Life Volume 1: The Right to Persevere

There are pieces of advice we hear throughout our life, which we might hear a thousand times, but yet, at the same time it is as though we’ve never heard it once. Until one day, suddenly, our ears open and finally, we get it.
The same can be said for the cliche sayings we hear throughout our life, but one day, we hear them differently and just like that, a light comes on, and we get it. There was a grade school teacher of mine that once remarked, “Everything is impossible until it’s done.” Continue reading

A Note From the Blue Collar Guy

The sun comes up to signify another Monday. It is another day here in purgatory. I say this because I see this as a way-station. Another week begins, and of course, the ideas of what’s to come and what awaits me when I punch my time clock are beginning to filter through.

I am a blue collar man, which in reality, makes me no different from a white collar man. I am here to earn a living and to make a mutually beneficial exchange. This is what a job is. I give them my time and my work and in exchange, I Continue reading

Life Volume 1: Out Of The Well

Climbing out of the well of depression:

I was broken—
I was not broken in the sense that I was not whole. No, I was broken in the sense that I was not complete, which is worse. Something was missing. Something was wrong with me but I couldn’t say what.
I was lost in the absence of a certain presence. I was lost as if I were missing an ingredient th Continue reading

Letters From a Son: About Luck

Does anybody remember good luck charms?
I do.
I remember rabbit’s foot key chains. I think the idea was to rub the foot to bring good luck. I remember dandelions too.
Remember them?
Remember being a kid and picking up one of the feathery ones. Then you were supposed to close your eyes, make a wish, then open your eyes and blow all the little feathery seeds into the sky so that your wish would come true.
Continue reading

The Sense of Insanity

What people don’t seem to understand most is that compulsion defies logic. It defies sanity. Compulsion is what makes an otherwise unthinkable idea become thinkable. But there’s more to it than this.

It’s like this:
There is this little tiny voice, which speaks in the third person. It piques interest, like a diversion, and then exploits the ideas of a ongoing compulsion. Some have called this voice, “The monkey on my back,” and some have call compulsion “Diseased thinking,” and me, I say it’s the beast in me. And the beast in my knows me well. Continue reading

I Dare You

I was somewhere south of Houston and walking down by the shops and looking through the windows at clothes I could never afford. I was in my late 20’s at the time. The weather was closing in on the end of the warmer months. Autumn had just begin and the change in season was just underway.
It was me and the girl I dated at the time. There were two others with us and neither of them were people I liked. But yet, of course, there they were, with us, and walking along, talking loud about Continue reading

Memory and The Joey O Predicament

The world changes and as it does; suddenly the familiar things become strange like some small detail we’ve seen a million times before, but yet, we never seemed to take notice of until are eyes were able to see things from a different perspective.

I sat across from a detective once. Meanwhile, my life was about to alter and all I could notice was the loose Continue reading

The Beach on Project Earth

Once the sun comes up, the world takes on a new appeal.
Everything is glistening now with a new sensation.
The sky is colorful and the beach at point Lookout takes on the orange haze that beams from the horizon.
I can feel myself Continue reading

Recovering Our Life

One of the smartest women I have ever met once told me, “Everyone is recovering from something, Benny. And don’t you forget it”
“We all got something going on,” she said.
“And we all have something to work through.”

I say she is right about this. We all have demons and skeletons, bumps and bruises, and scars than run as deep as our Continue reading

Life Volume 1: Friends

 

As I see it, there are different kinds of friends. There are friends like say, the ones you grew up with. These are the neighborhood kids. These are the ones you go back with. You have history with them and you know the little secrets no one else will ever know because real friends like this keep tight lips—and when something good happens, you smile and you nod proudly because you know the whole story. Friends like this are rare and far and few in between. This is true. It is also true that there are no friends like old friends. I can say this wholeheartedly and with all the love in my heart, there are those who have stood by me throughout my life regardless to the upswings or downfalls and have treated me Continue reading