Image That Was 11 Years To The Day of Another Crossroads

I am just getting around to posting this and it was from February 5, 2013 – I am not shitting you =/

11 Years One Picture

Pondering

I remember this moment for some reason to a T.

I was just out of an interview with a contracting company. I was wearing my cast on my right foot due to having it fractured along with a major sprang in my ankle.  

My injury was because of a bouncy house that was set up at the local JCC and I was seeing my kids for the weekend.

I actually missed the ladder going up with Jonah about 18 months with me, and we went down about 10 feet together and he was fine and I was well, it was my first break of my life.

Anywhoo, I was just attempting to start anew once again. It was cold out and I was wearing my suit and my camel cashmere coat that I had forever. It was Ralph Lauren and I I got it at a steal basically because it was marked off and then marked off again. I think I got it for 100 dollars and that was more than the decade prior.

The interview did not go well, but the compliments were on my network that I have been able to create due to being the Sales and Leasing Representative at Germain Mercedes.  

I did not have the technical acumen that was desired and so like the salesman that I thought I was still, I was like

“Do you have any openings in the Sales Representative Roles?”

They were both senior managers I was working with and then looked at me and gave a laugh and then said 

“You really don’t have the technical prowess and the background for that kind of role.”

I stated, I used to sell Mercedes that were $80,000 plus after meeting with clients in about 2 hours, "I am pretty sure I can come up to speed with whatever you have in mind and whatever technology you are proposing to potential clients and or customers." I said as I continued, I have taught myself technology and quality assurance concepts to become very knowledgeable in my area.

One manager said, 

"We really need someone more senior and more well practiced in this area. We talk to the Exec office Corporate Clientele and they have to take you seriously."

I was like “What about me makes you think I can’t be taken seriously.”  

I was told "I was too friendly."

Yep, you got that right, you heard it "too friendly."

I came back with the basics of sales, how to win friends and influence people. I needed a new start and I was going to have to have a good income because I wanted to be involved with my sons growing up as I was just separated from my soon to be ex-wife, and then the divorce, yada yada

They were like, "You have too much of a nice guy persona."

I was like okay, that was twice asked for the sale and did not get it. It was not looking good for me in a possible closing happening, meaning me getting a role, any role with them. They were steadfast on me not being this, that and or the other and not willing and or want to give me any slack, except to cut my feet off the pass at an iota of a chance. My Heart was sunk, but I continued because I knew I had too TRY

Let's go a different route, “What about you put me out there for 90 Days and see after that if I have created the environment that can produce results.”

They came back with “We don’t really want to waste our time with someone that can not come up to speed and be ready to hit the market with someone that is not used to the complete process of the proposal, contract, submit etc. and bidding that has to be orchestrated."

That was it, the 3 Rd Attempt and no room for a possibly, maybe, nothing, just a no once again. I was done and I knew it, from being excited when first meeting and amped up and very much enthused, I felt the warm dread, the I now have to try to find something, anything else. My foot was still throbbing due to the tenderness of the soft foot cast and the bones still being quite fractured. I was fucked and walking to the Pilot, "I was like now what."

Memories that I forgot to include

· I was carrying my dads portfolio that he gave me, it was nothing fancy, just a simple back and leather folder with a yellow notebook. It had paint on it and I carried it very pridefully due to seeing him and accompanying him on many many an estimate. Along with the briefcase, my mom got him from Kmart many many many years ago. 

**********I still can picture the day my mom presented it to him as if he became a CEO of Massive Company.  

In all reality he was the CEO of the most important company, his own “Royal Painting/Contracting”

· It was now aged like everything that would escort him to work. It was spectacled with paint, looking like it was on the outframe of a Jackson Pollock piece yet never known.

· He would always come out with that black leather and yellow paper pad and start working out what was needed to get the job estimated. Still recall him sticking his tongue out when he started to focus with all the intensity that he could project.

(my dad Harvey, or "Homer" as I called him, man i can remember how hard he used to write and sound of the pen being pressed hard as humanly possible to impress upon the paper, it is a miracle in itself that he did not just snap the pen or cause it to just simply cause the ink to just completely spill out suddenly. I am the same degree when writing, especially when it comes to pencils.

· He was no longer with me, but this was something that could accompany me as if he were there.

It was in the 30’s it was slushy and it was January or February that I recall.

I sat there in dumbfounded, they actually said I did not have the technology acumen after being in technology for over a decade but they still complimented me on my networking ability but did not think I could be network into the Exec level office executives with their more formal protocols.

It was a crossroads of my life that would or would not determine the rest of my future.

 

Just as once again, I find myself yet again for the unknown actually number of these that I constant and somehow manager to always find myself in. 

On my own, a man now that is not part of any person's life except the ones that he desperately wanted to be in, his sons. Currently for circumstances outside my control, not even theirs. 

This was the start of 4 years to attempt, and unfortunately fail, but try the damndest to create a iota of something that I was so fortunate to have with my dad.  

It was blinded by complete drive, emotion and not much common sense.

I went on and got a job working at JP Morgan for half the rate that I was attempting to get based on what the child support offer was and then, to add insult to injury, the ex would make fun of what I made at the time in the jest that I was and rigged it so I was making the least amount and doing it on purpose.

Wow, my dad was right, family can really be the worse when it comes to times of struggle, difficulties, and when you need someone the most. As Homer would say while raising his hand in motion

“Family will stab you in the back when you least know it and when you least expect it.”

It was a time not like the current one where I had to contemplate where to begin once again from scratch. 

I was a different person, not a happy one and I had so much ire and such a rock on my shoulder, the world in my mind was out to get me all of it and I started seeing my shrink and was able to be enrolled in counseling under her tutorlage with her students. 

Unfortunately, and fortunately, I learned through it all, could anything destroy me like I have felt not so recently, nope, will not happen, my survival instincts are so honed now, I am very impervious to whatever may lay ahead.  

I have found the comfort that I have had in the past while looking for work. It is not something that is I would describe as something that is pleasant, it is the feeling of like when your weather boots find that that ok place to not being completely comfortable but not to cause a blister. I was going to say it is when you are in your rental storage living there, and you feel like the mattresses are not going to fall underneath you while you try to sleep. (old habits die hard as they say) 

Be that as it may, one of my favorite sayings if you read anything as of yet by yours truly, as I told my cousin Marc, I will get through this like I have done everything else and many have as well, one day at a time attempting to do my best.  

I found myself very depressed as I was looking at my pictures of the boys and all the time has passed, but I put I decided to close that from coming to the present, I had and have spent and caused so much drama with that it really is completely illogical to slice open what has already left scars that are yet to be fully healed. 

Once again, my anxiety has come to bear now and then, it is what it is. I can recall so many times that I have been through the same tough spot, over and over again ad nauseum.  

Finding a job and keeping a job has always been my everything that I have always feared. But, yet here I am once again. =/ 

I found out that, as I repeat over and over if you follow anything that I have written about, 

WE ALL STRONGER THAN WE KNOW BECAUSE THAT IS ALL YOU CAN DO TO SURVIVE!

So many times in our life, we will be tried, failed, ostracized, mentally broken , but believe you and me, we can still face another day, week, year. Even if you have panic attacks so bad that you go through what should have been a 3 month supply in one month due to complete destruction of what you thought was your piece of mind and home, you can still go about each day.

It may not be pretty, you may cry on the way to work, you really feel like you are existing in a different reality due to the depression, anxiety, panic attacks and lack of any center.

But you will go on, you will face another day, you will utilize the coldest of showers to feel what life is like when it was prior to what is occurring in your life.

You will find happiness and small pleasures and completely take those to numb the numbness and bring about what the minute as they are warm feelings buried deep in our consciousness your inner soul still has in it.

You will learn, you will grow, you will have setbacks in which you have to cry for a good 10 minutes in a Walmart parking lot, you might even break down while working out. Welcome it and let it come and be with you, it is the grief of the loss of what was, it is similar to losing something as if they passed.

Let it go, wish them the best and wish all that do not wish you the best, the most peace that they can seek. You owe it to yourself as well, don’t overthink, don’t rethink what was, it is exactly that a was and no matter what you thought, it was not it.

Do not be afraid to change, be afraid to step out, be afraid to still be courteous, loving, open, passionate, being able to laugh again, and 

as well as love when the time is right. 

You struggled, you preserved and you are wiser, stronger, more in touch with what your chakras and your soul desire. You have experienced the beauty of the struggle of life and now you are forever changed in all the ways a person can change.

Go out and conquer it is what you desire and do it with as much vigor, veracity and tenaciousness as you always have, you owe it to one person, that one person is You!