Weird that I’d be in such a somber mood today, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders as I ponder just how evil the human race has been to me and those I love.

And yet no matter how much I try to get beyond that, no matter how much I try to climb out of this pit of despair and emptiness, there’s always some pig-f*&%er at the top just waiting for the chance to stomp me in the face so I end up free falling back to the bottom again.

Maybe I should accept the reality that failure seems to be my inescapable destiny, and trying to fight it is a fool’s errand that will only prolong the inevitable. Those who lie, cheat and steal to enrich themselves will always prosper obscenely, while my own moral conscience imprisons me from doing the same, all but guaranteeing that I will always be poor, pissed on, and shackled to a dead end job with no future.

The players get all the women, the cheaters get all the money, the liars get all the glory. There is no room left on this planet for a man who aspires to follow after moral uprightness and integrity, even if he himself falls just short of doing so.

For all my efforts, I remain alone, rejected and forgotten. In life I am a ghost, a scentless vapor drifting through the world, incapable of making its presence known, unable to leave its mark.

Unable, to be loved.

What a night.

After a long, grueling day at work, I finally signed out and booked out of here as fast as I could. There was only one problem though.

My car battery was dead.

When I came to work today, several news vans had parked (and doubled parked) in spaces I usually took, and since I was in a hurry, I turned on my hazard lights, doubled parked my car as well, and ran inside so I could sign in on time. I came back out again, found another parking space to stash my car, and yep, I forgot to turn off the hazard lights.

Mother@#$%.

I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking around here for somebody to help jumpstart my car, so I called up roadside assistance, figuring it wouldn’t be a big deal for them to send somebody over to quickly get me up and running again.

Good grief, it was like I had called the DMV.

“What is your VIN number?”

“What is the make and model of your vehicle?”

“What is your call back number?”

“What is your current home address?”

“What is your work address?”

“What is the color of your vehicle?”

Color???? Who gives a crap what color it is?? Just send somebody over here to jumpstart it already so I can go home, dammit!!!!!!!!

FINALLY, the operator informed me that someone would shortly arrive and that I would get two automated calls to confirm the service truck’s arrival.

I get the first call: “Your service truck is estimated to arrive in one hour.”

Fortunately the guy came sooner than that. On my way out to greet him, I passed by a couple of young lawyers, a guy and a girl who worked out of our case assessment office. They were stepping out too but ignored me. The guy was built, clean cut, and nicely dressed in a sharp suit, and the girl of course was a gorgeous looking brunette. I looked at them and felt ashamed. I was in rags of a uniform, a 5 o’ clock shadow on my face, with sad, broken eyes whose fire had died out a long time ago. I looked at them for a long moment. Accomplished people. Happy people. Something I would never become, a life that I would never have. I quickened my pace to get away from them and headed up the street

The service guy was a friendly dude who arrived in a minivan. When he stepped out, I noticed he was missing some of his front teeth.

“Awww kay, ley me paww ze ood herr.”

“Uh, ok.”

A few minutes later my precious baby roared to life once again.

“Awwwkay! Yor awww goods zuu go.”

I thanked him, jumped in and floored it. I wanted to get home, crawl into bed, and get away from this weary life. To sleep and dream, and perhaps never wake up again.

Tonight’s chat with a dear friend of mine reminded me of a lesson I learned a few years ago, when I went ape nuts clicking every blue link I could find at iWon.com in a bid to become independently wealthy and attract me some hot gold digging babes. I was on a mission to win something, ANYTHING from iWon’s site, so I could pay my bills, quit my job, and at long last tell my boss to go blow it out his own arse.

I also signed up for these gaming sites too in the hopes that I would become some kind of gaming master and win hundreds of dollars in cash prizes. Instead, I would win $1.50… then lose $2.00, win $4.00, then lose $5.00, and on and on.

For three weeks I was at it, playing games, click click clicking, playing some more games, then click click clicking, then play iWon’s slot machine, then click click clickity click click clicking, until my fingers started to sprain. By the end of the third week I was a few dollars in the hole and my fingers looked liked they belonged to the Elephant Man. I wasn’t getting anywhere. As usual, luck was never a lady with me, and in the end I finally gave up.

The next day I went to work, and as I was signing in, somebody handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“That’s your raffle prize.”

“My…. what??”

“Every year we raffle off the profits from the soda machines, and everyone is automatically entered. You were one of the winners, so that’s your share. 25 bucks.”

I just stood there, blown away by having finally won something, and especially at the timing of it all. I had spent the last three weeks trying to win every prize imaginable at iWon, and failing miserably at that, and now came this, a $25 prize for a raffle I never even knew existed. I still have that envelope by the way, with the money still inside.

There’s an old joke where a man prays to God to win the lottery and the Lord tells him to go buy a lottery ticket first. In my case even that part had already been taken care of. It was a sobering lesson straight from heaven, and one I had sadly forgotten over the years. As much as I’d like to believe God to rain His blessings on my life without requiring any effort on my part except to receive it, I still strive in my own strength to create my own success, and no matter how many times I fail, that lesson never seems to fully sink in for me. It’s been especially true these past few weeks, as I try to cram as much knowledge as I can find into my poor little brain so I can utilize it all to make money off the Internet, whether through my blog or elsewhere. There’s so much information to sift through, so little time to digest it all, and not enough brainpower on my part to take what I know and transform myself into the self sufficient man that I’ve always longed to be.

And yet I seem to leave no room for God in any of this. I’m trying to do it all on my own strength, relying on the world’s wisdom and philosophies, when instead I should be casting these burdens on Him, and trusting Him to once again provide that envelope of blessings when I truly need it. That’s something no professional blogger or Internet mogul will ever tell you either. But it’s the secret to real success, real peace and freedom from worry, learning that it really is all under His control. If I succeed in this new mission I’ve made for myself, it will not be because of my talents or skills or luck, but only, and ONLY, because God is gracious in His blessings towards me.

By the way, I do intend to use the prize money I won someday… specifically for when I finally meet the girl of my dreams.

My old boss was a pretty standup guy, always helping out with the work, making sure nobody goofed up, but at the same time letting us take it easy when there was a lull in the workload. Because of him our section was run pretty efficiently, and for once was actually a fun place to be. I found myself having more time in the evenings to relax and hang out until my shift ended because of how smoothly things were being run.

Then he got transferred abruptly, the result of the powers-that-be shuffling around three managers from three different sections. Enter new boss.

Don’t get me wrong, my new boss seems like a good guy too, but he’s a bit laid back… ok, maybe a bit TOO laid back, but I guess that’s better than being an all out psycho. Nevertheless, I was cheesed, mainly because he has to learn everything all over again, just when my former boss was finally starting to settle in. The move didn’t make any sense to me. Why did three COs (commanding officers) get shuffled around just like that without any warning?

Then I got some intel from a mole in the department, who let on that one of the COs’ subordinates from another section had boosted a kayak (that came from God only knows where), and while the CO knew what the guy did, he did nothing about it. So the gist of if was that he had been disciplined and then transferred out because of his failure to handle the situation. My old boss now works that section.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “I lost my boss because some idiot in another section boosted a KAYAK???”

“Yup.”

“Where did this friggin’ kayak come from anyway?”

“Good question.”

So now should have been an isolated incident instead ended up affecting three separate divisions. What the blank were the powers-that-be thinking? How ’bout you just reprimand the CO and his subordinate, suspend them or whatever, and be done with it? No, you had to throw 3 divisions into chaos with brand new bosses who don’t know which end is up, and this you call good management?

Unbelievable.