Here I'd like to jot down some ideas that I've been thinking about lately or within the last time of writing. First, is it just me or has American society become and/or has always been like a pay-to-play subscription? Hear me out. You have to pay for rent to live in a place if you don't own it, you have to pay for food, you have to pay to go to work if you drive there in your car or even take the bus, you have to pay to go out to bars/clubs if you want easy cheap entertainment, and if you're a homebody you will most likely spend money on streaming services, movies, and/or video game computers and/or systems. So where exactly is America, home of the Brave, right now?
I would say not in good place. Think about everyone you have ever interacted with on a personal level, how are they really doing? Would they be mad to hear that you're doing better than them? In this sort of climate, it's hard to even define what a better life would even be. For me a better life would be playing music in bars, making money off it, and not working a day job. Or perhaps becoming a day writer and somehow writing novels that somehow sell millions of copies. Or even running a small record shop in China or Japan, being the only black guy in a small area. Or, this would ironically be the easiest one, to marry a wealthy girl and still pursue all these other things with her.
But it seems most people I know or have interacted with on a personal basis are not doing good. Neither am I really. I'm living but I'm not thriving. At this middle age of life, I should be doing a lot more and thriving. Oftentimes, we know what we should be doing but we keep getting distracted in life by various things, people, work, family, and friends that we forget the reasons why we are living and what we should be doing and we're not pursuing our true goals. It's like going to a job, it's good because it provides you money in order to pay rent and buy food but overall, a job isn't going to make you reach your goals faster, in fact, its going to be a hindrance to it. For me, working jobs has slowed down my growth and lowered my ability to be creative and think outside the box. Working, ironically, has become a hindrance to me.
It seems the more people you know now and the more people you knew in the past, the more you know about people, their lives, and their goals, and how and if they go about achieving it. Some people inspire you and you can grow with their help, but only for a little while. Other people are sinking more and more into the abyss, even girls you really like. It's hard to figure out where you stand and everyday is a struggle in order to figure out who you truly are.
It's hard to figure out if anyone is even real or authentic anymore these days, online especially, but even people you know personally and see day to day, a lot of them are living a lie. I've had a few strange off occurrences that make me truly believe than even some of the people around you who you think are really good people are actually working towards and/or trying to hurt you, defame you, or ruin you behind your back. This is kind of dark but last year I was laid off from my job and when I called the work union about it I told them my situation and they told me that so-and-so, a female manager I worked for six years before this incident, had called them and said something to them about my case, even though she wasn't there, and there's no telling what she might have said, it could've been really negative, thus encouraging them to get rid of me. I only say that because when I asked what she said about me, they said some negative things about it.
There's a darkside to the soft underbelly of Los Angeles. Like sometimes, people from your past, like past jobs or old friends and acquaintances will want to keep tabs on you but not for good reason. They'll ask you questions about what you're doing, what job you're doing now, and that you should be doing this and that instead, and this and that. And you're just wondering, why does this person want to know all this stuff about me? And it makes you wonder who they're reporting the information to. There's this funny black youtuber I've watched and as he says, "We are trying living in the worst times of history, people showing their horns, its like you're truly alone."
I've seen the darkside of the Los Angeles valley over my entire tenure out here, although technically I'm just visiting from the Midwest. I will probably leave when the time is right. But back to the darkside. I was a part of a small friends group where the leader of the pack, my friend, was sort of going off the rails. He lost his girlfriend, was about to lose his apartment, and pack everything up to leave to go live in a different city, kind of far away. He was doing coke and lsd and weed/beer and just in general very scatterbrained, paranoid, and crazy. I mentioned this to other friends of the group and they told him and he instantly came at me hard and said we can't be friends anymore. This is a guy I was friends with for like ten years. All the guys in the group were friends for at least ten years and when he broke the friendship with me, he must've told them to stop talking to me too, because after that none of them ever responded to my messages and calls, except for one guy in the group. Looking back on it, I think I did a good job warning the other guys that he was on a crazy binge and that they should be weary. If I was a spiritual person, I would say that he was a sort of demon, or possessed. Ironically, I was sort of glad to be rid of him, because being around someone like that isn't fun because they're always only seeing the negativity of life and making you see through their demon-infused lenses.
I'll leave you with another weary tale. I was at work at this clothing shop gig and this guy called out to me in the storeroom that somebody had taken down the clothes off a manakin [it might've been him]. The guy manakin has like a little junk pouch, so I had to put some pants on it to cover it up. The guy took a picture of the naked manakin and he said, "I'm going to send this to corporate." I said, "Okay," calling his bluff. Then I took some pants and put it on the manakin and he took another picture of me doing that and said "look at this picture, I'll use it to blackmail you," I called his bluff again and just said, "Okay," nonchalantly. Then he proceeded to tell me about how he wanted an item off a manakin and an employee told them they couldn't have it until the manager takes it down at the end of the month. And how he had to go through hoops and make a lot of phone calls to get the clothing off the manakin. Okay, so you get where I'm going with this story. This is a possibly psychotic individual, maybe he's even under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, because usually people don't get to this level of pettiness without being altered by substances.
Why am I writing about all this? It's mostly a cautionary tale. Not everything is a coincidence. And believe it or not, there are people who are out to get you. I'm not afraid to leave my stoop or anything but I do realize that most of the people in my inner circle that I was actively engaging with and talking to, hanging out with, and meeting with at bars/clubs were in fact bad actors. They might not have been straight up demons [demons are mostly people who don't know you personally] but they had bad intentions, and being around them so often dimmed my light. Not that I'm a saint either, but generally I have a much better more positive attitude than everybody I've ever met. It's nothing special, it's innate.
Lastly, I guess I write this to say, yeah, we're in dark times. Remain in light.
