Author: CK Project

In 2011, I started the CK Project as a way to hold myself accountable during my weight loss journey. In 2013 I had a mental breakdown and almost ended my life. A year later I found myself in a position to reflect on my choices in life and decided to turn my life around. I started blogging on Facebook to help myself heal, and to show others that my mental health struggles weren’t the end of my journey. I used this as therapy, and a way to reach out to others who might be struggling. In 2016, I started blogging on Wordpress, and it was a way to help spread the word of my own experiences. I got back into the weight loss journey in 2017 and had the Gastric Sleeve done in December 2017. I’m open about my struggles with depression and anxiety that sometimes comes with it.

Building A Better Me: 8 Years of Blogging

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Here’s the rewrite of this blog from a month or so ago.I got reminded that I had been blogging on WordPress six-years ago. I started blogging using Facebook in 2014 to start sorting out that mess that was in my head. I’ve gone through so many changes since then, with one of them being that I followed my passion and went to film school.

I’ve said before that the idea of blogging was not only to share the experiences I’d gone through, but I also wanted to blog to help me with my writing. It’s really helped with my script writing as well. Surprising enough, I’ve found a support from people that had shared their experiences with common situations. I’d even been thanked for expressing unspoken feelings for some of my readers.

I think the best way to describe the last eight-years is growth. I’ve grown so much with my mental health, and it helped me get better with my physical health as well. I’ve better connected with people, and I’m grateful for the journey that it continues to take me on. For once in my life I feel present and like I belong in the vessel I live in.

The experience of not feeling that I belonged in my body, and not be emotionally connected had been the default setting for most of my adult life. If I wouldn’t have grown through the expression of blogging. I’ve met a community and my interests in life have gone in unexpected directions.

I would say that blogging has been a form of therapy for me. Much like walking is my form of meditation, and both places are where I collect my thoughts together. Yet as similar and with the thoughts, they are far different activities and the thought process is generally different, but only sort of, because my walks have been a place for me to work out some mental health issues. The only difference is that blogging hasn’t ever helped me develop a character.

What is the purpose of blogging though? Is this some vain attempt to draw attention to my issues and get sympathy? I don’t think that was how I ever intended it, and yes, I’ve been questioned. It’s just me laying out the realities that are apart of my life. It also was intended to let those who do suffer know that they don’t suffer alone.

I don’t speak the names of those who have confided in me, because I think that it’s not my place to out someone. Just like I think that people’s belief systems are personal and it’s for them to share. I try hard to steer away from politics because of the ugliness that I’ve seen go on through social media. I will say this though; both sides have valid points, and I believe that we need both sides to bring balance, much like the light and dark side’s of the force.

Outside of that, my social media is for updates, motivation and working on the brands. It’s amazing what kind of community support that can be found when you look for it. It’s refreshing that not all of the internet is toxic. So, I suggest if there’s something that you seek, look for that community. Most are patient and willing to answer questions.

That’s another thing that blogging, and the weight loss journey have done to help build that better version of me, is get me more personal and in touch with people. Some of those connections have been so surprising. Plus, it’s really helped me grow because connection was something I had only been good at faking in my earlier years.

Hitting rock bottom is never fun, and it’s a place that I’ve felt that I’ve hit a few times. I’m sure that there are many who would say that they felt the same way. Guess what? That’s part of that community that you might be looking for. Nothing bonds people more than a commonly shared experience. This could be anywhere from problems to hobbies. The internet does give you access to knowledge, and more than just cat videos.

At some point I think that I might need to evolve this blog into something a bit more niche. Sometimes I feel that I’ve lost all inspiration to blog, which is evident by how few they come out these days. Hell, there are times that it takes me a few weeks to get out a blog(This has been in the works for a couple of months here).

I think part of the problem is the fact that I’ve just not been inspired by much. I’ve been more into my world building for the scripts that I’ve been writing for the last few years, and I need to buckle down and that through some of those a bot more. It just seems that I’ll start getting distracted by other things, and I lose that focus that makes me happy.

With that, I think that I’m gonna call this a wrap, and hope that inspiration will hit me for another blog soon.

Building a Better Me? The Mixed Bag

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I think I’m going to start out by saying that this blog here will probably be NSFW. The past several months I’ve been struggling with coming to terms with a few things, and quite frankly, I’ve been having emotions all over the place. That’s good though, right?

I’ve not been a person to be very in touch with my emotions over the last thirty-years. The first issue with that stems from the fact that I suffered a traumatic head injury at the age of thirteen. I had to relearn so much, even embarrassingly having to use the bathroom. I wasn’t sure how I should react to things. Through that experience, I had become a different person, and my parent’s say that I was a stark contrast to the person I was.

I was sensitive as a child, but I had become much harder after the accident. My parent’s would say that I became more callous. I can remember several times where this was proven true, and I feel that I would only mime those feelings that I should have shown during specific events in my life. This is how I spent my years in high school, telling my girlfriend’s that I loved them, but was that because I was trying to have sex with them? Maybe it was because that was the way I was supposed to feel, and I just never really associated the true feelings with it? I think that perhaps it was a bit of both.

As I set this information as a foundation, I’ve been finding myself trying to connect a bit more with people. I know that the transition of connection started after my weight loss surgery, but it’s gotten more so in the last few months. In part, the reason is that I’m trying to push my brands and get some exposure; in another part, I truly want to show support for people who are through the same experiences that I’ve gone through.

One reason is because the decision of having weight loss surgery and the aftermath isn’t easy. I don’t understand why it seems to be so controversial among family members. My family hasn’t been the problem, but I’ve had other’s share their own experiences with family members disapproving of that choice. It doesn’t seem like an easy answer when dealing with these family members as it adds to the drama that might already be going on mentally.

There’s plenty of psychological battles going on inside after the surgery. Changes with the relationship with food. After a time the realization that the skin will always hang loose, and that more surgery would be required to fix that, and often times it leaves scars that are even more unattractive.

Getting back to the point is that I’ve been slowly connecting with people and I’ve always been able to at the bare minimum fake sympathy. Yet lately, I’ve become overwhelmed with emotions as I find myself conflicted with where my life is, and with where my heart feels it wants to be. I’ve felt intense moments of love, and even more intense moments of sadness. This last weekend I went to a twenty-nine-year-old’s celebration of life, and I’ve known this girl since she was four.

It’s profound on how little time I spent with her, that she had impacted my life. She was, at the time, my girlfriend’s little sister. This small child with down-syndrome, who had the biggest smile in the world. Watching the slide show of her childhood, there were strong emotions on seeing this life so full of happiness, and love.

Then the level of stress has been a bit higher as current events have made life a bit more of a struggle. Inflation is up, and while I have a good job, it feels like I’m still eighteen, trying to make a living on minimum wage. It’s frustrating, but I love my job, and the opportunities that has been provided by it. I spent too many years working high-stress-jobs, and it’s just frustrating to feel like I need to get another job, to help support my family. I know that I’m not the only one feeling the stress, friends have shared similar experiences.

On top of this, I still have to realize that maybe I try to do too much at times. I was taking a class on Information Technology and I was progressing along, yet I realize that it wasn’t for me. So, I made the decision to continue to perfect the crafts and skills that I already have. I’m a storyteller, and I think I’ve always have been. That’s where I’m putting my full focus into. I’ve been able to share my stuff with several people in the past couple of months, and I’ve had nothing but positive feedback.

Something else that I’ve been struggling with is the fact that I don’t seem to relate to most of my friends anymore. I mean that I love them and we’ve formed bonds that would last a life time, however as I continue on, I feel like I’ve changed so much that it’s hard to relate to those who are/or where close to me. I will always appreciate them, but things just feel different. That’s what happens when shared experiences seems like a distant memory.

I supposed that is something humanly unique about experience; we can share in it, and have a different point of view on it. I’ve noticed that the journey I’ve been on has made me less vicious with my humor, and I feel better about it. I’m not the instigator that I once was, yet I’m still able to see it in my own children. The unfortunate part is that I still witness the bickering and fighting going on with the rest of my imitate family.

As I reflect on the last forty-three-years of my life. I feel that I’ve finally come to the place where I’m finally grown up. I’m facing the harsh realities that time is moving and the thoughts of immortality is a wish long gone. I see it in my parent’s generation as they’ve all finally started to look their age, and the health problems that comes along with people who, could have taken a bit better care of themselves. With this realization of growing up, my perspective on things that matter have changed, the value of life, and self-worth has also come into focus.

An even harsher realization is that I somewhat regret the focuses of my youth, I wish that I would have pursued some of my desires much sooner, and I wish that I would have been more present in life. I spent too many years looking out the eyes and being stuck in the body of a person I didn’t even know. This is the one point that seems to bother me the most. Yet, I’m trying to do better. I wonder how many other’s have this same experience? It’s one of those bitter pills that has to be swallowed down.

As we get older, does the thoughts of the end come more frequent? It’s not something I’m scared of, and it’s not something I’m ready for, but I do think about it. I think about how my children will fair in life, once I’m gone. Will I out live my loved ones? Who will be there in the end? What’s going to happen once I have to deal with the inevitable time where I finally do lose some of those closest to me? Will these intense emotions that I’ve been feeling, get worse?

This is the director and that’s a wrap….

Building A Better Me part 6

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Wow, what a ride, and 2017 was a crazy year that I completed school, shot my student film and had my weight loss surgery. This was the point in my life that I finally started to realize that I needed to build a better me, and losing the weight that had trapped me in a body that I didn’t feel was mine was a huge step.

I look back at the time before I lost weight, and I see the pictures of myself. It’s crazy to see that person that lived in that body, it’s like it wasn’t even me. I had years of feeling that I wasn’t in my own body. I felt that I was trapped in someone else’s body. It’s a strange feeling, almost surreal.

I almost wonder if a lot of feeling trapped during that dark period of 2013 was partially caused by this? It’s something I’ll have to contemplate at a later time. So, over the years between 2014-2017 I had found myself making changes, investing in myself for once. There were so many things that I didn’t like about how I was, but I was determined to be better, and one of the biggest things I had to do was stop speaking negatively about others, and even myself. I’ve always had a way with self deprecation and maybe I was doing more damage to myself than I realized.

It’s funny how you can look back and realize that kids being kids, and the words that aren’t supposed to hurt, actually affect you through out your life. Stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Remember that? What a crock of shit that turned out to be. My cushion had be the fat and weight that surrounded me, I felt like that was supposed to protect me, but how does that negativity that surround my body, and kept me feeling trapped, actually protect me? How little did I know that the choices that I made would change my outlook in life.

The worst part of the bullying and the words are that that little voice inside my head tends to decide to echo those words to me on a regular basis. This is where my depression and insecurities tend to come from.

I hadn’t touched this blog in a few months. I’m sorry.

The hard part is getting those voices of the childhood bullies out of my head. Even today I still find that I doubt things and often times feel like I need some reassurance that I’m of value. It’s something I’ve been working on, and I think I’m getting the hang of it. Does it ever go away? Does those insecurities ever completely leave us behind? All I know is that I try to be better than what I was. I’m constantly trying to be something better. I think that’s part of the reason I chose to stay busy is because I don’t have to deal with things while doing something else. I honestly wonder if that’s a reason that so many people are so glued to the latest distraction: i.e. newspapers, television, social media, cellphones? Is this the evolution that keeps people from dealing with shit in the real world?

I’ve come to the point where I realize that change is constant, we are always evolving, and I know that people are uncomfortable with change. Maybe that’s part of the secret to the distraction? Not having to deal with change?

I hadn’t touched this for a few more weeks.

I tend to do too much, and with that I’ve been stumped creatively. I wish that it was easy to finish blogging, but there are times that I just can’t seem to find the words… I’m gonna stop this one here as I’ve got something else on my mind. This is the director and that’s a wrap.

Building A Better Me part 5

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In the last blog, I talked about becoming a father, taking on responsibility, and not being prepared for being a real estate agent. Part of my failure at being an agent was that I was a bit too honest about things and stopped some of my clients from making poor financial decisions. This was another high stress time in my life, and I had other people tell me that I probably would have done better with another broker. I have friends in the business and I’m glad that they could have a career in that field, it’s just not for me.

I also started finding that mindset was something that was the key to success. I just wouldn’t fully realize it until later. Feeling entitled had been a downfall of mine in my younger years, and I was now just trying to support my family. By the time I had gotten to my security job, I was finally making more money than Sarah was, and we started to do better with our lives.

As someone who had never done a thirteen hour day, and the kind of work that security was a difficult task, and by the third day, I was ready to quit. Yet there I was, sticking it out, getting sunburned, watching the sunrise, and set all while doing my job. Thirteen years in that environment and I made some of the best connections ever while there.

Once I got used to the job, the pacing wasn’t so bad. There were good people I had to deal with, and then some of those who are just miserable as it is. Yet for the first time, I had a “real job” and Sarah and my life was working towards something better. It would be about a year into the job that life would take an unexpected turn.

Sarah, who had been making decent money had lost her job, and my thirteen-hour-work-days had gotten reduced to ten-hour-days. We had taken a loss of two-thirds our income at the time. We had to make some decisions, and then we would find a way to make things work. While the loss of pay was bad, I will admit that the reduced schedule made life a bit easier to manage, and not feel like I was wasting a full-day at work.

Between the loss in pay, a major shift in protocol at work, Sarah and the kids fighting, and the fact that the new procedures were making customers, a bit more than unhappy; it became over whelming, and I had a break down a few years after this started.

2013 was the year that everything came to a head, I had been miserable, and I felt that I didn’t deserve better, I wanted to run away and hit the reset button. I had almost taken my life. So how does this apply to building a better me? If you’ve been following me for sometime, then this story is already familiar to you, and I don’t really want to get back into that struggle, just for the sake of telling it. So, I’m going to tell you why this is important.

In order to improve myself, I had to stop letting ego get in the way. I had to have that break down, reassess things, and figure out where I wanted to be in life.Symbolic to tearing down a building, and building something bigger, stronger. This is the way of the world. There are many who would share that their darkest hours where what forged a better tomorrow, just look up articles, look up Youtube videos. It’s really a common story. It’s that rough point that helps cement the foundation for something bigger.

2013 wasn’t the year I was ready for that, in fact, I wouldn’t be ready for that for a few more years. However, this was the start of the tear down, even before I knew it. I felt that I had made changes between the years of 2011-2013. They weren’t the easiest as I’ve already stated, but it was for sure some of the best for realizing that I needed help.

When I had started the CK Project in 2011, it was about holding myself accountable for weight loss and hoping that it would inspire people. I had made many friends while in Weight Watchers, but depression took me out of it. The plus side was that my brand had started a fan base. That fan base stuck by me even as things morphed into something else. It just took a few years before the CK Project became about mental health and my struggles with it.

There was the rebuilding of the foundation, in telling my struggles, it helped me sort out my feelings and I had found that other people that I had known had suffered similar issues as well. My first blogs had been on Facebook and it was in 2015, that I had converted over to an official blog site when things really started taking off. It’s funny as I’ve gone back to those first years and realize that blogging was also an exercise to help me improve my writing. I remember that I wanted to do at least 500-words-per-blog, only to find myself struggling to come up with more than 200-words.

At that time I thought that this was going to be the hardest thing to do. As the years went on though, I found that it had become easier to write, and while I write in a casual, conversational stye, it’s also helped me to improve my script writing, which is a different style all together. It was at this time that I started to realize that I could serve more than one purpose when doing things, blogging was just a way to improve upon my creative writing skills.

I guess as I look back, as I was starting to find the momentum to improve myself in 2015, 2017 was the time that things really started to take off. I had gotten so clumsy in my weight gain that I had lost all my balance and I would fall everywhere. This was that moment I needed to realize that I was ready to get my act together. I just needed to figure out how.

Well, that’s about it for this blog(which has taken a few weeks to write), so stay tuned as I go into getting into the gastric sleeve surgery and how my weight loss journey really took off. I’ll get into where my mindset had changed even more, and how that seemed to inspire even more people. This is the director, and that’s a wrap.

#Building A Better Me Part 4

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As we left off in the last part, I was getting through a rough transition with my first wife. We did some shitty things to each other, but in the end it was for the best. Not knowing how broken I was, I ended up getting back in touch with the woman, who would end up being my partner and best friend for twenty-plus years.

Sarah came into my life as I had become lost and directionless. My mom took a liking to her almost from the beginning, while stating that she was the one I should have married. My parents would consider her a daughter soon after our relationship had blossomed.

We were young, and not even a month into our relationship we ended up pregnant with our first child. I was scared because I didn’t even know if I could do it, and Sarah was constantly sick, and the pregnancy took a toll on her body. This sickness continued throughout most of the nine months.

One thing that Sarah had taught me early on was how to use the internet, and I had made friends with someone with whom I’ve been friends with over twenty-years now. She had been there to help me out as I was scared, for both the mother of my child and my unborn child. I didn’t know what to do. She’s also one of my most cherished friends.

Side note: I had to take a bit of time to sort things out. It’s been over a month since the first part of this blog.

I found myself in a position of uncertainty, my goals had to shift as I had lost my job in January of 2001 because my job just didn’t have anymore work for me to do. Also at this time I decided to got back to school, and I was finding that I was getting bits of money from being a tutor. I think this was a turning point in my life as I was trying to take the responsibility to take care of my then girlfriend and our unborn child.

Dealing with the trauma that was caused by my first marriage, I felt that a lot that happened during that time was a bit robotic, and almost an outer-body experience for a good portion of the next few years. The highlight was that my first born child came into this world. It wasn’t easy by any means, and we would be in and out of the hospital for the last couple of trimesters. We survived it though, yet I was scared to hold my girl for the first year. I was afraid to break her, yet I was happy to be a father.

2002 would be the year that I would start my growth professionally. Sarah had talked me into going to a casting call and I ended up an extra in Disney’s Holes, and with that I crammed the last month in school into a couple of weeks. That also ended up being part of the closing chapter up at the community college.

After Holes, I ended up with a job at Staples. There was something that I worked hard, and with that there were times that I felt that I was owed something, and I’m sure that I conveyed that in some of my actions with management. 2003 was when I finally decided that I was going to work on my career and stopped school completely.

By 2004 while I was trying to better myself, I had the opportunity to become a Real Estate agent. I wasn’t ready for the responsibility that would come with it, as I got my license in 2005, then Sarah and I became pregnant with our son. As I was happy to be having a second child, it did throw a wrench into our plans, with another bout of being in and out of the hospital for the next several months.

I stuck it out until January 2007, where I kind of hand a bit of a break down. Like I said, I really wasn’t ready for the responsibility of what came with being an agent. So, I ended up taking a bit of a break, before going back into the work force.

When I started looking for work, I had gone to our local place that helps with getting employment. This is where I had learned about positive affirmations, and while I thought it was ridiculous I had tried it after I had gotten a job with Kmart. This was when I was finally starting to get ambition to do better.

I interviewed and I got a position as a sales clerk in electronics. I was good when it came to customer service, as a matter of fact, I often would get calls from the front desk being praised on how good I was with the customers. During the Christmas season, I was getting the second most amount of hours besides the head of the department. My supervisor was grooming me to take over. I can’t say that I ever had a bad day while working there, and I tried to get full-time, but they didn’t hire full-time.

In January of 2008, I got a call for doing full-time security, and it was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up.

Well that’s it for this blog, and as alway I’m the director and that’s a wrap. I’ll be working on more of this blog soon, and will be starting the Building A Better Me podcast soon. If you have comments or questions, leave them here, or email me at ckproject@zohomail.com.

#Building a Better Me part 3

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A bit of a recap, part one and two were about how I compensated, in school with depression and loneliness. While also figuring my acting skills to build upon a lie to that helped build my confidence. I failed to mention that during this time, I had three separate attempts at committing suicide. So, a lesson that can be picked out from this is that I’m a survivor, and that I’m glad that I made it as far as I have.

Now, my family and I decide to move back to California, to my parents hometown. On the way I thought that this would be a good way to get a fresh start, and I decided that I was going to just be myself, and not lie to make me something that I wasn’t. At this time, I had made the choice to take a year off of school, and just work and live my life has an adult. We moved here, I got a hair cut, and pierced my ear. I do recall that my parents, weren’t exactly happy with that.

With this new phase in my life, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, I started going to church with family, made friends, dating some pretty great people. Some I hurt, other’s hurt me, but that’s life. Work life was interesting because I would meet the sister of my first wife when I was working at McDonalds.

After my first year, the ego thought that we were doing well enough and I enrolled in college. This would be the introduction to theater life. One of those things that I was adept at was taking criticism and learning to be a better performer because of it. I had learned somewhere that criticism was meant to make you better, and not necessarily to break you down. I had fellow actors who viewed that as an attack on their acting abilities. Ego really gets in the way sometimes.

So, how does this really go with building a better me? Well, outside of being an authentic me, I don’t think I was ready to become someone who was self-aware of my behavior. Dating had led to marriage, heartbreak, and finding love again. It was during this time that life would take some interesting turns.

I want to say that dating Mariah had been an experience. I loved her, yet we would fight, and I had an affair the summer before we got married. If you would have asked me at that time, why I did it? I would have said that I wanted to be sure that I loved her. As I looked back, I was looked at by someone who found me attractive, and I needed the validation at the time. Why would I tell her about this? It’s because for once in my life, I actually felt bad about doing a douche move like that.

What happened after put the red flags up that I think kept me in the relationship long after it should have ended. I was scared, and what’s worse I wasn’t sure what she would do, or what she could do. After breaking her heart, she handed me a letter, it was completely written in her blood. My ego was scared for my life, but we worked on it, and made things work. Big red flags! What possessed me to marry her? Again, I was in love, yet I hated her father, and he felt the same way back.

Decisions that I had made at this time, had hurt some good people, Sarah was one who got hurt, and I never thought I would be able to make things up to her for it. Maybe, I’ll be a decent person yet?

On the day of mine and Mariah’s marriage, was going to the best day of our lives. It was a good day, kind of awkward trying to get her stuff to blend in with my stuff. It was the next day that I should have stopped everything. She had become something totally different over night, like going from the woman I had known for two-years, to someone I had never met. What? How?

It was an act, it was a way for her and her mother to get her out of her parents house. It was about control, I couldn’t talk to my friends from out of state, in particular, the females. Crazy, isn’t it? Oh, and I couldn’t watch professional wrestling anymore because the female wrestler’s were prettier than her.

I’m sure someone is thinking that this was karma for some of the shitty things I had done in my life? The emotional torture that would come up as from time-to-time she would tell me that we were pregnant, just so that at a time later, she had miscarried. God damnit Chris, what’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you leave? I was in love, and for some reason, I was trying everything that I could to work it out.

Turns out that this story ended up more about control through manipulation. I wasn’t innocent, I mean things turned verbally abusive, and in turn things got thrown around. I was hot headed and stubborn anyway. It was bad, as I was working at Walmart, and she would call just to check up on me, or at least that’s my interpretation of it now. I would have to leave work on several occasions and take her to the ER, some for legitimate reasons, others, because I think she was a bit of a hypochondriac. I know that she didn’t have the best of upbringings. This was from what I observed.

I did try to make things better because after I had left Walmart, I had gotten a telecommunications job. I was making really good money, and I thought things would get better. However, like most stories with any sense of structure, we were getting to the climatic finally of this story. The job was good, yet it took me out of town. I had to take a few trips out of state, like Washington, and while being stuck in traffic in Oregon, I called Mariah to check in and she told me that she was pregnant. Something inside of me was different this time as my response was more of a unenthusiastic oh. I let her go, and went off to finish our trip to Washington for a few day work order up there.

One night while I was on the phone with my bride, she had told me that she miscarried, something about the way I felt was an unenthusiastic oh, sorry about that. I just didn’t seem to have it in me anymore to care.

After I got home, I had found that she had moved out. Cool, means that I could move on with my life, right? I was broken, and anytime we would meet, and try to talk, it ended up with us fighting. All until one day I got a restraining order. I was mad and couldn’t understand why this was happening. Yet after that day, she would call me everyday and say that we would still be together and that it was just her father’s idea. It was redeculouls with the accusations and when we went to separate at court, the judge laughed. Yet that was it, things were finally over.

During this time, Sarah and I just happened to have a chance encounter at the grocery store. She was shocked, because I had a Britney moment where I had shaved my head. I did it before her by-the-way, but it was the way I could start to make-up for being a jerk.

Stay tuned as I come to talk about the transition from being broken, to start healing and becoming a father. There’s still more to a decline of myself, and some improvements along the way. This is the director, and that’s a wrap.

# Building a Better Me part 2

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In the last part I talked about life in grade school and middle school. It was a difficult journey when the peers around me devalued my worth, and my mentality ended up being something that would keep me down. In hindsight, looking at the systematic teachings of classism has shown me why I as an enlisted military child I might have been treated that way.

As I go from my grade school and middle school years, I had moved from being overseas, back to stateside, and it was a bit of a culture shock. I was a bit out of place, but I ended up making some good friends, while doubting myself along the way. Tradition, and a few other things would really affect my first year in high school, as when I was in Junior High it was a seventh through ninth grade institute. As I hit ninth grade, it had been moved back to high school, and the freshmen year, meant that I would be part of the fresh meat class.

Before I move forward with the narrative, I should mention that I had made a friend in wrestling while I was in seventh grade. People would think we were brothers and we got a bit competitive with our dating lives. I would often date his girl when they broke up, to get some sort of validation that I was the better person, I’m aware of it being an asshole move.

So in ninth grade, I got stuck in a wrong place, wrong time situation, that I had gotten put into the creek behind my school during the middle of December, and I remember getting stuck in a full nelson and almost getting my neck snapped because I tried to fight out. I thought that I wold be able to fight my way out of anything, but apparently I wasn’t so smart. I should have known better than to go to the place that the kids liked to go smoke, right off school grounds.

Ninth grade was the year that I did date the same girls as my friend, just because I felt like I had to prove something to somebody, and that friendship would end that same year, because he got told that I said that I could kick his ass, if we fought. Then for the rest of high school, he would be a persistent problem like that. I should have handled that whole situation better.

The other part of my problem is that I didn’t always talk to people I was attracted to with an appropriate attitude, and I would end up in the principle’s office on a couple of occasions. I don’t even really remember where it was that I learned to be that way, I think that I just thought that I was being funny.

I find it hard to talk about high school, I do know that my idea of joking and messing with my friends, had ended up causing problems with people who I never meant to actually draw into the situation, and I wish that I had made some better choices because I know that it there were certain people who had a bad impression of me.

I think it was the summer before my tenth grade year, when so many things changed, and at the time I thought it was for the better, but like Peter Parker’s Uncle been said with great power, comes great responsibility(Amazing Fantasy 15, 1962). I didn’t know how to handle things.

It was the summer and my friends and I would hang out at Roosevelt pool all day. Most summers I would make new friends, maybe find a girlfriend or two, but this summer ended up being different. That’s when I met the girl who ended up changing my world. I won’t mention her name, but I think that she was the first girl I ever fell hard for. It also would be the summer where I would learn how to fake confidence in a way that I would carry for the rest of high school.

Here’s a fact about my health, I have bad skin. I had acne and my back would develop these bad scars called keloids. My back looks like it could have been burned, and this was the summer someone asked if I got burned. My friend who was with me told me to say yes and make up a story for it. He figured that I could lie and give myself a boost of confidence.

For those who know me, or have followed me for some time, I am a storyteller, and as an actor, I can tell a decent bullshit story, and keep it straight. With this being the first lie, I said that I had slept with a gang bangers girlfriend, and that they burned me as punishment. That lead to more and more stories, some for sympathy, others because it was becoming a game. I got mouthy to some people, and the friend who thought that my lying would give me confidence would help fuel my stories.

As my confidence grew, I became somewhat popular, it also led to other’s not liking me. This was what I wanted though, and I became friends with people in the crowd that I wanted to be around. Nothing could go wrong, right? People seem to like larger than life personalities, and I got attention. This is what I wanted, right?

I became a jerk, and I started bullying people that I shouldn’t. Lesser status people didn’t matter, as long as I was feeling somewhat more than what I had been in grade school and middle school. I hurt close friends, but it shouldn’t matter as long as I was seen as something more than I was, right?

It carried all the way through my senior year, where after we were getting prepared to move back out to California. I decided that I wanted to try and be myself, be honest. I was tired of being fake, and I wanted to be someone better than I had been in school. I think this part will be better for another blog.

Thank you for joining my journey on the flawed state of my life, and seeing where hindsight is a bit useless. Just use them as lessons and that’s the best way to use those lessons to become something better. Stay tuned as I will be writing another part to come out next week. This is the director, and that’s a wrap.

# Building a Better Me

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As this is the first blog of the year, I’m thinking that focusing on this where I can improve, and what I have improved on is going to be a good place to start. So, with that being said, why build a better me? Why should anyone care, and why should anybody want to build a better version of themselves? My answer to that becomes a bit more focused on the fact that people never stop growing, evolving. This is a great reason to start working on the better version on yourself.

This comes down to a series of difficult tasks that most people have problems doing. Hell, the steps I took, were hard, and often times even more difficult to accept. First off, self awareness and evaluation take front and center. To be able to grasp taking that hard look at yourself, you’ve got to be able to let ego go. This is so much harder to do than just saying that it can be done. It’s like having to see yourself as the world see you, and not the disillusioned version that we all tend to think of ourselves. Truth is, it sucks.

When you peel away the ego and get that hard look at yourself, you might not like what you see. I know that I didn’t. Realizing that my ego was over compensating for the fact that I wasn’t the great guy I thought I was, that hurt. What was worse, finding out that I was a bit shitty to people as well, and I hurt good people in the process. How do we get through this? How do we accept the new reality?

Maybe we should start with, why? Why did we get to this point in life? How did this sweet child end up being close to egotistical?

I think the first thing is to admit that we are fragile. Male, female, non-binary, we all have something inside of us that makes us fragile. I remember being a sensitive child who’s feelings got hurt constantly by the children I was surrounded by for five days a week. Even as I was little, I felt like I needed to be able to do anything just as well, if not better than everyone else. Often times that would end up causing more issues and blow up in my face, than not.

The feeling of wanting to belong and fit in, I think might have been part of what caused me to feel that way. I tried for years to do whatever I could to become part of the popular crowd. It’s only natural to want to fit in. It’s a survival tool, not wanting to be focused on as the object of bullying.

I should also point out that even talking about this makes me hypocritical because I too had found people that I thought was less than me, and I bullied them as well. The sad part is, that hindsight is the worst superpower in the world, and at that time of my own life, I don’t think I really thought anything about it. Picking on lessers was part of the natural order after all.

So, I go about life as a kid not accepting the responsibilities that were in my life, and that my issues were caused by something else. Though the loneliness also caused me to want to die. Don’t get me wrong, I did have friends, and I wasn’t a complete asshole to everyone, but I did have some of those days. Just like watching my own kids, I remember fighting with friends and telling each other about how much we hated their guts. I also remember being back to being friends not that long later.

As I got older, things seemed to get better, the loneliness stuck around, even when I was with a group of friends. The girls I liked, weren’t usually interested, and I tried so hard to be cool. I had a friend in junior high tell me that I needed to stop trying so hard, because I was already cool. Ego didn’t want to hear any part of that conversation. I didn’t seem to have the feeling of being cool or popular. Though after my accident, I learned that I wasn’t as unpopular as I thought. Though, that didn’t stick in my mind.

I just want to point out that as I’ve mentioned in other blogs, my mind has always been my worst enemy.

It was after my accident that I got to dance with a girl for the first time. I initially rejected her, because she wasn’t the girl I really wanted to dance with. Yet, we ended up dancing together at several dances, and she’s a wonderful person. Then I got to dance with the girl, the one I wanted to be with so badly. We had a few dances, and she has been a good friend of mine ever since. Yet, somewhere in that brain of mine, I still didn’t think I was ever good enough.

I’ll finish that story in my next blog, but I want to analyze somethings. Being self-involved, I didn’t see the kinds of struggles that others go through. In particular that popular girls that I totally crushed on. I didn’t look at what kind of value I brought anybody, I just felt that if I was better at things, if I was better looking, if I was just more, then maybe someone would let me know that I was worth something. As I sit here now, I don’t think that thought process would have changed, even if it hit me in the face like a baseball bat.

As I look back, most of it was trivial and I should have be able to handle things better. Thinking about how kids yell at us, telling us that we don’t understand, we do. I just think that sometimes we don’t think that those issues are a big deal, especially at that time in their lives. That’s an aspect that I sometimes forget about, as I brush of the child because I’m busy doing something. I think this is something every generation deals with. Not that it’s really that much different, but kids today do seem like they are more self aware than we were at that age.

Stay tuned as I write a part too, and also be on the look out as I’m going to be doing a new podcast on the whole concept of building a better me. This is the director and that’s a wrap.

Covid-19 Up in This Mother

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I avoided it like a quick reacting ninja for the last two years, as it was closer than expected at my last job, but now as we hit close to the third year of this pandemic, my wife had tested positive with Covid-19. So we’ve a family full of sick people, myself being one, but my test came out negative.

Note that I started this a few days ago, and I ended up being sick for a bit of time.

Sarah had been sick for a few days even before we got tested. She was laid out bad, and I know with there immune compromised system, that she takes most illnesses harder than many people that I know. It seems that it takes twice as long to get over as well. So, with her, Lily and, myself on the quarantine route, I had found myself coming down with something not even a day later.

I hate being cooped up. That’s something I’ve hated ever since I went into my weight loss journey. That, and the fact that I’ve taken a break from being overly invested in doing martial arts at the gym, I’m feeling a bit disappointed with myself because I miss being active and I need to get back into training. Especially now that I’m almost ready for my Yoga cert.

Sometimes, that break, and the reflection in life is required to get that focus back in, so that one can continue on the path of success. This pandemic has been a mixed bag since the beginning. It started out that it didn’t completely affect me too bad as I was already on the night shift as it was. So, beside seeing fewer people during my shift, I was able to focus on paying down some debts, and it helped to keep things in a positive perspective.

The hard part was watching helplessly as people that I know were passing from this disease, just to hear that it was just a “flu”. When it gets said like that, I feel a tinge of arrogance with those words. Even if it’s not meant that way. It bugs me, and this was before people I actually cared about. Most people I’ve observed say that hadn’t seemed to have lost anybody to it, or someone of a significant impact on their lives.

The biggest issue with this is the fact that it seems to me, that opinions are coming from a political point of view. The fact about the vaccine doesn’t even seem to be the issue. It’s from the point of view that it’s being forced on people, and in turn invading their rights. With that being said, I got the vaccine long before they decided to make it mandatory. It was a choice that I made to help protect my family, and if something evil or wicked comes from this choice, I’ve made my piece with it.

Note that since the second section, I did get retested:

As I was getting ready to go back to work, and having the symptoms that I did, I decided that I would get another test, and get my doctor’s not to go back to work. It was going to be smooth, and easy. I got the news on Dec. 14th, that I had a positive test result. So, I’m off work until after Christmas, it’s gonna hurt a bit, but we’ll survive, that’s something I’ve always been known for, as survivor. I just have to be creative with a few things. Overall, I feel much better than I did, and I hope that it was the vaccine, and the fact that I’m in relatively good health that helped me through this. With that, an illness has gone through this house, whether it was a bug, or Covid, the whole household has ended up sick.

I spent most of the this time in lock down either playing Stardew Valley, or watching movies. I just finished my last quiz for yoga, and started to take the test. I figure that I’ll get back to that in a while, so I’m gonna finish writing this blog, and start going over some of my scripts and giving them the polish that need so that I can get back to writing the rest of the stories. I’m gonna start working out again, as I’m giving myself the time to actually stop being lazy and set myself up a workout, and training regiment. I feel that I’ve waisted enough time, and while I was looking to get back to work, I’m gonna plan on getting back out there and kicking ass.

With that being said, I feel that I’m going to cut this blog a little short and get back to doing other things. This is the director and that’s a wrap.

Motivation

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I’ve been sitting on this topic for a little bit, and I was trying to figure things out. How am I to continue this? That’s one of those things that had been lingering for a long time. I find my mode of thought, and my life style has been thrown into a different perspective this year.

It’s not bad, I mean new job, mentally I’ve been good, physically I’m going alright. I just find that my motivation has been kind of hampered.

Here’s the real question, what happens when you reach the goals for your motivation? I was lost and I wanted to better my professional situation, which in turn bettered other aspects and focuses in my life. What’s next? I remember that I had a job that kept me active most of the day. I’m in a different kind of job, that isn’t as active physically as it was. I find that as I went into this job, that I ended up getting busy with other things, and I ended up not having enough time to finish all the things that I wanted.

This is where I’m at: burned out on several levels because I was apparently doing too much, and I would find myself, just not accomplishing anything but video games, or watching television. This is where I got stuck. I need to take a bit more time in my day and focus on the stuff I’m truly passionate about.

So with that, I’ve stepped away from coaching, and the martial arts training for now. I love the kids, and teaching is something that I do love, but again, I was getting burned out because I wasn’t able to be creative enough. That’s one of those issues being a creative individual, creation is key to life. It’s hard to explain if you’ve not been there.

I also loved the martial arts training that I was doing and I will be back at it, but my other focus has become that I want to become a better personal trainer, and again feeling the burn out wasn’t allowing me to be as productive as I wanted.

So, I’ve been on break for a couple of weeks now, so what has that done? Well, I finished the a working script for one project I hope to get into production before the end of the year. I’m almost half-way finished with my first full script for my feature film that I’ve been working on for the last five years. I’m also have way through getting my yoga cert. Plus, I’ve gained a couple more personal training clients that’s given me a new kind of challenge.

With my life going at full speed as it has been, I’ve not done a lot with blogging, and I think being busy has kept my mind off of the subjects that I’ve needed to talk about. I miss podcasting and that is also something that I feel that I need to get back into. So now, I’m trying to find a new balance, and motivation to continue to get things back in order.

Let’s also face facts that the last year-and-a-half has put a different set of challenges on everyone’s plates with Covid-19 being a major factor with holding life back. Yet, this has been the year of change, people seem more bitter and mean, and politics are in the forefront of life. It’s scary, and I come from jobs that have shown just how people feel about others. Now it seems more intolerant. Now opinions are no longer respected, and it leads to violence. Did that year of solitude ruin the way people act towards each other? Did we forget how to get along?

It’s truly something to ponder as I look at friends, and people that I get along with, just to see how life has been affecting them. I’ve been surprised by the way some of them have responded to current events and the situations going on. This is why I turned my personal social media into something that promotes my brands. To be honest, I’m finding myself on certain sites a whole lot less these days.

Something I’ve found motivation in though, is that I’m reaching out to people that I find important to me. I know over the last several months, I’ve had friend’s lose loved ones to health reasons. I lost a friend, whom we’d grown apart, to Covid related complications a few week ago.

I’m going to note that this has been two weeks since I started this blog. You know life gets in the way.

So, as I’ve been trying to give myself some time to sort everything up, Covid has hit my family, and we’re all sick together. To me it feels like a head cold and I’ve just been being lazy over this weekend playing video games. I’ve had this headache off and on for the last few days, and it all started with a slight tickle in my throat. With that a bit of that difficulty breathing, like when you get a cold. I think the only problem as we got tested on Friday, I came up negative, but things just seemed to get more intense. I think that I’m okay, and as I laid down last night, I was doing some Ujjayi Pranayama, or as some might know it as yoga breathing. I’ve been studying it for the last month along with the rest of the yoga practices, and I’m not sure if that’s what’s been helping me breath, or if at best hope, I just have a head cold.

It’s funny where my motivation has taken me, and I find that yoga is complex, and I want to master it, because of the health and spiritual benefits that it seems to bring. I’ve also heard that it’s good to go with people who train in martial arts. So, we’ve see where this journey takes me. I’m going to cut this short, because I’m not in my best state for real concentration at the moment, but as always this is the director, and that’s a wrap.