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I am not one to watch endless amounts of brain draining garbage on the tele, and certainly not reality television but a funny thing happened in what is now a few years in the running. First, I have never sniffed American Idol and the endless run of idiotic contrived mish-mosh of Fail-list actors and actresses, it was just not for me. Not to say that these programs are of no entertainment value, wait,er, I take that back, only fucking baboons watch these types of programs.
It was a few years back, I believe it was the first season ‘Intervention’ aired on A&E, and for the first time, I was hooked on watching so called real people confess their transgressions to a camera. Up until that point, these ‘confessionals’ were restricted to only hot chicks and gay dudes on The Real World, and to me that shit was fake. For some reason the show had me at hello, not sure if it was the graphic documentation of their abuse or just the ‘realness’ of it all. Their strife was what got me, not necessarily the addicts themselves but their situation when observed from a more holistic perspective.
My name is Randy, R-A-N-D-Y, and I’m addicted to Intervention.
At the heart of my fascination with this type of reality programming, it is the situations in which the main characters seem to perpetuate themselves in. I mean, it is one thing to have a problem and cameras following you, and again this is not new, HBO has been running documentaries of this nature for years, but it is another when cameras are also filming the other side of the equation. The under belly of substance abusers are the people who care for them, the ones who whole heatedly love them. This is the closest thing I have seen documenting the pain of unconditional love, and the great theater it provides.
The addicts in the show are portrayed as the facade of dark family ties, and to get to the root of the darkness, we get a window into the lives of the family members who struggle with finding their loved ones. No matter what the situation they get themselves into, the family members come desperately fighting to get back their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, mothers and fathers back.
My heart strings are mercifully tugged at when I see a grown ass man, deduced to tears and screeching yelps, desperately seeking for their sons and daughters back, only to be rejected and ridiculed for their plight. This is what brings me back for seconds, thirds and fourths. Deep down, I always wondered what it would be like to regain my family’s love and trust through redemption because my current situation is in dire need of drama, and for me, this is why I am so attached to the show, I get a glimpse into a life entrenched in dire situations.
I sympathize with the family, but a better part of me understands the addicts motivations. Not too long ago, I was suffering, suffering from something I call self-loathing. Senior year of college was a time of strife for myself, I was struggling to pass my courses, study for final exams, go on job interviews to job start my career and all the while trying to kick my addictions. Through it all, I longed to have someone to identify with these intense feelings of fear, loathing, self-worth, a buddy whom I could relay my concerns, and all I got was another joint or worse. At the time I could not accurately articulate the pain that was wretched between my mind and body, no matter what friends would do or say, I couldn’t reach out and tell them that I fucking hated where I was. A so called friend, rather than provide support, offered cutting remarks and threats of abandonment and the bastardization of me.
I mean, it wasn’t like i was prostituting myself for the next fix, but still, my plight was genuine and nobody could even get close, even I wouldn’t allow for people to get close to me. My only source of light, was my academic performance and a job that I thoroughly enjoyed in which also brought in a significant income for a college student which also served as a means to perpetuate this transient lifestyle in order to make myself feel good. The friends I surrounded myself with were neither there for me or were totally oblivious to the fact that I was stuck in a mental rut. In someway I welcomed their narcissism, for this was validating my internal perspective on my peers and contributed to my ‘Fuck the world’ mentality. The hate I felt for the world at large spawned the current person I am today. The realization that nobody really cares lead myself to take life by the ear and create opportunities for me, once this was actualized, I have not looked back and subsequently I am in a better place without the persons I came to know as friends.
The thing that brings me back to this time in my life is the ‘intervention’ itself, I always wonder, just one slip up and I could have been one of these fellows, just one concerned friend could have also altered my path. To me, the friends and family of the show are the real characters, as for the addicts, well, I was one of them, the only difference, they had people who fought to get them back.
And as the addicts continue down their dark paths and their families desperately trying to stop them from themselves, I take solace in the fact that I got through it all on my own, without the knowledge of my family nor the acknowledgment from my so called friends. Because to me, coming out on top with little more than self-honesty and guile is a testament to my human spirit.
**cue up happy jingle**
I have always wanted to write, but I had no encouragement or inspiration so it became something to loathe. High school being the barrier to entry for all things, was not particularly kind to a kid who’s only interest at the time was smoking dope. In hindsight I was searching for an outlet, a place I could control and gain sure footing in a world that offered none, a place where I could effectively process and understand the shit going around me.
Working in an office became so monotonous that after 6 months of my first job, I began to surf the internet for weeks at a time with reckless abandon. For one, I just didn’t like what I was doing and began to regret my career of choice. Up until that point I was still trying (and still am) to find my niche in this world and as I saw my peers expand themselves geographically and mentally, I came to realization that this was what I was seeking all along, mental expansion for emotional intelligence. The job I hated was at least banking me a fairly decent salary, so I was allowed certain things to slide, like an entry level engineering job that sucked the soul out of you.
Mental expansion was the goal, but execution was easier said than done. Lurking on the Internet can be a learning experience that offers many lessons. This was how I discovered blogs and blogging. Before paying any mind to the writings of others through a blog, I was regretfully entrenched in updating MySpace, where misrepresentation happens. MySpace is a vehicle for presenting a version of oneself, this version, a facade at the discretion of the user, that only presents what the user allows to project of themselves, is something I never fully embraced. Reading the writings of others for me, the thoughts and perspective offered more value than staring at vomit that is a MySpace page layout.
This realization came 2 years ago and I can honestly say unequivocally that I have been lurking all this time. Not the type of lurking that would make Larry the L2 perp proud of, but rather lurking in admiration for all the wonderful stories and fresh perspectives that I have come to admire and respect but too lame to try out myself. So, in a sense, I felt I was not worthy of starting a blog myself. Going back to the original thought, I was unsure of how I would approach creative writing or even capturing my daily exposure to all things life.
Ten months into my entry level gig, I traded in the civil engineering post for the wonderfully chaotic world of clinical research, and this is where I was thrown into a cubicle farm so devoid of character that after 8 weeks of eye gouging and in flagrant contempt for the job, I fell back to my old ways, surfing the internet for weeks at a time. Only this time, I happened to come across a few blogs that just inspired me. inspired me to express my thoughts through writing, forget grammar and prose, just write whatever feels natural.
As it turned out, following a few bloggers snowballed into joining discussions and adding comments. This became an outlet for which made my work days shorter and seemed to motivate my creative self. As I thought over what concentration I should focus for a new blog, I digressed back into my lurking ways, for I didn’t believe I was an expert on much of anything to have a blog focusing on a discussion topic.
It finally occured to me that the only way to process the world around me was to capture in writing, things that inspire me, current events, random shit and everything in between, the good, the bad and the ugly. Fast track to early 2008 and anything is better than the process of constantly posting additions to a facade in which we all know are never rooted in foundaton.
I have been posturing about this statement for the better part of this year. I see old friends and these are the first words uttered, the people I come across can only see the world as such. To me, this is a call to attention from individuals who have not the experience nor opportunity to go out and make the world their own. To which whey respond, ‘Life sucks’, but further examination reveals that life in fact is neither pleasant nor foul. It is of what we make it. Again, i myself did not believe this.
To further examine this point I turn to my own life for the moment. Externally, one would assess that my life is rich. I’m living on my own, I got a place I call home, good friends, and good times abound. On the contrary, life is hard, so hard in fact that I am more scared and doubtful of my current state of affairs than when I was a stoned and broke undergrad. Instead of saying to others that life sucks, I internalized such thoughts painstakingly and unnecessarily wallowed in self-doubt.
Self-doubt is such a high-level subjective term that I must pinpoint an exact event in which this notion manifests itself. A few months back, I was working for an organization I need not mention by name. Work life got so bad that it affected my self worth and above all my mental state. You see, work was going fine, I had a job in which I looked forward to reporting to, until something that I have never experienced happened. MASSIVE layoffs! Acquisition and merger! Frightened and at a loss to process what the fuck had just happened. I sought out support from my friends, to which they replied, ‘Dude, at least you have a job, and besides you didn’t get laid off, you should be so lucky’ Ok, not particularly the response I was looking for, I turned to my parents for advice. Again, self-doubt was even further fortified with the curt response from mother, ‘Are you sure you can just leave and find something else?’
I was like, ‘WF?!’, rather than offer words of encouragement, I was slapped in the face with a moment of clarity, I was now grown (i am not using the term grown man , because a.) I can barely take care of myself and b.) I am not ready to be for the responsibility of being a man, but i digress). My parents being the stoic figures of old world thinking, thought I was being a being ‘a fucking whiny bitch’, my father in so few words. So this was the turning point in which I saw the light, my folks were actually relating to me as if we were on the same level, equals if you will, and this was when it dawned on me that my reaction to the curt response was in fact my inner child seeking assurance from my guardians. Self-doubt was the only objective term that I could tag on myself.
A few weeks later, work turned from alright to down right bullshit. We merged with a German company, my director at the time left for greener pastures, morale was low and I had no plan as how I would move forward. As the merger progressed, the Germans, began ‘integration’ efforts, by that I mean, ‘hey, give me the passwords and create thorough documentation, and no you will not have access to the system and application that you designed!’ Well the writing was on the wall and the resume was being polished as the days turned to weeks.
How does this correlate the original thought, well, this lead to the fabled ‘job search’, and we all know how encouraging that can be, it’s worse than dating! For one, I am sick of dealing with recruiters who have not my interest at heart, but of their own. Here’s what I think of recruiters, why would I allow C students to place in me in under-paying jobs so they can score their commission, why would I take someone seriously when they expect 7-9 years experience administering Windows2003 server, (hey homeboy did you know that the OS has only been on the market for less than 5?, but I digress.) what the fuck does a windows administrator do anyways? Calling out their bullshit I played along and went to meet some ‘recruiters’, and you should have seen the shit show I encountered, that arrogant prick on the phone stringing together buzz words and shit they read on PC magazine looked like someone I would smoke fucking blunts with not someone who could help advanced my career. So i asked myself, if my resume only garnered the attention of these fucking wastoids then I must not have the requisite skill set for advancement. Again self-doubt reared it’s ugly head into my life.
Then a funny thing happened, beat up by the whole process of job search, I decided to ride out January and cease contact with said recruiters. Unknown that my info was out there I was approached by an actual HR employee of an organization. Scheduled phone interview with hiring directory, my mental state was that I was not currently looking for a job and that the current opportunity was something a few notches above my skill level. Reflecting back on this experience I now see how self-doubt could have prevented me from going for the win, so to speak.
As I aced the phone interview armed with little other than my personality and wits, I was invited to an actual face to face meeting. Brimming with confidence I approached the interview process with less calculation and more bravado, to which I attribute to my mental state of not expecting much of an outcome. My valuation of the situation was that if I had any self-doubt going in I was going to at least attempt to counter that with my inherent talent and skill to which I can tactfully bullshit and talk sauce with the best of them but with some humility.
A few days later, I received a great job offer, I had earned it completely on my own and of my on volition. And the only person doubting me is myself so fuck the haters. To come to this realization was the defining moment of my life up until this point, LIFE is Good.
