We All Matter

All of us matter in this world. The thing is that not all of us feel that we do. I can attest to that. There are days when I just want to sit and cry. Some days I actually do. Life gets too hard or I get too frustrated. Whatever is going on, I can have my moments.

I think it is important that you let people in your life know they matter. Whether it is a small thank you, a smile, a token of appreciation. Show them something.

Today at work a new coworker came up to me and started talking. I feel she must be an empath like me because she just sensed I was feeling worn down. I hadn’t said anything to anyone about feeling like shit. I had my perky attitude going because I was at work. But she said something so kind that before I knew it a tear sprang to my eye. At first I felt like an idiot, but then I realized she understood what I was going through. It felt good for someone who doesn’t need anything from me and doesn’t really know me to say something kind for no reason.

I think we should all strive to do that more. Stop having motives behind everything. Just be a good person. Just do something nice because you can. It can turn a shitty day into a good one.

Try it. You might like it. You can bless someone and bless yourself at the same time.

Out of Control

I am trying to let go of things that are out of my control. I really am. But oh my God they’re driving me crazy! It would be different if people would stop bringing stuff to me. They know I am a fixer, doer, motherer, etc. If you present me with a problem, I usually have a solution. That is who I am. Now if I only had all these solutions for my own life…I’m working on it, though.

I have a friend who is going through a divorce who needed me to help her with something. She wanted me to help yesterday. I was in the middle of finishing stuff for school. Did I tell you I’m back in school at 50? No? Well, I am. So she wanted me to drop everything for her crisis and help her and her new boyfriend. No. I told her they could have my assistance today. What does she do today about 20 minutes before time to meet up? Sends a text saying “never mind! we don’t want to bother you.” I’m sorry, but you bothered me about it multiple times yesterday and a few times today. Could you not have given me more notice?

Another friend that I have been helping with social media…she is going to use the last of what little patience I have left. I told her she needed to put a friendly post about something she needs on a group we are in on FB. What does she do? Puts a post up like an ISO ad. Nothing friendly. I sent her a long message explaining the protocol of the group and told her to fix the post. She is going to end up pissing off a bunch of people who are her target audience.

I realize a large part of this is my fault. I get it! But honest to God I don’t know how to turn it off. I’m in therapy and still haven’t figured this shit out.

• What makes me a drama magnet?
• Why do I feel the need to help?
• Will it ever stop?
• Why do I get so angry?

These are questions I ask myself all the time. Ohhh…and why can I fix their shit but not my own? Well, I did say I am working on that and I really am. I have started asking myself, “what would you tell someone else to do?” and it usually works. And sometimes I follow my own advice! And it works!

Are any of you like this? What do you do?

Why I Don’t Support $15/Hr Minimum Wage

Let me start out by saying that I do support increasing minimum wage. Absolutely! It’s ridiculous that it hasn’t been increased in all this time. BUT I do not support it going to $15 an hour. It’s not that I don’t want people to do well. At all. But I see how it is going to affect a whole lot of people, including myself.

Many people in this country make between $15-20/hour currently. And it took them a long time to get to that level. So if you make the minimum wage $15/hour, do you think the wage of the people who were already making that is going to increase? Think about it. No! It is not going to increase. You are going to have a country that is already filled with disgruntled people even angrier because a high school kid is making the same as them. I say this because I will be one of those pissed off people. Right now I am pissed off about some things at work anyway due to salary. So this will only add insult to injury.

Also, do you realize that EVERYTHING in this country will go up price-wise? Everything! Why? Well, where are they going to get that money to pay those people? You have to have money in order to spend it. Those business CEOs, CFOs and any other C-Level people are not going to take a pay cut in order to pay their peons more. So they will jack up the prices. So my hard earned money that I didn’t get a raise for will now be even less because someone without a degree, without any work experience, with nothing to back up that jump in pay can make as much as me. This is completely illogical, irresponsible and unreasonable.

If you think this big of a leap in the minimum wage is good, you are living in a dream world. I am not a Republican. I am not a true Democrat. And I do vote more Democrat than Republican. But I am a realist. And I see this crippling our economy. I also see it angering a nation that is already at a boiling point that I honestly do not know if we can ever recover from within my lifetime.

I think our leaders need to re-think this and realize this is not going to help our country. What would help our country is providing housing at reasonable costs. Lowering taxes. Not taxing things such as groceries. We have to have those things to survive and some of us are being taxed to death on them. They should look at doing something for the education of health in our country. Why not slap fines on pharmaceutical companies for bleeding us dry for medications that are necessary? Make medications affordable!

But this crazy minimum wage proposal is going to cause more harm than good.

My Soul Hurts

I really hoped that 2021 would be better. I didn’t come into it with high hopes. But there were hopes. I believed that after the atrocities of 2020 that things must change. They did…for the worse. 1/6/21 was such a horrific day. I am haunted by the images and the questions. The words of the politicians, mainly the president, who fueled a fire that became an inferno echo in my head. The empath in me feels the fear and uncertainty of this country as we watched in horror.

Many of us are still living in fear as we move forward toward the inauguration. We are scared of what is possibly coming. This is not the America we grew up in. This is more like the foreign countries we watched on tv and wondered what could cause such hatred in the world. Now we are living that hatred and wondering what the hell happened to allow this? How did the people we know become these people who are enraged and filled with hate?

Aren’t these the same people who told the rest of the country four years ago to “get over it and accept our new president”? Why can’t they follow their own advice? Why is it that they can’t just accept that this vile, hateful man lost? Yes, there are a lot of them. But there’s also a lot of others who were tired of the hate and tired of the bullying. And those people voted. And while they may have had a lot of people, the other team did as well and this is the one time I was glad we had an electoral college. For once, it did what it should.

I have been grieving and depressed about what has been going on over the last week. Actually, I guess the last four years has just caught up and it’s been overwhelming. My soul hurts. All of this divisiveness and hate has worn on me. My heart aches that people can’t seem to stop screaming and realize that we are never going to accomplish anything by fighting each other. Nothing. All of this damn fighting is for NOTHING. It needs to stop. The world is laughing at us. They are watching the USA as if we are nothing but a fucking reality shit show. And guess what! That’s what we are right now.

If you want to make America great, then act like a good American citizen and do what is right for your COUNTRY and quit letting your fucking party dictate your behavior. If you want to say you are a Christian, ACT LIKE IT! I honestly do not think Jesus would have gone through the US Capitol smearing shit through the halls. Seriously. I do not think that is the answer when the question is WWJD? I also don’t think He would condone beating a police officer to death. So think about those things when you scream how Christian you are. Think about that when you pretend to pray. Then maybe you should actually pray.

I read an open letter tonight to Congressman Mo Brooks from someone who was a friend of his and a former colleague. The letter was one of the most well-written pieces I have read in quite some time. One thing that stopped me and just made me repeat it over and over was this passage where Mr. Barclay was pointing out the responsibility of the hateful words and how they incited violence: “You know full well that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, and more to the point, your own rhetoric, fomented the violence which resulted in the breach of the Capitol, the destruction of property, and, most importantly, the murder of a law enforcement officer. His blood is on your hands, and you can never wash that stain from your soul.”

I read it and repeated it to myself out loud. “You can never wash that stain from your soul.” That is such a strong and damning statement. And it is so true. When we try to say that our actions should have or do not have any consequences, we are being irresponsible. Our words are like Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Each action has an equal and opposite reaction. “The statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the forces on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. The direction of the force on the first object is opposite to the direction of the force on the second object.” (https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newton-s-Third-Law#:~:text=Formally%20stated%2C%20Newton’s%20third%20law,force%20on%20the%20second%20object.)

Those words were the force and the riot was the reaction and the push back to the force. Basically, cause and effect. And now there is an indelible bloodstain on the hands of the president as well as other government officials who supported him, including those from my own state.

I doubt the president has the capacity to understand the meaning of the words from the letter, much less feel any remorse. But I do know of Mr. Brooks’ work throughout North Alabama and hope that these words pierce his conscience as they pierced my heart when I read them. I know Mr. Brooks has a conscience. I do feel his words will haunt him. I feel there will be remorse. Eventually. It may take some time, but the old saying is that time heals all wounds. I am truly praying that time will heal the wounds of my country. To be such a young country, we have gone through a lot and some things have been at the hands of our own citizens. I pray our citizens open their eyes and see that they’re doing nothing but destroying the country they so claim to love. If you truly love this country, you’ll stop. You will dig deep and realize that as an adult there are times when we endure things we don’t like. We do things for the greater good. We adult when we don’t want to. We behave like civilized people. We do not behave as King George did in 1776, which caused the American Revolution.

We all know the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. But do you know this: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

This is exactly what happened recently by our own fellow citizens. Our country should learn from the past and do better in the future. And right now I want to feel better. I want my soul to not hurt. I want to know that everything is going to be ok tomorrow and the next day and the day after.

God bless you and please…God bless the USA.

1/6/21

I thought it was going to be a good day. It was my birthday. It is a day I’ll never forget. I felt as shocked and hurt as the day of the Oklahoma City Bombing. Terrorists. Domestic terrorists. Americans destroying the place I love. WHAT THE FUCK?!

And what gets me is that I watched my social media feeds and saw people I cared about say it wasn’t Trump’s fault. I was in utter disbelief. I have seen people today say that he was the best president ever. I wonder how these people can see what I saw and not see that he caused it? How? He has been provoking violence for four years. And over the last few months he has been calling to action more violence because he didn’t win an election. And yesterday was the pivotal moment of when it came together and the safety and sanctity of our government was in perilous danger.

I watched in horror as these monsters walked through the Capitol as if it were a mall to be treated like shit. That building is a representation of our government. And they tried to destroy it. They essentially held people as hostages because they were hiding in fear of these barbarians and wannabe thugs.

Thankfully the situation was under control after a while. But I kept asking where is the National Guard? Where are the rubber bullets? Where is the tear gas? Where are the reinforcements?

I was amazed at the fortitude of Congress, though. Those people, who had gone through hell, went back in and worked tirelessly until the job was done. Those people finished what was meant to be stopped. I didn’t agree with all of them, obviously. But I am still proud that they went back in there and got shit done.

Now I hope that 45 is held accountable for his role in the deaths and destruction on the Capitol on 1/6/21. I know he has worshippers, but I hope that there are more reasonable people who see the truth. I pray that people see that this man worked hard to get minions to overthrow the government in order for him to remain in charge of our country. I pray that my friends who are so damn blind will begin to see what really happened.

I was raised to believe the US was such a wonderful place. I am devastated over what has happened and I am so afraid my country will never recover. Yesterday was such a piss poor example of how Americans are. If you aren’t from here and are reading this, please know that we aren’t all like that and some of us are so ashamed of that man and that we cannot wait until the day he is out of the White House.

I’m praying for the United States of America. Desperately.

Alright 2021…let’s be friends!

2021, I thought I was friends with 2020. Turns out she was a bitch and apparently her name was Karen. She drank a lot and was like a loose fucking cannon. And she argued with a white cat a lot. I really hope you’re better. I really can’t handle another 2020 situationship or another Karen. I can handle another white cat, though. So if you’re up for that, I am, too.

So here’s what I need in this friendship: I need some reciprocity. If I am nice, you need to be nice. It’s really simple. I also need you to take any medications that are necessary to keep you on an even keel. The bullshit that 2020 gave of murder hornets, Corona Virus, quarantines, hiding toilet paper, online arguments and some crazy orange man taking over the White House and sending out tweets to twits was just some over-the-top crazy. So 2021, take your damn meds! I’m all about holistic approaches, but not when you’re bouncing all over the place. Please! I am begging. Take your meds. You’ll feel better and so will the rest of the world.

I also need for you to give some warning of any chaos that may be coming. And can you please, for the love of God, keep Mother Nature from drinking too much? Last year she got a little crazy with some weather mood swings. We’d go from hot as Hades to freezing our asses off in the blink of an eye. Well, when we walked from our house to our cars trying to find the elusive toilet paper and Clorox wipes.

Maybe this year you can bring us some peace? That would be nice. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men (and women) would be such a nice change. It would be wonderful to be able to talk to others without screaming about politics and such. It would be great to have some pleasant things to talk about. Can you find some good things for us? All over the world? Please.

And maybe sprinkle some fairy dust or whatever it would take everywhere so that our moods improve. 2020/Karen really brought out the worst in us. I know there were times I behaved in ways I never thought imaginable. There was even the episode that my friends and I now refer to as “the day that Anonymous went Walmart on someone’s ass.” It was not a pretty day and many curse words were used. It was effective but it was not my normal nature.

Now I’d like to tell you that I am really glad you’re here, 2021. I am. I think your name should be Hope. You don’t look like a Karen at all. Let’s be friends and do some great things!

Vaguebooking & Fakebooking

I love social media. I really do. It has kept me in touch with people that I love for years. But there are days when I wonder why the hell I bother even looking at it at times. There are times I literally yell at the computer screen because of how stupid the posts are.

Vaguebooking and Fakebooking are two of my pet peeves. If you are going to be on social media, be on there to be social and real. I know we can’t be 100% all the time. We’re not in real life either. I mean, here I am with an anonymous blog because there are just some things you don’t post for the world to see. But the thing is that it’s called having a filter. I will say that as I age my filter doesn’t work as well as it did when I was younger. I find myself saying more and more of the truth. So I am definitely not vaguebooking or fakebooking. I just put that shit right out there if I’m feeling ready to.

So some of you may wonder what I am meaning. Here is an example of vaguebooking: “Keep me in your prayers. Some of you know what I mean.” This may look like an innocent request. It’s not. It is a pity party for the world to see. Maybe they do want prayers, but they also want you to rush in with “are you ok,” “is there anything I can do,” “call me if you want to talk,” and so on.

Another one that I see frequently from one friend is “I guess no one cares about me because I don’t get invited anywhere” and stuff like that. We’re in a damned pandemic! Most of us are avoiding each other right now! So why the hell are we inviting each other places? Keep your cooties at home! I go to work, the grocery store and home. That’s about it. I live alone and I rarely see people outside the places listed. I am trying to make it to 2021. Don’t try to manipulate me like that. I don’t appreciate it!

Fakebooking is the we’re so happy and have the best of everything and life couldn’t be better people. They are the imaginary Joneses we have heard that we should be keeping up with. Sorry…I don’t keep up with the Joneses, Smiths, Johnsons, Davises or anyone else. I barely keep up with myself. But these people either want to paint this picture perfect happy couple/family or home or they paint a happy-go-lucky life that we should all want. Sorry! Not buying that shit! Some of those people forget that we know them in real life.

One of the Fakebookers I know just makes me want to shake her and tell her she needs to get her shit together. She took back the man who she told me has hurt her and who hit on me on a dating site. She is married to him. She kicked him out for a while and then took him back. I really care about this woman but she knows he is a piece of shit and he has physically hurt her and yet she took him back. He is a manipulative predator. I know I can’t rescue her, but I wish she’d quit trying to paint this rosy picture because I know damn well it’s not that way.

Why do we have to be so fake? Why can’t we just be ourselves? Either people like us or they don’t. I’m at a point in life where I realized that family won’t always love you, no matter how hard you try. And sometimes you have to tell people to kiss your ass and move on. And then just do the best you can.

We have a finite amount of time on this earth. Be yourself. Enjoy yourself. Stop trying to please others. Stop pretending to be something you’re not. You’re good enough. Just the way you are.

Entitled Adults

I have been dealing with a lot of entitled adults lately. It just irritates me that adults act as if they should be handed things or are above the rules.

An example is work. Most of us are not wealthy and we have to work. Hell, many wealthy have to work in order to stay wealthy. I work in the office at a manufacturing plant. A girl I went to high school came in and got a job. I knew it wasn’t going to work from the get go. I asked HR were they sure and they were like, “Oh yeah!” OK…well she worked one whole day and that was it. THEN she posted on her Facebook wall that she had been looking for a job for two months and couldn’t find anything and could someone please help her! I laughed. No, she couldn’t find anything that she wanted to do. There were two issues with that. HR should have seen she wasn’t qualified for that job and wasn’t going to fit. That was very obvious. She should have stayed in the job until she found another one. If you need a job, you work. It is that simple.

Then another woman I know on Facebook has gone through three different jobs this year. She got a job that was going to be good pay and have insurance. She knew when accepting the job that it was in a call center. She knew. Two days in after being trained and she is posting on Facebook “I need a new job! I can’t do this! If you know of another job, please help me!” We all know your work history and will not help you. You are a liability. Unstable. Unreliable. And lazy as fuck. Why would we help you? I have issue with the fact that this woman has children and she refuses to work basically is providing an unstable home environment for them and then wants to blame everything and everyone for her problems. How about accepting the fact that you quit everything? You’re lazy and irresponsible.

Then one of the managers at work knows the purchasing process. We have to put a PO in before making a purchase with a vendor. This requires a written quote and then the PO. Then when approved the purchase is made. Well he feels because he is a manager that he can do whatever. Well this got some shit stirred yesterday. I am just tired of his cavalier way of dealing with me and his attitude in general so I told them I would handle it. I sent him an email telling him I needed whatever quote he got in order to put the PO in and that going forward he needed to follow protocol. I also explained what protocol was and why. He replied with the quote only. No words. I knew he was mad. I don’t care. Do what you’re supposed to. Can he really say or do anything? No. “Anonymous told me I was supposed to follow the rules when buying stuff and she is a lowly peon.” “Well, maybe she thought you didn’t know the rules and you are supposed to follow the rules. Did you follow them?” “No.” “Well follow them.” Not a damn thing he can do.

My point is that these adults who are supposed to know how to deal with life just flagrantly don’t. They feel they are above things and they don’t need to do certain things. It really pisses me off because they are the exact ones that if others didn’t follow a few rules they would be bitching about it.

I know some rules are meant to be broken and I do break some. But I don’t act like I am not supposed to work. Hell, I work a full time job as well as a part time job. Believe me when I say I work! I don’t say that to feel extra. I actually really enjoy my part time job and am trying to grow it into a small business. But I just don’t like these people who expect sympathy when they had a good job and just felt they were too good for it or were too lazy to work.

I wish life was easy all the time but it isn’t. It’s called adulting. Go to work. Get a check and then do what you want. But if you are capable of working, don’t act like life owes you a free ride. Get your ass to work and shut the fuck up.

Mid 2020

This year has been one of the craziest of my life. And I have had some crazy years. One year all of my immediate family died. This is ranking right up there with that type of crazy.

2020 has brought us a pandemic that has killed thousands, Civil Rights Movement part 2, so many celebrity deaths, locusts in foreign lands, unemployment crisis, toilet paper shortages, hate and violence that seems to be the beginning of another Civil War and an orange president who doesn’t seem to give a damn. Europe has closed its borders to us. And I had to laugh when I read that Mexico closed its border to the US in Arizona because COVID-19 numbers had surged. You know things are crazy when that happens. My friend and laughed and said, “Well, Mexico may pay to build that wall after all! TO KEEP US OUT!” If it wasn’t so sad, it would truly be funny.

But right now, not much is funny. Many of us are wearing masks that everyone hates. Some refuse to because they feel the government is overstepping. I find it interesting that these same people love their republican government but haven’t figured out that those people are the ones mandating the damn masks for the most part. Or in the state of Alabama, the governor is being such a wimp and saying they can’t govern the masks but each city can make their own decision whether to enforce a mask rule or not. Bullshit. Quit making it hard on the cities and municipalities. Say that the mask rule is in place and you stand behind it and with the mayors and law enforcement. Don’t just shrug and say, “Well, I can’t really do anything.” You sure as hell opened up those beaches too early and our COVID numbers went up quickly. You did something then. You opened up the state too quickly so you wouldn’t have to pay all that unemployment. You did something then. So you can’t enforce a mask regulation? Bullshit.

I just want to live normally again. I want my life back. It wasn’t much of one, but it was mine. I want to be able to hug someone without admonishments. I want to see the man I was seeing before this crazy and kiss him again. I want to be able to cough without people looking at me like I am killing them.

I want 2020 to settle its ass down and let’s get back to normal.

American Angst

Right now our country is filled with angst, sorrow and anger. We are a nation in pain. I hurt so much for my country that I cannot even truly express it even in writing. I love my country. And that means every color of person living in it.

I have been watching as much news as I can tolerate. I can only take so much, though. Some people sit with it on 24/7. I can’t. It just makes me feel so defeated. I am not putting my head in the sand and hiding from the atrocious acts that are happening, but I am limiting my viewing of it.

I am glad that I watched a Facebook live last night. Well, let me re-phrase that…I am glad I was aware that one of my friends in Birmingham, AL was attacked. I was not glad to see that attack on the air and not know if he was ok for a while. That was scary. I was panicked and filled with anger and anxiety and fear to not know what was going on with my friend. To not know if he was beaten to death in the streets. He was there doing his job; he’s a reporter. The mob turned on him and started beating the shit out of him. It is one thing when you see something on television that is horrific, but it is quite another when you know the people involved.

I do understand the anger and the rage at the death of George Floyd. I am angry as well. I even understand the protests because nothing was done immediately. And there’s still cops that haven’t been arrested. And I don’t believe the autopsy results. But the violence and destruction hasn’t necessarily been about George Floyd or any other deaths. It has been people just trying to take the spotlight away from his death. And it needs to stop. People are getting hurt unnecessarily. Mr. Floyd’s brother has requested that it stop.

I want justice for all of the deaths that have occurred and I will shout that from the rooftops. I have argued with family members about it. I have argued about why the black community is so angry and have family completely angry with me about my position. But I will continue with my beliefs and my position because I believe that strongly. But I will not support violence that hurts other people or property. At first, I got the initial property damage because the initial rage needed to be dealt with. But now I believe that common sense and decency should prevail.

Please look at what is going on and see that there are people that do care. Yes, I am white, but I am someone who cares. I truly care. I want justice. Not for only George Floyd. I want it for Ahmaude Aubery and Breonna Taylor and everyone else unjustly killed.

I want justice. But just as they were innocent, I don’t want other innocent people to suffer because of the sins of other people. It wasn’t fair for George, Ahmaude or Breonna and it isn’t fair to anyone else.