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A third journal of personal musings |
 My life always continues to change and it only stands to reason that with each change, there should be a journal dedicated to it. |
Prompt: "I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them." Kevin Costner Do you often regret things and what do you do about your feelings of regret, if you have any? There are a few things I regret, but one is more of an emotional response and the other is having 20/20 in hindsight. A lot of stuff of my life that I wish were better, whether it's having a different/better job, it's more just being unlucky in time. Like when I graduated in 2007 and the economy tanked. Or how for a long time, we were always like year behind the cost of living. We thought we might never buy a house because we always just seemed to be behind the price hikes and the interest rate increases. One of my regrets is just wishing I'd been a better daughter to my parents, helped them better financially. It's an emotional response since their deaths. Sometimes I get in a dark mental spiral about it, but then I just tell myself that it's a common emotional response and I just force myself to think of other things. The other was when I was in college and I'd graduated with a BFA in graphic design (focus in web design). I could've gone on to get my Masters, but I was so mentally tired from college that I decided against it. But then I began to realize that the economy was tanking and finding a job, at least where I lived in New York, was almost impossible for me for two reasons. One, I learned design (of web design). Prior to the economy tanking, you had someone who did the designing and someone who did the coding. I knew some light coding. After the economy tanking, they combined the positions and then made it so you needed +years of experience. I did get some interviews, but nothing after. I did got a provisional job, working for a company that put wifi's in Denny's. They wanted to dip their toe into web design. I explained I didn't know any deep coding, the owner (this was a small local company) said this was fine as that's all they needed. Turned out that wasn't at all what they needed. They told a lady who ran a vacation/tourist website for a city in Florida that they could move the website to their servers and maintain it for her. They ripped the website to their computer and fucked up all the code. It was my job to fix it. I tried to explain that I couldn't, but that I should try. The website was a lot more complex and tilted into more advanced coding than I knew. If I really cared I would've at least tried to tell them that there's an ability through hosting to transfer websites, but I had already decided that just before the holiday when they took a break I wasn't coming back. It was supposed to be like 30 days and ended up going to nearly 4 months. I'd call and let them know what my days off were and would work there on my days off. So, after the holidays, I just never called back. They never called me. I never felt guilty about it. I never felt true regret until I had gotten a job working with a friend I'd gone to college with, who had gone to get his Master's degree. I was excited because it was a guy who was a lawyer who decided to create websites for law firms. It wasn't that complicated of a job, I did well until the owner decided that one of the jobs he wanted to give the client what he thought she needed instead of what she actually wanted. Then she was upset with him. Then he wanted to make more complex websites than what they had designed for (all websites had a basic layout and I'd customize it slightly to whatever the client had in mind. So on top of that, I was also getting clients that wouldn't call me back and that became my fault. So I was fired. I felt like I failed. It then got to the point where I couldn't even get my Masters, Internet 2.0 had hit and things were just getting a lot more complex. I'd basically have to start over and that just felt so overwhelming and depressing. |
Prompt: "To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization." Harriet Beecher Stowe One of the things I love about my mom. She was the Queen of celebrating the small things. I know when I was born, because my mom would always sing happy birthday to me at that time. She'd ask us what we'd want for dinner for our birthday and I always looked forward to it. My mom had the amazing ability to enjoy and celebrate the small things in life and it makes me appreciate those things. I strive to live that way too. Especially with Mathew whose mother didn't really celebrate much at all. I think when you're able to enjoy the small things in life, life seems a little brighter. |
Prompt: "Every moment in your life tells a story." Write about this in your Blog entry today. Oh boy. You aren't kidding. I'm going to make this an easy one (for me) and probably an emotional one (for everyone else). I'm missing my mom a lot lately (always) and it's a story I like to tell because...well, I'll get to it and maybe you'll realize it before I get there. So, when I was 8 years old, my life kinda changed a lot. My dad had to file bankruptcy. We had quite a bit of money before I was born and when I was little. Through some inheritance yes, but my dad was a good business man. He ran some game rooms (remember those! I don't really, too little, but I vaguely remember my dad's) and was good at it. Unfortunately, my dad ended up running into a man who took advantage of him and his money and welp, by like 1993/94 my dad just kinda ran out of money. We lost our house and had to sell a lot of stuff to kinda get some money to find a place and a vehicle. Unfortunately, what my parents sold didn't do really either of those things. We ended up staying with a family friend and his wife that my dad had worked closely with before he'd come into his inheritance do being in the same plumbers and pipefitters union. Anyway, during the 3 months we stayed there, I celebrated my 9th birthday. I know I didn't get a lot of gifts, but I don't remember being saddened by it. To be fair, even though my parents had a lot of money, they never acted like they had a lot of money. My mom always felt like the most down to earth person. Sure, did she get her hair done and wear some nice clothes? Yes, but her clothes never felt outrageous or looked super expensive (even to me now when I look at old pictures, they look like she went to Macy's or JCPenny or something honestly). I know they did have some nice clothes and stuff. Like they got some really nice leather jackets and really nice cowboy boots, but that's really all that stands out to me (my dad could've had some really nice expensive suits, since I know he wore them a lot back then, but they just looked nice to me, I don't remember any brands). Anyway, not to say I didn't get a lot of gifts before then, but well, I don't know how to explain it. I never had the expectation of receiving a lot of gifts. They were never flamboyant with their money and so I don't think I understood what we lost, other than our house and that my mom had to get a job (she was a stay-at-home mom until then) and my dad had to get something else. To also put into reference, my dad had "retired" by this time. In 1985 when I was born, he was 52 (my mom was 34. She liked older men, lol) He had been able to get into doing whatever his friend was doing at the time, which might've been working at the old Birds Eye factory (which has sense closed). I just remember that they used to go to work together and come home together. My mom hadn't found a job yet (sometime after my birthday she would end up getting a job doing food prep for the Golden Corral). My mom told me much much later (after I graduated high school), how she was able to pull off that birthday. Because they didn't have much of anything then. She had taken a dollar (or two) and had played the lotto. She won $68 dollars. She used that money to give me a birthday. To buy me some gifts and a cake. I remember how hard that hit me when she told me, because she could have, should have, used it for whatever they needed to use it for at the time, even if it meant it went into savings. Instead, she used it on me. Now I want to say that I never ever doubted my mom's love for me or her devotion, but it really made me realize how lucky I was to have her as a mom. It's a story I like to tell when I want to describe the type of mom she was in the easiest way. I guess because my mom doubted herself a lot, because after that time, we never really had a lot of money. Did we ever end up destitute or have anything shut off? No, but there wasn't really time for extras or vacations. I think she always felt so bad for that. Or that she couldn't buy us more things for Christmas or our birthdays. I think those things hung on her a lot. She worked very hard, sometimes extra to get extra money. Especially during the fall and into winter time. My birthday was in September, hers was October, my sister's was at the very end of November, then there was Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas thrown in there too. It's one of the things I hate that I can't tell her now. That I don't think of those things. All of the small things she did are what I remember. Okay so maybe I got emotional too. Anyway, a moment in my life that tells a story. |
Prompt: "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper." Robert Frost Is what Robert Frost says true for you? What makes you lose your temper? Yes, I think it is true. Education doesn't necessarily mean formal, but learning about things in general. I think you could make an argument that losing your temper can be often related to not fully understanding your opponent. For example for me, I used to try and talk to MAGA commenters/friends and I used to get irritated (mind you this was the first time around, so 2016) because they couldn't see why what they were saying made no sense. It didn't take me very long before I realized that they just wanted to think that way. So I stopped. Mind you I never lost my tempter. It takes a lot for me to lose my temper. But I've learned to save my sanity when it comes to being irritated or annoyed. Work is another one. I learned I was caring more than those above me, so I started taking the correct cues to lower my own standards. It has saved me a lot of frustration. |
Prompt: "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." James A. Baldwin What do you think about this quote? Do our children really imitate us? Oh definitely! I'm not a parent, but I've been around my friends who do enough to know that they know exactly what to imitate. They might not listen to when you tell them to pick up their toys or eat their broccoli, but you accidentally say "shit" or "fuck" and by the goodness, will they suddenly be saying those words. They even want to imitate in good ways too like wanting to vacuum or sweep or mow the yard. Sometimes even older kids will want to wear similar things they see their older sibling wear or even what their mom or dad wears. We all know they often imitate behaviors or reactions to certain things. I've seen a video of this little girl, probably would be starting school the next year or so. Shows her walking with her arms behind her back and some words on the screen roughly saying: "We wondered where she got this from until" And then it shows a grandpa who walks with his arms behind his back. It's really cute! |
On this day in 1969, American actress Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by followers of Charles Manson, leader of a communal religious cult known as the “Family.” What do you recall about this heinous crime ? Thinking about the media coverage of that time compared to today's media coverage of violent crimes, which do you prefer? The crime itself was well before my time, but I've watched quite a few videos that have gone over it, whether it be just the murder or a documentary that talked about Charles Manson and included his time with the Family and the murder. Hearing a lot about what allegedly went on during his childhood, I feel bad for the boy and not all surprised by who he would become. I had always heard of the murders through a conversational type of way. Through shows or people talking about it. Knew of Helter Skelter both because of the murders and because of the Beatles, but I didn't know the importance until much later. It's the first thing I think of when "it was a different time" is ever said. Roman Polanski was someone very well known in Hollywood, as well as his wife Sharon Tate, and anyone could just walk up to their door (so much different than today it feels like). One of those weird things that sticks. The crime itself was horrible, especially since it was all just a set up. They were killed just to get white people angry at black people by making it seem as though black people committed the murders. It felt so...soulless. Ended up being done for absolutely no reason because no "race war" ever happened because of the murders. The media coverage, I'd prefer the media coverage of that time, I think. Even though it was sensationalized because of Sharon Tate and the Hollywood connection (and unfortunately, lesser coverage of the murders that happened the following night), a lot of the information was very open and laid out which is refreshing? Everything feels so neutered now with the media. I don't necessarily need to know intimate details, but they just tell you what happened. There's not a sob story, you don't have a documentary on the murderer by the evening news, there's not the 24/7 nonsense either. Which is probably the worst part of current news coverage. There also isn't "everyone's opinion" being used as news in news articles either. As much as I'm glad that it didn't become a "race war", there was questions of "weird religious rites", aka Satanic Panic, so I can imagine there was probably some of that, especially once Charles Manson was mentioned and his Family cult was brought to light. I could see something similar happening today, maybe not so much directly on the news (maybe some stations), but I could see it running through social media (been seeing some Satanic Panic type stuff off and on with certain things and I don't know how that cyclical nonsense keeps happening). Granted, I was born 16 years after the murders, so a lot of what I've seen is really just snippets. I didn't experience it nor have the real understanding of the time. If I'd learned about it before my parents had passed, it would've been an interesting question to ask my mom. She was 18 (would turn 19 that October), freshly graduated from high school. It would've been interesting to hear her thoughts and what people said, what they thought. What she thought. It will be interesting to see the opinions of those who lived through it, to hear what their opinions are. Especially at least with the news portion. Today's news coverage is so exhausting. They will scrape the bottom of the barrel, talking about things maybe only tangibly connected to the story because well, everything is 24/7 now. We have to hear opinions by 647 different people, find some random schmuck who knew the killer(s) or one of the victims and barrage them with questions for an hour. I just want to know what happened, told to me by journalists, not personalities. |
Number One of 1985   SongMoney for Nothing by Dire Straits  Book Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor  Money for Nothing is great! I included the music video because it is *french kiss* It is very early computer graphics and it's amazing. The song, like I said is great. It has an amazing opening guitar riff. If there is something that I don't think I ever realized until listening to it within the last few years was that the gay slur fa**ot is in it and it can be off putting a bit. I know they aren't using it so much as the people they're talking about are, but still. It's something that made me realize I listened to and watched the clean edit. I found the official music video on youtube a few years ago and was surprised by that addition. I've attached the clean edit music video. Dire Straits also has some other amazing songs, so if you like this song, I'd suggest checking them out. Romeo and Juliet, Two Young Lovers, Sultans of Swing, Telegraph Road, and Walk of Life are some! Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor is neither a book I have heard of or an author that I have heard of. The book sounds like stuff I've written for some stories that helps give me background for my stories. It's about a fictional town, but it's written in the style of a non-fictional historical publication. It goes over the history of the town and then describes the lives and activities of the inhabitants of the town. The second half of the book kinda reads like multiple short stories, but there isn't really a plot. I don't know if I'd go out of my way to read it, but I think if it was like a book club and we were to talk about it or use it as a reference for myself, for my own research, I might read it. I read a little bit up on the author to see if I might know of anything else he has written and the answer to that is no. He was more into radio and had a radio show called A Prairie Home Companion which was a variety show, which had musicians and some skits before a live audience (remember those?). The book was based off of some bits from that show and his show seemed to be popular enough that for the second half of September (I was born on the 20th) and into the first week of October, he was the number one NY Times Bestseller. |
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