The last three days had been an eye opening experience for me. These experiences don’t happen often but they do come at various points in my life thus far. This time around, I realized exactly how alike my father and I are. I am a reflection of his failures while he did whatever he did to try to ‘make it’.
Prior to his life in Canada, he worked at an office with a relatively good salary and a very good chance of getting a promotion to assistant manager at his youthful age of late 20-something. However, he decided to travel around the USA and Canada to find something he could do and settle down into. He chose Vancouver in the early 1970’s. In 1977, my mom and dad got married, then had me in 1979. They will be loosely celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary on my birthday next year.
Throughout my father’s life in the 1980’s to early 2000’s, he had tried different businesses to quench his ambition for more. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a good salesman. With the loss of money, inability to sell his products, union strikes and debt, he became a desperate mess. Skipping a whole lot of things, he’s 70 and he still owes money for the house mortgage he bought in 1997 amongst other debts. A 70 year old man with a $200,000 debt because of all of the mistakes, as well as his unquenchable greed and inability to recognize stability over risk has cost the family a lot in the long run.
I swore on my life I will never follow in the same foot steps as my father.
Yet, a few days ago, something leaked into my mind. While it is true I have not badly invested into stocks, I have not taken any large loans, I have not invested in products I know I cannot sell, all of the things I did from when I was in my late teens all the way til now has been a reflections of what he had done on a milder sense. We both experienced large gains in money and massive losses that went into the negatives. Though he had lost a lot more than I have, I did essentially trade in the health of my body and my eye sight for a ‘moment’ of glory that ultimately lead to my demise. While it did teach me a few hard lessons, it had long unforgiving results that has lead me to this point in my life with all of these health problems.
I realized that if not my life being shortened by the years of alcohol abuse, grief and depression, then at the very least, the incredible strain I put on myself trying to do what I dreamed of doing but is constantly failing. Indeed, I haven’t invested tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars into my ventures, but I have invested thousands over the years after the sorrowful and pitiful downfall of Loud Productions in 2000. The experiences over the years has somewhat twisted my perception of the world and what it’s capable of.
I cannot do Youtube videos because while I was once passionate about Leemanism and as my alter ego, GinsengSamurai, I no longer have the energy mentally and physically to follow through with them. I want to. I really want to, but I don’t feel like it.
I hoped I could do game development, but things has pretty much grounded to a halt. Timing and the lack of tangible investment, as well as long term vision and a solid business plan has made the follow up nearly impossible without an active project manager to help us.
I also hoped that I could do some helpful, as well as fun-filled videos for PapierLoveStory, but unfortunately, since the onset, Amber had shown very little interest. While she thought it was a neat idea, she had in the beginning, tried to talk me out of putting much effort and hope into the project. Perhaps it was a perpetuation of her own very little interest, reflected off the constant failures I have successfully shown over my life time that I am in fact, a failure.
It is not sad that I have gained this realization. It just lets me see things as they are, no matter my desires. If it wasn’t some self-righteous morality that ultimately did not work out in my favour, which gave me long term lingering haunting regret, then it was my procrastination to do what needed to be done, not being able to get out of my own rut, this ‘slime’ of a fear that holds me back from completion.
I refuse to assign blame on anyone but myself, so I will never blame others for the choices I make in my own life. However, it is disheartening that even my own wife would not support the things I do. Perhaps this is karma. It is karma for never being able to side with the dreams of my fellow kin, who had their hearts set on the things they wanted to do. I wasn’t supportive of what they wanted to do if I knew it endangered their well being and their connections. I was being selfish because I either feared losing them to illness and death or I was too held up in my self-righteous pedestal of bullshit. They indeed deserve someone who will back them up unconditionally. By the time I realized my mistake, the damage had already been done. Indeed, I have some very forgiving and emotionally generous friends, but I cannot forgive myself for those misdeeds.
At least my dad keeps trying.
