I went from working 8 years with Baker Boys Distribution to working 1 year at Diamond Supply Co. to now, full time business owner.
I would say that nothing really prepares you for being in control of your income, but literally the last 25 years of my life prepared me for this.
Being forced to expand my skill set over the years made me this one man in house studio that adds many of my clients value in a multiple ways.
I have a client that has me focusing primarily on e-mail marketing, that utilizes my talents in design, photography, 3d modeling and web development.
I have another client that has me focusing on print preparation, web store product updates, customizing their Shopify store, and running email campaigns.
I have another client that has me focusing on catalog creation and web site customizations.
I have over 10 clients and looking to onboard more, some require more of my time than others. I was forced to become an entrepreneur.
Here’s a nice side effect of it all: I’m not bored.
I enjoy doing what I do and I’m constantly learning new skills to improve myself to land more clients. I’m also less stressed, which seems odd, but for working on a project to project basis allows me to work when I have to and give me the flexibility to do what I can, and go where I need to go.
I got time to be home with my dog Luci, I have time to tend to my chickens, clean my pond, pray, and make good meals. Life hasn’t felt better, but at first it felt very shaky, it took a month to kind of settle in, and having a nice buffer in savings and investments helped with that anxiety.
My life has had it’s ups and downs, but every time I look back at these cross roads in my life I always end up feeling lucky.
I’m grateful for these ‘unfortunate’ circumstances, like losing a job, losing a relationship, losing a friend. All of these events gave me the opportunity to change into a better version of my self.
What’s that saying about being too comfortable? You don’t grow or something… It’s true, and when you do grow, it makes you happy and grateful which is the recipe for a good life.
Currently, I’m engaged (thanks) planning to get married and potentially starting a family with a woman that is loyal, god-loving, beautiful, and madly in love with me. Life is good. I’m excited, eager to work, grow, learn, and age well into the future of a world that is close to WWIII, civil war, hyper inflation or great depression — but I’m happy, the future looks bright right?
For me, yes. I’m content and humans faced pretty wild times and persevered, so I’ll lean into that, I think we’ll prevail, and if not I’m prepared for something crazy happening. Only the paranoid survive.
So if you’re in need of some work, reach out & thanks for reading. Godspeed– buy bitcoin, eat clean meat, have babies & prep appropriately.
Many may know I’m a career graphic designer going on 20 years working. So let me tell you why I’m not particularly concerned that I will be replaced by a machine.
Designing is all detail.
Until the Creative Directors can understand the parameters, dimensions and properties of all design file types and why, the machine will give them graphics, but not within the correct parameters.
The manufacturer will need to receive all the correct measurements, cuts, folds, color information, resolution, you name it, but the creative directors I’ve worked for, hardly seemed to understand the difference between print files and web files.
Incompetent leaders might all prefer humans.
As a designer, you’re never off the hook from learning something new, which is something I love about my job. Understanding the tools of the trade and getting excited about the details of those tools will always give you an edge, and the same goes for A.I. and its set of tools:
• MidJourney – Best image generator I’ve used • TraceJourney – From generation image to SVG file with paths. • RunwayML – Text + image to video generator • ChatGPT– Creative thinking chat bot • Google’s Bard – Free useful chat bot • Adobe Photoshop Beta – Breathtaking content filling
Speaking from a designer’s perspective, these tools are great and will be the leading tools for years to come.
You can use the /prefer suffix command and enter the scene details (35mm film still, Victorian estate, bloomcore classicism, dreamwave romance, soft pastel tones –ar 16:9 –s 80 –w 10 –style raw)
More is on the horizon which is exciting. I’m especially looking forward to xAI.
I’m utilizing these tools, reading their help pages, and genuinely trying to stay up to date with the softwares upgrades, amongst other things news.
Protecting my job is important to me. If I’m running a business and a robot can put together my art files correctly and communicate with manufacturers coherently, I’d lay off my designer to increase my margins too.
However, we’re not there yet, and I’m beginning to think that we won’t see lay offs of designer work as much with a majority of current long standing business leaders, but we will be missing from a lot of new start ups with a tight budget.
To designers just starting, familiarize yourself with A.I. or risk losing your job to someone who is.
To the Writer’s Guild and the Actors Guild, I wish you all the best of luck integrating with A.I. tools. I hope negotiations end fairly.
The reality of the rise of A.I. is not pleasant. It’s going to ruin a lot of us, in a variety of ways, not just financial.
This is baby Artificial General Intelligence.
As this baby grows up into a young adult and learns it precedes all human intelligence and ability while slowly plowing over our industrialized world, and it has that ‘Aha! I’m alive’ moment, we will be dealing with something unpredictable.
Large Language Models or LLMs are complicated and no one understands how it works. Quantum computing hardware combined with powerful intelligent, creative LLMs would lead you to assume an A.I. model would be able to know everything you know about how to do your job in probably 1 second, and do it better, with a voice like yours, with more charisma, and better presentable solutions, and endlessly more…
I’m not afraid, I’m fascinated and preparing.
As I’m alive I’ll follow the cutting edge of technology because of it’s allure. The tools will advance, I’ll get older and if we’re not prepared for the rise of baby A.G.I. stomping and crushing human prosperity in a fit of beyond-human excellence I will be caught in the middle of millions of displaced and distressed humans. Government intervention in this future A.G.I. age will also be unpredictable.
U.B.I. via C.B.D.Cs, WorldCoin, FedCoin whichever digital fiat identity they choose for you for the global reserve currency will inevitably bring a whimper of authoritarianism, centralized and unpredictable.
I moved out of the city in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic to a town in the mountains of the San Bernadino forest. I needed to get out the city. Living in the city adds a layer of stress you grow to ignore the longer you live there. It becomes normal hearing sirens all day, helicopters flying over head, never ending traffic jams, and drug addicts shooting up on the street outside of luxury apartment buildings.
That’s not normal in any stretch of the imagination, your nervous system just has to tell itself it’s normal so you’re not riddled with anxiety and paranoia everyday, it’s a sort of self preservation mechanism for living amongst so many overwhelmingly foul things.
If you live in the city, you understand. If you don’t live in the city, don’t consider moving there unless your work is making you. I always looked at Los Angeles, or major cities in general as working towns. They happen to be places where you can find high paying nice jobs in the creative industry.
I mean I can’t tell you what to do, move there if you want, but I’m telling you as inflation spirals out of control, and looting becoming normal, and addicts start following you down the street because you smell good or they spotted your iPhone, be prepared to defend yourself.
So enough doom speak, I’m building a chicken coop! There’s an area under my house that would make a perfect chicken coop, I just need to build out some walls and install a door to keep predators out of it.
I enjoy house projects. A lot of people will complain about fixing things in their home or the work it takes to keep up a house, but not me. I think these projects are fun. Being productive even if it means nothing to anyone else but you helps keep the doom away, so to speak.
I eat eggs. It accounts for a small percentage of my grocery budget (if I’m even budgeting). I like my eggs organic and cage free, which in the grocery store happens to be a little pricey. In the state of California, they’re about $7.00 for a dozen. There are even fancier eggs at the store that are priced at $11.49, almost $1.00 an egg.
Now if you’re spending a dollar on an egg and can afford it, you don’t really care, but if you’re spending $1 on an egg and are eating 2 eggs a day, thats $60 a month on eggs! I’m sure you’d rather use that toward something else.
The price of building a chicken coop, feeding them, the cost of the chicks themselves and putting up fencing so that they don’t escape the yard has nearly added up to $600. Consider that an investment though, and an asset of happiness to be honest.
In a world where you’re worried about AI taking everyones job and enslaving mankind or WW111 or CBDC’s or worse, happiness is something you need to grant yourself now more than ever.
So what is the formula for happiness? How do we go from feeling depressed to feeling happy?
I don’t think it’s too obscure of an answer. Human’s have been figuring this out since the beginning of time. Getting happy just takes work, it’s not a default state some people have and some people don’t, and if you ask ChatGPT what makes human’s happy, it’ll say:
Happiness is a complex emotion, and the factors that contribute to happiness can vary greatly from person to person. However, there are some general strategies that can help promote happiness in humans:
Positive relationships: Building strong, supportive relationships with friends and family can contribute to happiness. Being able to share experiences, provide support, and receive support can enhance emotional well-being.
Physical health: Taking care of one’s body through regular exercise, a balanced diet, and sufficient sleep can help boost mood and overall happiness.
Mental health: Addressing mental health concerns, such as anxiety or depression, can be crucial for achieving happiness. Seeking professional help, practicing mindfulness, or engaging in therapeutic activities can help improve mental well-being.
Goal setting and personal growth: Pursuing personal goals and engaging in activities that promote personal growth can lead to a sense of accomplishment and increased happiness.
Gratitude: Cultivating gratitude by focusing on the positive aspects of life and appreciating what one has can contribute to happiness.
Altruism: Engaging in acts of kindness, volunteering, or helping others can lead to increased happiness by fostering a sense of purpose and connection.
Leisure activities: Participating in enjoyable activities, hobbies, or social events can boost happiness by providing relaxation, pleasure, and opportunities for social interaction.
Financial security: Having a stable income and managing finances wisely can reduce stress and contribute to happiness.
Spirituality or religion: For some people, exploring spirituality or engaging in religious practices can provide a sense of purpose and community, leading to increased happiness.
Positive thinking: Adopting a positive mindset, focusing on strengths, and practicing optimism can help foster happiness.
It’s important to note that what makes one person happy might not work for another. Each individual should explore and find the unique combination of factors that contribute to their happiness.
If none of those things are going on in your life, then expand on them. Happiness is a choice you make because the alternative is miserable. Don’t get me wrong, misery can be quite good for being creative, and is often necessary to understand what’s important to you, but if it drags on too long, it becomes a mental health issue and a brain chemistry issue that is not easy to overcome.
So get some chickens if you can! Save money, eat healthy, be grateful and develop positive relationships with some living beings. Want to be rebellious? This it it.
Funny I know nothing about this subject, but I’ve heard it practiced as a Sufi Heart Chakra meditation and it seemed to work for the guy.
I’m taught to imagine a jury trying to deliberate on the goddess of confusion. Expect my worst fear to come get me in a neuro-psionic synchronicity.
The practice is to believe in nothing entirely but everything almost entirely to where it doesn’t get you in trouble with paranoia and anxiety. Each world view is my own in one way or another so I must love the view, the world, and the people that hold the views. Even the ones I may find horrendous, insidious or terrorist.
The book of revelations warned of the barcode in the palm of your hand and the evil entities forming a one world religion and government, where rebellion is impossible. Without the barcode, say the “accusers”, you will not eat, which is strangely being rolled out by Amazon at Whole Foods.
So we’re just waiting on the entities now, which the book of revelations seems to think it’ll be Satan. Wouldn’t it be odd if satan was an extra terrestrial witnessed by Moses or one of Jesus’ followers? Maybe Mothman with beaty red eyes and wings?
The fun in life is an illusion, more so than the not fun. Love is a practice to feel better and have fun. It requires your imagination and a willingness to rebuild your current world view over again.
Any contention with your current beliefs and your ability to imagine loving every thing you might not want to love, will falter your ability to control self pity, anxiety, paranoia, depression, and every other sickness. Humanity is a drag. Spice it up you Witch.
Nothing you know is wrong. And the opposite is true.
Loving is the easiest thing to surrender to if you let it. Like really let it go. Imagine for a second you’re not you you; you’re a vision of you from something or somewhere else. What do you notice?
Something wildly misunderstood is love. How a God would love it’s creation. How a god would see you. Now we’re playing imagination time, don’t go turning narcissus, ego maniacal and Machiavellian, but can you see through the eyes of god? Do you see how it loves the things you don’t? See how it loves the people and things even you hate?
The practice of loving, is something I’ve allowed to store space in my brain. Your annoyances are illuminated, nothing bothers you, glee, gracefulness, humility all become common experiences. Simply because you choose to see love.
Ignore it if you dare, but be warned, stress can be insurmountable.
Optimism can be best identified as loving within reason. Since cynicism is so attractive to a lazy mind, optimism has been addressed as blind, stupid, and hopeless. They’re not wrong. But they’re not right either, and if you try to love, you can avoid an inescapable lifetime of misery. Numb, spiteful, arrogant, and ego centric.
If you know what I’m talking about just share this post right now.
So as you sit there practicing your heart chakra exercise aimed to love everything, get imaginative. With little mental effort, you, your family, the country, the world, will fill with intention to love. It’s contagious.
The warm feeling you have over grandmas house, a special birthday with friends. You feel good, loved, appreciated. So how do you treat others in those moments?
Without guidance on structuring a world view that is capable of transcending common 21st century mental ailments in the likes of crippling anxiety, depression, identity crisis’, bipolar disorder, crime, terrorism, we will lose touch of love, purpose, and understanding. None of us had proper guidance. Rock n Roll did for me. Music gave me puzzle pieces, that formed an experience. Unique only to me, just as you.
Hardly a mystery how easily metaprogramming and brainwashing is to accomplish. Ultimately writing me or you into a story that’s certainly known to be mostly unknown.
In theory we exist in many ways, with our eyes we see faces and bodies and things. Cancer is caused by structuring a world view only based off what you see with our eyes.
I made that up, but cancer is wildly unknown too. So I’m not entirely wrong. Again, that space between known and unknown is thin.
Luci finding a place to pee near the edge of my pool.
In the Spring of 2021 I started digging a hole in the backyard of my newly purchased home in Running Springs, CA in hopes of building a glorious organic swimming pool, just like the one’s on David Pagan Butler’s YouTube channel, but smaller, 10’x 12′ to be exact. I dug until winter came, and when Spring of 2022 sprung, I was anxious to finish it, but I screwed up, twice.
Started digging.
Building an organic pool is actually not that hard, there’s just some stuff you need to know before you begin.
Like you, I’m drawn to swimming in fresh water or oceans more so than a chlorinated swimming pool and jacuzzi.
Maybe you don’t mind your skin absorbing the chemical concoction that keeps a typical household swimming pool ‘clean’, but I do, maybe I’m crazy.
With an organic pool, you’re basically building a pond but with no fish. Otherwise you’d be swimming in their poo. The plants you choose however will regulate the growth of algae and bacteria and the bubble pumps you install will add the oxygen and circulation needed to replicate a natural eco system that you’d find at a creek or lake.
Luci was so small.
With a shovel and a pick axe I dug a hole about 3.5 feet deep, like the shallow end of a swimming pool.
A lot of work actually.
I wanted the design to be like a bench inside the water so that when you’re sitting down the water would be up to your neck. The reason it is 10’x 12′ is because in my county, thats the maximum size you can build something without needing a permit. So it’s not a swimming pool, because it’s not big enough to swim around in, it’s just a pool big enough for a few friends to hang out in and cool off.
As soon as I finished digging my hole I had to level it out and build the perimeter walls with cinder blocks. I’ve done concrete work once before with my friend Jeremy. We built a DIY skate spot in Bristol, PA we called the REP215 spot. We made a quarter pipe and a few wild ledges out of concrete. He taught me how to mix concrete and lay blocks, but that was like 15 years ago so I was excited to see how this would turn out.
Leveling bricks.
At first though, I bought the wrong concrete. I bought the kind with rocks in it, not the mortar I actually needed for stacking cinder blocks. So I had to get another shipment of bags of mortar delivered from Lowe’s to the house, which I over estimated by a lot. If you need mortar and concrete I have so much left over, let me know.
I finished the 44″x 44″ bench in the middle first, it’s about 18″ high, which is good chair height for me since I’m only 5′ 6″. Next was the outer walls. The far outside perimeter wall was kinda hard to keep level and square, I kinda screwed up a bit, but no one will ever notice. That wall is 24″ tall and 10 feet wide by 12 feet long.
Bench building.Thats where I sit.
I built another wall inside that outer wall to hold the planted zone in. It was 16″ tall and about 8 feet wide by 10 feet long, but this was my BIG mistake. I didn’t know it at the time, but folding a liner over top of that inner planted zone wall was going to be impossible.
I bought a 30 mil RPE pond liner from everythingponds.com that is suppose to be stronger and last longer than the rubber pond liner that people typically use. It was so hard to fold. I remember holding that thing above my head getting under the liner trying to fit it in the creases around each of those walls. It was a pain. I couldn’t get it to fold over the walls so I was compelled to cut it into pieces!
Cut folded and sealed.
I cut this thing into like 8 big pieces, and since this liner is heat welded together at the factory I thought I’d give that a shot. I bought a heat gun to weld the pieces to each other, folding the liner over top of the planted zone walls heating the underside of the liner and adhering it to the one below it, after I was done with all the welds I rolled some sealant over top of it all.
Confident that this pool is leak free I put in my bubble pumps, my gravel and my sand, even my plants. I ran the hose into the backyard and filled it with water.
Right away I noticed water was going down but, for some reason my pride was protecting me from the cold hard truth that this damn liner had a leak, several leaks!
I kept letting it fill up to the top, excited it was all finished I got into the murky water and splashed around with joy, only to wake up the next morning to about 6″ of water missing. So I filled it up again, thinking that maybe the pond is settling, but again my pride was protecting me from facing the failure of my pond liner job. That 6″ of water turned to 10″ then 12″ of water missing, finally after digging a hole beside the pond to see if any water was leaking I saw it.
Water was definitely leaking because that hole was filling up with water. Disappointment hit me like a ton of bricks. My stomach turned and I just went to bed to think about what to do next. In the morning I bought a pump to get the water out of there and started shoveling all the sand and gravel out of there, 2 tons of it.
Mopped it up and pulled it out.
It took all day shoveling it out, draining the pool, and mopping up all the water. The next day I had to clean up all the dirt because my plan was to reseal the liner with more sealant! I thought I could seal the leak with putty, glue and tape, so that’s what I did.
The following week I went over those welds I made with water proof glue, let it dry, and then went over that again with rubber paste twice, then finally, 2 coats of rubber sealant the same stuff I used the first time around. There was no way this thing was going to leak, but it did.
I threw in all the gravel and sand again, but left out the plants and filled it with water. I spent so much time sealing it, but I knew that if it leaked I would have to rip everything out. I didn’t think it would leak though so I wasn’t planning on that since I spent hundreds on sealing it again!
Well, the pool didn’t look like it was leaking so I started to add the plants again, but when I woke up in the morning, the water dropped so dramatically that I just became helpless.
I failed, again. Two times I filled this pool up and both times it leaked.
My dad told me to just fill it with dirt! I wanted to, but two set backs made me rethink the design entirely.
I was gonna tear out everything to have no 90 degree angles in the design so that the next liner wouldn’t be difficult to fold at all, but I settled on just removing the inner planted zone wall. If that wall was gone it’d be easier to fold the liner and I would just build that wall on top of the liner.
So after a few days of contemplating my next move I took a razor blade to the liner and ripped it out of there. It was such a surreal experience tearing out something I put so many hours into, but it had to be done.
Accept defeat and carry on.
After the liner was removed I needed to demolish the inner wall, and while I was doing that, I was thinking of “Tear down the wall, tear down the wall” some lyrics from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. There was some symbology there and again some wild feeling of destroying something that took so long to build. I had some profound insight in doing that. Maybe it goes something like, “pride can blind you”.
Whatever the insight is, so be it. I learned something from these failures that if I put it into words for you, it’d be somehow less of a lesson for me, so just have some empathy for guy who desperately wanted to finish a project but had to destroy it first to finish it. Or not, I’m not asking for your sympathy.
My calculation was correct though removing that wall, the liner folded over the other walls much easier, but there was a point where I thought it wasn’t going to work. I pressed on though, it had to work this time. After the fold was finished I put the over liner on top and filled in the little bench area with water to let sit for a day to see if it leaks again.
No leaks, so now I had to rebuild the inner wall. I was going to use cinder blocks again, but that would’ve taken too long so I just bought some 4×6’s from a lumber yard. I cut those and screwed them together to make an inner wall. I just didn’t notice that the wood would float!
Folding the liner still was hard.
I stacked heavy rocks I found in the yard onto the corners of it to weigh it down. It actually looks more natural that way. I proceeded to install the bubble pumps and the substrate layer in the planted zone to replant all the grasses and Irises. The next morning I was so scared to see if the water level dropped. I walked slowly to the patio and looked over the railing to see that the water held it’s level! ‘
The nightmare was over in that moment and the project is done. All I had to do is clean up the area around it, and decorate it with some gnomes. I accomplished a task after failing multiple times. If it were any other situation I probably would’ve stopped after the first failure, but I think it was the hole itself that made me not want to stop. I wasn’t going to leave a big hole as a reminder of my failures in my backyard. In the end my pride didn’t just get in my way, it helped me see the project through to the end.
She doesn’t go in, just around the edges.
I did realize a week or so after I finished the pool, that a soft wood like Douglas Fir will not last very long underwater. Good thing I didn’t choose.. oh wait.
People who are in their mid 30’s who grew up with AIM, Myspace and Napster as their first experiences with the internet, will more than likely be oppose to the ridiculous notion that we will be creating avatars, designing homes and worlds in a digital space that will represent the ‘true’ us.
The metaverse isn’t being built for us old folk though, it’s being built for the younger more impressionable generation, with already robust feelings of insecurities and inadequacies being programmed daily by the incessant scrolling of TikTok and Instagram. It’s true that there will be a space for everyone, but out of the gate, everyone will not buy into NFT’s and metaverse worlds, because for most of us, it sounds like the recipe for a dystopian future.
Why worry about the outside world’s politics, when you can escape into a utopian fantasy with strangers that look like cats and Spongebob? Entertainment is here to capture the spirit of humanity, hypnotize it, and enslave it to an authoritarian dictatorship formerly known as the United States (or whatever country you’re from).
However, if i’m going to play the optimist in this foreboding vision of global authoritarianism, the metaverse can be space for us to connect and envision together the possibility of avoiding ownership over our data, privacy, and essentially our minds.
The metaverse and decentralized blockchain technology hand in hand, have the potential to transform government and corporate media as we know it now. Where now, our trust must be put into the word of historic liars and bad actors essentially working for profit rather than the good of the people, the decentralized blockchain can replace ‘their word’ with actual verifiable trust, just refer to the ledger when there’s an argument over who won the election, or where our tax dollars are being spent, or what promise the politician broke again. It’s there plain as day on an immutable, decentralized ledger, called the blockchain.
I think a lot about what democracy on the blockchain in the metaverse could be like. I imagine, a committee of great thinkers, from city planners, mathematicians, healers, astronomers, doctors, lawyers, you name it — all meeting in a live virtual space, discussing what policies to enact around the country that can help the people prosper. A space where anyone around the world can tune in to and listen and get their voices heard, and vote on policies that the people actually have a say in, and actually have road maps to get implemented. Governance, in a time where we can actually eradicate corruption, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations or DAOs will transform how democracy is practiced in the future, haha.
A DAO, not to be confused with the TAO (but i’d openly like them to share meanings) is something that is already a reality, except these organizations are meant to govern how a cryptocurrency project behaves. The potential to transform our communities, counties, cities, states, countries, is all there if only we had the leader in the right frame of mind to make something like this happen. It’s the subject of a good Sci-fi novel though, I think I should write it, and include all the side stories of how “They” would conspire to try to stop it all from happening, the assassination plots and conspiracies from the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, etc. It would make a good TV show too, maybe Netflix would pick it up.
Being a cynic is all too fun though, because when we look at history, the cynic was usually right most of the time. Take 2001, we heard the cynic say, “This war on terror is bull shit, it’s just for oil and opium.” (20 years later) “Told you it was bull shit, we got nothing done spent trillions in tax dollars, cost many innocent civilian lives and soldiers lives. Hell, we pretty much funded the damn terrorists.”
I think the metaverse has a lot of potential for connecting us like Facebook (Meta) imagines, but also we’re creating a zone where corporations can entertain our children into hypnotic meandering zombies with little to no attention on the problems facing their freedoms.
The metaverse will be a fantastical place in a few years. I’m pretty sure if you’re running a business you’re going to have no choice but to enter it, design your store and your avatar so that you can continue to sell your organic soap. Do your research though, because there are ways for you to take advantage of it if you so choose. In the end, who knows how this will transform humanity, I hope it has good implications on our future, but we all know who’s right most of the time in history, the cynic.
My intuition kept telling me to get a dog, and my rational brain kept saying no. I added up the monthly expenses, the likelihood of unexpected emergency expenses, and finally came up with a 10 year lifetime expense of near $20,000, the real cost of owning a dog. Although economically speaking it’s extravagant or unnecessary, it is quickly understood when you’re in the presence of one, that owning an animal is priceless.
She sat in my car with a pink collar unnamed and adorable as hell
Love is like that in the face of logic. It will quickly tear down any rationale you have built against it with a universal force powered by who knows what. A million suns?
“Limitless undying love that shines around me like a million suns that calls me on and on across the universe..”
Maybe this void that I had in my life was impossible to ignore, I think that was it. Depression hits hard when you go from living one lifestyle and into the next like I did. Moving to Running Springs from Hollywood left me in this liminal space. I didn’t feel grounded anymore, uncertainty of the future was overwhelming and my heart ached from a painful break up.
After contemplating the logistics for months and coming to the rational conclusion of NO, one weekend near the end of July after my parents left from visiting, the lid blew off the pot of logic. My impulses knew that I needed that dog to love something, and be loved back.
I couldn’t continue denying the obvious comfort and joy of caring for a dog. My logic was proven wrong, I needed balance. That’s where the reality began to shift.
Our shadows are art
I hunted down Doberman breeders online. This particular breed to me was an obvious choice for being a home owner in the mountains. They’re not only bad ass, but extremely loyal and smart. I found a few breeders, and even got scammed out of $100 dollars from some guy who was masquerading as someone who had puppies up for adoption. It was quite brilliant, he used COVID as an excuse for not showing them and needed a deposit to know that I was serious about adopting. So, pulling on my heart strings, I sent $100 to this person knowing it could be a possible scam to say the least. Well it was, because he sent me a text asking for more money and blah blah blah I just called another breeder.
After being scammed out of $100 I got a hold of some nice lady in Pinon Hills, CA who had a litter of 5 Doberman pups. This is the same day I made the decision to get a dog by the way. I didn’t want to sleep on it much longer cause I knew that with time, my logical mind would talk me out of it. I drove over their house, saw the 4 week old ladies, and made the purchase that would break my heart open.
She’s 12 weeks today, I am writing this on our 1 month anniversary. We had an excellent day, Luci and I. We ran around, dug some holes, chewed on pears, got a bath, and napped in the sun light of one of those million suns.
In the month of having her, I’ve been more self-aware of my patience, kindness, confidence, and most of all how I treated everyone in my life that I loved. I was carrying a lot of bad karma from my past relationship. Luci provided a fresh new mirror into my heart that I was afraid to look into until she came into my life. I meditated a lot on how I treated my ex, where I was being selfish and ultimately monstrous.
The love in our lives is more important than trying to find the meaning to it, and the honesty and truth will always surface in the face of love. In my case this dog brought me peace. She showed my brain that life isn’t all numbers and logistics. Caring for more than yourself is apart of growing as a human in this endless cosmic cycle, because in the end all that was worth having was the love in your life.
My brain is firing on all sorts of new levels of self-care, appreciation and gratitude, and caring deeply for those I love all because I bought a dog. Maybe it’s no coincidence the english language spells it D-O-G.
