Covid in the Workplace

Good evening ladies and gents, a happy dawn to you. 

Here I'd like to talk about what's been going on so far at this point in the pandemic. Okay, so we've been at this pandemic for nearly three years now. A lot has changed at my job, I've had to readjust mightily and heavily and I faired pretty damn well, I might add. 

But let us get to the heart of the matter. There are currently fifteen recorded covid-19 cases at my store, and that's only going back from the first of the year, AND that's not including cases that are probably there right now but haven't been reported. 

The new store director has been commissioned by the company to order everybody to be vaccinated by the 24th of the month with an electronic verification online. This doesn't include booster shots, the only requirement is at least the one shot vaccine of any vaccine from 2021. Things are finally moving, but wait, why wasn't this set in place by the company in year one?

I know for a fact that a lot of my coworkers/management weren't vaccinated, yet I've had to work with them all this time, myself being put at more risk. While I do find it comforting that everyone will at least have to prove they've been vaccinated once, it still bothers the hell out of me that this wasn't a requirement on year one. One step forward, two steps back. It's a lot like getting a gunshot wound and putting a band aid on it. 

With so many call outs from colds/flu and covid-19, the store is being run with much less staff and most departments doing earlier closing hours. Social distancing is nearly impossible in our narrow aisles and small front end. Tons of people come in without wearing masks all the time. The unmasked are a nuisance and get aggressive, sometimes physically aggressive and taunt other customers. Some things never change. 

With all this covid in the workplace, I'm more weary than ever about catching the virus. It's not really myself that I'm worried about because I have good health and am still young, it's more my stepfather. In terms of the climactic moment of this plague, and my own personal plague journal here, I would say we've hit the climax in terms of covid disrupting my place of employment with high numbers of cases, and counting. 

It's like a movie. I almost still can't believe it. Two years and counting. Welcome to the plague years. The best years of my life. 

Vaccine experience

So I took the Johnson and Johnson vaccine through my employer. 

Once I actually got the shot in my arm, I felt very lightheaded and suddenly my body became very weak. I sat down and didn't say anything because I really just wanted to get out of there, away from other people who might have actual covid-19 symptoms. I knew I was going to be okay, but things seemed questionable for a minute. 

Anyways, when I sat down and waited 15 minutes to see if I had any adverse reactions, I realized inside my head I was actually spinning. It gave me something like a super high effect. Everything was super trippy and at first I wasn't sure if I was going to be okay. Possibly my body had a bad reaction to the vaccine because I didn't really eat much that day. The guy at the desk did mention something about the fact that you want to have eaten a bit of food before taking the vaccine. Also, I've heard that people who are overweight might also have some stronger side effects from the vaccine.  

Anyways, so yeah the vaccine gave me some kind of vision quest that I don't really know how to explain. 

Basically, when I got the vaccine injected into me I started feeling extremely faint and woozy. I sat down and it sort of intensified a lot while I was sitting and waiting the routine 15 minutes to see if there's any adverse side effects. 

I ate some taco bell some ten minutes after leaving, and when I was in the car I still sort of felt it. But it became faint for the rest of the day. 

However, the next day when I went to work for a morning shift my body was weak. I was extremely fatigued and began to get headaches. This lasted for two days. A total of three days of feeling some sort of strong side effects from the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. 

Disclaimer! Just because I had strong side effects doesn't mean you will have it nor does it mean that you shouldn't take the vaccine. Everyone should take the vaccine to protect themselves, their families, and everybody they come in contact with. 

Not really sure what to make of whatever I was feeling, but it was stronger than alcohol or marijuana, this was something in a whole league of it's own. 

But still get vaccinated people.

A Super Spreader Event In My Town

To whom it may concern:

Tonight at my local retail grocery job, we had a what is called a super spreader event. Tonight was no average night. No sirree Bob. It was October 31, 2020. Halloween night. Halloween is a really big deal in LA of course. 

I clocked in at 7 pm and the front end was busy. Around 8 pm the managers were spending a lot of time outside trying to disperse a large crowd that was getting bigger and bigger. The crowd began gathering bigger and bigger. My estimate was that there were over 100 people [maybe more counting the ones going inside and outside the store], mostly millennials, standing around in the middle of the parking lot. They were huddled very close together, chatting among themselves. There were many young men and women who did not wear masks, guaranteeing this becoming a super spreader event. 

Now, I know that Halloween is a big deal in LA. And I know hot girls want to show off their costumes. And guys want to party but they can't have a real party. So they have a tail gate party outside of a grocery store. There are serious problems with this whole situation and I needed to jot down what happened tonight right away so you can get the information straight from the horse's mouth. 

My closing front end manager is a nice lady, a Filipino woman. But this was her first weekend closing and she could not deal with this situation. Don't get me wrong, I don't think any manager could've dispersed that crowd. She did everything she could. She called the cops and the cops came but they also did not and could not disperse this crowd. This crowd was determined to party all night in the store parking lot. They didn't leave until nearly after midnight. I've never seen anything like it. 

Another issue is the fact that many of these young people partying outside came inside the store not wearing masks. The manager told many of them to put on masks or leave but almost all of them snapped back at her with excuses for why they had to stay inside the store. One person said, "I lost my keys, I have to stay in here and look for them." 

The blatant disregard for human life was on full display here. The decline of the western male and female is on full tilt. Our millennials here in America are stupid as fuck. This is why Asia and Europe laughs at us. They would rather tailgate party, talk very loudly without wearing masks, while huddled close up together, than have a small get together and practice social distancing. 

America is in for a rude awakening. There's nothing but death and misery ahead in the coming months. It's going to be a dark winter. But at least we had a fun Halloween night, right?

August Update

Hello, everybody. I thought I'd write down a what's up post. I haven't been writing for some time now and perhaps just writing anything can get my back into the groove of things. So what's up?

I've been still doing my retail gig at the market. They took away our hazard pay after only 2 months but supposedly our union is trying to get it reinstated. I still can't believe that they took it away when COVID has only got worse. Keep in mind that the company is a million-dollar organization. How's that for a big fuck you to your employees? Jokes aside, I really do hope they reinstate the hazard pay. It's only an additional $2 an hour but every little bit helps. They also need to stop kicking their workers in the balls. 

Nevermind the fact that our chances of catching COVID are still super high there. Nobody cleans anything, not that I blame them. The customers are at a super high risk of catching COVID there too because nobody cleans anything. They could probably get it from touching the payment pinpad. The customers leave their masks and gloves in the carts for other customers to be surprised by when they grab the carts. Sometimes my community disgusts me. In a way, it's brought out the real me. You see, about 90% of the customers treat me like human garbage there, while maybe only about 10% treats me like a human being. I have to treat them accordingly if you get my drift.

For the last three months, I got switched to morning shifts. It was a big deal and I wasn't fond of it but I got used to it and enjoyed the free time at night to hang out with friends and family. Well, now I'm back to my usual night shift, which I've been doing for the last couple of years. It's not fun but I'm used to it. And after working mornings for the last couple of months, I actually miss the mornings, the morning coworkers, the better preparation, the extra help. Everything's easier during the morning and daytime when everybody is there. When you have a full staff to run things, you get a lot more done. At night our managers don't give us enough personnel to get everything done. So consequently, not much gets done. 

I've been using my nights to relax and smell the coffee. I'm trying to find a new way to live during COVID. It's very difficult and stressful at times. My job has become a lot more stressful and more of the customers are assholes all the time now. Them not being able to go out and party, on top of not having work, or having their kids at school, it's set them off. They're driving me and my coworkers crazy. This is not a good time for retail or any kind of store operation. If you have to go into a store, treat the workers really well. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were heroes, now the customers are treating them like shit. 

I spend most of my time reading books on my Kindle or on YouTube, where I can listen to my precious music, quite possibly the only thing keeping me going at the moment. My friends are there for me but they can't be there all the time. And I don't want to bother my family too much, I feel like I've been a burden to them. I realize I need to eventually spread my painted bird wings and fly out of the nest. Perhaps when this whole virus thing ends once and for all. 

I've been thinking about moving in somewhere with some roommates. Or with closer friends. Or perhaps joining a hippie commune somewhere? That would be like the ultimate hippie move and I would perhaps even be down to do it, provided my other plans in life don't work out the next few years or so. That would be so wild, born to be wild.

As you can tell, I've just been pretty stressed at the retail gig. But not only that. About a month or so ago, I sprained my right-hand pinkie, and playing the guitar isn't the same. It might be another month for it to completely heal IF it completely heals. If it doesn't heal, playing the guitar will never be the same. In a way, I've been super pissed ever since the day it happened, long story about that but I won't go into the excruciating details. But let's put it this way if you're a guitar player and you get a finger injury, the only thing you really have to say to everybody is, "go fuck yourself, fuck you." That sums it up perfectly.

But there's good news too. I've finished Livy's Early History of Rome and started reading Don Quixote again. Perhaps I'll finally get back to blogging about books again and albums. The whole lifestyle/rant blogging style has sort of run its course somewhat for the time being. Thanks for listening.

Enjoy your evening. 

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Virus pt. 8

It's dystopia! 

The world has been dealt a grievous blow from the virus and it appears now, more than ever, that nothing will ever be the same. If you are an educated person like myself, someone who reads regularly, reads the news regularly, and perhaps even watches the news regularly, you should be very alarmed. This is not normal, of course, nor is it a drill, nor is this where we could and should be at this stage in the pandemic. 

We're in a bad place right now. We're seeing the highest numbers of new case increases in a single day. It's very high, something like 4,000-5,000 new cases in a single day, in places like California and Texas. We've already reopened states but the reality of the situation is that if we don't close down all nonessential businesses in say, 4-5 weeks, there will be so many dead people in America, that there will no choice but to close down everything again. Here's the reality; nothing will be done until the shit hits the fan, however, it might be so bad at this current juncture that it's already too late. Sleep on that. 

I work at a grocery store. Today, I received a text from a union representative leader, stating that someone who works at my store was tested positive for the virus. This is the second person who's tested positive at my store, the first one being a worker that has already quarantined, become clean, and is back at work.

The fear of catching the virus is high. If I catch the virus and possibly die, will there be anything left to remember me by? This sort of darknesse is reality. It turns out, in a way, that the company cutting down hours on all employees is actually a good thing. Although we get less money, we're around mass crowded people in the market less [where they're not limiting the numbers of customers allowed in], saving us in the long run from being exposed to the virus more often. But some people need to work a lot of hours and make a lot of money, what about them? They're going to have to deal with having less money and fewer hours, unfortunately.

I'm sort of actually coming to the gravity of the situation recently. I was previously on a two-month leave of absence from work and it was good. I was safe from the virus and did a lot of reading and writing. But now I'm back working with the public, often in crowded aisles and a crowded front end workplace. The situation is dire.

It's only just now hit me today that most things don't matter much anymore. The most important thing right now is your health and finding a way to live.

What I mean to say is that it's finally dawned on me that mine as well as all of us, our collective goals, dreams, desires, and fortunes don't even matter anymore. In a post-COVID-19 world, your goals, dreams, and fortune don't matter one bit, because, in that world, the individual person doesn't matter much because we're all one and the same when it comes to the virus. Rather, I believe, in a post-virus world, the collective unity, the group, the whole human tribe as a whole, matters much more so than any other time in human history. If this thing doesn't bring us together soon, nothing else will.

So as I sit here writing this I think about my future. It doesn't matter if I never become a rock star, or the best selling author, or a computer coder, or any of that crap. Rather, what is more important than any of that is finding a way to live that is meaningful to you. Once this thing continues, it will take more lives, more lives than you can possibly imagine, and in that paradigm, things like money and jobs will decrease in value, because people will spend most of their time in quarantine and isolation so that they, and their loved ones don't die.

The lack of leadership shown in this current administration is shocking and appalling. However, even if Biden takes control in November, there's still a lot of shit that needs to be cleaned up in terms of government, and it could take years to fix that up. Not to mention that there probably won't be a coronavirus vaccine by that time, and Biden will have to form his own strategy against the virus because it will still be ravaging by that time, most likely.

There's a lot to think about. At this moment the best thing we can do is be there for ourselves, our loved ones, and try to find a way to live, a new way to live, that isn't tied down by the constraints of dream jobs, lots of money, and other such desires. Staring at the face of death, into the abyss, it only appears to be staring back at us.   

What's up!

What's up, everybody? I thought I'd take a little time out to write a post.

Things have been pretty good. Except for the fact that I have a sore throat cold. I still have high energy most of the time but damn the sore throat makes talking a real chore. I've been working consistently 40 hours every week, which is good. Especially considering the fact that a lot of peoples' hours got cut recently. You know how it goes in retail. Blah, blah, blah...

I'm still doing a lot of morning shifts but now they're at least giving me some night shifts so potentially I can be at the store at any time. I actually think that if you're one of the special chosen ones to work early mornings or even like 9,10, 11, 1130am, that they want you there early because you're one of the better workers. Everyone fights for those early hours because they all want to get done with work and go hang out with their girlfriends, wives, families, whatever. The morning shifts at work are a much more adulting shift than the late shift.  

In other news, I've been doing the open mics at the Sugar Mill Saloon on Ventura Boulevard. That happens every week on Tuesday nights. Sometimes I sing solo with just acoustic guitar. Simple songs like Hendrix. I've been doing Purple Haze and Hey Joe. Other times I do instrumental jams with another guitarist named Dave. He's a great player, a true acoustic player.

I've also been reading a lot. Since finishing Kant's Critique of Judgement and the Critique of Pure Reason, I've also finished John Crowley's Engine Summer, and just last night on Valentine's day I finished Cecelia Holland's The Angel and the Sword.

Holland is a historical fiction novelist with some twenty novels written. I learned about her through my dad, who vouched for her one and only science fiction novel, a feminist [joanna ross' the female man] space opera called Floating Worlds. It spans twenty years and five hundred pages. It's a true epic, one of the best science fiction novels in the canon. Check out my review for Floating Worlds here.

Anyways, The Angel and the Sword is a great novel about Roderick the Beardless, a 9th-century European story about a Princess named Ragny, of the blood of the last rightful ruler of Spain. She runs away from her father who tries to force her to marry him. She disguises herself as a man, becomes a knight, and saves Paris from being overrun by Vikings. She even falls in love. This story has everything folks. 

The remarkable thing about the Angel and the Sword isn't even the great, realistic historical aspects and the non-psychological character stylings of the characters [the Hemingway model, the action is plot]. Rather it is the main character herself. Ragny/Roderick is simply a captivating woman. She struggles hard in a fierce world dominated by men [and Vikings], and she faces down every obstacle in her way. Strong female lead! 

Next, I plan on reading The Republic by Plato. Finally, after reading so much philosophy, I'm reading the original texts of Plato. I'm a modernist but in a way, I think Plato was a modernist too, of his time. Everybody knows about the allegory of the cave. That is such a modern concept, especially in a postmodern world.

Just finding the time to write more has been a struggle. I'm usually really tired after work and now that I'm working mornings too, half the time I have to go to sleep somewhat early. Oh, the agony! How I wish I had more time to read books, write, and play guitar. However, it's good to just sit down and write, whatever. Writing anything seems to suffice, I get a real thrill out of just writing down on a blank canvas and seeing what turns out. Sometimes the writing is meh, but oftentimes there's a little something, a little flair, that I see, and I say, "Hey, that's pretty cool." To more flair!

2020 in our sights

Greetings, readers of the interwebz. 

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I'm glad 2019 is almost over and that 2020 is about to begin. A lot of the chaos stems from political turmoil in America. Mainly, that the President is using the highest office of the land for his own personal political gain. It's infuriating and it's despicable. We have one party in government that is completing undermining American democracy just because the President is 'their' guy. Simply put, it goes without saying that if Obama got caught doing the quid quo pro, he would've been impeached by now. Democrats would've defended him but they wouldn't have defended him to the death like the Republicans are clinging to Trump? Why? Because they have values still whereas the Republicans today lack that. 

The division and spread of hate via politics have become mainstream. People are identified by what 'tribe' they are in. Trump's base versus Americans who think he's undermining American democracy. There is no in-between. We'll have to wait until Congress comes back from their holiday recess to see what will inevitably end up happening regarding the Trump impeachment. Merry impeachment, happy new year, new year, new President? Something along those lines would be nice. 

I got a lot of reading time this year. According to my Goodreads account data, I read 26 books over 11,000 pages. I've spent more and more time each day reading rather than playing computer games or hanging out with friends. Also, I can finally play through Sequenza for guitar by Luciano Berio [though not that well or fast]. That took me about a year to do that. Also, I've finally adjusted to a diet where I eat less food at night and eat less overall, while not starving myself or doing complete fasting. Rather its an overnight fast, fasting when I'm sleeping. I've been playing in a straight-ahead jazz duo for a year straight and I've learned a lot about jamming, jazz, and improvisational music through all those performances and recordings. I've accumulated all my best sound recordings on my Soundcloud and put it out there for the world to hear. I've been working nonstop at the same place for seven years straight. These are great accomplishments. 

When I think of what I was missing out on there are a few things I can think of. In 2020 I want to play more guitar, learn more songs, hang out with more new people and friends, who are more into art/music/literature, as well as write a lot more. I mainly want to write more short stories and develop a short story collection as a novel. I'd also like to finish up on my novella, my memoir, which I started a year ago and sort of finished but didn't edit very well. I want to learn more about technology and science to use that knowledge in my own science fiction stories. Things like that. 

When I think of the world/country/city/general life in general as opposed to my own personal well being/job/friends/family/hobbies/life I would say 2019 had more downs than ups. But I'm an optimistic guy. "It's getting better all the time. Me used to angry young man..." As the Beatles sang life does indeed get better. I get really down on my luck regarding the job and the rising inequality of the middle/lower classes in America but I'm still very hopeful of a better America. Maybe not in 2020, maybe not in five or ten years, but in a future where I'll be older, smarter, and hopefully working an office job. 

I think progressive politics scares a lot of people still because it's associated with the 'dirty' word socialist. However, the way things have gone down in America it only makes sense to start using more socialist policies. In a way, I feel that capitalism has run its course. Of course, it could never be completely abolished. Rather, there would be a future where there are fewer capitalistic systems and more socialist ones. In five-ten years down the line, I could see a guy who has similar policies as say, Andrew Yang, get elected. The old school Republican versus Democrat has just got to go. 

So 2020 is in our sights. Let's all make these last few days of 2019 good. Remember how tough it was this year. For the world in general. And look forward to things getting better.

The Proletariat Christmas

The last two weeks have been pretty rough at the retail gig. The holidays have come and gone, save for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. It's been rough. That's a phrase I've been saying a lot at work. I'm just a little stressed. That's another likely quote. How do you fight back against this stress, this holiday frenzy, eating away at the core of modern American society? 

Well, the thing is, you just have to rise above like the Black Flag song. Inevitably every little thing in our lives affects us at least somewhat on somewhat of a scale. One of the best pieces of advice my manager at work gave to me was, "no matter what happens, just go with it." At first, this sounded to me like a plea of defeat. But then you put it to practice and see how useful it really is. 

There are two kinds of customers in retail work: assholes and friendly people. There is no in-between. You might think you're a tough guy and that nothing anybody says to you can ever affect you but in reality, every interaction we have affects us in some way, however small, or large.   

Think of all the people you've met in retail work [if you work in retail] that you've ever had contact with.  Most of it is overwhelmingly positive, at least for me. I'm pretty much something of a celebrity at my job, just for the sheer fact that I'm a unique personality [I talk a lot to people about books, music, guitar] that people never forget me and want to talk to me more the next time they come in. I think that it just shocks people that I'm a big black dude that shreds the guitar like Hendrix and reads Heidegger. They will never meet a black man quite like myself ever in their entire lives. In that sense, I'm something of a novelty. The other side of it is the depressive, melancholy that comes with the retail experience. 

A large chunk of that melancholia would be bad interactions with customers. Customers who are overwhelmingly rude, customers who want to take advantage [return things with no receipt, demand cheaper prices, yell if it doesn't go their way, etc], upper management that tries to tell you how to do your job even though you've been working there longer than them, and the rest is just low-level grunt work that gets old fast.

There's also a sort of late-night depressive side of retail. When you work 430pm-1am 5 days a week for seven years straight you start to find that you're thinking more about the darker side of life at the later hours of the shift. Ironically it's at these hours that I feel the most awake, the most alive, in a sense. When I come to realizations. 

But wait. Here's the good news. This is happening to other people too. Not just you. The modern American workers need to rise up in solidarity. The middle-class, upper-middle-class, and rich people with their nice cars, their mocha frappuccinos, their office jobs, and their gym memberships know nothing of the true struggle of the proletariat.  If it were up to them they would stay rich and you would stay poor, indefinitely. And if you don't recognize this truth, then you aren't one of us. 

This is why it is so important to have a worker's movement in America. The modern American worker is losing so much right now. The rich are so happy with their fancy video games, their pornography, binge-watching their favorite Netflix TV shows. They know nothing about what it's like to be a true proletariat. 

The next worker's revolution is coming sometime. There will be no video games, pornography, or Netflix in it. 

The revolution will not be televised. Say goodbye to the bio-mass. 

Dialectics of a modern proletariat

Here we get to the crux of the matter that I was trying to get into in the last post, entitled Black Metal October, the dialectics of a modern proletariat. Oh boy...here we go. 

Clearly, I haven't read enough Marx and Engels, or Hegel to truly discourse on said subject, so instead I'll do a write up on my personal views towards the matter. 

Work is a wonderful thing. In moderation. Even when you're too entrenched for free time sometimes. I've been in the working world for some thirteen years now. It's had its ups and downs, but mostly its been the same since day one when I was nineteen years old in Wisconsin. "Same shit, different day," as the snarky co-workers like to say.  Touche.

The thing about work is that when you consider that you're going to the same place every day and working for money, that is actually a purpose-driven life [john grisham], in and of itself. That alone is satisfying enough for most people to even consider their job their actual status in life. "I'm a banker." "I'm a doctor." "I'm a cashier." "I'm a warehouse worker." And they would never even question trying to be/label themselves as something else like a guitar player [my own personal circumstance], or a writer [me again], or a painter, comedian, actor, gamer, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, mechanic, etc.  

The hardest thing about work [for me] isn't the work in and of itself. I've worked hard for thirteen years straight with only six months off. I've only been unemployed for six months since I was nineteen. Anyways, the hardest thing for me is keeping a good attitude on the job. It's always a good attitude thing on the job, as opposed to when you're off the job, because when you're off the job who gives a shit, right? 

So the question then becomes how do you stay positive in a working experience? I'm not quite sure there's any real answer to this. For me it always goes back to myself, my own inner mind, my mind's eye if you will [happy Halloween!]. As you can tell, I'm a pretty down to earth guy who's been around the block, seen some shit, met a lot of interesting 'characters', if you will. But again, it always stems back to personal experience. How do you stay happy when you're working all the time? 

The truth is I'm not really sure. But I have some basic ideas. You have to enjoy all your free time away from work to the max, 100% overload. Work hard, but play much, much harder, so hard that if people from work chilled with you outside of work they'd have no idea of the 'real' you, you're ultimate persona [don't ask, its a California thing]. 

So for me, this would include hanging out with friends, guitar playing, music listening, writing, and reading a lot, performing at open mics. If I skimp on these other things for whatever reason I can't be chipper at work, it just will not work. Why not? Who knows, I'm not a psychologist, I'm more of a philosopher, an avid amateur one at that. 

The other side of the work coin that we haven't spoken of is one of metaphysics. Because you are working at whatever job it is that you do, you are fulfilling a job that is key in the universe, you are taking a position that is important whether you know it or not. Phillip K Dick has a novel where this guy is doing crossword puzzles [or something of that nature] and without his knowledge, because of the fact that he is doing these puzzles, the government is taking his answers and using them as coordinates to help stop an alien invasion. Talk about a great concept. Consider this. Because you are doing whatever it is that you are doing in your life, you are filling a void that is missing in the universe. When you leave, that void goes unfilled and could potentially cause disorder, decay, maybe even chaos. You're actually important even if you're a pencil pusher. How about that? 

Unleashing Your Inner Zen

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been writing, which has been more part personal vlog-style and part inspirational thinking. Here I'd like to discuss how I've changed my mindset, and become a more jovial person, at least for now. 

The beginning starts with my attitude coming back from vacation and going back to my retail job, where I sometimes work over 40 hour weeks. My friends that work there are always stick-in-the-muds about working there, meaning that even though they have cushy top positions there (and low like myself), they still feel like the job is letting them down, and that perhaps they would be happy doing something else, etc. 

For a while I got trapped in that line of thinking. These people aren't happy so I should be unhappy too, right? Wrong. It all starts with my boss asking me to come in early on my late night shifts. At first I was saying no and using my time to just relax-game, read, guitar, my usual activities. But then I started saying yes, all the time. 

Wait a minute. You're probably thinking you'd rather relax and have fun than go in early to work retail. Or maybe you think you'd rather have free time over money? Once I started saying yes I realized that I actually didn't mind going in early, and that I'm getting paid more money, so that's a plus. The other upside is that management likes me and (hopefully) has my back in times of trouble. 

Now to the jovial part. Work can be stressful but once you 'get over it', you realize that your life is actually quite amazing, and good things even happen to you, even at work. I got over my job, which means that I'm willing to help out in any way I can, even if I don't need the extra cash. I'm happy to help, and be a team player. Its no skin off my back and I don't attach any negative energy to my occupation. Its a blissful realization, inner zen unleashed.  

I had about a month lead up into this from my vacation in October. I don't think I would've realized it if I didn't start dividing my time into organized sections-music, guitar, reading, hanging out with friends. I've been using my time more wisely. It even affects my eating habits. I realized in order to lose weight I have to stop eating late at night, so once I started doing that, I started losing weight again. 

The mindset problem is very difficult to overcome. Most people don't. A lot of people are whiners and complainers their whole lives even though they have everything handed to them on a silver plate. I'm a lucky guy, I have musical talent, a job, and intellectual curiosity that leads me to a lot of interesting books. Most guys would be lucky if they just had a job. So maybe your crappy attitude makes you think things suck when actually you just have to change your outlook to realize how great life really is. 

Perhaps I should become a zen monk?

Band Update: We're a death metal band called Wolves to the Slaughter, playing a show soon!

Hey, just wanted to do a short update on the band's status. For a short while I was just practicing and performing at the weekly open jam as a duo, two piece band with my drummer friend Martin but now we're working with a metal (screamer) vocalist, we're playing death metal with a little bit of black metal influence, mostly in the drumming. My guitar playing is more straight death metal with 80s shred guitar and progressive rock (jazzy distorted chords) bits here and there, a bit of black metal influence there as well. But I digress...

What happened with Martin's other group was that they decided their guitar player was holding them back so they kicked him out and recruited me to join. I reluctantly joined because at first I left that band (some months ago) because I didn't want to play death metal. But I changed my mind and I've been working with Alex (vocals) and Martin (drums) for a while now. So far we've only been practicing two hours a week but I think we're already ready to gig. We need a bass player but I think I've already found one, one of my friends.

We've got four songs down already that are originals, more if we count covers but we're not sure if we're going to perform covers, you see we've already got a gig lined up. We're going to be playing a backyard show at Martin's friends' house downtown LA (more information available as I find out more) on March 2nd. 

So yeah we're playing a show on March 2nd on a Friday. Unfortunately we aren't getting paid but it will be my first real official gig in California (not counting the open jams). I haven't played a gig since 2013 so this is quite a musical milestone for me and I'm quite pleased with the band, even if we ain't playing jazz (I wish I could be in a gigging jazz band). These guys couldn't play jazz anyways but they are pretty good rock and roll musicians.

It's all quite exciting and cool. Oh, and by the way the band is called Wolves to the Slaughter, I thought of the name and everybody agreed on it that it was cool. Hurrah for democracy! 

I'm using my 7-string Jackson for the band, I'll bring my Marshall amp for the gig, straight through the amp, no effects. The drummer plays a small jazz kit (even though he's a metal drummer), he likes the sound of small snares. And the singer has this whole vocal effects setup with his own personal microphone. The gig will probably go great. I'll post more information once I learn more about the gig. 

Another thing I'm gonna prioritize for the band is recording. I think we're ready for it, I could even record the bass parts if need be.