He Used To Be My Dad

My dad and I used to be the best of friends. I used to go to the movies with him after school, talk with him about whatever, and go with him wherever he went. We hit a snag in our relationship when I was in high school during my sophomore year. His reactions regarding my poor performance in school caused me to turn away from him. During that year, I had to endure many factors that gave me a lot of stress, distraction, and anger.

Let’s just say that my parents had finalized their divorce, I had a new step-mom and half-brother,  and I would talk to a girl up until 5AM. As you can imagine, I had no sleep before school, and right after school, I would have football practice. This behavior was notoriously destroying my academics, but I couldn’t tell my dad about that and blamed it all on my parents’ divorce and my dad’s decision to remarry and bear another child.

He Used To Be My Dad

There once was a guy that I knew.
Always there for me, through thick and thin.
My support system, the one I could turn to.
Then one day he left, came back, and I and wondered where he had been.

I lost more than I could imagine, he’ll never know what I’ve gone through
I sit back and always think about what we once had,
But he’s happy with his new family now, with me just number 2.
I look at him and  say to myself, “That guy used to be my dad.”

2011
04/05
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Spring Break

It is officially spring break for me and that means more writing time.

Yes I haven’t been keeping up with the blog. I had finals on top of increasingly longer hours at work. Life hasn’t been all that bad lately, but I do have a lot of interesting things that I would share with you later on. For now, I’m just letting you readers know that I am not dead and hopefully down the line I’ll bring another interesting read.

2011
03/30
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Life Lesson #4: Passion Triumphs Fame

Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night; Follow your passion, and success will follow you.  ~Terri Guillemets

Stop and think for a moment about what drives you. What is your motivation? Why do you live? What do you live for? Who do you live for?

If you are a human being with emotions, you will undoubtedly come across one of these questions throughout the course of your life.

Now think about your hobbies, your weekend activities, and what you do for a living. Why do you do what you do? As they ask in the airport, is your destination for “Business or pleasure.”

What I’m getting at is, passion should the primary motivation for the things you do in your life. Because it’s my blog, and all I’ve been doing is talking about other people’s lives, I wanted to take a closer look at my life, and try to evaluate myself before it was too late.

My friend told me he was sick and tired of hearing me whine about how I compare myself to others, saying that all I do is try to measure up to who they are and what they have become. It comes as no surprise that I am starting to get sick of that as well. I thought it was time to try and do something. I used to be a positive person and used to see the positive in every situation, good or bad. I don’t know what happened, but I guess it’s because when I see the success of others, all I see is are the failures that I’ve done in my own life. I’ve tried to live my life proving others wrong, but I guess that can be a destructive path in it of itself. Why bother doing things that spites others? Why not do things for me? All I really want is personal achievement, gain, and ultimately, happiness.

Let’s see what I’ve involved myself in doing but after a while, lost interest in it, saw what others had to contribute in the field, and in turn, told myself that I could never amount to that:

  • Photography
  • Automotive
  • Business
  • Computers

Does it hurt to want to be better than other people? No. But it’s bad if all you ever do is WANT to be better than everyone else all the time. Setting up goals is one thing, but to try to beat out the competition on a daily basis just to feel superior eats away at a man’s soul, especially if they fail to attain that level. I’ve been telling a lot of people that I need to get on so and so’s level. When I fail to get on that level, I feel like all hope is lost and there is nowhere to go. But as they say “Nowhere to go now but up.” It’s true. When you’re at the bottom, all you have to do is look up and you’ll see the light.

What has made so many people in the world well-known and successful? Passion. The greatest example that I can provide is someone whose story is well-known (if you’re a basketball fan).  He loved basketball as a kid, wanted to play for his high school basketball Varsity team, got cut as a sophomore, worked his ass off until he made it during his Junior and Senior year. Yeah maybe the high school had a strict policy about 10th graders joining the Varsity squad, but with Jordan’s mindset, it was like being cut. It’s like saying you were a QB the NFL, but was second-string. What motivated Jordan? To be better than the guy next to him, to stand out, and above all, his passion and love for the game.  His story involves many doubters, but with his passion and ability to “prove others wrong” he destroyed the competition. What made Jordan the greatest basketball player of all time? Passion. He played for the game, not to be recognized. His achievements just allowed fame to come to him.

The days coming ahead will be rough, but that’s what happens when you get knocked down. Get back on your feet, rethink your strategy, and don’t let them scare you. If they scare you, you’ve already lost the fight.

Here’s a promise that I will have to make to myself — Keep moving and don’t listen to the negativity. Even if people do not believe in me, all I have to do is believe in myself, be successful in the things I do. If I don’t like something in my life, change it. Letting it be will just stay there, haunt me, and constantly remind me why I failed to change it. I don’t need to fail anymore. I need to be strong. Find passion in what I do. Be passionate, and keep the fire lit. Do it for yourself. Prove them wrong.

For all of you Catholics, if you need something to give up for Lent here are some ideas:

  • Self-doubt
  • Depression
  • Carelessness
  • Mistakes
  • Failing

Make a path, keep the end-goal in mind, and start walking. It always begins with the first step.

Here are some shoes to help you get started:

2011
03/09
CATEGORY
Life Lesson
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Life Lesson #3: Don’t throw in the towel…

…or else you’ll never become a champion.

Let’s face it. You’re in the ring, in another fight, hoping to take out the enemy in front of you. You two slug it out, until he catches you off-guard and knocks you to the ground. What will you do? Stand up or lay down until the referee counts to 10?
This is what you will do: you will get up again and again, until you find a way to beat your opponent.

This is a lot like life, where obstacles and challenges try to constantly derail you, knock you down for the count. Champions get back up, never give up, and keep fighting until they win.

I have been in that ring several times during the course of my life. As I have already said before, I’m 20 years old, but I’ve faced a lot of problems that I never thought I’d deal with. I complain about what I lack, what I am not, and what I have always failed to do. I am sure a lot of you have been in the same ring, but believe me, you wouldn’t be here today if you didn’t get back up on your feet.

I don’t have a story to relate to this because everyone, and I mean everyone has faced the fight of their life, whether once a day, month, year, or decade. How do you want to be remembered? How do you want people to see how you fought your fights. Will you simply throw in the towel because your opponent was “too big” or “too fast” or “too smart” for you? The point is, be better than the challenge, and in fact, start today and be a better person tomorrow. However you choose to do that is up to you. There are reasons why boxers go through training camp:

  • To be the better fighter than the guy they’re facing
  • To be better a better fighter than they were in their previous fight

No champion in the ring has ever thrown in the towel. They may have fought and lost, but they never gave up. They never stayed down. They got up. Life will throw its punches, but get out of the way and take the fight to them.

2011
03/08
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Life Lesson # 2: Love Thy Parents…

…but don’t use them as a crutch.

I haven’t written in a while but it’s only because I’m still starting out and I have yet to actually gather stories that would be worthy to share with everyone else.
I drove one of my co-workers home the other night, and his story is sad in a sense that it’s another one of those “Are you serious?” stories.  Actually, what I am telling you is current as of today (03/06/11). It’s a bunch of little things he has told about himself.

To start off, a little information about my friend “Lee” –

  • Graduated from University of California, Los Angeles
  • Served honorably in the Marine Corps
  • Works at a job that pays by the hour. Has worked with the company for the past 5 years.
  • Has no car, walks between home and work, and has a small amount of friends
  • Lives with his dad. His mom passed away few years back.
  • A chain smoker.
  • He is 45 years old.

Lee, as I have said before, lives with his dad and apparently is under the control of his father, even at his age.

Lee has no computer at home to call his own, so he doesn’t go online all that often. When I say a “computer to call his own,” I mean there is a computer where he lives, but it belongs to his father. Lee’s dad will not let him use the computer (for reasons unbeknownst to me). Lee moved in with his dad after giving up a well-paying job and moving out of his apartment. His job didn’t make him feel happy despite the money he had. He instead moved to a job that involves heavy interaction with customers but earning minimum wage.

Lee had a car that got taken away from him because he neglected to pay the registration and getting it out of the impound lot. That is how he ended up with no car. His current situation, as it stands, is his dad felt bad about the car and is offering to buy Lee a new car, but only at a cost of $15,000 max. However, Lee cannot get a car that is “fancy.” The best he can get is either a Nissan Versa, Honda Fit, or some other sub-compact car. The funny thing is, the car was supposed to be acquired in January and yet there is no car. Lee’s dad is very wishy washy and cannot make up his mind. I asked Lee why can’t he just use some of the many he’s saved up to get a nice car, but he said his dad doesn’t want him to use any of his savings.

Let me get this straight… you are 45 years old and you cannot make decisions for yourself? I know that Lee’s life hasn’t exactly been perfect but there comes a point in every man’s life (especially when you are 45 years old) that you should man up and take charge. I firmly believe that if you live under the roof of your parents, you follow their rules, but holy crap. This situation is unreal.

When I say to love your parents, but don’t use them as a crutch, this is an example of using them as a crutch (albeit an extreme example). Once you move out of the house, make sure you never come back to live there again. It’s good to visit, but to still depend on your parents? That pretty much sums up “What the hell?”

Another part of Lee is that he also tends to read a lot of self-help books, always looking for something important in his life, and to find purpose in his life. He has read “The Purpose Driven Life” and talks a lot about it.

This is another thing you should keep in mind: If you have a goal, make sure you it is what you want and although changing is a good thing, changing for the worst is not. Lee had a lot of potential with his background. I suggest that before you’re anywhere close to hitting age 45, here’s somethings that, although obvious, needs to constantly be implemented in your everyday life.

  1. Make friends, connections, and always look to foster those connections.
  2. Develop a circle of friends and relationships that will help bring you up when you are down.
  3. If you are busy, never be too busy to say hello to somebody.
  4. Don’t contact somebody you haven’t talked to in a while just to ask them for something. That’s rude and you’ll lose contact with them….fast.
  5. Keep the end goal in mind. With this, you’ll always aim to reach it.
  6. Your parents are you support, not your lifeline. To depend on them hand and foot is putting yourself under their control. Do you want your parents to tell you what to do when you have your own family?
  7. There is a purpose in your life. Even if you feel like life is hopeless, just remember that there are people who have it worse than you do, but it also doesn’t give you the right to mope about it. Do something about it.
  8. Don’t wait to do something, otherwise that opportunity may never come up ever again. Then again, it’s never too late to try something new.

Take one minute to tell your parents you love and respect them, but also let them have faith in you that you’ll go on to bigger and better things and make them proud.

In closing, if you had the privilege of being taught by your parents on how to ride a bike, think about this analogy. That bike is what drives you through life. As a kid, your parents taught you how to ride a bike. As soon as you figured out how, you had the training wheels on, just in case you ever made mistakes. Those training wheels helped keep your confidence up and always practice with something to lean on in case you messed up. As you grew older, your parents didn’t have to watch you anymore and took off the training wheels. At this point in your life, you’re on your bike going full speed and with no training wheels. If you fell, you got up. You got scratches, bruises, but that didn’t stop you from enjoying your bike rides. That is a lot like life. Your parents are gone and it’ll be up to you to take the fall, the mistakes, and the injuries along the way. You have no choice to get back up because you can’t come back home walking your bike instead of riding it back because you were too scared to get back on.

With this, get on the bike you call life, pedal hard, and never look back. If you always keep looking backwards you’ll never see what’s up ahead.

 

 

2011
03/06
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Life Lesson #1: Grow Up or Shut Up

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.  ~Chili Davis

Now, I know that this blog is centered around venting, having a “negative” outlook on life, and ranting about how bad something is. But time and time again I’ll be posting stuff with quotes and having these “Life Lessons.” I’m posting it not just for myself, but for others to learn.

Last night my friend made me realize something about him that I didn’t know. I thought I knew him and about what he was going through but through the course of the night we talked about important events that were going on in each other’s life. For this purpose, let’s call my friend “Ben.”

Ben is a nice kid with what you may say is a rough background. He was born to a single mom, raised around “bad” influences and dealt with marijuana. He has a lot of street smarts, knows a lot of people, very charismatic, and although he has a lot of downs in his life, he gets through them with a fighting spirit.

He’s a great kid, but made some decisions that society deems “appalling.” Right now he is 19 with a kid who is a year old. He is about to get married to his fiancé this summer. You may think that he is stupid or unwise for being married so early, but his reasoning is that he “doesn’t want his kid to grow up with his parents still unwed.” That’s a lot of courage for a teenager in his situation. The fact that he did man up and did what other guys in his situation would never think about proves to me (and should prove to all of you) that teenage boys are not what society makes them out to be. It is true that there are men who get scared and run away as soon as a child comes into their life by accident* no choice of theirs.

Ben also told me that he prays every day, thinks about his son every day, and works with his future wife to raise the baby to his fullest potential. He tells me that he is stressed all the time, and when I asked why it never looks like that, he simply said, “It’s called hiding it, man.” I can attest to that same reaction. I hide my own feelings because what is the point of showing others how you’re reacting to life’s struggles. When I told Ben about how my dad was in the same situation as me, but he had to work two full-time jobs while my mom worked her full-time job, Ben replied “He was doing it to give you a better future.” That reality hit me because although my dad told me while I was young that he was doing everything for me, it was astounding to hear it from someone who is close to my age. Since high school my dad and I grew apart and we are not as close as I want (no I don’t have Daddy issues) but it’s weird that my dad still provides for me everyday and I grow less and less aware of it because I feel like I am independent and no longer in need of his money to help pay for school.

Society thinks that Generation Y-ers are useless, obnoxious, and lead no future. Ben looks to the future every day. He knows the first few years of raising his child on the income level he has now will be hard. He wants to go to college, but will only do so after his fiancé goes to college and finish. Ben attests to the fact that he has had to grow up very fast because of his kid. Before his son was born, he used to smoke, drink, party, and go out all of the time. Now, he just stays at home, or goes to work. I don’t know about you, but that’s highly respectable. He grew up and I think more highly of him more than ever. I thought I was struggling, but hey, we all lead different lives. What is our end goal anyways? To be the best there is and you will only start on that path (and stay on it) if you stop being a kid and grow up.

*Note: No child is an accident. Each child born is a gift from God and has his or her own purpose.

Here’s to a wonderful day!:

2011
02/27
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Predicament and Anger

So I am still awake at 3AM, and I just felt like blogging.

I had some interesting conversations with two of my friends, and basically starting going off about school, work, and my future in general.
Basically, all I have to say is that although school is important, I just find it so boring now. It’s not that I’m academically inept or lazy. I’ve just lost all interest in sitting down during class and just listening to the teacher, taking notes, doing quizzes/tests/homework. It’s boring “busy work” and I could easily attain all of this information while learning on the job. What I am saying is, why should we go to school when we have something called “on the job training” ?

Grades should not be a prediction of someone’s success in the real world. I’ve learned a lot from classes that I got C’s in. (GASP Cs OMG). Yeah, if you had to be a working student trying to make ends meet and struggle to stay in school, you would understand. If you never had this experience, good for you — now fuck off (if you’re saying shit about my “poor” grades.) If I don’t work through school, I can’t go to school. If I don’t go to school, I can’t have a better future. I don’t want my salary to increase just because the government says to. I actually want a god damn future, but I also want to own a business of my own. 100% ROI, as in, all of my hard work goes to me. I hate working for people and I would rather operate my own business than do work for someone and let them reap the benefits of my labor.

Some people may consider me lucky, and I understand completely. I’m a regular middle-class individual, and yet I consider everyone above me lucky. It’s just the way human nature works. You never want to stay where you are. You want to always get up to the next level, always trying to make yourself better.

I have this itching and nagging feeling in my head to always want to be better. I want to be the best that I can be in whatever endeavors that I pursue, and even if I fail, I won’t stop until I succeed. Unfortunately, as one friend put it, I’ve been taking on too many things and just cannot handle it all at once. I have 1 job, a non-paid internship, and go to school full-time. What time do I have for myself? Not a lot, unless I request it off from work. What do I do to have a “play” aspect in my life? Photography, socializing, and playing video games. I try to balance everything, but once I get thrown off track (i.e. missing class due to oversleeping), everything collapses and I’d have to struggle to get back on things. You’d oversleep too if you had night shifts even though school starts early morning the following day.

People think that the Generation Y kids such as myself are lazy, lack potential, and are risk factors that will give rise to society’s downfall. The same thing was said to the generation before us, and before them and so on. I’m not worried about what will happen (just a little bit). I am a driven individual, always looking for better shit to do, and trying to rise above everyone else. I have my ups and as of late, numerous amounts of downs, but I always try to get the hell up and keep going. Reminds me of that Dwayne Wade Converse commercial. “Fall 6 times, get up 7.”

Call it cliche, but I call it reality. This is me. Fuck you.

2011
02/17
CATEGORY
Anger
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Introduction

This blog is about me. This can be a private blog or a public blog. Whatever my thoughts, experiences, or events that occur in my life, I’ll be sure to post it here. Hopefully in a year from now, I can look at this and tell myself, “Wow, look how far I have come.”

This is not a blog to whine and bore you. In fact, this blog was never for you. I only write here to vent out what is needed to be said. I see this as a constructive method of seeing how my own mind works, because if I do not write down what I’m feeling and how to get over it, how can I possibly help myself. This is not for your entertainment, but rather for my own enjoyment. Yes, I like to write, and no I do not mind that it’s being shared in the public. If you can relate to my feelings and what I go through on a daily basis, then I applaud you for aligning your life with mine (or at least trying to.)

I do not wish harm on anyone. I do not wish anyone ill will. I do not wish people dead. If I do type out anything negative regarding someone’s life, then it’s exactly what I feel. I’ll try to keep it as clean as possible, but once again, because this is a free-flow, off the top of my head blog, I do not have time for Nobel prize-winning edits. Like what they said in Spongebob, my “insulting” language can should be considered as “sentence enhancers.” If I offend you, you don’t have a strong will to take offense lightly. You will not survive in the harsh world out there.

Who am I? Well because this blog is called “Ventaholics Anonymous” I will only refer to myself as Mister Yomama.

Let me give a brief background about my life:

  • A Generation Y person born in 1990. I am 20 years old as of this writing and I am damn proud of it.
  • I’m a student and I have a job. What student doesn’t have that these days?
  • Hobbies include: Photography, automotive stuff, computers, video games, walking around, reading, writing, and of course lying around and trying to do nothing.
  • I am not lazy, but I’m not exceptionally hard-working. I can be if I wanted, but as of late, I’ve been increasingly unmotivated in everything I do because well, I have issues, like anyone my age would.
  • I like to think of myself as a creative person. I am continuously thinking, writing, reading, and trying to advance not only my life but those around me.
  • I am not “Emo” but like I said before, if I have my sad phases throughout my days, then I will openly admit it. Fuck you if you think you have never been sad or worried a day in your life. This is real life, and if you can’t admit to your own past, you’ve been living a lie. Good job.
  • I like playing sports, working out, and having a good time with my friends. I also like to meet people and I am great to talk with. My blog will literally turn me into an open book. I may share secrets, my past, and my history, so I welcome you to do the same. Do not be ashamed of where you came from and what your current situation is.
  • I am an outwardly expressive person, and I let people know my feelings whether through words or actions.
  • I am a caffeine and sugar fiend. I love coffee, Monster energy drinks, and Starbursts. I especially love M&Ms. What is funny is, I do not like Soda as much as I used to. Weird.

I enjoy talking to other people and I do not mind you wanted to post a comment or write me a letter regarding how you felt. I can hold conversations, but because I am a student, do not be offended if I do not get back to you ahead of time.

Because I like taking pictures, I may even post some pictures of the day and write about it.

Life is fun, life is grand, and if you keep looking and worrying about your past, you’ll never see what lies ahead.

 

With this, I bid you a good night, and this is it for my introduction. I think I need to do my homework now and grab a nice cool drink of Monster energy drink :).

 

2011
02/17
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