I’ve been wanting to write this post for, believe it or not, a few years. I started this one as a draft a couple years back and it’s been on my to-do list for 2-3 years.

I think I’ve always loved music and how certain songs seem to be sung for me or about my life. Here are a few of my favorites:

“there goes my life” by Kenny Chesney. One listen and you will know why, its about a young man, who says “I’m just a kid myself, How am I gonna raise one?”.

“unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield. I just always liked that philosophy in life. No matter what is written on your previous pages, whatever story is written so far, the next page is blank and can be whatever you choose it to be.

There are many more, including “damn it feels good to be a gangster”, lol.

This Ashley McBryde song is one that I feel applies. I look at my life and I would guess that the odds of me “making it” in life were pretty low. I was a self-admitted slacker through high school. I wasn’t blessed with a head start on adult life. Less than a year after graduation I had a child on the way, even though I was still a kid myself. Doing what I thought was the right thing to do, I married my “baby momma”. So here I am at 19, with a beautiful baby daughter, a wife, barely 2 nickels to rub together and not a clue how to navigate adult life. I worked 2 jobs most all the time. I tried going to college for a semester, thinking I wanted to try law enforcement. Luckily I realized that wasn’t a good path for me.

So the story of “girl goin’ nowhere” (Ashley McBryde), if you don’t know the song (I suggest you give it a listen, she has an amazing voice and way of story-telling), is about herself and her dreams of being a musician. She didn’t receive any support. In fact the people in town mock her as “not the first, won’t be the last” of people trying this path. And that they’ll be there when she “comes crawling back”.

While I didn’t have a town of people saying I couldn’t be someone, I remember some co-workers at American TV laughing when I said my goal was to retire at 40. I didn’t make it, obviously. But 50 is in play, which would still be a pretty damn good time to make retirement.

Even though I didn’t have the people in town saying I would fail, I always felt my parents expected me to fail. I think my mom wanted nothing more than for me to call and say I was lost, that I couldn’t find my way and that I needed help.

I think that the feeling that people were against me, or at least not expecting much of me, has given me motivation in life to always push harder, if for no other reason than to prove people wrong.

I am proud of where I am. I have a lot I can do better. I can be a better father, grandfather, husband, boss, friend and man. We all wrestle with our demons, the things we’ve done we regret, the things we wish we had done but didn’t, the chances we didn’t take that we should have, the chances we took that would have been better off not taking.

But through it all I think what I’ve done was partially motivated by the lack of support, the perceived negative expectations of what I could become, to prove people wrong.

I like playing the role of someone who was supposed to be “goin’ nowhere” but did.

I lost a good employee this week. Someone I cared about. He had only been with me for a little over a year, but still it hurts. I fear I lost him to a dark demon of his. I hope I can feel confident I did all I could, but the truth is you always fee like you could have done more.

I will miss you sir, I hope the circle of life brings you back around.

Update – 3 days later

I no longer hope that life brings you back around. I think it will. I think that you will go out and explore life and realize you had a good job, and worked for a good company, and had people surrounding you who truly cared about you. Three days ago I would have welcomed you back, and so would have the whole team, with the widest of open arms. You Filled me full of lies. You said you weren’t going elsewhere, that you needed to clear your head, that you had so much respect for Amy and I. It turns out be all lies. I am surprised, but I shouldn’t be. I’m too trusting and I want to give people extra chances. Maybe one day I will learn. Or maybe I won’t, maybe I shouldn’t. If you give 10 people a 2nd chance and 9 of them screw you over, but the 10th thrives and excels and has a beautiful, fulfilled life, were the 10 2nd chances a waste? I have to think not.

Even still, I wish you the best. I hope you can keep your demons away. I hope you find the life you want. I have to do some structural inspecting of our bridge, but I think it may be damaged beyond repair.

In my previous entries I talk about chugging along without a destination. I also talk about how much my life is good and I have much to be thankful for. I find myself in a weird place lately, a really good, but weird place. Let me explain.

Life is good. It’s spring (not officially yet) in NC and was a beautiful 81 degrees or so today. I played golf. I also played yesterday and I’m playing tomorrow. I’m also playing Sunday again. Then, next Wednesday I’m heading to Fripp with 3 buddies to play as much golf as my older-by-the-day body can handle. My business, Absolute Recovery, is doing great. We set an all time company record last month in the shortest month of the year. Financially all is good, better than ever in fact. Covid seems to be moving into the rearview, partially I think due to the distraction of Russia/Ukraine and partially because everyone is just sick of it all and ready to move on. It seems that we will be enjoying maskless concerts without negative tests or vax cards. Hopefully soon we will be flying again without masks and this whole “pandemic” will be behind us. All those I care about are healthy and doing good. And my grandson is an awesome little dude, so happy to be a grandpa.

Not everything is perfect though. The cost of damn near everything is up. Interest rates are rising. The stock market and housing market seem to be inflated, with a correction likely coming. But even still, things are good.

So I should be skipping along happy and not worrying about much right? Well yeah, I am, sorta. I have written about my desire to start more companies and to do big things. Where I find myself in this weird place is not having any kind of end game or destination. I like nice things, I love cars, and golf, and travel. I also want to simplify life. I don’t know how to do both, maybe it’s not possible.

I feel like i can grow my company and hit bigger numbers and make more money, but with what goal in mind? I feel like I need a stopping point, a destination. Something like, have your house paid off, no other debts and X number of dollars in the bank (or invested or in assets). If I knew that number or had that exact vision then I could work toward that. I could make whatever number happen I believe. The problem is, how the hell do you know what that number is? I’m 45, so I need to plan for another 45 years, but I could only have a year, or I could live to 105, no one knows. Having a paid off house is a great plan, but I have a 2.625% rate, so does it make sense to pay it off when not much is going to interest? Not really. I don’t really have any other personal debt, so that’s cool. Let’s just say I get the house paid off and for the sake of a number say I set a goal of 2 million and hit it. Awesome, so I have no bills, other than utilities and essentials and hopefully am able to pull a halfway decent return on that 2 million. The issue is that things cost more money over time. If you pull 8% return from your money, 160k per year, that seems like a good amount to live on for possibly the rest of your life right? Well, go back in time 30 years, so 1992. How much was rent? Gas? a new car? a snickers bar? If what I’m trying to figure out now was being done by someone in 1992, maybe their number was a million and no debt. Considering the same 8% return they would be living on 80k. Not too bad I suppose, but they wouldn’t be living the life they thought they would because 80k now doesn’t buy now what it did in 1992. It sure as hell will have less purchasing power 10 years from now. So what’s the answer? Maybe I need to double whatever number I think I need? That requires working harder and longer to get that number, at which point I will have less years left in my life, so I don’t need as much after all. And then you add in the thought that maybe I want that bucket list Ferrari or to buy a boat and travel around south America. So maybe I need more than I think.

I just wish there was some level to beat, like in a video game. Like the moment you beat Bowzer and then the game was over. You could sit back and say you were done, you beat the level and achieved the goal. I want to beat the game. But what if playing the game keeps you going? Maybe you can’t beat the game and once you do the game ends?

I’m going to continue pondering this and how to get to the finish line. As I typed this out and put it on paper, I think I am possibly more unsure than I was before. Usually writing it all out puts it in perspective, but not this time.

I’m sitting in my office, where most of my blogs have been written, doing some work with Fox business in the background. It seems that all the news is bad, worse than normal, which is normally bad. Stocks are down due to Omicron worries, where the worldwide death total from this variant has reached the huge milestone of 1. In reaction to this not only is the stock market down, but NY city has reinstated an indoor mask mandate and Philadelphia is requiring a vax card for anywhere that food or drinks are sold and consumed on site, including restaurants, bars, movie theaters, entertainment venues and more. Oh yeah, there is also the terribly destructive tornadoes that killed many dozens and wiped out entire towns.

It is all a bit depressing and scary. Obviously the people who died and lost everything is heartbreaking. This is the biggest tragedy in quite a while.

What I want to focus on though is the frightening slippery slope of these vaccine mandates. I am in no way religious, but the following bible verse has been mentioned a lot and has stuck in my head as I watch what is going.

Revelation 13:16-17
And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

So in Philly, one will not be able to go out to eat or drink unless they can prove they have been “fully vaccinated”, which in itself is constantly changing. I assume there will be more cities to follow suit. I fear for those of us who believe in personal freedom who have made the conscious decision to not be vaccinated. The plan seems to me to make it so hard to do normal life things that people will be forced to cave and get the jab. I can certainly see in the not too distant future a vaccine being required to fly on an airplane, go to government buildings, go to concerts or sporting events and more.

I fear how this will affect my life and ability to do the things that I should be able to do in a free and open country. I fear what this does to businesses being forced to enforce vaccine requirements, or face possible fines for not complying. I fear for the precedent this sets. If they can enact these restrictions successfully there will be nothing to stop them from making any number of requirements in the future and just take away your rights and freedoms if you don’t comply.

Lastly I fear for the safety of my fellow Americans. I know there are many who have had about enough and are damn near ready to snap. Imagine what will happen when you force people to have a vaccine or lose their job. For any number of reasons some/many people will not be vaccinated. So a family loses their source of income due to the mandate. Then the family is not able to get basic food and clothing that is needed. you’re going to push people to the brink.

Then you have the people who believe this is all about governmental control. In many of their minds they look at themselves as true patriots, protecting the freedom our forefathers fought for. These people are out there and the pressure is building.

Then you have the religious faction who believe this is the mark of the beast and by fighting the government restrictions they are doing the Lord’s work. There are those who will feel completely justified in fighting the mark of the beast and therefore Satan.

I was hoping that life was getting back to some semblance of normal, but it appears that through fear and the media there is constantly something new to be fearful of. It will not surprise me if there begin to be people fighting back. People are sick of it all. Add in the massive increase in crime, the out of control inflation and never ending covid restrictions and I think dark days are ahead. Maybe it’s what we need as a country. For too long people have sat back and allowed life to be changed for the worse and being able to do nothing about it.

It will be interesting to see what 2022 brings. I am hopeful, but I fear the worst. It’s so sad what has happened to the once great United States of America.

12/2020 – I have many times in my life heard the term “treading water”. There definitely are times where I would describe my life as “treading water”. To me this term means that a person is just getting by. This could mean barely getting by financially. This could mean just going through the motions of life. This could mean life just seems to be passing them by while they sit in place. This could be that others around them are advancing, getting promoted, getting married, having kids, retiring or whatever while they just keep doing the same without advancing.

I don’t view my life as treading water. I think I’m at the next stage, one I’m calling “swimming along without a destination”. I don’t feel stuck in place. I don’t feel like I’m not advancing. I don’t think I’m sitting still. I think I’m progressing along nicely. I think things are going the right direction. I think I’m passing some of the water treader’s as they sit in place treading water.

In the analogy of being in a body of water I think I’m swimming along at a good clip, maybe not Michael Phelps fast, but at least at a competitive swimmers pace. My issue is that in this analogy, I cannot see the destination. Like I’m hauling ass across this lake but it’s big and the shoreline is not in sight.

Ok, enough of the water analogy. I’ve been feeling lately like I don’t have a plan. Like a swimmer starting from Fripp island heading towards Spain, knowing in the back of their mind they won’t get there but without an alternate plan. (OK, I know, more water analogy).

In many ways I have accomplished a lot. I am proud of these accomplishments. Where I am is not because of any special handouts or advantages, often its in spite of them. Financially I’ve gone from a modest middle-class upbringing to poor to above average to poor again to above average again. Hopefully this trend doesn’t continue back to poor, but if it did I have no doubt I could get back on the other side again. From struggling to support and know how to raise a kid when I was myself still a kid to going through a tough divorce to changing career paths many times and being abandoned by the parents who raised me I have always found a way to survive and keep going, even if only treading water for a while (dammit, can’t get away from the water/swimming analogy).

I am now in a place where everything seems to be going as good as could be expected. Friends make comments about how good I have it. And I have to admit, I do. I don’t have to work a ton of hours. I’m coming up on my 9 year anniversary to a great woman. Even though I feel abandoned by my parents, I’ve gained 2 sets of in-laws that love me and are supportive and are more then I could ever have hoped for. I have an amazing daughter who just bought her first house with her fiancé and is getting married in a few months. I have a beautiful house and some nice possessions, even have a (half of) a house at the beach. I have some money saved and don’t have to worry about groceries or bills for the most part. You could say I have all I need and more. I feel lucky and fortunate for what I have while at the same time I feel accomplished because what I have and where I am is because I’ve worked hard for it, making tough choices and sacrifices along the way. But……

I get this feeling of not having a destination. Not having an end goal. I try hard to not get caught up in the pursuit of more stuff. It’s hard to do though and a hard thing to balance. I think that the pursuit of X keeps us pushing forward. If I didn’t want anything more from life then I think I could be content with treading water. I think wanting more is what keeps us going in the right direction. It’s viewed as wrong or selfish to be focused on a Ferrari or a big ass boat. However these things keep us pushing forward and keep us motivated. Whatever the motivation, could be vacations or jewelry or cars or nice steak dinners, we all need something to keep us striving for more. 

7/7/2021 adding on – 

It’s been 7 months since I started this blog. I reread it a few times and I still feel this way. I have spent a lot of time thinking on this subject and I came to a tough realization. I’m not excited by much, so getting passionate about anything is a challenge. My wife asks me why I am so addicted to golf. I do absolutely love the game, love the challenge, love that it can’t be mastered, basically love everything about it. What I have come realize though, is that golf is the one thing I am passionate about. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. I don’t have an addictive personality, but I do tend to hyper focus on things, which is what has made me successful. Some would call it obsessed. Some might say addicted. Some might just say over the top. 

From all the way back at my first job at McDonalds I’d say I was this way. I worked my way from trainee, to crew, to crew trainer, to crew chief to swing manager in under 2 years, making me a swing manager before I was 18. I worked hard and could do every position in the store just about as good or better than anyone. Customers loved me. Staff respected me (at least in my mind they did). When I wasn’t working I spent time there. I picked up extra shifts and would be there in 15 minutes if they were short handed. After my McDonalds days I did some factory work, where I would say I was not very passionate about it. I then went into sales at American TV. I was hired for home audio, but I had a desire to learn and expand, so I got trained and could also work the TV department and car stereo. I even learned how to do some car stereo install. That was retail so the hours were long, but I didn’t mind because I truly enjoyed my job. I was excited to see every new model that came out, play around with the new functions and test versus other models. I stayed in this industry and got a job at Audio Video Systems in Charlotte, later to be bought by Tweeter. This was an exciting move for me because I was in a new city with new challenges. AVS/Tweeter was also higher end products so the learning continued, the sales were bigger and opportunities were greater. I moved into an assistant store manger role, which I took seriously. I saw margins shrinking and decided an exit from the A/V world was the wise move. I left there in 2002. Tweeter filed its second bankruptcy in 2008 and closed up for good. 

Next I went into the mortgage business. This is where my professional life took off. I started making more money than I ever had, by a wide margin. I had already been in sales, but this was selling something way more important than a TV or some speakers. I was selling money. I was helping people get cash out to send kids to college or add a swimming pool or pay off mountains of credit cards. This was exciting. I quickly realized though that the company I was at was borderline predatory, so I moved to another more reputable broker and then went into wholesale. This was a business to business sales job. Instead of selling to 1 customer and then never speaking to them again, I could develop a relationship with a client and not have to start over. I loved this way more than the retail mortgage business. Starting, building and maintaining a relationship was way more my cup of tea. I took calls way after hours and on the weekends. I would take calls during dinner or a movie or my daughters softball games. I am not proud of that. I would do that differently if I could go back and do it again. 

Once again I saw the writing on the wall and decided it was time to change my career path. I left my wholesale job in 2008, and just after then Equifirst went out of business. I decided to start my own business in a field I knew zero about. I bought a repo truck and opened a repossession company. Partially out of need and partially out of a passion for it I worked harder than ever before. I worked almost all waking hours, which were most of the hours because there was no time for sleep. I started this company with a truck loan and very little savings. I built it into what it is today, which is a successful company with 13 or so employees. I was passionate, maybe even addicted, to this business for many years. But as the company finally became established and began to run more without my day-to-day input I lost my passion for it. I also see shrinking margins and changes happening that lead me to believe it is not a business I want to be in long term. 

This brings me to current day. I am sitting in my home office writing this blog. I am going into the office today, but it won’t be for very long. I go in to make an appearance and check on things, but I don’t do much while there. It’s great that I don’t have to do much, but also leaves me in this place of feeling like I don’t really have a mission to focus on. If I believed in the business I could jump in and expand to other markets or grow my footprint, but I don’t feel like that would be wise and I do not want to jeopardize what I have built by risking it on future growth in a business with shrinking revenue, margins and increasing compliance and scrutiny. 

So what now?

That is the million dollar question I guess. I have some other businesses I am interested in, things I have been thinking about for quite some time. I know that once I dive into another project I will likely be “all-in” and find that passion to focus on again. So why haven’t I done it yet? Man I wish I knew. I can say it’s because I still have my repo company and the requirements from that keep me from fully jumping into the next thing. I could say it’s because I don’t know which of the 3 or 4 other ideas I really want to start first. I could make other excuses I’m sure. I think it’s because I’m scared, to an extent. I’ve been in multiple businesses and job types and always been successful, but these other ideas would be completely new. I don’t think I will fail. I think I will be willing to jump in and make any of them work. But what if they don’t? I don’t know how I will do with failure, if it came to that. I also know failure isn’t a big deal. Most of the ultra successful people in the world failed a bunch of times before they made it. So what’s my problem? This is what I am working on now. I know me and I know I need that thing that I can focus my energy on. It’s time to do it. I will do it. 

I don’t write this blog for anyone else (clearly, since no one else reads it). I write this for myself. My mind is a constant whirlwind of ideas and thoughts, so putting onto paper (or the screen) I think is good for my brain. Maybe this is also why I love golf so much, when I’m out there I can put my phone on silent and just play for 4 hours (and drink beer, and BS with the guys) without the thoughts of anything else. This blog has been a good one for me. I am ready to begin my next adventure. Which will it be? I have a software/app idea, a product/brand to develop and build and a drop ship business to start. Hmmm, stay tuned as I decide my next move. But first, I have a 3:57 tee time….

I am going through a course on sales and entrepreneurship by Tai Lopez and he just said something that I think is gold. I kept rewinding it back and listening again. He said “a lot of people say thank god it’s Friday, well what about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? If you don’t like your life those days then you don’t like your life.”

I feel that this is exactly what I have been trying to say, but just didn’t know how to say it. I want to live a full life. I don’t want to always be looking forward to the vacation, the next paycheck or Friday.

If a person wakes up weekdays and dreads getting out of bed, then a change needs to be made. We have a limited amount of time on earth, so to spend 4 or 5 out of every 7 days dreading the days events seems like madness. It requires changes. It could be as simple as an attitude shift. It could be a new career path and job. It could mean, and it does for me, creating a life where I can do what I want daily by building businesses or streams of income to allow me to do what I want and enjoy. It is not all about money and having all the stuff. However, to be able to do what you want does require income to fund your life. We still need food and a home and I am not aware of a way to get those things for free.

So, if you don’t like your life, make changes. I know I am.

These might possibly be the last words my mother ever says to me. I typed a text back to her that said that quote, followed by “Nice. I’ve felt alone for 25 years, maybe never more alone than now,.”

I wanted to follow that with “fuck you!. Don’t ever speak to again. I don’t want you in my life.” This is exactly how I feel right now. Truth is I wish she was in my life. I wish she wasn’t so judgmental. I wish she wasn’t brainwashed by religion. I wish she was proud of me. I wish she cared about my life. I wish she loved me. I wish she hadn’t shunned me my whole adult life. I wish she wanted anything to do with me. The fact is she doesn’t. Any of it. She cut me off as soon as I turned my back on her religion.

I didn’t send the text. As much as I want to cuss her out and tell her how awful she has treated me, and how much she has hurt me I couldn’t do it.

I’m not a crier. Unless it’s an animal in a movie (or in real life) or maybe a little kid going through something (the scene in The Patriot when Mel Gibson’s characters’ little girl who never spoke runs across the beach screaming for him not to leave gets me every time) I don’t cry. It’s not because I’m an insensitive person, its just that I show emotion other ways usually. But tonight I sit here crying like a little kid who can’t have ice cream after bedtime. But I sit here with tears in my eyes wondering what I did so bad to end up a kid without parents who love him. They don’t call. They don’t care. Maybe they assume I’m fine because I’ve always figured out a way to be fine. I grew up young. I found my own way. I didn’t follow their path. Maybe they resent that. I’m sure they do. They expected me to come back a failed mess and need them. Well guess what mf’ers? I don’t. Not to say my life is perfect and I’ve never needed some help, but I’ll be damned if I will ask them for help.

It’s funny (definitely not haha funny) how people who you care about can make you question everything. I have sat and wondered many times if I’m the asshole. What have I done wrong to be this ostracized from my family? To be shunned by those who are supposed to love me unconditionally? To be treated like a black sheep when I’ve done nothing, in my opinion, to be shunned?

The end of the last paragraph is where I stopped this blog entry back in June, and now today is December 16th. I often think about this post I started and never finished. The truth is I don’t know how to finish it. The day this all happened my emotions were running high, as you can imagine. I was angry, so angry. I was hurt, and still am. I was shocked in a way. The sad part is I wasn’t really shocked that it was the way my mom felt, I was shocked she said it. Our relationship has always been strained, or at least once I became a teenager. I guess maybe that’s when many parent/child relationships deteriorate. I think most are healed over time, many are not. 

My life growing up was… normal? Average? Different? Challenging? Chaos? I am not sure what word to use. I typed the first 5 words of this paragraph and sat there for a minute trying to decide the next word. It felt a little bit like when the president does the state of the union address and he says those those words- “the state of the union is ________”.

I’m not sure how to describe my childhood. In many ways it was a normal, average, middle-class American childhood. We weren’t poor, but certainly not rich. We didn’t go hungry and were never homeless. We had sleepovers with friends most every weekend. We went camping and on occasional vacations. We went to both Disneyland and Disneyworld. We watched Dukes of Hazard and Knight Rider on Friday nights with pizza and soda and popcorn. We had family game nights. We had laughs and good times. I believe my parents (mom and step-dad Michael) did the best they knew how in raising us. 

They both came from dysfunctional families. What I know is what they have told me mostly but my mom had 2 brothers and parents who were married until my grandmother passed away. My grandfather was a quiet man who let his wife run the show. He didn’t say much and to me never seemed happy. I know they slept in separate bedrooms since at least their kids moved out. From what I know they had a loveless marriage. My grandmother was a hoarder of epic proportions. She called herself an antique collector, all I ever saw was junk, stacked to the ceiling  in every room. 

My mom was a hippie flower child who was born about 10 years too late. The 60’s were ending as she became a teenager. She wanted so bad to be a hippie, but it was too late. I think she was a bit of a wild child as a teenager and rebelled as early as she could. She had me at 20 years old with John Castro, who was gone before I was born (preview of a future blog I’m sure, I first meet John about 33 or 34 years later). After I’m born, by around age 1 she decides to start over and move to Washington state to live with or be near her Aunt Patty. Not too long after being in Washington she meets Michael, who lives in the same apartments she does. The night of their first date, I’m told, I was in the bathtub when he showed up to get her and I shit in the tub. Anyway, they start dating and within 2 years I have a little brother, Derek and a permanent “dad”. 

I will always give Michael credit for treating me while growing up as if I was his own kid. He didn’t treat Derek and I differently, or at least it never felt that way to me. Michael was one of 5 brothers I believe. There was Mark, Michael, Mitchel, Murry and Monte. These are the ones I remember anyway. Michaels mother and step-dad were alcoholics, the bad kind who prioritize booze over everything else. I only remember going there to meet them once. I just remember a small house in a partially commercial, partially residential area and an Avocado tree. I’m not sure why I remember the tree but I do. Michael grew up with his mom and stepdad and from what I gather had no restrictions and was able to do whatever he wanted. He was a musician and partied hard. His father re-married and had Monte. They lived in another state so he wasn’t a huge influence in Michaels life I don’t think. 

So between my mom and Michael they didn’t have good role models on how to be good parents, but I do believe they had the best of intentions. For all the normal things we did as a family  we were also dysfunctional, though I bet most people would say their growing up was dysfunctional. When I was young, from when I can remember until around 8 or 9, Michael only cared about playing music, working out and smoking weed. None of that bothered me, except that it took precedence over most other parts of his life. He did always work and provided a great role model of working hard, and always providing for your family. 

My mom was raised as a Jehovah’s witness (jw). When she rebelled as a teenager she left the church and “went out into the world”. At some point she decided that she still believed and decided to become a jw again. She started taking Derek and I to church (meetings) 3 times a week. We were required to go door-to-door as early as I can remember to “witness” to strangers in the hopes of converting them. Her and Michael fought often once she made this switch back to jw life because she wanted him to be one too, but he didn’t want to. I still feel to this day she forced him to. I’ve even been told by a family member that she gave him the ultimatum of her and the church or she was going to divorce him. He went along, but I don’t think he was committed (how committed can you be when you’re forced to do something?). 

My mom cleaned houses for a living and Michael worked for big companies. He worked for Boeing, JI Case, GE, GM to name a few. As you can guess these were not in the same city so we moved. A lot. People ask me “where are you from?”. My answer is always, “all over”. Here goes – Born in Dayton OH, then to Seattle area, 3 different cities in CA, back to Seattle, to Cincinnati, to Detroit, to Racine WI. Racine is where I say I’m “from” since it’s where I graduated high school and became an adult. Moving around was tough. I think the longest I was ever in one place was between 3 and 4 years, the shortest was about 3 months (Royal Oak MI, temporary housing while looking for a house). Do you have any idea how hard it is to always be the new kid? Leaving in the middle of the school year and then starting anew in the middle of the school year in another state? All the eyes of the other kids seeing only “the new kid”, trying to find a group to fit in with, just to be looking again in a year at a new school?  It was tough. I learned some skills because of it though. I can make friends pretty easily. I’m not scared to meet new people. I guess that’s a good skill to have. On the flip side, I don’t have any lifelong friends. I hear people talk about the friend they’ve had since second grade, I don’t have any of those. 

Moving was tough but not as tough as trying to fit in while being limited by the religion that I was raised to be. I wasn’t allowed to have friends outside of church. I wasn’t allowed to play organized sports, no little league or peewee football. When I did make friends at school I wasn’t allowed to hang out with them outside of school, because they weren’t in my religion. Birthdays and holidays were the worst. When the other kids would have birthday cupcakes in class, I would have to go sit in the library alone, WITHOUT a cupcake. When it was time to do an art project for Halloween I had to do a project on something else. When it was a field trip to to a Christmas tree farm or a St Patrick’s day parade I couldn’t go. Kids are mean. They will use anything they can to poke fun and tease. Thanks to my religion they had plenty of ammo. 

I wasn’t allowed to date growing up. I wasn’t supposed to have a girlfriend at school. Of course I did anyway and hid it from my parents. I wasn’t allowed to listen to rap or heavy metal or watch R-rated movies. I did sneak and try to fit in but I was living a double standard, or as they call it in jw speak, I lived a double life once I became a teenager. 

I was conflicted though growing up because I believed in what I was taught at church, it was all I had ever known and was jammed into you like Facebook ads because you googled something once. I always tried to please my parents. I went to church 3 times a week and went out door-to-door like I was supposed to. At the tender age of 13 I got baptized. Catholics baptize kids at under a year old. JW’s get baptized when they feel they can make that commitment. The problem for me was that I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I did it because it’s what you’re supposed to do. It was what was expected. Everyone cheered and there was a party. My parents were thrilled. But as I grew a little more into my teenage years I began to see that the restricted life of the church was not how I wanted to live my life. Swearing and drinking and R-rated movies and dating were fun. My double life put me in a bad spot. Do I keep living this life my parents want me to live, while unhappy, or upset my parents and go find out who I am and what kind of life I want to lead? 

Well about 2 weeks after I graduated high school it all came to a head. I had been dating a girl I worked with and my parents didn’t like her. We were supposed to be going a family cruise to celebrate my graduation, but my girlfriends dad had gotten me a union job at a machine shop. This is the kind of job in Racine that was a jackpot job. It was union, paid very well after probationary period, good benefits, pension, the works. During your first 90 days you are on probation and missing any time would end with termination. So I had a choice to make, go on this cruise and give up a possible lifetime job (my future father in law had been there 25 years) or keep the job and miss the cruise. The responsible thing to do was keep the job, and that infuriated my parents. We got into a huge fight and they said “maybe you need to find a new place to live”, to which I replied, “I will be gone tomorrow”. I left the next day and never looked back. This is where my parents and I’s relationship first really broke. 

We didn’t speak much for a while. I got an apartment after staying with a friend for a week or so. As you can guess my girlfriend stayed over there almost from day one and shocker – a few months later I found out I was going to be a dad. 

I remember telling them the wonderful news and seeing the look of disgust and sadness on their faces. I was scared shitless, I could have used some support. I was also unmarried so the church wanted to meet with me since I was living in sin. I refused to “repent” and change my ways and was then disfellowshipped from the church. This was the kiss of death. Per the rules of the church my parents could no longer associate with me, share a meal with me or speak to socially. At this point they completely cut me from their world. 

I will never forget one time driving down  Durand Ave in Racine one Sunday, when I happened to see my parents at the stop sign leaving the kingdom hall. I waived to them as I drove past. They stared blankly back at me like they had never seen me before. Up until the story at the beginning of this blog that was probably the most hurt I had ever been. I wasn’t a bad person. I wasn’t dealing drugs or robbing people or scamming old ladies, I simply chose a different path in life than they did. I was married, raising my daughter, working 2 jobs, paying taxes, obeying the laws and trying to become a responsible husband, father and citizen. I didn’t deserve to be treated this way. 

Over the years the state of our relationship would sway from non-existent to almost decent and back again. Giving them a granddaughter was the only thing that kept us talking over the years I’m sure. They were excellent grandparents. I will give them that. At least until Hailey got older and they started trying to force feed religion on her. 

So what led to the meltdown in the beginning of this post had been brewing for years. At different points in my adult life I have gone 12-18 months between chats with them multiple times. It was a kind of a game for me to see how long it would be before she would call me. I used to call every few weeks just to check in. Especially once my mom got cancer. We argued about her treatment, or lack thereof, for her cancer. I thought she should get the chemo and whatever she needed to beat breast cancer, since the survival rate is so high there was no reason not to just get it treated and live a long healthy life after. She wanted to only do natural stuff to treat it. I thought that was dumb. She ended up having to get an emergency mastectomy because what she was doing didn’t work. Anyway, past all that we come to the time when our possibly last conversation happened. 

I like to question things and people. Just because you tell me something doesn’t mean I am going to believe it blindly. I am going to question it if I don’t understand. So Derek calls me to tell me that her doctor told her since she wouldn’t wear a mask to come in for treatments that she should just go off and die. That seemed odd to me that a doctor would say this, especially considering their oath they take so I questioned it, but I decided to go to the source, so I called my mom to get the details. She proceeds to tell me a version of the same story, and that she feels like the doctor basically told her to just go die. So I asked what exactly the doctor said and this is what was said ‘since you won’t wear a mask you cannot get treated here, you will have to find somewhere else’. It was something to this effect. To me that’s a whole different story, but my mom saw it the same as Derek. So in the course of our conversation as we are discussing this she is getting madder and madder that I don’t see it as she does, but she keeps saying “well Derek, er I mean Brent” and after doing that about 4 or 5 times I bring it up and she says that she doesn’t have to argue with Derek when she is talking to him like she does me and basically that she doesn’t like talking to me. I say something to effect of well then why don’t you just talk to him then and that when she says “It’s taken everything in me to not hang up on you”. I said “well have a nice day” and I hung up. Then I beat the shit out of my steering wheel and the seat next to me and balled my eyes out for the next 20 minutes. 

I have not spoken to her since that day. I get occasional updates from Derek that she is doing ok and that Michael has retired. 

I’m not sure I will ever speak to her again. That is very sad to say. I have reached that olive branch out so many times, I’m not sure I can anymore. 

First off, this is just my personal opinion (the whole point of a blog right?), and I am not an expert on much of anything, much less the Covid-19 virus.

Let me start by saying I think this Corona virus is overblown. The fatality rate is low. The symptoms for most are less intense than the standard flu. It is not wiping out towns, cities or countries. I believe it is being overblown. I believe the media loves hysteria and whats better than a illness that COULD KILL US ALL (du dun duh!!)? From their standpoint it is great, it makes people watch the news constantly, which means ads and revenue and profit. It’s disingenuous but it’s the way media works.

My fear of this Corona virus is the chain reaction I see as very possible from industry to industry making everything worse, a domino effect.

The hardest hit place so far is the travel industry. A quick look at the stock market will show you that every airline and cruise stock has taken a beating. Norwegian cruise lines just announced all cruises booked through September can be canceled all the way up to 48 hours prior to departure for full cruise price that can be applied to future cruises. American Airlines made a 2 week window where tickets booked can be changed without fees for future flights. I assume other travel companies are making similar arrangements for their guests. I just happen to have upcoming flights and a cruise scheduled.

In the last week a huge industry conference, South by Southwest, was canceled. Last year 73k people attended this. Imagine the economic hit to Austin, where this was to take place. 73k less people flying there, staying in hotels, renting cars, taking ubers, eating out and yes drinking. The lost revenue to these local businesses will be huge. They prepared for this likely for the past year, making reservations, accommodations, hiring staff, ordering supplies, planning menus, maybe remodeling. Now there will be so much wasted time and resources, revenues lost and people not working.

This is happening all over. A friend who travels for work a good bit just mentioned on facebook that their company has suspended all travel by air until further notice. My sister in laws employer just told everyone to work from home for the next week. Work from home and altered travel plans can be easily done for the short term without much hit to overall productivity. However if this continues to spread and the hype increasing then people will stop eating out or going to the mall or Walmart (never thought anything could stop people from going to Walmart) or going to sporting events or concerts, or anywhere there are people in numbers. If this happens then the malls and Walmarts and restaurants and concert venues will not need employees to come to work. If those people don’t go to work then they don’t get paychecks. We know as a country that most people don’t have reserves to pay expenses for more than a couple weeks. Oh, but a lot have credit cards to fall back on. However banks are not dumb. If people aren’t working then they will chop credit limits (this happened to many in 2008-10, including me). Not to mention if people are scared to go out and companies are telling people to stay home, there may not be anyone at the bank to talk to since they will also likely be closed. If people aren’t working and trying to survive on what they have are they out buying new cars? I doubt it. Are they spending any money on non-essentials? I doubt it. So the dealerships close and the big auto manufacturers close for a bit and all those people are left without their next paycheck. And then the places they all spend their money aren’t selling lunches and beers and clothes and… you get the point.

I am looking at this on a large scale and also from my personal standpoint. I own a repossession company. On first thought it might make sense that the number of repossessions should go up if people are squeezed and more focused on food, housing and getting a paycheck coming back in. However the clients that we do work for have staffs of people making the decisions on what accounts should be repossessed. If the people working in these call centers or large office building are also staying home then there is no one to order the repossession. If orders for repossession do not go out then I don’t have enough to keep my staff busy and therefore have to either cut hours or lay people off. Then they have the same problems mentioned above trying to pay their bills without a paycheck or at least not a full paycheck. Even if I cut staff to zero and did whatever had to be done by myself, I could not generate enough alone to cover the truck payments and insurance and facility and utilities and softwares we use. I could find myself in the same position easily. My company is small, with 15 or so employees, but as a business owner I can see the same holding true to most any business with a massive cut to production. Even something as needed as plumbing could be a challenge if employees are scared to go visit someones house for fear they might have Corona virus. Everything could come to a screeching halt.

The above doesn’t even take into account the even bigger mess if because of all this the Walmart that no one wants to go to closes and the grocery stores have no employees to run the store or the truck drivers don’t want to drive cross country with food or medicine for fear of being a thousand miles away from home and not able to get back to their families. Or because trucks aren’t running there is no gas at the pump and now getting anywhere becomes not possible.

And then the ultimate worst case scenario we’ve all seen played out in movies or shows, police aren’t there doing their jobs, same with fire and medics and the world burns in chaos. Then the zombies eat us all….

Sheesh, that escalated quickly. (completely kidding about the zombies, btw)

I fully believe that people smarter than me can figure all this out before we get to the zombie part. Where in that rabbit hole it stops and gets better? I’m not sure.

I again want to point out that I think this entire thing is completely blown out of proportion and pretty much everything above should never happen. However people are not very smart and are easily led down a path of fear and overreacting, so I see it as a possibility. I certainly hope we get some good news on containment in the coming week or two. I know there are vaccines and treatments being rushed to market to combat the virus (rushed medicines could have its own set of issues).

So the question is, what am I doing personally? I am taking a wait and see attitude. I am not rushing to make any big decisions or changes. I am a little bit of a “prepper” anyway, so I keep a little extra long term food stored anyway (you never know, natural disaster or a virus named after a beer or any number of other things could disrupt life so better to be a little prepared). I am running my business to be efficient. I am holding off on the purchase of another truck temporarily. Does it hurt anything to have some extra food for the dogs and couple cases of water? Nope. I am working on a plan in case business slows drastically so I am not caught unprepared. I made sure I have a little cash in case banks were to close for a bit.

Some might say that’s overreacting, and it might be. But one of the few life lessons I took from my parents was “better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it”.

My alarm went off this morning at 6:55 for the only reason I ever get up early, golf. The bad news is that it rained all through the night. I remember waking up enough to hear it raining a few times through the night, and then at 6:55 it was still raining so golf would be a no-go today. The problem is that once I wake up I often have trouble going back to sleep. I’m on vacation so I’m not in my normal bed, so drifting back off to sleep was unlikely. But I tried. And failed. I looked at Facebook for a bit and tried again to sleep, but no sleep was possible. Once my brain gets moving in the mornings getting back to sleep is nearly impossible. So I let me brain wander. I am excited about life in general anyway, but right now I have some new things to ponder and spend a lot of time thinking through. I am in the process of starting another business. It is both exciting and a little scary. I have 2 successful businesses now, and my wife is an owner in a third business. We know how to manage and run these businesses, though much struggle and sacrifice went in to each of them. The businesses we have are service businesses. They require hiring and managing the right people. They also require more people and tools to grow since services have to be performed by people. The headaches of service businesses are that hiring and managing people sucks. Good people are hard to find. Honest people are hard to find. People who actually care about the work they do and the success of the company are hard to find. Finding people who are all those things, really damn hard to find. We have been fortunate to, over the years, be able to find a good core group for each business who possess these traits. Next venture is where I travel into a whole new world for me.

My next business, called Blue Frog Wear, is a product based business. I have a product line I have developed that I believe will serve a need for many in the US and hopefully across the globe. I will post more details once the product in produced and ready to be sold. This new venture takes me in a whole new direction from a business development perspective. While before I had to acquire the tool(s) needed to perform the job and then find the people to use those tools to do the work to make the company start turning and producing revenue, I now have to find a manufacturer to make what I want, almost certainly multiple manufacturers to make the couple different products in the initial product roll-out. I have to build, or more likely have built, a website that provides info, content and e-commerce, since this will be a product sold exclusively online. I will need to come up with packaging. I will need to learn how to market a product as opposed to a service. I will need to learn about warehousing and shipping and inventory management. All these things are new to me. I am excited, nervous and overwhelmed. I like the idea of a new challenge. In many ways I am bored with my other businesses. They are good, run smoothly (as smooth as one can expect). I have a fantastic GM in my Repossession company and a friend of 25 years running the other.  Blue Frog Wear I envision will have no employees other than me, with my wife being a big help as she has been in the current businesses.  Once it grows I hope to have just a small group of trusted people to help manage some aspects but I want to have 3rd party warehousing and shipping. I believe this will make the business easier to manage and the shipping and inventory management to be done by a 3rd party company who specializes in that area. I’m excited to bring this new business from ideas on paper to products people need and want.

Last night I wrote a blog about litterforcash.com or cashforlitter.com. As I do with all ideas I get, and I get a ton of wild ideas, the possibilities and the challenges and the logistics of a movement that could be huge and possibly global run through my head like a comet or freight train or a herd of buffalo or, well you get the idea. I see this idea of randomly finding someone cleaning up trash that someone else left as so simple but so effective. I see this as contagious. Like when in you’re the Starbucks drive-thru and you get to the window and the cashier says the car in front just paid for your coffee. My natural and immediate reaction is “well I will pay for the order behind me.” And I assume it goes like that for a while. How long? I don’t know. I can’t imagine being the person who says “oh cool” and drives off. Maybe it finally ends when there is no one in the line to pay for. Paying for someones coffee randomly seems like such a small easy gesture, but makes you feel good, that you’re doing something just because. It also makes the person who got their coffee paid for remember that there is good in the world. This may be seems like an extreme view, but I often get so discouraged with the way people behave, the evil I see in the news, the general selfishness of people that I start to think everyone sucks. And then some random person buys my coffee for no reason or saves a dog from a storm drain or a community going through a disaster steps up to help each regardless or race or class or political views and gives me that glimmer of hope that people aren’t jackasses in general, that maybe it’s not most that suck, but rather a few.

I begin to imagine what the future of a movement like this could look like. Starting in little ole Charlotte NC I do this once a week, take maybe $100, spend a few hours and find 5 people to say thank you and give $20 to. Maybe a couple post about it on social media. We all know how fast things travel on social media. Then someone across town or elsewhere sees a post and thinks “awesome, I could do that too.” And so they do and it gets posted and shared some more. Then people in other areas do it. And people who hear about it start picking up a piece of litter on their way into a store or while walking around their neighborhood hoping someone hands then a 20 or a Benjamin. The end result is less trash on the streets. As the idea spreads on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram someone like Conan or Oprah or Stern gets wind and talks about it and it grows even more. There is an unlimited amount this could catch on.

I’m going to start next week when I get back from vacation. I will post a blog entry about my experience. It should be interesting.

I don’t know the name yet. I just reserved litterforcash.com and cashforlitter.com.

I made a list earlier this year, 2019 with goals for this year, 5 years, 10 years and lifetime. Some of this years goals were things like, pay off my wife’s car, take a vacation just the 2 of us. 5 year goals had travel overseas and others. 10 year goals were bigger, like pay off the house, not HAVE to work anymore and be healthy, keeping weight down through age 50. However for the purpose of this blog post I am more focused on lifetime goals. A couple of these were leave some money behind for my daughter (and future grandkids), not die broke, travel to every continent and make a difference to the world. The latter is what i want to talk about.

So a comment I’ve made a bunch in past year or so is ” when I get rich and have money to burn, I want to sit in my car at a walmart or a street in a neighborhood or a concert or wherever and find trash/litter just sitting. Then I want to wait and whenever someone picks it up I will walk up, thank them and give them $100 or $1000 (depending on my lever of richness)”. I would want it to be completely random. Sit in a different car each time, at a different place each time. The goal obviously would be that people would hear about it and even if just hoping for the cash, would start to pick up trash. The other goal would be that giving some money to trash picker-uppers would catch on in different parts of the city and then different cities of the US and maybe even spill over to cities around the world.

Picking up trash is easy. You’re walking through the parking lot to go in the grocery store, where you will walk past a trash can going in, so pick up that water bottle or candy wrapper or fast food cup. It won’t kill you. It might even get you paid.

I know there are good-hearted people around the city/country/world who would do this. What I didn’t know how to do was get people in different areas to do this. I really still don’t. My hope would be that by doing it in one place it would catch on through social media or media coverage and someone would do it in the next city and then it would become a country with people doing this in cities and towns all over the US.

My issue with this was that I needed (in my own head) to be wealthy or on my way to be able to give money away that would make this worth it. But today my opinion of this changed. I am on my yearly vacation with my wife’s family this week. Where we are is paradise. Fripp Island SC is paradise. I’m sure I will write a blog about it at some point. Knowing that this is paradise and a nature preserve but yet some people are still ass-hats and think that dumping their beer cans or plastic bottles should be someone else’s problem. So today we, my brother and sister-in-law and my wife and I, were driving around on the golf cart and my brother-in-law Joe stopped to pick up a water bottle. He said “we’re picking up trash today”. I loved it. When he said that I thought to myself, “man if I had started my idea he would have just gotten some cash”. And then it hit me. I don’t have to wait till I have the money to give out $100 or $1000. I could do this with way less, what I could afford to give out now. And so could everyone else. I could go to a Walmart with 40 bucks. I could give 2 people who pick up trash a twenty each. Or 4 people $10 each. Even a little is something. I think the reason I wanted to do $100 or more was so that it was money that would really help someone. But $10 or $20 might make the difference to some people between buying the absolute basics and being able to pick up some ice cream or fresh veggies or school supplies for the kids. Or maybe that $20 goes to someone who doesn’t really need it, and they can pay it forward. Maybe they go through a drive-thru and buy the meal for the car behind. Or they buy some extra food and toiletries to give to a homeless person. Or maybe they put it in their IRA. Maybe they buy a lottery ticket, win millions and keep the idea going. Who cares. I don’t care if they go buy a case of beer with it. But the next time they are walking through a parking lot I bet they bend down and pick up a piece of trash. If just a small percentage of people pick up a piece a day the whole country with be cleaner.

I think this might be my “make the world a better place” idea. It seems so easy to me. There are tons of people with some extra cash. And there are literally tons of trash that need picked up.