The emphasize here is that I enjoyed my time at Calgary with Uncle Dick and Jason back at the end of February 2014. Somewhere inside of me was a man that enjoyed every moment of it, but at the same time, a large part of that man was filled with worry, anxiety, depression and everything that brought him down.
Not long ago, I met with Tom after a long time. He wanted some coffee, so as we walked up the street, I stopped him and told him that in the past, I was numb to the feelings of others, while I was so entrenched in mine, but as time passed, it felt as though that numbness melted and like a liquid, mixed in with mine. So when I see or hear or read about what others are up to and are going through, my emotions run wild. To see everyone I should care about, do the things they are trying to do in their varying degrees makes me happy. The thing is though, I still don’t show it as much as my heart feels it.
Yesterday evening, I went over to Benny’s place for about 2.5 hours. Half of that was just watching him code bits of our project with a client. The other half was just hearing him talk, show me pictures and watch Hailey run around like Sonic the Hedgehog. It was honestly a bit freaky to watch her run around like that, worried that she would slip and hit something. As I left his house and drove back home, I put on a song called “Escape” by 3LAU, Paris & Simo featuring Bright Lights. It’s a Lukas Termena Chill mix. A repeating lyric is: “Free your mind.”
It’s inspirational because my mind is chained down hard with the fear of failure, fear of disappointing those that would rely on me, fear of breaking apart.
I know that it’s not the fault of my friends for not understanding, but I am honestly very disappointed at them for not understanding. While I sat beside Benny at his home office, there was a part of me that kept thinking, “This is my last night here.” Alas, there are many anchors that hold me to this life. However, this thought has been in the back of my mind for a long time.
Before I encouraged Amber to open up to her family, her mom used to say to her: “Just do it!” <---- this is essentially what my friends have been saying to me in their varying levels of their own comfort. After Amber opened up to her mom, her mom had slowly and gradually started to understand her issues and stopped pressuring her, knowing that the issues stem from a long history of abuse and indifference, especially a long history of family members being ignorant. My mom is the only person besides Amber that knows a bit about my issues. Although she tries to understand and accept it, she is still the only barrier between me and reality/my dad. My dad is in the dark and my time is running out. I said to Amber earlier today that I wish it was just an option that I support my parents financially. I wish I have the option to do the things I want to do, but I don't and I am failing hard at finding my projects to keep my family and I afloat. Worst yet, I keep hearing "Just do it!" echoing somewhere in the bowels of my psyche from my friends. They don't say it exactly like that, but they might as well. Every now and then, I go through the Facebook profiles of my friends which many I have known for over ten years and I might go through their photos, see the correspondence between their friends and see how their life has improved. I do not compare myself to them. There is nothing to compare. Instead, I go through them and I reminiscent on mine, the steps I took to get here. There are things I regret, but if I hadn't done them, then I would not be here today with all the positive aspects. It's just that the negative aspects are overwhelming. Today is Thanksgiving Day. I didn't know until last night. I never do this, but if I were to be thankful for something, they would be: - That I live in a region where there is relative peace. - That I have a family that isn't abusive or bad. - I have friends that at various points in time met me in the middle and I will always remember our experience. - I have a wife that loves me and accepts me, even with my faults. - A supportive mom. - A happy little brother who has successfully worked himself up the corporate ladder. - A little brother that has met someone whom he loves and loves him back. - Relative good health, minus the surgery I need to do to have my gall bladder removed and the micro-fracture in one of my teeth. - The project that gives me some money to pay for Amber's immigration and 2.5 months of support for my family. - A house we own, but still owe a mortgage on that is clean and in a relatively good neighborhood. - A former boss that is giving me a chance to make it up to her and earn some much needed money. - Access to good health care. Earlier when I was talking with Amber, I told her that it seems like my entire life is just one massive curse when it comes to my finances and work. My first business failed gloriously. My second business with Razor failed gloriously, though I had more than half a year of a decent salary. My employment at OMG lasted almost five years, then I was laid off and all that time, I earned a small income. Then my third business failed. Then my fourth business consists of a partner that just doesn't care very much for the company and its project. I told her that it's always as if someone threw a giant diamond at me, then someone comes along and smashes it into a billion shards, then uses a tornado to blow it all over the place, then when I finally find a piece, someone else is holding it and presents me with an unnecessarily difficult riddle for me to solve. On top of all of that, I can only redeem bits of the diamond for money if I put ten pieces together, polish it, then sell it for less than what it would normally be. If I had a past life, I must have been a king or a prince who splurged and I am now this near-dead-poor piece of shit being blocked at every opportunity. All I need is a programmer in our company that will do the job that needs to be done. My other partner can get us the projects. That's not an issue. The problem is that Benny can't do programming when he has to do administration, marketing and meeting/dealing with clients on top of his day time job, his T5 stuff and his family. My rhetoric is why is life so damn fucking hard for me? Why does it seem like every single time something good happens, it must fall down ten times harder and crush my dreams? This is supposed to be an easy $60k to $80k project, with it's first milestone completed two weeks ago. Where are we right now? I'm done the UI! Our indifferent partner is taking his time, making excuses along the way. I told Benny: "Why does every single programmer we work with since Razor turn out like this?" Our first programmer did his best to demoralize the staff after he lost his position as Chief Technical Officer and did not do any work. Our second programmer always said "yes" to everything, but could not deliver on time and we even lost a project because of that. Our third programmer loves answering in riddles and doing things at the last moment, resulting in late milestones and the inability to communicate and follow up with clients. I DO NOT GET IT! Benny and I can do the work. We just need a reliable programmer! It's so sad that my life is dependent on one other person. Why can't things be smooth? When Benny had time and the energy, we worked well together. He is a programmer. At this point in time, we need a second programmer to fill in the role of software architect. We need someone that is reliable, communicative and gets straight to the point. We need someone who knows how to build SQL databases and has knowledge in PHP, C# and .NET. So in the very off chance anyone knows someone, please contact me. We need someone to do contract work with us and possibly ongoing contract work. These are not mom-and-pop projects.