Coherent Ramblings I think?

Weird feeling in the city tonight. It’s almost as if I don’t belong here. I got on the bus downtown at Powell . The sun was setting and it was a bit breezy. Drive down about ten stops on the 38L and all of a sudden the weather is overcast and drizzly. It kind of feels like late fall according to New England Standards. Also, I have missed the past 4 consecutive Fall seasons at home. It’s kind of sad since Autumn is my favorite season.

This feeling I have, I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I have always been one to shake things off and play everything as no big deal. It’s kind of crazy when you pick up from home and literally leave with less than a days notice. Leaving all my family and friends behind. Don’t get me wrong, I love San Francisco. Ever since I left California, I have wanted to come back here. It’s been about three weeks and I don’t necessarily miss home, I just miss the thought of it and my family.They have been very supportive throughout all these recent ambitions(My Mom and Dad, Aunt Stell and Uncle Dick, and my Grandma) and I can do nothing but thank them for everything. I never realize that I think too much about what I want vs. what my parents might want and their feelings. It has been about me for awhile. They’ve given me everything and continue to while I start a career or whatever this is here.

I have done nothing for the past 1.25 years since graduation. I have held some bullshit positions but nothing of substance. I like to think I’m worth more than $11 an hour but apparently not. Every single position in the city that I apply for says they are going to pay me far more, and then low ball me afterwards.

Every time I start a new job, I have job anxiety. Within the first two hours of my first day I can’t help but think, “This really fucking sucks, I want to quit.” I don’t want to give up my independence of doing whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want. But you need money to do that, what a bitch of a catch 22. I will stick with this new job though until I have another conformed position. I have to because if I don't I will be moving back home again. Also, this job is not strait commission, so I am getting paid for being there which is nice. I have some serious issues.

Comical Dreams

I found this comic awhile ago, and actually forgot completely about it until I was cleaning out my Downloads folder the other night. It is kind of a reality check for me because I seem to do what the comic depicts, all the time.

I have been sitting up late at night recently, hitting refresh in my browser quite possibly 50-100 times to see if anything new pops up in my news feed or my Twitter timeline. Usually at this hour I am indulging in a new television series or a movie that just came out. For some reason I’m ADD about starting a new show or committing for the time of a movie. No doubt I will definitely be up two hours from now, but why waste the time, on a probable shitty movie. I watch 95% of movies and TV on my laptop, so maybe I need to actually watch it on a TV, or projector or something. I could also just get rid of the laptop and TV and find something more productive to do with my time.

This comic really hits home because I have been seeing and doing pretty much the same things each day, for the past two months. I have been basically reliving the same day, more or less, for 60+ days. Towards the end of my last rehab cycle, I was out doing things, so I don't really count that in what I am talking about. Only having one good leg at a time is paralyzing in terms of a social life, work life, or any life for that matter. ACTUALLY, being dead ass broke also is a huge factor too.

The comic talks about dreams. What does one want to do in life and how most peoples dreams don’t come around and find them, they must find their dream. For some people, with today’s internet age, any viral video came make someone famous, all their dreams come true, in the matter of a couple days (i.e.Greyson Chance, Girl who was Conan’s first person he followed on Twitter. Satire BP Twitter account, etc) The comic is making a point that people need to get off their ass and go out and make their dreams happen, not everyone can be as lucky as @LovelyButton.

I start to think about my dreams. Why did I go to school in the first place? What do I really want to do? What does it take so long to do your dream job? Why can’t I even get a job, for anything? Well first and foremost the real reason I went to school was to make money. Get an education and then the money would start raking itself in. Apparently everything I had been told was a lie about having a degree and automatically getting a job and money. I had no idea what I really wanted to do until I started taking classes at Dean College. I didn’t love the business classes but I seemed to be getting the hang of things since I was getting A’s and B’s.

After my first year I figured out I wanted to be in the entertainment business. Specifically, I wanted to work on the business side of the movie business. It pretty much stemmed from the show Entourage. I would love to be an agent or a personal manager. I kind of came up with this out of the blue one day at a career/college fair that was being held for transfers. Next thing I know I’m applying to ten schools that have entertainment majors and whatnot.

A big problem why I have not really nailed down what I want to do, or have a job in a field even close to what I want to do is because never really had a mentor. Students latch onto their advisors or a certain teacher. I never had that. My advisor was not entertainment-field oriented and was kind of a dick. Also, some students take their job within the school and decide they want to expand on that and become part of the school, or it gives them a better idea as to where their path will lead eventually. I never had a job in school either, other than working for a lawyer momentarily after I graduated and the only internship I had was working for AMP promoting their product on campus. Parental mentorship can only go so far, unless you are entering your parent’s field of work, and then they are a wealth of knowledge. It’s frustrating when my parents say things like: You will be fine. You're a smart kid. You can get a job if you try harder. They can’t offer specific advice, just basic, cookie cutter advice. They don’t know shit about what I want do. How can they I don’t even know what the fuck I want to do.

Some things I do know are that I don't want to just ease into a mold of what societal life thinks one like me should be doing. I don’t have/want to be famous, or popular, I’m just looking for something different. I’d rather be happy doing nothing, then being unhappy doing something I don’t like.

Everyday should be a day of different but equally epic opportunities and situations that you put yourself in or you magically run into. It shouldn't be a run of the mill, dull existence.

Future Ventures

As a joke the other day I said I was going to start a business that catered to the elderly generation that cannot handle the technology of cell phones and computers, compact discs, and if they are really old, cassette tapes, and 8 tracks. All in all it’s not really a bad idea. There is a market for it--old people do in fact suck at technology, so why not charge them for my knowledge?

It makes me think that this would be easy to pull off because of my grandmother. She knows how to run “the email” just fine. I have been receiving her forwarded joke emails for the past 10 years. I don't care how many she has sent me, I have never read a funny one. She has had the same cell phone for the past 6 years, so she knew how to make call, but never text or pretty much anything else that a cell phone has to offer. I sent her a new phone the other day because we added her to our family plan. She might as well have never even seen a cell phone before. I had to explain to her every little step on how to activate the phone, and even how to make a fucking call. “Green button, Send, red button, End, OK means okay/enter, and the arrows help you navigate the phone” said I. “So…how do you make a call again?” said she. I have patience with her though, because I understand her issues and she gets frustrated if something doesn't go smooth the first time around.

Also, I started thinking about where I would advertise for such a service. My initial ideas were: billboards, phonebooks, retirement home cork boards, and hospital fliers. Then I thought a little more about it and came up with talk radio, commercial times during the Price is Right, Let’s Make A Deal, Regis and Kelly, and the 4 am news. My friends got in on the action and suggested the newspaper, telemarketing (but not make calls between 3-4pm because that’s dinner time, also not after 7 30 because that’s sleep time,) and passing out fliers at the local mall before it opens because apparently that’s where exercise happens if you are above the age of 55.

Apart from it being a decent idea, I guess all it needs is a business plan, and a good location, such as Florida. Well anywhere really, there are elderly everywhere.

I come up with ideas all the time. Always thinking about funny things, rude things, whatever floats my boats, really. I need a personal web designer that can build my shit up in two hours, rather than me sitting in front of my laptop Googling how to do it.

Total Hip Replacement: Part I

This whole process began on February 20^th, 2009. I remember specifically because the pain had started the morning I woke up from the Black and White Ball. I don’t think the pain was attributed solely to that night but for some reason that night had tipped the boat or whatever other metaphor you can think of for something going overboard.

The pain started off like it was aching within the days follow and then turned into the worst pain I have ever had. Making it hard to get out of bed in the morning but would subside for the day, mostly. I had seen a couple doctors while still at Pacific to cure this problem. A couple trips to the emergency room and to urgent care and the doctors either couldn't find what was wrong, or didn’t care enough to actually see it though to give a proper diagnosis.

Urgent care might as well be for people with strictly colds because they didn't seem to give a fuck that I was dying of pain. I was prescribed some bullshit medicine that reduced inflammation, which helped for about a day. They just see people, give them a prescription and send their ass home while billing the fuck out of their insurance. I was limited to the Emergency Room and Urgent Care because I was from out of state at the time and my HMO only provided for emergency care. I also saw a chiropractor because for some reason the general consensus of everyone who had heard about my pain said it was coming from my back via the sciatic nerve. This nerve can be pinched and cause pain to shoot down the back and cause pain in the legs. $100 later, I deemed that it was not the sciatic nerve and called it quits there.

After I graduated I came home from California to take care of this nonsense.

I was sent to do an EMG test which tested my nerves throughout my legs and my back to see if there was damage. They stick needed throughout your legs and lower back and then send and electric shock through that region of your body near the nerves. It was definitely not the most pleasant test I had ever taken. I remember the doctor saying there was some damage at the time, but nothing ever came of it through my primary doctor, who is fucking useless basically, all around.

Next was the MRI of my back that was ordered in order to see a spine specialist who would ultimately tell me that the pain was in my head because my spine was fine. Oddly enough this doctor also took x-rays of my hips and deemed them perfectly fine. Had he ordered and MRI of the hip region he would have found the disease I would eventually be diagnosed with 8 months later in February 2010.

The whole finding the problem and cure process took a break while I went back to California to live and work for awhile but that ended up not working out so well. The pain was in my every aspect of my everyday life, so nothing had changed in that department. I finally moved home in late October of 2009 but didn't see a doctor until February 2010 because of the holidays and I kept putting it off for some reason or another.

The spine doctor that said the pain was in my head referred me to a pain management doctor, finally, someone who gave me some answers. So the long and short from this doctor was that he did an x-ray of my hips and gave the diagnosis of Avascular Neurcrosis which is a disease in which the blood supply is cut off to the bones, and is prone more or less to the hip region. If the blood supply is cut off to the bone, the bone starts to die and dead bone starts to disintegrate. It was noticeable on the x-rays this time because both of my hips had finally collapsed, because the blood had been cut off for some time. The only remedy for this would be an eventual total hip replacement on both hips.

There was another referral, Dr. Jones, in between who was basically useless, but through his referral to another doctor, I was finally referred to Dr. Eric Smith of Tufts Medical in Boston.

I went in for another set of x-rays and a consultation for range of motion in my hip. We shot the shit for awhile. He is actually from Modesto, CA and knew of Pacific and the Pike house there because he was a Sigma Chi, not at UOP but somewhere else (yeah I know, boo.)

No doubt would I need to get two total hip replacements. Metal on metal for longevity and because I am a bigger guy, he did not want to run the risk of cracking a ceramic ball replacement. All I had to do was call and schedule them. He was scheduling them three months in advance at that point in time so we made the appointments.

Another rigmarole of the healthcare system is that if I wanted to get on a cancelation list to possibly move up my surgeries, I would have to get clearance from my primary care doctor. So I called for an appointment and scheduled one three weeks away and somehow ended up on the cancelation list for Dr. Smith.

My first major surgery was a total right hip replacement at the ripe old age of 23.

So the process of this took over a year to get to halfway through a final solution. I can’t believe the process and holes you have to jump through to get anything diagnosed and done when it comes to your own body. Throughout the entire process from when the pain started and the surgery I have seen seven doctors. SEVEN FUCKING DOCTORS. Really?

Part II to come later.

And on the job front: I still deliver pizzas.

A Long Weekend in The BAY

A couple weeks ago I made the trek across the country to San Francisco to visit my pals that I had not seen about 3 months or so. There was a huge snow storm here the night I was leaving and I had come home from a friend’s house to see a foot of snow in my driveway. I was leaving in 2 hours to go to the airport, so I shoveled a path to get out of the driveway at 2:30am, wasted. Also, I had a little extra time so I constructed a snow man for my mom, because she always bitches about my brother and I never making her one when it snows out. Well I remembered why we never make her one, because it is a serious fucking pain in the ass - rolling around huge balls of snow fucking sucks. So Mom, enjoy that snow man, because it is going to be a very long time before you get another one.

Anyways, I landed in San Francisco around noon hit the BART and a bus to meet up with my boy George. We chilled and shot the shit until we decided to go out that night. We went over to our friend Terrence and J Money’s house and had some beers there, caught up a little bit, and then hit this bar called Monogan’s which was a short walk from their apartment. Every night of the week had specific specials, and we just happened to land there on Irish Night, which was $3 Guinness’s, Harp’s, and shots of Jaminson’s. When Tory and Josephine showed up at the bar, they bought a round of Jaminson’s and Coke for all of us there, the bill came to only $18. I was amazed that we were getting legit hammered for that cheap.

I don’t need to bore you with the exact details of every night there but here is a little bit about each night if you are interested to hear what went down:

Thursday: Bottomless Saki at Coach Sushi in Oakland with Coco, Cass, Avery, Mouse, Kelly, Nancy and her roommate..Jen or Jess? This place breeds blackouts before 10 p.m. You get a wooden box that is filled with Saki until 10 p.m. or until you can’t take it anymore. If you’re lucky you will bottom out your wooden box, but don’t count on it happening often. George blacked out and let me slap him in the face extremely hard. Twice. On video. He also broke a table at Cass’s apartment. We got a noise complaint, and went home extremely hung over the next day. Taking the BART a bus hung-over, is shitty.

Friday: This was the big event “Bill LaHaye: The Return ft. Joel Strauss.” Basically we had 40 of our closest friends at Bar None, doing what we do best. Even some friends from Stockton made the trip for this ever so epic event. We all met up around the same time, did some pre-gaming and then the larger groups all met up at Bar None and had a great time. I even met up with a friend from Gardner who lived down the street from me, but now lives in SF. Once I got back to Georges, Nate and I chatted about life until the wee hours of the morning and smoked about 40 cigarettes while we listened to some good tunes.

Saturday: This was part of the original reason why I was headed to CA in the first place. It was your basic standard Pike Event, Founders Day. Pregame before, head to the event with a couple beers in your pockets to drink on the bus, etc. Well some girl decided to throw the event a curve ball, and take a fucking shit on the men’s bathroom floor. I know, crazy. I’m shocked the owner did not kick us out of her place for that. We have been kicked out of venues for far less.

Sunday: Watched USA vs. Canada. Fuck Canada. Got lunch with some friends and just chilled. I also realized that my flight was about 8 hours earlier than I thought it was, so I had to break lunch plans with Nancy and a couple other plans that were going to fill up my Monday that ended up being filled with Planes, Trains, Buses and Automobiles.

On the way home from Stockton, after lunch and the USA game, I got a ride home with Chumbley, Akers, Schapansky, and Joel. We chatted in depth about life and everything that we wanted from it. We talked boldly about all of our future ambitions and wanting more in life than what we currently are doing, wherever we are situated now. We even came up with this ridiculous business idea called InnerTube, and began naming all the aspects we would control. Basically, all the things we are good at in our own respective. The general consensus was that we all wanted to be around people and friends that motivated us. The majority of the people in the car had places and things already going on in San Francisco, but it was motivation for the others that wanted to move there and start something.

Basically the point of all of this is to say that I really had an amazing time there. It made me realize everything that I was missing out on, and all the great times there are to come. Not that I don’t like my home life, but there is this black hole feeling I get when I am here. I find myself not wanting to go out or do anything that involves driving more than 5 miles. San Francisco is an amazing city that makes me feel good about myself when I’m there. I want to live in a big city while I’m young enough to enjoy it with all of my pals.

So my ultimate goal is to move to San Francisco in three months. Well actually the plan is to have secure plans on when I am going to move by June 1^st. I think this is a realistic goal for the most part. I got a job delivering pizzas, which really isn’t that much income. But also just today I got a job through my temp agency working at a medical supply company. I start tomorrow, bright and early at 8:15 in the morning. The only thing I really have an issue with is the commute but whatever; I need to have some paper in the bank to be able to make that move. And once I make the move, the same temp agency has like 10 offices throughout the Bay Area, so I am hoping that they can just transfer me there, and I will be able to find a job there with no trouble and maybe pick up a part time job at night.

So currently I am a man with two jobs. We’ll see how long though.

Until next time…

Back to Where It All Began

As many of you know I have moved back home to Gardner, Massachusetts. I packed up all of my belongs, which sadly fit into my Mustang, and drove across the country with my mom in 5 long days. We made stops along the way in Wyoming, Iowa (to see family), and Cleveland to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was a decent place. The best exhibits were the Rolling Stone Magazine section and the Elvis exhibit.

Anyways, I have been at home for two months now. It really isn't all that bad. There is something about this place that has a black hole effect. I feel myself getting sucked in and never wanted to leave, not in a good way. If something is going on even twenty minutes away I am not always willing to go. I am either being really lazy or the other things going on aren't worth the drive to get there.

I finally got myself involved with a temp agency, OfficeTeam. They set me up with a job working for the Muscular Dystrophy Association calling local business leaders to hopefully get them to sign up and be "locked up"on behalf of the MDA. They would get the local police involved to go "arrest" people and the money that they raised would help bail them out of this metaphorical jail. They bail was set at $1600, which sends two kids with muscular dystrophy to summer camp for a week.

It was all a nice noble cause but it definitely wasn't for me. I hate annoying people by butting into their daily routines. Sales must not be for me. I would only want to do it if I already knew the person wanted to participate in the cause or buy the item and I didn't have to convince them otherwise. It was all based on results, much like every sales job. The list of people they have for the towns involved in the lock-up had been severely exhausted because they had a full time lady there who was on the phones all the time calling people.

Everyone there was really nice. The position itself was not the most desirable.

I do have any other position available to me, a couple actually. I think I am just afraid of a job commitment that isn't flexible and easy to get out of. I must have some sort of job anxiety. Or maybe just working in the real world is super fucking boring and I don't want to be in a lame nine to five position working for the man, or whoever the man may be in this case.

I have a job working as a pizza delivery driver, which was supposed to be starting this week, but was pushed back another week because the place is in the process of setting up and getting everything installed. I know this may seem like a step backwards in terms of career success, but I can easily make more money delivering pizzas, a mindless job, then I can working in a room making phone calls and annoying people for $10 an hour.

Upon coming home I was supposed to take over my fathers limo/transportation business. I was working there for awhile making a shit-load of money and starting to pay off my credit cards and saving some money. But ever so conveniently he was laid-off from his job, so he took the business back because he needs to pay the bill, etc. It's not really that big of a deal to me, but it does kind of suck to be promised something and then have it taken away.

I have written out a list of goals for my life for the next 6 months to a year. I wrote them two months ago and I have yet to be able to cross any of them off of the list. I am in stalemate of sorts but it because of my own job anxiety and commitment problems. If I really wanted to be crossing things off that list I would have a full time job.

But in other news I will be headed to Cali at the end of this month to hang out with some old pals and attend Founders Day possibly. The only problem is I need to have a decent amount of money to blow when I go there. I'm hoping I can go there with at least $300 to be able to chill with. So if you are in the area of San Francisco from the 24 of February to March 1st, hit me up.