the point? I did all that work for almost 2 years to get back to this stage of my life so that no one noticed or was too busy to see how important that was. Oh well. Life goes on, I say to myself. I worked full time for another year working a job that usually paid $15/hr or higher, even in 1998, for $5 an hour. I finally decided to go to college. I could only afford community college. I had NO IDEA what I wanted to major in. I knew I didn’t wanna work like a dog but I was so blind, again, people in my life that didn’t belong there any longer throwing their input around. I decided to go to college based solely on what I loved and what I wanted to do over what I probably should’ve done. I choose film. I wanted to be a filmmaker. I went through the pains of that and graduated top of my class. However, I could never make that transition and just move out west and start at the bottom.
Looking back on it now… I was afraid to fail and be stuck out in CA with nothing. I had a livable life here. Not a great one but livable. So I decided to stay and just work and see if something came up. Yeah; I did that alright. I did that for 18 years… Nothing came up… I have been stuck in 1999 or so since… My mentality was work hard, play harder. Why save money, why pay for this and that. During that whole time, I did what I wanted rather than what I needed. Even people that have way less than me figured outdo what you need to do and not what you want to do…
This all adds up to a life that I can no longer live. I am now taking those steps for needs over wants and its been a very rude awakening. Its no accident I have managed to stay mainly single and have no kids. It’s quite easy to not notice me. I don’t have anything. I haven’t done anything worth noticing. In the past few months since I started the blog, I knew I was gearing up for something. Some real change in my life. Friends come, friends go…
Parents eventually die… Brothers move on… Life goes on.. I have to go with it. I have to start life planning…
I started the process by selling most of my CD collection and most of my collectible Vinyl. Over the weeks/months. I plan to sell most of my collectible things. Football cards, more CD’s, movie posters, books and such. I just don’t have any real practical use for these things anymore. It blows my mind how much time/energy/money I spent on this stuff and for what? To sit in a closet for 20 years? Makes no damn sense…
Like in the movie “Fight Club,” the things I own do not define me as a person. It’s the things I do in life that do. Or course I will keep some of the stuff, the really rare and stuff that is a part of my personality. Like my DOKKEN collectibles and such, but everything else is going. Not because I need the money, sure, I do, lol, but more or less to rid myself of my past and strive toward the future.
I have made real strides over the past few years but the work I am doing now can create real change for me and that is what I need to do. I look through old yearbooks and see all the people I used to be friends with, only I don’t talk really to any of those people anymore. Those connections are changed, they are not totally gone, as I still remember them. Things are very different now. Not just with me but the World in General. People are changed. Some for the good, some for the worse. As a race, we are lost spiritually… Humanity is stripped of its spirituality…
I am always here to chat about the good times, even the bad times. However, I am finding less and less people these days on the Facebook’s and Instagram’s that want to go back on those trips and I am fine with that. After that, if people are not willing to grow towards the future, then what is the point?
So many people on my social media that probably do not belong there. I talk to and am more friends with people I have never met face to face than people I was pretty close to back in the day. I would say that is a huge change in how people think these days or maybe just me, specifically, probably me…
I know I confuse the hell out of people, a lot. I always say, hey, just ask, tell me what is on your mind, only to get silence.
I have a plan… It’s on its way, even with the current roadblocks the LAW is throwing on me. I still have the freedom to make my own decisions and now its time to exercise those freedoms (not a workout pun, ha). I am here. I am here to stay… I plan to prosper in this life and if not this life then the next.
At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, where Spock is telling Kirk about, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” Spock turns the table and says, “The needs of the one, outweigh the needs of the many.” This is obviously an illogical phrase…
This was a personal act of Spock’s freedom letting Kirk know that the needs of the many was to not sacrifice Spock’s life for the crew. Spock in hand, this was his need, he needed to sacrifice his life for the crew. It was something he needed to do, he also wanted to, out of love… Love for his Captain, his friend and crew of friends.
My need… Is to now live the life I always wanted to live. The only way this want can be achieved is by doing things I need to do 1st and what I want to last, not 2nd, last… My life to hit its full potential… “It had the virtue of never having been tried.”