BS

No job 4 u~!

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 | Life | 3 Comments

Ok, so I have been trying to switch to a different job at work. One that would pay a lot more and teach me some new things. Well I could do this job REALLY WELL. So every single time a position for it opens up I do not get an interview. This just blows my mind, because I have little doubt in mind that I could get the job with an interview. Well one time I couldn’t get the job because I had not worked there long enough despite having good recommendations. Then another time I couldn’t get the job because a “final written warning”. Basically I only had the final written warning because of attendance, but not even bad attendance. I had simply been sick 3 times since I had started working for the company.

Even with paid for sick time, EVERY SINGLE TIME we miss a day of work that wasn’t pre-approved for vacation we get nailed…. verbal/written/final written. Now my understanding was that after 60 days they drop off. Nope.

See I just got denied an interview again because of a final written warning…. This time I was very confused. I said I have only been sick once since July!!! Hell, I couldn’t drive to work that day because I had vertigo so bad. I got ready to go and just couldn’t walk straight…

Turns out what really happens is that after 60 days the status drops down 1 level. So if you have a final written warning and you go 60 days without being sick (which I did) it drops to a written warning. However then after that I was sick again, so the written turns back into a final written. This means that unless I go 180 days without being sick I will always have some kind of warning on my account.

This is pure evil. My boss (who’s awesome by the way) went and fought for me and told them how great I would be at the job. He was just met with “sorry, my hands are tied, I can’t hire somebody with a final written warning”. He told me that It was perfect for me and that I would make more money and be happier. Since as it stands, I am very good at my current job but it doesn’t challenge me in any way anymore.

Wanna know something eerie about the day I was sick ? It was right before I talked to my sister for the last time. I got vertigo then and it did not go away until I walked out of her apartment in Wisconsin for the first time… You know, everything is just energy and my brain just happened to get fucked up right after my sister made the hardest decision anybody could ever make. Then it stayed a little fucked up until I had left her apartment in Wisconsin.

Now I have to look at my own situation again. I can stay at GoDaddy and just keep doing my job, which is easy however I cannot be absent at all until December or the system will see me fired. Lets say I am not absent till then, if a job opening comes up then I can maybe get it, but if not if I am absent ANY time before February I am back on a final written warning and cannot be promoted again.

Talk about a bunch of bullshit… If you have “sick time” it should not count against you. Fine, you want it to count against us, then at least make it so that it won’t haunt us forever. I mean damn, you miss a couple days and you are fucked no matter how good / qualified you are for something else.

Memories and Change

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 | Life | 2 Comments

It’s amazing how we can feel so totally strong about something one day and then so totally different another day. Tonight I just felt like listening to music. Lots of music from the compilation cd’s I have made over the years. Well those songs reminded me of other old memories and associations as you would expect emotionally driven music to do. I even decided to dig up one of my old poems. Now I can no longer claim to feel the way I felt in the poem I wrote then, but am blown away by how strongly I felt then.

Seeing this gives me comfort now, because it means that all emotions can be let go of with time.

I also made a comp cd that day:

01 [Ani Difranco] Done Wrong
02 [Our Lady Peace] Clumsy
03 [Hole] Dying
04 [Apocaliptica] The Unforgiven
05 [Vertical Horizon] Everything You Want
06 [Chris Issac] Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing
07 [Soul Asylum] Promise Is Broken
08 [Blessid Union Of Souls] The Rest Of My Life
09 [Ben Folds Five] Don’t Change Your Plans
10 [Collective Soul] The World I Know
11 [Cake] I Will Survive
12 [Blur] Tender
13 [Tom Petty] Into The Great Wide Open
14 [Concrete Blonde] Tomorrow Wendy
15 [Would Be King] Can You Hear Me
16 [Red Hot Chilli Peppers] Californication
17 [Fisher] Too Late

FYI: OiNK Is Gone

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 | Helpful | 2 Comments

Short version of the long story (just google it), OiNK is no more and unlike all the other sued sites (demonoid | isohunt | torrentspy | piratebay) it appears that it will stay that way.

I thought it should be mentioned since it was one of the greatest sites ever to exist. Yes, something will take it’s place as is the way of the world, but until then we will remember it as the greatest music download site to ever exist.

Ab Imo Pectore

Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | Helpful, Life | 3 Comments

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Then, find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party!

There is a philosophy for everything. and as I sit here over-thinking things I have come to a few conclusions:

1) Life is short - It has never been more evident to me than it has this month. It is easy for me to say I escaped as I am still alive, however I am not unscathed and will forever be changed. The trick I believe is to know what happened in your life to get you where you are but not dwell on it, just move on. Which brings me to conclusion number two.

2) You cannot live in the past - Think this is easy? This is the toughest thing to do. If you focus on the shitty things in the past then it is what you will see in the future. There are no real if-and-buts about it. You ever hear of the course “The Secret” (which was on this site until last week wiped out 600 videos)? All the damn thing says ask and you shall receive… yep, old school bible stuff. Just focus on what you want and not what you don’t want.

3) Find somebody who will listen to you - Wife, friend, mother, pet… Whatever works… Just know that when you are speaking that somebody actually cares enough to listen.

4) Never be without music in your mind - I can’t even begin to express how much music has done for me. There comes a time when you think nobody understands you but then you hear a song, and suddenly you know that you are not alone. I have over 44,421 songs in one folder yet I can throw them all into at shuffle and wallah, it finds something that fits what I need. Music will never leave you and it is there in all of your good and bad times.

Those are the conclusions I drew tonight. A lot of people expect me to act or feel a certain way now that my sister has died. I wanted to try to feel those ways but due to my own core beliefs I can only feel the way that I am. I can be sad while still being thankful. I can be depressed while still being optimistic. I can feel hungry while still feeling full and I can live while being lost.

Ab imo pectore = “from the bottom of my heart”

The hardest 2 weeks of my life

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 | Insanely long, Life | 5 Comments

Beginning of the month
———————–
I paid rent today… for the second time since I am paying for one place AND living in another. I am ok with doing this because it means that despite having to come up with more money, I will not have to get defensive and prepared for war.

3rd
—
It’s my mom’s birthday! Gave her a call, things going well and moving back to normal

4th
—
I woke up with moderate vertigo. Just moving my head caused me to spin. I had been kicking some ass at work and actually wanted to go, but I was too bloody dizzy and couldn’t pin point why but I could not go to work.

My friend Chris sent me some messages that concerned me about my sister. I asked him straight if he thought she meant suicide and he said it was more like a “terminal disease” and that we should talk to her.

There are only 3 people my sister will REALLY talk to at this point. Me, my Mother and Chris. So
I call my mother and she has heard nothing.

She calls my sister and gets no response, leaves a message.

5th
—
No response, no call back.. we are now fairly worried.

6th
—
My final day off and I’m still bloody dizzy so I had to make a doctors appointment.

Then Beth calls me. I kept trying to hint at things but never threw anything at her. I wanted her to tell me on her own. She seemed very in check with her emotions and just referred to herself as her usual crazy self. I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t say anything. I was not satisfied with what she said…

My mom got a hold of my sister, and she was acting completely normal. For awhile she refused to admit anything was wrong. So my mother told her what she had heard from me… There was silence… Eventually she said she had gone to her local pill pusher and he had informed her that meds don’t work seem to work for her and that she had two choices. Either she could get electroshock therapy (which isn’t proven to help at all for people who have bipolar) or she could go on massive doses of anti-psychotics / anti-convulsants (which would make her into a vegetable). She was unwilling to go with either one of these options and instead of trying to find another doctor, or another answer she just decided that she would not do either choice, but in not taking her pills she knew she would go totally crazy.

So she told my mother that she had some connections and had gotten together a new identity, and she was going to go away so we did not have to suffer along with her.

My mom though upset about this, believed her and tried to get her to stay, but her mind was made up and she didn’t want to be confused with the facts.

She informed our mother that she wanted to leave with the last conversation with her brother being peaceful, so that I would just remember her as my “crazy sister”.

I discovered after this that she was also giving away a lot of her stuff…. not selling it.

later
—-
I have been worried, which I never worry, so I call a couple of her friends to just call her and see if she is ok. I do not believe the “new identity” thing and am hoping the people telling me she is just looking for attention are right, but I don’t believe them either so I called a couple other people to go check on her.

7th
—
She sends me 3 text messages. They appear to be her going away messages.

Nobody’s calls were answered but she is still sending Chris text messages, so hopefully she really is just “going away”. Still, I don’t for a moment believe the new identity thing so I send somebody else over to check on her and she says her car was there, not packed, and her A/C was running. That’s all I could get out of them.

8th
—
Unsatisfied with the last person I sent to check on her Chris agrees to leave early in the morning and go check on her. He has an hour to drive, but after I think he would be there I send him another text message from work.

He told me to call him, and he always prefers text so I knew my sister was dead.

He had to let the police into the apartment. She had shot herself. Sorry if I am not prettying this up but this is how it happened.

I told my boss a quick version of what happened and I left. I got a plane ticket but it didn’t leave for awhile that day. So I started calling people, lots of people to tell them what happened. While still waiting for the plane I went running. There was nothing else I could do.

My friend Josh picks me up in Milwaukee and I stay over at his place.

9th
—
Life has come to a halt, and nothing is getting done. The coroner had some lock box with notes to me and my mom as well as some other paperwork in it, but he would not release it until both my mother and father signed for it because they could not find an official will.

Nothing is progressing except arguments between my family.

I stayed at Josh’s place again and he says something that really sets me off. He meant well but it came off badly. He said “You seem a little too ok with this”, he said it because I had been laughing and watching tv and doing normal things. So I snapped and said “how the fuck am I supposed to act”. I mean I really didn’t know. I haven’t cried, and I have just been working on what I need to do for this crazy situation. He takes it hard because he was just trying to help.

10-12th
——–
My mom keeps not being able to leave due to all sorts of things, but without her getting to WI, nothing was getting done. So I found a way to get the keys to her apartment and Chris and I went to her apartment. I only wanted to walk as far as the computer. I found some documents on it that were VERY helpful and I printed them off. It was the first real progress we had since we didn’t have the box.

I have been managing the different sides of the family as best as I can. My dad hasn’t spoken to my mother in 9 years and he has nothing but hatred for everything when he tries to communicate.

13th
—-
I wasn’t satisfied with the “no service | no obituary | no reception” response I was getting from my dad’s half of the family so I said screw ‘em and I threw a get together myself at a bar in Madison.

The gathering went really well. My mom was in town and virtually every single person I invited came as well as a couple others. There was a letter my sister had written to “anybody and everybody I ever loved” and my mother had written another letter about Beth and we handed out a lot of copies of those.

It went really well and as it was breaking up Chris / Isaac told me that I needed to go with them to the Essen Haus for a ‘boot’. I decided that was a lot of beer so I said that Tom (stepdad) needed to come and also my mother to help me finish some of the beer off.

We got there and they were out of da boots. So instead we ’settled’ for a 5 liter beer (that had a $120 deposit on the stein). We drank all that and THEN we had a boot which became available after Isaac made friends with somebody at another table. So we drank that too.

A little toasted, but still feeling good we left, but stayed at a friends in Madison instead of driving home.

I ended up staying up till sometime in the morning talking to a wonderful girl whom I had met before, but never really knew.

14th
—-
More phone calls etc..

15th
—-
We actually got the lock box today but we have to go start cleaning out my sisters apartment. However my mom won’t read her letter (for good reason) until after she leaves the apartment.
Not a pleasant thing to mention but the crime scene cleaners have not made it to the apartment yet, however my mom insists we get started. So I ran in ahead of her to close the bedroom door.

The apartment smelled awful, but at the time I was able to get past it and I insisted that my mom did NOT go into the room. I had not gone in and neither should she. There was NOTHING in there she needed to see.

Well I went out to throw away some trash and came back in while she was walking out of the room. I was pissed because I told her not to and she had ignored me. She acted ok with it but she was not. I know damn well that she held up a front and then let it out later. Yes, she has thick skin and will be able to handle it… eventually…. but there was no reason to do it.

I eventually left and picked up my friend in Janesville and went to a bar for a couple drinks.

16th
—–
I spent 3+ hours talking to my father this morning and trying to help him leave the past in the past so that he could handle the situation that was in front of him now. As it stands he hasn’t been dealing with the last 2 weeks, but the last 15 years.

We got a moving vehicle today to take stick furniture and other crap in the back. My sister had SOOO much accumulated crap. The ‘cleaners’ still have not been here despite the apartment complexes call to me saying they got a different company to do it. Still, as far as I’m concerned we NEVER have to go in the bedroom. There was 0 reasons to do it and no stuff that is in there needs to be saved at all.

Same thing happened, only this time it was Tom. He decided to be ‘manly’ or some bullshit and go get all the fucking stuff out of the room and half ass clean the place up. I walk in to see that after another trash run and am really pissed off. I mean WTF purpose will it serve. So the cleaners haven’t gotten there yet, so what. Either they will later and then you can go in, or you will need to leave before they come and you never go in. Both seem like valid / rational options to me. The apartment complex can dispose of the stuff in there on their own.

Until this point I have showed virtually no emotion. I have simply managed things. It’s not that I am trying to be “brave” for everybody, I simply have only had thoughts of still living, getting by, getting things done. However In that apartment my heart beats faster and my energy is drained. So I would work fast to fill up a garbage bag and take it outside for air (garbage is a long ways away from the door).

Yet with that door open and the pungent smell coming from it, I was having a hard time breathing and keeping in check. I left for the night because I had hauled out most of the stuff and it was obvious that they didn’t want to listen to me.

I left there and everything hit me at once. For the first time since this has started I am “showing emotion” over the situation. I was having trouble breathing, and I just felt miserable.

Look, it’s not that I don’t want to be emotional over this. Hell, then I could better relate to people who are ‘expecting’ it from me. It’s that I have been in control over the situation. A fucked up situation that nobody should ever have to deal with, but I have been dealing with it. Now all of a sudden a door opens and I loose my control.

—

I don’t know what will happen next. I only have a few days left in Wisconsin, and the number of things I need to do is decreasing. I will fly back to Arizona and go on with my life. In this shitty time in my life, I can still see hope and the possibility of something better to come from my time here.

It will take time to get past this, but I have a lot of time left.

The below section is a letter my sister wrote to ‘anyone and everyone she ever loved’
———————————————————————————-

Disease is not your problem…

Friday, October 5th, 2007 | Helpful, Rants | 4 Comments

Alone. It’s not a problem when you are used to it. So long as you just focus on something else, anything else, then it just becomes something that you are.

You cannot stay alone though, friends won’t let you, family won’t let you and most of all life won’t let you. Life isn’t about what you want, it’s about what other people want and how they will treat an accept you. If you are alone you will have nothing but your memories and fantasies, because all we really have is our memories. So you spend your time alone thinking about others. Experiences you have had with others, or ones you would like to have.

So you try to live for yourself, to not care about the circumstances of other people who have let their memories and fantasies become too dark. Yet you cannot escape it, because as soon as you escape it will come back. As you get older you meet more and more people, and make more and more friends. All of them have their own dark memories and dreams and though they may not want to drag you down with them they have no choice.

A life lesson I learned all at once one day in my youth: You can’t bottle up your problems and hope that they go away. They become all you subconsciously react to when similar situations occur. You need to have a way to release your shit and change your focus.

When you study the mind you find that altering one emotional memory simply by changing the perspective in the memory can cause you to act subconsciously change everything around you. That if you go and change say 5 emotional memories to be less intense that suddenly you can make it through your day without any problems because the things you associated with those memories are no longer stabbing you.

Yet even knowing the utter simplicity of how to change a life just by fucking with memories a little bit, still doesn’t make other people want to change. They will make rationalizations for all of life’s problems because they are too scared to change.

My father had electroshock therapy many years ago because no drug would work for him. He would get a new drug and would get 90% of all the symptoms and they became worse then the depression. So extreme situations call for extreme measures. Well funny story. A little electricity running through the pathways in the brain and he was a TOTALLY DIFFERENT PERSON for a few days. I mean they had simply weakened the paths of his shitty recent memories by intensifying other memories. He came back and sat down at the dinner table with us as if he always did that (he always ate in the living room). He went through the shit in his closet and said “Why are we keeping these? (to a box full of the cardboard things that fall out of magazines that he had been collecting just “in case” he needed one) and then he threw them away. He was scared because there were many things he couldn’t remember, but suddenly he was a good person that you would want to be around.

If you were to have tested him at that time you would be able to see that the chemicals and everything in his body would have changed. Not because of some drug that made it change, but simply because he forgot the negative crap that made him fucked up in the first place. Well electroshock is no great cure because as he kept going to the therapy he no longer lost any memories and instead just came back shaking because he built up a tolerance in the brain but not in the nervous system. The lesson however is the same. Life is what you focus on, and if you take a shitty perspective on the things that happen it will fester and eat away at your brain until you cannot remember what it is like to not feel shitty.

Disease is not your problem, it’s the effect of the shit you think and do. So own up to your own life and start thinking about better things, and looking at different perspectives on things that pain you. As soon as you start to feel shitty take a deep breath and then focus on ways to not feel that way.