“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of hot babes.”

Happy Independence Day!

It seems fitting that my credit card balance would be cleared in time for today’s celebration, and hopefully by this time next year my car and college loans will be paid off as well. Hard to believe my credit card debt was as high as $8,000 only a few months earlier, partly because I had to pay for the costs of new hearing aids, but I just kept furiously paying it down as much as I could, until by some sheer miracle the balance finally read zero for the first time in 4 years.

Once my car and college loans are taken care of as well, I’ll be completely debt free and enjoying a near perfect credit rating, especially since I will have paid off the car loan at least a year and a half ahead of schedule. So, debt-free, no ugly history with exes, no kids to complicate things, stable job with superb medical benefits, and I drive a sleek black fully loaded SUV. Girls should be lining up the door here, and yet nobody wants me. At least nobody sane that is, and just that one criteria seems to eliminate a good portion of the female populace.

*Sigh*

That’s part of the reason why I want to travel, and once my debts are cleared I’ll have to decide then whether to throw caution to the wind and quit my job so I can roam the country as a working nomad. I’d like to believe that there’s a place in this vast nation of ours where I can truly feel like I belong, a place I could finally call home, because it sure as #@$%ing hell isn’t this sewage dump of a New York town. I’m never gonna know for sure though until I start putting myself out there.

At the very least I’d be free from the shackles of a dead-end office job, with no ties to anything and the freedom to pursue any course I desire, and embark on any adventure I wish. Maybe then I’ll finally find…. her, and by then I wouldn’t have to worry about the trials of a long distance relationship, because I’ll be able to go to wherever she is. Unless of course, she’s in Australia.

Ah well, for now I’ll just celebrate this little victory over VISA, in the hopes that this will signify the beginning of my very own personal independence.

The Californian fires got me thinking about how much worth people place on material possessions, and how quickly it can all be lost through circumstances beyond our control. It’s so difficult and takes so long to build up our material wealth, and yet the cruelties of life have shown us that in a mere moment it can all be taken away.

I certainly learned that lesson when I lost my house and found myself utterly homeless for the first time in my life. The feeling that you suddenly have no place on earth anymore to call home is simply indescribable. It was surreal for me, and the shock of that experience changed me forever. These days I no longer place any value in owning a home, and I continue to wittle down my possessions in order to make myself more mobile. Nowadays I place my value in my independence and the freedom of not being tied down to one location. I want to be able to move any where on a dime’s notice, and as a result I’ve been making it a rule of mine to ensure I don’t own more than what I can fit into my own car. Fortunately though I own a SUV.

For the longest time I’ve romanticized the idea of living a nomadic lifestyle, and whenever disaster strikes somewhere in the U.S., I liked the idea that such a lifestyle meant I could just hop in my car and go to lend whatever helping hand I could. I hated to watch these kinds of events unfold, (such as the fires happening now), while I was stuck on the sidelines, tied down to a dead end job, suffering from poor health and with bills that never seem to stop coming. I haven’t entirely proved myself useless though, since I’m using my income to help provide for relatives in need, but there was a part of me that always held on to the notion that I was meant to do more. Not merely token gestures of charity, but the capacity to truly help those in need in ways I’m either incapable or have been unwilling to do now.

To me this felt like the real way to live. It would feel right. It would feel JUST.

There’s a Hebrew word that describes my feelings here, down to a T. The word is Tzedakah, and while it is translated to mean “charity” in English, in truth the meaning is much deeper than that. According to Judaism 101:

“Tzedakah” is the Hebrew word for the acts that we call “charity” in English: giving aid, assistance and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes. However, the nature of tzedakah is very different from the idea of charity. The word “charity” suggests benevolence and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor and needy. The word “tzedakah” is derived from the Hebrew root Tzadei-Dalet-Qof, meaning righteousness, justice or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous, magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty, giving the poor their due.

When I first started this blog I was under the belief that I would eventually attend law school so I could help find justice for those in need as an attorney, and when those plans fell through, I felt like my life was basically over, and as a result I sunk even further in my depression. Before the thought of law school I once had a lifelong dream of establishing a career in law enforcement, but after 7 years of working in one of the most corrupt law enforcement agencies I’ve ever witnessed in all of creation, that dream was pretty much derailed as well.

Law enforcement didn’t pan out, the legal profession didn’t pan out, so where was I supposed to find justice?

Then I thought, maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. It’s a given that God never sees things the way we do, and maybe there’s huge part of a picture in all this that I’ve just haven’t been able to see yet. Maybe the kind of justice I’m looking for can’t be found in a courtroom, or from wearing a badge. Instead of letting myself completely unravel and succumbing to my depression, it might be time to consider that there really is a life being prepared for me that will end up being better than anything I’ve ever imagined, and the kind of justice I seek and find in that life will prove to be more profound and far more rewarding. I just need to believe it again.

I still have a long way to go before I can finally consider myself ready for such a life, but it’s time I broke this cycle of despair and began my own personal basic training program.

I think I might hate my new boss.

A storm front brought in a hail of ice here, so a lot of people were able to go home early…. except for me of course.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t turned out that due to some recent policy changes, no work would be coming in for me tonight. So now I’m left here to twiddle my thumbs for 3 hours until my shift finally and mercifully ends, and then I get to drive home 15 miles in the dark on what now has to be one very long sheet of ice because the snow plows haven’t quite gotten to salting and sanding it yet.

The phone rings, and I pick up. It’s the boss. Hey, he remembered me! Maybe he’s calling to tell me I can leave early since there’ll be no more work. Maybe I misjudged him after….

“Linc, can you see if there’s a pink slip of paper on my desk?”

“Oh…yeah, sure, hold on….”

I go to look. There’s a slip with a number on it.

“Yeah I see it….”

“What’s the number?”

I give it to him.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome! So I guess I’ll see you on Mon….”

*click*

………………..yep, I think I hate my new boss.

I was just reading a blog post by Miss O’ Hara discussing how women should ignore or drop men who still live with their parents because they don’t have the wherewithal to survive on their own or be good husbands. She does allow for mitigating circumstances where the local economy and the real estate market can make this virtually impossible, or if you’re supporting parents going through a rough patch (I think). Still, this type of thinking makes me uneasy. Even if you provide legitimate reasons for staying with your parents, I can’t help but wonder if whatever girl you’re interested in had already written you off on her mental checklist the minute she heard about your living situation, despite you giving reasonable explanations for it. After all, being with your parents tells a girl either A) He’s not rich enough for me, or B) he’s burdened down with caring for his ailing parent(s), so he’ll have no time left over to shower me with any attention. I know plenty of girls will swear until they are blue in the face otherwise, but I suspect they can’t help but think this way. Just as it is supposedly in man’s nature to be the leader, it is also in woman’s nature to be cared for (by the man).

I also think Hara’s reasoning here that snubbing guys who live with their parents can have the opposite effect. A guy could resign himself to believing that is truly no one out there waiting for him, and thus he may lose the necessary incentive to improve his life and gain some independence.

I surmise that this mentality is really borne out of an innate desire to find a guy willing to coddle them, and who makes enough money that they can stay at home and freely sponge off his salary. I personally know a few women who are like this too. Rather than being a help mate, they are instead a burden to their husbands, who find themselves caring for their wives the same way you’d care for a pet dog. Not surprisingly, such wives tend to show a complete ineptness in handling even the most basic tasks of paying the bills, balancing the checkbooks, and so on. Some don’t even have driving licenses, creating yet another unnecessary burden on the husband.

In spite of the exceptions some women profess to make for men who live with their parents, the fact is such a trait is undesirable regardless of whether he has good reasons for doing so or not. The bottom line is that such a man would be unable to care for her because of his financial difficulties, or because of his obligations to his family. In this vein, women aren’t looking for a man to love: they are looking for a man capable of coddling them for the rest of their lives.

And stupid me, I always thought marriage was all about true love, not something to be judged on external circumstances such as what your living situation might be. Would it be so terrible to get to know a guy first instead of immediately writing him off because he lives with Mommy? Maybe he has a heart of gold, but is just afraid of going off on his own, and just needs a woman to encourage him or (God forbid) HELP him find the moxie he’s been looking for. Would that be so terrible? The Bible does say that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave onto his WIFE. Ideally then, the man is never truly alone wen he goes out into the world, for God himself has said that it is not good for the man to be alone. He is ready to leave when he has ALREADY found someone. Yet the Gospel according to Miss O’ Hara demands that he already be independent BEFORE meeting someone.

Personally, and for the record, I live with my parents because we can only survive for the time being by sticking together. It just hit me that out of all of us, I am actually the only one who is self sufficient. Neither of them can live independently of me, but it is through no fault of their own. There are times when I can sense my mother’s grief and how she feels she has let me down because of it. But sometimes it’s just the circumstances of life, and I don’t believe it’s always going to be like this either. For now I take it as a lesson on how important it is to stick together as a family through thick and thin, and I believe that’s a learned trait well worth taking into any marriage.

Do I resent it at times? Of course, and sometimes more often than not. But the times I truly resent it is when I see picky women quickly ready to pass over me because my living situation is something they find unappealing. I guess loyalty and a sense of duty for honoring your parents counts for nothing these days. Nope, it’s all about showing them the MONEY.