My day at work

Somewhere in the afternoon I was driving and saw a guy walking with his dog without a leash.  It was some sort of chihuahua.  I was thinking how cool it must be to be able to walk your dog without a leash and was also thinking how paranoid I’d be walking my dog without a leash.  About 10 seconds later I see this dog just start running across a main road and just missed being smoked by a car.  The guy yelled for it to come back but the dog didn’t even look back.  I think it saw its other owner across the street and darted for her.  Damn that could have been a horrific sight.

Later I was witness to a crow chasing a squirrel.  I didn’t know that happened.  The crow was in the air trying to grab the squirrel with its claws but the squirrel managed to hide in a bush.  The crow stood on a fence post making crow noises.  I wonder if it was trying to call for back up.  Research on the internet tells me the crow might have been protecting its nest of eggs or baby crows.

After doing a pick up I jump into my truck, slide open my cab door and I was like….”shitttt!”   I had a nice view of everything outside cause my rear door was slid all they way open!  I must have left it open from my previous stop.    Luckily nothing fell out of my truck and the worst thing to come out of this was that I looked like an idiot for a few blocks.  Really lucky cause I was driving up this really steep hill.  Can’t believe no one tried to get my attention.  Or maybe they did and I was in space like usual.  I thought about it for a minute and the stupid thing is that I actually remember not shutting the door.  My freaking brain.  It’s never in the moment.  I walk around all day like a zombie thinking about crazy stuff, never concentrating on what I’m actually doing.  That meditating stuff works in some way.  When I feel that my brain can’t stay focused very easily I do this meditating thing where I only concentrate on what I am doing in that very moment and I make sure my brain does not float away.  It’s quite calming even if I only do it for a few minutes.  Below is the type of truck I drive.  3510276 is the prisoner number.

 

Always Hungry

Diet post? Life post?  Both I guess.  Most of my meals during the work week are pretty health conscious which usually leads to hunger much faster than if I were to just stuff myself with unnatural foods.  It got me to thinking though.  Being really hungry is one of those things in life that we try to avoid and can easily remedy but in  hunter gatherer days you would probably be hungry almost all the time.  It wasn’t as easy as going to a store or packing a lunch.  Food was scarce and competition was fierce.  I like to watch animal documentaries and it always shows how difficult it is to get food even for the most excellent predators like leopards and bears.  Often they end up starving to death.

This makes me think that we were always meant to be hungry and hunting whether it be for food or something else.  There was never a coziness before to life.  If you wanted to survive you had to devote your life to it.  Today food, shelter and safety are pretty easy to come by for most people in the developed world.  Even if you have a shitty low paying job that you hate, you just have to do it and you’ll be ok.  It’s not enough for many people though.  They’re always hungry for more.  It’s somewhat frowned upon to not be satisfied with what you have already but I think it’s just natural human behaviour.  Once you stop being hungry you stop hunting and it feels there’s not much reason to live.

The unnatural foods like the starches and sugar fill you up just like how TV and internet fills up your life.  It doesn’t usually do any good for you in the long run but it keeps you from being hungry.  It stops you from thinking about what you should or might want to do next.  In the end I think it just makes you feel unfulfilled.  Once you stop hunting it feels like you’re dying.  Surviving was not meant to be this easy so maybe the consequence is feeling depressed.  I’m not hunting right now.  I want to but I don’t know where to go and some things don’t feel like they’re worth chasing.

On an unrelated topic the 50 year old married couple upstairs who are my landlords are annoying me at this very moment with their massage chair that they have to use everyday.  Sometimes they use it before work in the morning and it’s loud.  Sounds like someone roller skating upstairs.  They are a couple of squares too.  It annoys me how squarish they can be sometimes.  Typical Chinese immigrants from that generation.  Always paranoid about stuff.   I’m not even sure how crazy they are about living.  They work a regular schedule, come home, eat take out, watch tv and repeat.  Yes I know that’s like my life minus the take out but I just can’t see how they can amuse themselves.   They’re probably more mentally stable than I am so who knows.  They probably think I’m insanely odd too.

Skitching

Have you ever heard of ‘skitching’?   I’ve seen it before but never found any reason to look it up until today.  I drive one of those postal trucks for work and this afternoon this not so old but not so young guy decided to skitch onto my truck without telling me.  ‘Skitching’ is when you hold onto a motor vehicle to get a ride while you’re on a skateboard, roller skates, bicycle or whatever.  In my situation this guy was on a skateboard.

So I’m stopped at a red light and just before it turns green I for some reason decided to glance at my passenger side mirror and I see this guy right next to my rear tire trying to get a grip on something.  There’s not much to grasp onto besides the wheel well and maybe the placard holder.  I’m pretty easy going so I’m like whatever even though I know this is totally not allowed.  I’m driving for 2 blocks before I have to make a right turn so I have to stop and get this guy off my truck otherwise who knows and I don’t want to find out.  I’m signalling but he can’t see cause he’s on the side of my truck so I yell to let him know that I have to turn (my passenger door is slid all the way open) and he can’t hear me cause he’s got his headphones on like an idiot.  Seriously?  You’re going to do something not so safe and have your headphones blasting at the same time.  It’s rush hour on a busy street too.

After being stopped for 10 seconds he’s finally aware that I’m not going anywhere.  He skates on and says “thank you” not having any idea that he could have ruined both our lives.  Well, at least his.  Usually I don’t look at my side mirror if I’m driving straight so it was almost fluke that I knew he was even there.  He probably wasn’t even thinking I was going to turn off so soon.   If I had not known he was hanging onto my truck like a retarded monkey I would have just whipped a right turn and who knows.  I could have just changed lanes and that could have been enough for shit to go wrong.  Just yesterday 2 long boarders were seriously injured here going downhill and then swerving to avoid an oncoming car but crashing into a parked car instead.  2 weeks ago some other long boarder suffered serious head injuries colliding with a van.

This guy should have hung on to the back of my truck just off to the side where there’s a handle he could grab.  Honestly he could have just got off his board, jumped onto my bumper, hung onto the handle and it would have been safer.  I bet you that guy or other skaters would have said something like he was watching and would be ready to bail if I turned.  “Us skitchers know what we’re doing.  You just don’t know man.”  How about if I test out this theory next time?

Skaters sometimes have this attitude where they think they have to live on the edge and show how gutsy they are, thinking it’s only their life at danger so no one else should care.  They don’t think about how much trouble it will cause the other person who is involved in the accident with them.  When I saw that guy hanging on my truck it instantly made me feel that I was responsible for his life.   Yes I should have told him to get off right when I saw him but it didn’t occur to me how dangerous it really was until after.   I guess I’ll know better for next time.

It’s all about believing

Throughout my life my thoughts and actions were based on boredom and beliefs.  I can understand the boredom and beliefs but the beliefs were retardedley out of fear, environment and probably other stuff.  The whole foundation of our lives are based on our beliefs.  The really crappy part is that our beliefs can often be foolish.

I go back to my thoughts when I was younger and think about what drove me to be sad, angry, excited, accepted and it was usually the beliefs that I had at the time.   If it’s just a belief then it’s really just a faith and like many faiths they can be false.  When you are younger you might believe staying home on Friday night makes you a loser.  When you get older you might believe being unemployed or working a shitty job makes you a loser.  As we get older it seems the beliefs become more miserable to be faithful to and more depressing to not be able to meet those beliefs.  It’s like there’s this cultural bible most of us have that tells us how we should live in order to be happy.  There’s commandments that should be trusted.  Thou shall must keep certain friends and family forever.  Thou shall always make more money and never less.  Thou shall get married and have kids.  Thou shall go on exotic vacations.  Our bible today can be like a picture bible and its preachers are the people all around us.  You see pictures of people who look so happy on vacation and the message that goes to your brain is that if you go there it will make your life more worthy.  You see pictures of a family who look so happy in their well lit spacious house and you think that must be where happiness is.  It must be cause you see it in these pictures and everyone else says it is too.  Well, maybe they don’t always say it but that’s the kind of energy they give out.  All this is just faith though and not factual but it really just seems like what you’re supposed to do.

Belief is all people have sometimes even if it’s not the belief in grand ideas of riches and love.  The belief that you are someone in someway keeps you going even if it’s just fuel from misery and ego.   When people are faced with the possibility that their main beliefs might be bollocks the first reaction is to fight it cause they’re scared.  After you’ve believed in a way of living and thinking so long you can’t even imagine living a different life.  It’s like taking a main ingredient out of a popular recipe.  It’s going to taste really different.  I conformed to so many things before cause I believed I had to.  Even though I thought it was stupid I still did it.  That’s how strong believing is.  It makes you do things you don’t want to do cause you don’t know what else to believe in.   A belief can stay with you a whole lifetime and die with you.  We’re so desperately wanting to be something and not nothing in life that we’ll believe anything that makes us feel better.

Religion is faith and so are the cultural beliefs that we have in our society.  The common beliefs in society regarding family, friends, love, success, you name it, are all based on faith and not fact.  But it’s not looked at as a faith but instead, “real life.”  The trickiest beliefs are the ones like religion where you can never find out the truth until you’re dead and even then who knows.  Even when our cultural beliefs don’t seem to materialize we still believe in them.  We might just think it hasn’t happened for us yet or that we failed in achieving them cause of some shortcoming from ourselves.  Often we don’t think that maybe it’s a bullshit belief.  Unlike Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, there aren’t enough people to tell you that some things just aren’t true.

I used to believe the same things that the people around me believed.  My life was never a good projection of what these beliefs were and that was the basis for most of my sadness.  It was like a game and it always felt like I was losing or just treading water.  A big reason why you associate  yourself with the people you do is because your lives are probably based on similar beliefs.  Once you stop believing though then it’s over.  If you no longer believe in Jesus then you’re not going to want to go to church anymore or be around Jesus lovers.  If you hate going to church and all of the people there, you might still go as long as you believe.

It sucks when you don’t believe in anything.  I don’t really.  It’s depressing.  I used to believe in people and ego but I just can’t do it anymore.  People generally suck sooner or later and ego is for fools.  I’ve felt shitty about myself most of my life but could always find a way to trick myself that I was in someway special in society.  These days I sometimes think I’m special but it’s more like the kids in the portable 1 block from all the other kids special.

Life is like a game

You’ve probably heard the term,  “life is like a game.”  I think it’s pretty accurate for most people.  A game is something people play that has rules and everyone wants to be the winner or at least not the loser or sometimes they are just happy to be able to play.  If you don’t play by the rules you get penalized and fall  behind everyone else.  You have a choice to not play but then you’ll have no one else to play with.  The most popular game in life is to make money, achieve social status, raise a family, have a significant other, be respected, etc.  This is like basketball, football, hockey…the sports that the majority watch and talk about.  Saying “screw you” to the game of life or failing at it is like playing lacrosse, field hockey, water polo or some other unglamorous sport…you will have a hard time finding anyone to play with or getting admiration.

I think being obsessed with sports is retarded.  Millions and millions of people (mainly males) would be offended by that statement but I think it’s true.  Why does someone even care if “their team” wins or loses?  If they win the championship what do they get out of it?  Nothing! Not even a day off work or a coupon.  Probably even less than nothing cause of all the money and time devoted to this team.  It just shows you how life is so meaningless for most people.  Who are you really rooting for?  A bunch of people who never lived in your city, who will leave for another team within a few years.

In Canada, hockey is the #1 sport and if you are a guy and you don’t like hockey people think there is something wrong with you.  Our team in Vancouver is comprised of 50% non Canadians and no one is from Vancouver.  How is that “our team?”  When you were in high school your basketball team was comprised of people who went to your high school not people from other schools or other cities.

People need something to live for I guess.  I’ve known people who would believe that having kids and seeing the Vancouver Canucks win the Stanley cup was all there is to life.  Really?   Whatever.  I guess when you have nothing else to believe in, life can seem meaningless.  I used to really like watching hockey and was really into it come playoff time.  It was like I was part of the team just because I lived in the same city.  People just want to be  part of something.  To be able to band together cause of some commonality.  It’s not really “your team” though.  How is it?  You’re just some schmuck who lives in the same city this team plays in.  You think these people are playing for you?  Ya right, they are playing for their million dollar salaries.  It’s just another thing in life that I used to believe in but no longer do.

 

 

 

 

Staying indoors sucks the life out of you

Woke up this morning and laid around and fell back asleep again.  Woke up and watched a BBC nature dvd.  1pm rolls around and I feel like total crap inside and out.  I had to get outside so I did some exercise and walked around for 20 minutes.  Once I came back from my walk I was all of a sudden inspired to wash my car, shampoo my floor mat (I only did 1 of them) and do laundry.  I had no ambitions to do any of these things when I was laying around breathing in stale air.  I guess that’s my positive inspirational speech for you all.

In my mid 20′s I worked at a call center responding to customer questions and concerns through instant messaging.  I was stuck at a desk for 8 hours a day.  Not sure how I did it but maybe when I was younger I had more tolerance for stuff I didn’t like.  Being stuck indoors drove me nuts.  I wasn’t aware of it at the time though.  I would sneak off to the washroom not to use the facilities but just to get away from my desk.  I would just stand by the sink and dread going back.  At times there was this feeling of wanting to jump out of the window cause my mind and body were so restless.  Anyway that job stunk but the pay was ok and the benefits were really good.  Another instance where I sold my soul.  Anyone who works at a call center and says they like their job is probably a liar liar pants on fire.  There’s really nothing to like.  People yell at you and ask you not so smart questions all day.  The being stuck at the desk part might be the worst thing for me  Time crawls…like really crawls.  Not sure if I could do a desk type job again.  Plus your mind and eyes get all zombied out by the end of the shift.

Ever since I started blogging I never really put much effort into reading blogs until recently.  I’ve been surfing the tag, ‘thoughts’ and the blogs listed there get me all confused.  I come out of it not knowing what to think sometimes.  It ranges from super positive to super depressing to super normal to super anything.  It sometimes makes me question what I normally think.  I can always relate to the more depressing, cynical and hopeless type posts but don’t want to disregard the somewhat positive ones that my mind wants to quickly reject sometimes.

Just want to say Sundays suck when you work Monday to Friday.  It’s like the come down from getting high.  There’s the Monday Blues and then there’s Anxiety Sundays.  I guess that’s a bit extreme.  Maybe Somber Sundays.

How I got scammed on WordPress

People often like a story about how someone else was scammed.  It just makes people feel a little better.  The title says I got scammed but really, I scammed myself.

It all started around October of 2012 when a blogger (Journeyman1977) commented on one of my posts.  As I usually do when someone comments, I check out their blog.  This guy had a fascinating story about his life that also made you feel sympathetic for him.  He wrote about how he was framed in Sri Lanka by his family member and had to spend 17 months in a shithole jail.  While having posted bail and awaiting trial he made a decision to flee and become a fugitive.  His plan was to arrange an escape to France or America where he has citizenship.

During his time spent hiding from the authorities he started a blog and wrote constantly on his blog and others.  It seemed so fitting as he had so much time on his hands with limited options.  His followers grew immensely as did the heartfelt comments of support for his situation.  Many followers including myself were there for every step of his journey through despair, alcoholism, betrayal, ptsd and hope.  His comments always appeared genuine as did his reasons for blogging and interacting.

Fast forward to about March of this year and a blog post he had published described a man who was alone on the streets with no funds and losing all hope to be able to ward off capture in the very near future.  This is where I go retarded.  I wanted to help this person as his story seemed genuine.  This is why I say I scammed myself.  There was no pleading for a donation of any sort but I took it upon myself to offer a bit of money to him.  My philosophy was that I’m not financially starving so if I can, why shouldn’t I help someone out who needs it.  He gladly accepted and was very appreciative.  I sent him $250 through Western Union…the #1 preferred method of scammers.

It was not much longer after this when things just started to not make sense.  He got greedy and so did his story.   I’m leaving a lot out cause it would take me forever to give you all the details.    With contact through instant messaging via smartphone his stories began to not make sense and mostly revolved around situations where he needed more money.  I refused as it didn’t seem genuine anymore.  Once I fully realized I was taken for a ride I ceased communication.  His whole story was a lie.

So what was the his whole motive from the beginning?  I think it was to get attention.  He thinks he’s an aspiring writer who decided to test out the waters on WordPress.  Every person he deceived was another pat on the back for him and his ego.  It wasn’t that his story was so tight and refined that made it believable.  It was the hearts of his readers that made it believable cause if any of us thought with our brains instead of our hearts we would have written him off right away.

Believe it or not I’m not as embarrassed about getting frauded in this fashion as one probably would be.  I can definitely understand how anyone reading this would think I’m a totally stupid and a naive person.  I don’t blame you.  Looking back I can think of 2 dozen things that made no or not much sense.  It was an unbelievable story to begin with.  I think another reason why many of us bought into this guy’s story is that we didn’t think a person would actually take so much time and effort to fabricate a fraudulent story for months and dedicate so much energy deceiving others on WordPress.  It was a full time job for him to make up stories, read blogs and to comment on them as well.  He told a tale of an ex-military soldier, aspiring writer, fugitive that wanted nothing from blogging but just a way to vent and reach out.  In reality he’s just a bottom of the barrel person from a 3rd world country that can’t get any attention with his writing without being a fraud.  He talks about how ashamed he feels for his father about how he turned out.  I’m sure your father is proud of you now.  The worst kind of person is one who takes away from the world, leaving it a shittier place than if he wasn’t born at all.

The $250 doesn’t affect me much. The thought of what I could have done with it instead crosses my mind.  Of course I think about what I could have purchased for myself but I also think about how I could have given it to someone who really needed it.  I could have given $25 to 10 homeless people.  $10 to 25 homeless people.  I could have even given it to someone who wasn’t even homeless!  Anything would have been better.

The only thing more amazing to me than getting scammed $250 is that I allowed the opportunity for it to happen.  This is not something I ever thought I would ever do.  Give money to someone that I don’t know in another country for a cause that I can’t even be sure is real?  At least when a bum off the street is bullshitting me for money, I can be pretty sure that he at least needs it.  It’s not like one of those stories you hear about someone getting scammed off a dating website or from ebay.  In those situations people are expecting something in return or their greed got the better of them.  I expected nothing.  I just wanted to help a guy out who I thought was in a real shit situation.  I guess this guy was part of my community at the time and I must have been in a spiritual mood.  I fucked up and my guess is that I won’t forget this ever.  Suspicions and a scar will always come to mind before doing anything charitable for a stranger again.  But then again I doubt there will be another situation as retarded as this so I shouldn’t be so jaded.  I’ll take it as another life lesson.  I’m out $250 so the least I can do is get a story out of it.