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.

How Will 2023 Be Better?

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Therapy is on the menu for this year, it’s okay when you’re not okay, but how do you get okay? Seek help from someone who understands. It’s not always easy looking for help, asking is even harder, and let’s face it, insurance isn’t always on your side when it comes to mental health. Why? Maybe it’s viewed as some sort of liability. It remains that seeking help from a professional is a great way to help deal with the difficulties in life. Especially when they sneak up and become overwhelming.

I know that being more active in blogging will also be something that will make this year just a tad bit easier for me. This is because typing out what’s going on is very theraputic in its own right, and I know that these written words have touched others in some fashion. Plus, I miss writing and this is practice for that other thing I like to do. However, I find that my writer’s block isn’t an issue so far this year.

There was a point where I had troubles coming up with things to discuss, because I felt like I had dealt with all that I needed to conquer. I had slayed the beast of my mental health problems, and became the champion, in my own mind. Kidding! I’m just kidding. I just didn’t have anything that I seemed to struggle with during that time.

The pandemic had hindered some of the goals I had set forth several years ago. I had caused me to become less motivated in exercise, since we were all in lock down at the time. Now it’s time to find that motivation and become an ass kicker once again. I did use some of that time to study and I had become a personal trainer, which I still do, and plan on diversifying even more as I continue, but I’ve ran into some issues that are slowly being resolved.

The biggest hindrance has been trying to film. We wanted to get started on filming our thriller Unexpected Side Trip, but that kind of got pushed aside. I’ve polished the script and think it’s a goal to get going in the near future. We ended up doing The Driver(2020) as a project to do over summer. I wanted to continue that story and had one treatment for it. I passed it around, and then decided to simplify it and made it longer. Do to situations beyond our control, we only got to film part of it, and then I decided that I wanted to go in a different direction with it. So, we’re taking the concept of what we filmed and use that as an ending to our first season, and I’m currently working on the story to feel out the events that lead up to it.

I’m glad that the writers block as finally passed. I’m glad that I’m being motivated to get things done again. After recovering from Covid, I finally was able to get the strength up to actually start doing yoga again. I was doing it for two-days-a-week in the beginning, and now I’m up to three. I plan on keeping it going and doing more days during the week. I’ve also gotten back to getting 12,000 plus steps in on most days and that’s something that’s been helping with my mental state as we..

Another thing that has put this year in a good direction is that issues that came up towards the end of last year are finally starting to resolve themselves, and I hope that this trend continues to go in a positive direction. We need this win.

Therapy is going to be key this year. I need to find that help since most aspects of my life seem to be “throwing curve balls in my direction”. Sad that being overwhelmed and losing control is what it took to realize that I couldn’t just handle everything, like I had been trying. Being everything to everyone was starting to become too much and it exhausted me. Helping my parents, has exhausted me. I’ll gladly do it, but it takes a tool. There’s a vibe that I can never seem to shake after I’ve been there.

I also hope that Sarah gets to a place that her physical pain isn’t as bad as it has been for the past several months. Her arm causes so many issues when she moves it. She said that the pain will cause her to pass out at times, and I honestly thought that she was exaggerating, until I witnessed it myself. It was a scary experience to say the least.

I think one of the best things to come out of last year was getting Duce, my son, into a school for kids with special needs. I’ll admit that I’m not impressed with the way the educational system seems to mishandle kids with special needs. They seem to get left behind. As a parent, I’ve been frustrated at seeing him struggle, and want to give up. This new school has him motivated and he’s finding that he has a chance to excel, and prove that he’s smarter than “the system” has given him credit for.

Towards the end of December, we were involved in a car accident on our way home from shopping and that’s left us without a vehicle. I appreciate those who’ve helped give us rides in our time of need. It’s made me realize that being able to take myself to work is a freedom that I’ve taken too much advantage of, and it’s been missed. However, that’s an issue that is currently being resolved. At least no-one was severely hurt during the collision.

I think the thing to take away from this blog, is that it’s a time to take a risk and move things forward. I’m planning on taking a positive mindset into this new year, because it’s worked for me in the past. My friend told me that I needed to take life, one-day-at-a-time. I’ve had so much anxiety and worry do to all the things that life is throwing at me, I tend to forget that all I can do is handle things in that way.

With that, I often feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders, and it really does overwhelm me. That’s why I’ve had depression and the mental block that’s kept me from feeding my soul.

Well, that’s a wrap on another blog. Thanks for sticking with me through everything. This is the director and that’s a wrap

Here We Go Again

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Here goes another year, as I find my guidance to make it through this crazy thing called life. To be honest, the last couple of years have been a bit of an adjustment. Let’s review what has gone on in the last few years, that have changed my perspective in life.

I guess we should start with the fact that I was fortunate to have been on the night shift during the first several months of the pandemic. I was only supposed to be on it for six months, but it ended up being eight-long-months. The months of March and April just seemed to be a four-month-stent each. Night shift provided me with not having to deal with anyone really.

I think night shift ended up being my saving grace a few times. In 2019 we had an earthquake that registered at 7.1. I didn’t have to deal with much that the day shift had too. It was nice that the last three years in my previous job, gave me a chance to deal with something other than the craziness of the day shift.

Thinking about the last few years, I saw loss, and not with just how a few of my friends had lost loved ones. I know through the pandemic, I had known several people whom had died do to Covid complications. It started hitting closer to home when I had heard that my former pastor’s wife passed from those complications. It hit even closer to home when my sister texted me about getting ahold of my brother because my mother had Covid, and after a few year stint in a health care facility, it was going to be her last days.

This event finally motivated me to travel back east and finally meet family that I grew up not knowing. I’m glad that I was able to get there, however, I was in the air between Detroit and Harrisburg when my mom finally passed. I was met at the airport by my niece’s mom, Jessica. I had an ongoing dialogue with this woman for years, and it was finally nice to meet in person. Jessica is by far one of the most giving and kindest people that I’ve ever known, and her daughters are just the best children outside of my own.

Being in Pennsylvania connected me to something. I can’t quite explain the experience, but I felt like some of my life story had been filled in, and I also know that something about that place calls me to spend more time there, perhaps this next part of my life’s journey. I have cousins that I’d like to get to know, however, I felt that way about spending more time with family here in California, which I became very disappointed with. Though I get along better with some of the more unexpected ones for sure.

Finding myself working after the trip left me wondering where my future would be, and it was early in December when a mutual friend of mine and my ex-wife reached out to me, and informed me that my ex had passed from Covid. I really didn’t know how to feel about this. People kept telling me that they were sorry for my loss. I find that getting those wishes was a bit strange. We hadn’t been together in over twenty-years. I think that my connection to her was the fact that we had become friends again. I felt bad for her as I had watched her struggle with stage four adrenal cancer.

Then the day after Christmas, I applied for a job that would take me on a new career path. I got a job as a media specialist, working for an archive center. I would learn to be more proficient with photoshop and help organize things in a way to make items easier to find. I hadn’t had an office type job since I had been a Realtor in 2007.

This was a blessing to get out of a high stress job, however, I also found myself struggling with not being in a job that was so demanding. Going from a four-day-ten-hour-shift job, to something that actually had a lunch, and a relaxed environment took some getting used too. I still love my job to this day.

I also found time to assist with coaching youth wrestling, working as a personal trainer, and taking various martial art, classes. I enjoyed it all, and yet there was something missing, and as 2021 would continue along I would find that stresses where starting to creep in and really impact my life.

In January 2019, my stepmom ended up falling off a ladder and suffering a cracked skull. This was a tough time in my life, and for the years surrounding this, I was taking time off of work due to sick family members. When summer of 2021 hit, my step mom had another head injury that left her in an out of town hospital for weeks. I think this was when things started to get worse for me, mentally.

I had stopped being really creative and I was feeling it, because creating is the outlet that I need. It saved me from one of the worst time periods in my life. My film stuff suffered, my blogging became minimal. In part because I didn’t know what to say. Worse, I didn’t know how to say what I was feeling. I was just trying to keep positive and sane. I thought that I had it all under control, yet my frustrations, and anger kept creeping in. It just kept getting worse.

2022 I found myself feeling ennui, and I lost myself. I did get back into being creative a little and we filmed, but I struggled being satisfied with it. I had fun doing those things that we filmed, but I needed something more. Getting filming with another became an issue that stopped from filming.

The highlight is that I started seeing a therapist again. It was hard to realize that I didn’t have things under control. To be honest, food as become my drug again and I don’t like how I physically feel. I don’t like how for the last several months, I’ve not been present around my family, but there’s a silver lining.

I had Covid for the second time around Thanksgiving time. It took me longer to actually recover fully from it, and physically I feel like I have to completely start over to get back into the shape I was. While starting again sucks, I’m determined to get all that motivation back and bounce back better than ever. I’m getting back into being creative so that will also help.

I’m the director and that’s a wrap.

Building a Better Me: The Battle

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The goal: to improve yourself to “hopefully” improve the way you feel, and to positively affect those around you. Life goes well, and you’re feeling the difference, when things start to head in a different direction. A pandemic hits, then self realization starts to sink in and all of a sudden, you’re in a spot of wondering why? Why so I struggle with the decisions that I’m make? Why have the bad habits seem to sneak back into my life? What does it all mean?

Life is a struggle, and when something gets introduced in some unexpected ways, it takes time to process, and with that more questions come about. Then more of the puzzle from the past comes to start explaining why the “knee jerk” reactions happen the way they do. The scary part is realizing that some of those reactions are from fucked up things that happened to you because of the choices you made down in a distant past.I watched a video once that said that thinking of the past brings depression, and that kind of explains a few things.

Life still shows you the struggle and then you start to wonder about the unknown in the future. You want to better yourself, but making those hard choices, leaves you scared because of the unknown. You know that the current path is easier, even the safer choice. That video I mentioned about depression, also mentioned that anxiety is what happens when you dwell on the future. I guess that’s a case study for living in the present.

I often have found myself zoning out, thinking of other things, besides the present, and I guess that would explain some of the difficulties that I’ve had. Yet, how does one truly live in the present? Patanjali was quoted, Yoga takes you into the present moment, the only place where life exists. https://quotepark.com/quotes/2070613-patanjali-yoga-takes-you-into-the-present-moment-the-only-p/. I think that’s part of why I’m becoming such a fan of yoga. I went to study it for something different to put under my personal training belt, but it’s become so much more than just that for me.

Then you go off track, sometimes you just seem to lose or forget your reason for doing those things you chose to do. In all truth, sometimes, life just gets busy, and you lose focus. That’s when you need the gentle reminder that it’s okay to stumble sometimes. I think part of this comes down to not having the best time management in my personal life.

Work is kind of easy to keep track of all the tasks that need to be done. I multi-task like a son of a bitch at work, and it seems to push me to do better. Plus it keeps me from getting bored from the same desk sitting mundane tasks that happens everyday. That is my professional motivation.

So, where do I go from here? Am I stuck in a pattern of toxic cycles, feeling sorry for myself? I heard a friend say something to me at a birthday party the other night that got me thinking about where my mindset has been. He said that he didn’t know if I had still been practicing kickboxing and that got me thinking about how much I miss the martial arts. It’s never gone far away, I still watch videos for technique and I occasionally move around, but it’s not the same as hitting the bag every day. So, it’s motivating me back into working out.

I have found motivation to get back on the task at hand, to workout, get my steps. The down side is that getting started again is a task since parts of my body hurt. It’s not like the main muscles are sore, I’ve been working on those awhile, but it’s the smaller stabilizer muscles, and other muscles that seem to be much harder to stretch that are getting to me. Once the routine is back on, I’ll be unstoppable.

Now, I’ve been in a strange place with my writing. Blogging has become infrequent, script writing is kind of in the same boat, and I’m trying to get my project filmed, but things seem to be getting in the way of finishing. I know that I need to prioritize my time a bit better, and I think that will help. Even squeezing things in earlier during the day would help.

I had to leave coaching because it was getting in my way of being creative, and yet I really miss teaching. I know that I want to expand on my martial arts so that I can teach more things, and it was always fun watching the kids develop into better versions of themselves, and being better athletes because of it.

My new pledge is to get back into blogging and being creative, because it poison of distraction and procrastination is always present. While sorter then most of my blogs, I’m calling this a wrap.

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.