Struggle? Block? Stress? Who the fuck knows..

I was dead set on dusting off my blog today. To breath the sweet spark of life into what has basically become a dead idea. But Ive noticed I was just staring at the screen for the last 45 minutes. Nothing comes to mind, no idea blossoms to fruition, not a god damn semblance of a thought at all.

Now I love writing I really do. And in no way shape or form do I consider myself a writer. To put myself in that Pantheon of Legendary Writers seems kind like a weak attempt to validate myself. But I will go so far as saying that Ive had writers block these last couple of months. Ive come to believe that stress hinders our ability to imagine, to love, to genuinely laugh. Stress is a self given plague with no cure. To more we achieve the more we want. The more we lose the more we get scared of having nothing at all.

Ambition.

Ambition is a beast that cannot easily be slain. Ambition is a blight that can never be healed. The problem with the ambitious is that once they achieve what they want, they are never truly satisfied. Always looking for that next step to that next level to the next.....who the fuck knows. And really who the fuck cares?

For one, I do. Ive pretty much been complacent my entire life. When I started tattooing, tiny little thought bubbles went of in my head. the more I tattooed the more these empty bubbles started taking shape, over time coalescing into one beautiful dream. To have a shop I can call my own. Simple. I knew doing this I wasn't going to be a millionaire, I knew doing this I wasn't going to have any "grand social commentary" to give to my fellow humans. I knew I wasn't going to be famous. But IT WAS MY DREAM. Its all I ever wanted. And once I got it, I had a brief exultation of extreme joy. Brief is the key word. For once I had attained my dream, I quickly learned to be scared, to be frightened of losing my dream. It became a struggle just to maintain a daily routine. I'm already on the look out for bigger and better things to make my dream grow. TO FUCKING GROW!

I laugh at the absurdity of growing it right now. Oh it will grow, it will flourish into my Lifetime Achievement. My stamp on this life. My legacy that I will hand down to my daughter. But right now it is like a new seedling that has barely been planted. I need to nourish it, I need to love it, I need to take care of it just to keep it alive. Its a juggling act that I haven't mastered yet. But I will. This I know for fact....I will.

And there it goes, just like that. My block is gone. I said earlier that stress is a self given plague with no cure. It may not have a cure but it damn sure has its therapies to help ease the ever present nagging going on in the back of your head. Breath, relax. All will go as it should. You can do no more and you can do no less.  

Live.

Time to shine

It's been a long time coming. And even longer a time making excuses. I am proud to announce that I am free. Free from what you may ask. Free from the shackles of laziness. Free from the cruel grasp of insecurity. Free from the prison of trying to make everybody happy.

For too long have I been driven to have every bodies attention. For too long have I sat idly by feeling sorry for myself.

I find myself on the edge of rage lately. Any little thing sets me off. And it took me a while to see that it wasn't every body else around me that got on my nerves,I found that it was the slow agonizing loss of control of my life. I go out of the way to help people, I offer them everything I have at my disposal to ease their burdens. But in hind sight what has it gotten me? And what, if anything, do I ever receive in return? Nothing.   And its not like I do everything with the purpose of getting anything in return, besides the actual feeling of being helpful. And that is the key to my sudden moment of clarity. I help every body else to help them feel better about themselves personally and in their lives in general, why can it not work for me? Why is it so hard to believe that I can change my own life for the better.

You see, I've had it wrong this whole time. I am what I need to better my life. It seems like I've been lost in a miasma of self delusional thinking that I needed other people to make me happy. I lost my way on the main path of my life. I was no longer creative, I was no longer passionate about anything. I was just a shallow husk of a being who neither cared nor really loved anything around him. I existed from day to day. Now it is time to live.

And I don't mean from here on out I'm going to be a selfish ass hole, and in a way Ive always been a selfish asshole, but in order for me to flourish as an artist, writer and life period, I need to focus on myself. I need to explore me. Explore to the depths of my psyche that have never been touched before. Those places I have walled off because of my insecurities and phobias.

And I'm pretty excited about this journey I'm about to set out on. I'm excited about all the possibilities that exist outside the confines of these four walls that have slowly crushed my soul.

And with that, all I have to say is:

Keep an eye out people.......its time to shine.

Heroism

In a bit of all of us is a hero waiting to make his triumphant debut. But we all have a bit of a coward in us also. For the hero to emerge there must be some type of catastrophe. For if nothing happens then what use is a hero? And the coward in us is afraid of the hero emerging due to the pain and trauma we must go through to create our hero in a time of great need.

I try to be the best person I can be. I try to make a difference in peoples lives. I strive to be a hero. But the coward in me sabotages that on a daily basis. I dont know why Im afraid of change or even being happy. Once I'm in a good place in my life, for some reason, I always decide to throw a wrench in the shitty gears that I call a life. My flesh is weak and my mind even more so.

And I have it pretty good. Im talented I have a gift, I have a family that loves me, and I make good money. So why do I throw all that shit away? I still in my 32 years of life dont even have a grasp of why I do the things I do.

Is it the excitement of being on the edge? Is it that I dont like being happy? Is that I dont even care? Who knows. Yet deep down I think, better yet I know, Im a good person. Im selfish but I'm always there for somebody in need.

Just recently a had a girlfriend I was very much in love with. We had a very passionate and heated relationship. We fought like cats and dogs but we loved each other like no other. Now we both had issues we had a hard time putting behind us and it was the culprit of the majority of our arguments. We both had demons we cant conquer. But together we both helped each other get past them. we both were better people together. Separate we self destruct. Hard. But it was just one of those things where no matter what you do, u can never win. Oh and how I tried.

But life is all a lesson. No mistakes are ever made. We do the things we do subconsciously to forge our hero.

My hero is inside me. My hero is still incomplete. My hero is me.

I will win. I will conquer. I will make my inevitable transformation into the hero I know I am.

It's been a while.

Since my last blog. I haven't been inspired enough to write lately. Life has been good to me. I can honestly say I'm content for once. But once content, always lazy I say.

The reason I came back to writing was how inspired I got the other night reading. I read so often the words become a blur. I don't even see them. It rolls forth like a movie in my mind. Vivid details like the smell of wet grass all the way to drying blood. I can even perceive the smell of death.

And this is what strikes me me as amazing. The simple power of the written word. A beautiful dance of sounds that pit you in the middle of peoples minds, their emotions and their struggles.

I just finished reading a book from my favorite author. His latest in a long series of novels. And when I mean long I mean I've been reading his books for twenty years. All about the same group of friends. I've been though their battles. I was there for their victories. I've laughed with them, and yes I have felt their every pain and loss. All together around eighteen or nineteen novels spread over twenty years I have shared their lives.

And thats the reason I felt compelled to write this blog. At the very end of this book. Two of the main characters died. It was so powerfully written, so devastatingly beautiful. So agonizingly sad. I've literally grown up with this ensemble of diverse personalities. One of them that passed away was introduced to me fifteen years ago. In the beginning she was around sixteen. I've watched her grow up physically as well as emotionally all the way to her mid forties. I was with her through all her struggles, fought beside her in every battle. I've felt her every loss.

And this is why I have a passionate affair with literature. I didn't dawn on me how much emotions I have invested in these characters. I have been there for them for twenty years and yet so have they for me. When she died I was devastated. Albeit she is a fictional person.

But thats exactly the point I am attempting to make. The written word is a powerful thing. I took it for granted for so many years. And I was totally blindsided by her death. All I could think about was how I'll never share her adventures, her pain, her triumphs, her joy. Ever. This gave me such a profound sense of loss. Like a friend in the real world actually died.

But at the same time I am overjoyed. I have found a world I can completely immerse myself into. I find solace in my imagination. I feel inspiration fill my soul. Because if the human intellect can produce these feelings simply by writing, then there is hope for humanity left.

I feared that with so much technology around peoples imagination would grow lazy and incompetent. With gadgets doing all the work for us with no thinking involved. But there are pioneers out there that wont let the written word die. I know I won't.

I don't mean to sound like a PSA commercial. But, go read a book.

Repercussions of War

War is a necessary evil that comes with our existence. But at what cost? The one that that takes the biggest toll is innocence. Most of the young men and women that join the military have no other choice, whether it is being poor, seeking an education or just wanting to get out of a bad neighborhood. These people join with an optimism that the military is going to change their lives for the better, to earn money and benefits for their family.

To a large extent these things do happen and does make a positive outcome for their lives. We tend to look at our military not as individual men and women but as a mass. That young woman who wanted earn money for college was just put into a situation where she had to kill somebody, or one of her friends was gunned down right next to her. Forever she will have that stain upon her soul. Forever will she see snipers in every building. Forever she will see blood upon her hands.

And what of that young man who joined just so he can get away from an abusive home? He thought he was leaving a bad environment just to be shipped off to a literal Hell on Earth. With the mental scars he receives from overseas he may come home and abuse his own family, mistakenly attacking an enemy in the shadows when it is just his wife coming out of the bathroom.

I whole heartedly support not our military but our troops. A lot of these brave people are forgotten as soon as the leave the military. They fought blindly for us, doing as they were told, killed when they didn't want to, saw suffering at every corner.

We need to applaud them and not bash our military just because we don't believe in the war. War was around before we were here and its going to be a part of human existence long after we've turned to ashes.

We can not lose the cost of innocence but we CAN help our own and lighten their burden.   

Growing up, Moving on and opening my eyes

I've had a rough year so far. My wife, aka my best friend, aka the love of my life, left me. I don't have my daughter waking me up every morning anymore. And recently left my other family, Tattoo's and Things, after seven years working there. Now I believe everything happens for a reason, and in all honesty I think these things happened for the best. I took all these things for granted, and used them as a crutch. With my wife, I got used to being with her all day everyday. I stopped trying. I got bored. And I fucked up. I thought she would always be there no matter what I did. I stopped doing the little things that made her happy, I stopped paying attention to her.

 Same with the tattoo shop. I was comfortable there. I got lazy, I was happy just to tattoo. But I didnt try to better my craft, I got complacent. I did enough to get by. I honestly believe I set myself back about 10 years in tattooing. I do well, but at the same time my shit isnt in magazines like it should be.

And this is where I believe things happen for a reason. Sometimes it takes trauma to light that fire. Sometimes it takes losing your entire world to realize you never even had one. You may think you have it, but if you look back, did you deserve it? Did you try your best to nurture it and let it grow? Did you try to open your little world to every body else? I didnt. I closed myself away in denial and selfishness. I assumed people would come to me and kiss my ass and get everything I wanted with no effort.

Now this has been like four or five months that this has happened. And now I am finally waking up. At first I hated myself, I despised myself. I got very self-destructive (as always) and closed myself up to wallow in my own misery.

But now things have changed. I feel different. I have always been very selfish. But now I think that selfishness evolved from a self-destructive standpoint to a more positive aspect. I'm going to focus on myself more but not in a selfish fuck the world way, but to improve myself, to be a better person and father to my daughter. To improve my career, to make more money for my daughter.

I have always been a loser, but times change, and so will I.

Now I wont apologize to anybody for my actions. I pushed a lot of people away. I just didnt realize it till my birthday last week. None of my friends that I had for years showed up besides my cousin my bestfriend Yvonne and Nichole. I know its all my fault because I have alienated a lot of people and pushed them away. No surprise there. I neglected them also.

Yvonne told me, after a horrible year, next year is going to be your best. I believe her, but I also believe I have to MAKE it my best year and not just hope it will be.

Douchebaggery

Ok some of you ladies have expressed your weakness for douchebags. My only question is why?

Oh douchebags how I hate thee, let me count the ways. First off douchebags consist of men AND women. To me they are completely impossible to converse with (unless you love talking about what type of products you use to frost your tips or about how big the tires on your truck are). Now I see these guys on a daily basis. They come into the tattoo shop in droves requesting the tribal flavor of the month. They come in with pictures of buff guys from the internet and literally point at the picture and say " I want to look like that!". Now what they are really saying is " I have no personality whatsoever and I strive to look like everybody else because I have a small penis and without the tattoo nobody would waste their time talking to me, because the stupid look on my face says it all."

What really bugs me about them is how they judge others who choose to express themselves and not be part of the "pack". Just because I dont wear Ambercrombie and Bitch doesn't mean I dont have anything relevant to say . Just because I dont spend 200 plus on shoes doesnt mean I'm worthless. Sorry if I'm not cool enough to pop my collar and wear shiny shirts.

It doesnt take much to make me happy. Good friends, a cold beer, and good conversation can go a long way. Now I have to admit I do have my vices. But at least they are not cosmetic. I can understand how women have cosmetic vices like shoes and make-up. I just dont see why a guy wants to look prettier than his girlfriend. If you get your nails done more than your girl, you have some serious issues.