A Human Condition

Working the job I do, you have your finger on the pulse of the sense of entitlement out there. People want something for nothing, the customer is always right and feel despite the fact you treat them with the utmost respect and dignity they have no qualms rubbing your face in their inability to return some common courtesy.

Of course not everyone is like this, some are decent and even nice. For the most part my contact with people beyond my own circle of friends and family leaves something to be desired. Now, you have to take into account the people I talk to have legit issues which are irritating. However, what people expect out of a relatively small amount of money is completely disproportionate.

Let's say you pay $85 dollars a month for your cable bill. Extrapolate it over the course of a year and you pay $1,020. It's not enough to cover one of my paychecks. So how would you losing a few hours of service be grounds for you to request an entire month of service? I don't work for a cable company, however this hypothetical request is something I deal with on a minute to minute basis.

All in all, and despite people asking for the sun, moon and stars, I still love the challenge of what I do. The job is a daily acquisition of puzzle pieces making you better than you were yesterday, and I really appreciate it. I need things to exercise my mind or I would go nuts. More so than I already am.

So I have this to fall back one while I'm hiatus from full-time school which I am excelling at to my surprise, but to the surprise of no one else. Maybe one of the things I feared was I knew I could be successful at this and I'd have to hear everyone say "I told you so." Being a 4.0 student and the drive I have to get there (which not surprisingly, doesn't require as much as I thought it might) is bleeding over into the professional aspect of my life. Now, if I could apply it to getting into the gym and landscaping my yard, my wife would love me that much more.

"What does this have to do with anything?"

Glad you asked, let me explain...

Detaching myself from how I operated from about the age of 15 to the age of 27 is a process still in development. A big part of who I am stems from my broken home as a teen in high school, and it is something I don't talk about much on my blog. At least compared to the rest of the mindless and some meaningful topics I tackle or stumble over.

Self reliance is a trait most see as invaluable. However too much can be poison. I wasted ten good years of my life figuring it out. I dropped out of college, messed up friendships and relationships, and even fell into some that damaged me emotionally and financially. I ran over some good people, and cut strings from people I thought I'd be attached to my entire life. Counting on only yourself leaves little room for others.

My relationship with my family hasn't been the same since I decided I didn't need them. My extended family is an afterthought, the people I looked up to as a child were demystified to the point of them being useless while I searched for someone else to fill the void. What I learned was I became me through the people I wanted to dispose of, which caused a deep resentment directed at myself. I hated and disliked me, because of what I thought everyone else who had my last name (or my Mom's) screwed me out of what I deserved in life. Funny thing is, they wanted to do everything they could to keep me from being so bitter. Being right all the time blinds you from those who are trying to assist you.

My sense of entitlement and my success in life I thought would just be a given. I deserved it just because of who I was. Did it come from how I was raised? I was praised quite a bit, but I never followed through on it. The people I was close too and loved, it was good enough for them so why even try harder? I've learned over the past few years, and more recently with this current job, just being there doesn't entitle you shit. It fosters a great deal of complacency, and you get lazy.

I missed out on a lot of life in some respects. The loss of a close family member and a couple of friends couldn't make me see the light in my early 20's, but a group of kids 10 years younger than me, and disgruntled cell phone users from around the country helped me break the mold. Most of all, my wife and companion has helped me. She probably wouldn't know why exactly, and maybe neither do I. There are quite a few unspoken phenomena in our relationship.

Repairing what I've lost and salvaging what I can is a double edged sword at this point. Moving from Sioux Falls to Kansas City allowed me to bury things that needed burying. But it also prevents me from mending some fences, which is hard to let go of. But I carry on and do what I can when I can. The older you get the smaller your world becomes. When you are striking out on your own, everything and everyone is so important. But the moments you have with the people you trust and love become more real when you don't try to be everything to everyone.

It's sort of cliche, the closer I get to 30 the more I see the previous 29 years shrinking in the rear view mirror. It's a good thing, because the weight I was carrying around my neck almost choked me to death. Basically what I'm hoping for is not to be so bitter when I have crappy cell phone reception and have to call to get it fixed and don't hassle the guy or gal on the other end of the line too much. All I can hope for is everyone else out there is coming to a moment of self-realization akin to what I am experiencing.