A Living Magazine - Grounded in Maine - Day 15 - There is Still Time to be Happy

The sleep spot was, in a word, ideal. I needed to catch the blog up. There was a Starbucks just across the street, a McDonald's across the parking lot, a Dunkin Donuts, two gas stations, a Shaw's, and if I were to need more supplies there was that Walmart I'd visited the day before. Surely I could get a lot of work done. Now that I had a place to camp that would also not be a worry.

I took a few pictures on this day, but my SD card failed (again). This is a nightmare for a photojournalist. I would find out how deep and dark this nightmare would run in the next few days. I got to Starbucks, a very friendly and well-run store--maybe the best one I've seen. A sweet girl named Jessie made sure that she got my name and remembered it for the next few days.

Once there and plugged in, I was able to publish four posts. I think that was the most I'd ever written in one day. I was smart enough to have done quite a bit of preparation during my days in Brunswick. That helped a lot. I had started an essay a few days ago that I finished after my other work on this day.

The inspiration for the sentiments in it are from some opportunities that are finally lining up for me. I believe some digital publishing and printed books are on the way. It is not yet the nonfiction books I've been writing in my head about these Journeys, but rather shorts stories I have published on the blog. There should be a compilation of them soon. This is a distillation of how I feel now that things are beginning to come together.

I want so desperately for others to find a way out of lives in which they are unhappy. I can't do anything for your love life, your diet, or your family relationships. I can only offer some unasked for advice for you if you hate your job as much as I hated mine. Working at it was literally killing me. My heart could not withstand the anxiety and stress of the hypocrisy, backstabbing, and betrayal of a mid level business career. So, take from it what you will... 

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THERE IS STILL TIME TO BE HAPPY

All things happen for a Reason and in their own time. This is my belief. If you work your little ass off at something you love and simply never, never stop or give in, you WILL meet with greater and greater success, and you will become happier and happier.

I don't say this for the benefit of people who work for other people, although I think it can apply to them as well. And, I genuinely hope that those who hold jobs with a boss above them can find that this does work.

Rather, I am speaking to people who make crafts, or are artists, musicians, writers, and business owners who are just starting out--people who are making their own careers, who have chosen to do what they want with their lives.

If you love what you do - honestly feel satisfied with your career choice and aren't just telling people that you are happy with it - then this sentiment of mine is not what you need anymore.

But, if you have been considering being your own boss, making a life for yourself by doing what you want--changing a hobby you love into a career, for example, for godsake do it!

Yes, you will struggle and go through intense personal hardship. You will have days when you can't eat regularly, maybe even years. You may lose all of that so-called "security" that you thought you needed to maintain in order to "survive," meaning to merely exist. 

But hell, survival is not the point of life! The Universe, whatever Creator you believe in, or simply your own dignity as a human being if you don't believe there is anything higher, want you to be happy, not just exist. Happiness is worth finding - if that search is intentional and intelligent - at all costs.

Happiness is the forgotten goal. It is even a right written into the US Constitution ("...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). If you are not pursuing happiness, you are not taking advantage of your inalienable right as an American citizen, nor as a human being.

Government is there to protect this right for you and encourage circumstances to be maintained in society that provide for this pursuit in which you are entitled. The people we elect are sworn to uphold this right of yours.

To instead encourage a society of worker-masses made to feel, and even think, that they must sacrifice their entire lives under the weight and pressure of unhappy and onerous labor, is treason.

That millions upon millions of people are indentured to the maintenance of a system that virtually requires them to give up their dreams and creative goals, to be unhappy for the supposed "good" of all, to enslave themselves for a tiny minority who is then able to do anything they want, is erroneous, evil, and ultimately iniquitous. Do I state this too strongly? I don't think so. From my observations around the country, what is happening now is utter and unmitigated insanity.

This insanity accepted by the majority of human beings in this world, expressed through doing what the tiny minority requires of them just to exist, has raped the environment we all love, sends one seventh of humanity to bed each night with nothing in their stomachs (one billion people), is selling away the future of your children and grandchildren and feeds upon itself, in an ever worsening loop.

Indeed, that your own friends and family would encourage you to do what you hate - with rationalizations about how if you can make enough money then you could do what you want, or that it is your responsibility so that society doesn't have to take care of you - is a personal betrayal to you, and by default, to all humanity.

These rationalizations are cruel lies that when given as counsel constitute an abridgement of natural law and logical reasoning.

Someone who truly loves you should never advise you to be unhappy even for a short time. In their hearts, they know it is morally wrong and ethically unwise. Perhaps they've felt they've "had" to do it and await your commiserative partnership? That is not even tough love. That is passive condemnation. It condemns you to willingly click a ball and chain to your ankles, and then throw the key away. No one, and I mean NO ONE, ultimately thinks that telling you to be unhappy in order to only exist thinks that is the correct thing to say. But they still do it. 

Telling it to young people as they become adults is the worst possible advice that could ever be given.

It fascinates me to no end that in order to fit into the insanity-society, ten of millions of people feel they need to take SSRI's or other antianxiety or antidepressant "medications." Millions of doctors whoring themselves to the pharma industry immediately turn to these substances to dumb down the discomfort of their patient, just so they can live the life they hate. Patients, now having been told they these unnecessary drugs do it because demigod-doctors are held with such unearned esteem. Patients simply accept the habitual need for more and more numbing, because that's what's "good" for them. I call people who submit themselves to this form of dangerous drug dependence, "the worried well." If they can't twist widgets onto doohickies, or sit in their cubical-cage each day, or flip burgers fast enough with artificial smiles plastered on their faces, there must be something wrong with them. 

The medical industry in particular is over-regarded to the point where patients don't even give a second thought to doing what they are told by "their doctor." And the convolution of information being pumped directly into people's minds through the repetitive ads flowing from the hypodermic apparatus of corporate media is so warped and distorted that people will actually use a TV commercial's advice to "ask their doctor if you have this condition and may need this medication." The carefully nourished stupidity cultivated by repeating, rampant and rapacious commercialism is even more popularly adopted than is the doctor's advice itself! With all of this blind medical following, are we not even aware that being killed by a doctor's mistakes or negligence is the third leading cause of death in America?

The crazy-factory where first world people are separated from their dreams and creative urges, then reconstructed as heavily medicated, medically-numbed workers laboring for the tiniest bit of the population is now the norm. Changing their brain chemistry for society's corporate owners, rather than changing society itself to fit our already-perfectly constructed brains, completes the madness. Nearly everything that most people do each day makes this madness more perniciousness and ingrained. 

But I'm here to tell you that there is a way out. I found it! And those of you who have wallked along with me have seen it developing. I suspect of you will eventually travel down a similar path.

Finally, there are a few business-like opportunities developing for me. I've seen the very bottom, lived there, shown it to you as best I could. I am not quite free of the chain around my own ankles yet. But in wandering around this nation writing about what I see and whom I meet I have scraped that chain down to its rusty core. You can do the same for yourselves. You must find your own wallk and it may have nothing at all to do with my method. But it IS there for you.

You can find it by taking other people's poisonous expectations for your life and flushing those away. There are forces in the Universe that will assist you in this. It takes that first mere decision to relocate what you had dreamed of for yourself as a child. Maybe something you still dream about?

You would be better off spending the rest of your life finding a way to grind away the chain around your own ankles, than to be miserable and then pass that misery on to your children, insisting that they then pass it on to their children.

You ARE the craftsperson, the artist, the musician, the writer, the business owner that you once thought you were and still wish to be. Even with all of the terrible brainwashing and disinformation you may have let be tattooed upon yourself, as long as you are still breathing you can cleanse yourself, wake up your soul and be an example to the people around you. Buck the trends. Fight the darkness and the whole world will begin to fill with Light.

Or, don't. If all the hunger, suffering, violence, and poverty...all the unhappiness you see around or within you is okay with you, then continue to embrace your own discomfiture. Work as hard as you can to polish your ankle chain. Dump your dreams in the trash forever, and fill the pockets of those who boss you around, patronize and lead you give them your hard-earned money. Stay in debt financially and socially. Fill every corner of your house and then rent a storage unit and fill that up too with crap that TV tells you to. Play the doctor-game and stuff your medicine cabinet the latest, greatest serotonin blasters. Be a serotonin junky.  Be proud of it. Be proud of it all. Because, very frankly, you will have nothing else of which to be proud. I would venture to guess that not a single person who has made it through this essay thinks that is alright. Yet, many condone it through their own inaction and willful compliance with these things.

At the very least it is worth taking a second look; indulging in a second thought. It was for me.

I believe that after quite a bit more struggle, I will prove for myself what I have said above (and many others are saying right now) It is a truth that future generations will acknowledge as self-evident.

I will not fail. I will not turn back. I will defend myself against those who seek to destroy my work, my reputation, or me, by naysaying and insisting that I jump back into the hell that they are subjecting themselves to. And if you take the step of freeing yourself, I promise to defend you. We are the Army of One.

I will tell every curious person I meet that you and I have used our own minds - through self control and tenacious persistence - to free our souls from slumber. I will tell them that they are only one choice away from doing the same thing. And, then I will leave them alone.

As I have said hundreds of times now, I will wear my soul on the outside and you will see it before I leave this world. I think that many, many others will do the same within our lifetimes. We are creating a New Age of Heroes. There is still time to be happy. We will do it. Just watch us!

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When I was utterly spent from writing, I packed up the tablet and went to the gas station to buy a Gatorade. Then I watched a beautiful sunset, taking pictures that would never be seen and returned to the sleep spot.

It was an easy job to set up the tent. A few mosquitos got me, but not many before I climbed in and slipped into unconsciousness.