In 2008, I had a major emotional breakdown. I never backed off of my "weakness". I never knew I would be in my predicament, but I knew I wasn't alone. The more I started to sort my mind out and talk about it, the more people were helpful and shared their own situations. I was lost for 4 or 5 months before I started to turn the battleship around.
The life I was leading was one of excess. The arrogance in my every step was obnoxious. My relationships were toxic. And my workplace was filled with jerks, at least that is how I saw it. Not me, they were the problem. When you run your morals into the ground, drink alcohol everyday and hang out with forever aggrieved lefty knuckleheads, your vulnerability is right under your skin. Every comment hurts, every correction is taken personally and you are an easy target for the psychopaths. This job had a few. I left with my hair on fire.
No one is going to re-hire a 54 year old man with a questionable recommendation. I puttered around for two more years in Chicago. I was in a relationship, again very toxic, and my ship was sinking. My confidence was shattered. No one really seemed to care. I started to get a lot of, "Get over it."
Once I came to the conclusion that I caused the turmoil in my life, not all those I was lashing out at, the advise started to take a new tone. Yoga, meditation and a sense of awareness brought a light at the end of the tunnel and I regenerated a new personal attitude. A great deal of this mindset was honesty. I was going to be a better person. Stand erect and face the world as it came at me, not bend the world to my will. That sure wasn't working.
I received an offer from Sacramento that there might be "some work" there. I had to get out of toxic Chicago and I took it. A chance for new beginning. Some amazing synchronicity happened, mostly for the good. I was invited to live with a long time woman friend and not to soon afterward we became intimate, not to last I'm sorry to say. I went through the licensing test process (a lesson of State coercion) and outfitted my truck to do small jobs. So many people had so much start up advise and wanted me to pay them to make a web page. I bought 500 business cards and handed them out instead. Word-of-mouth is the only effective marketing strategy that works. I did good work for cheap. I was honest and people sensed that in me.
Sacramento is the home of Healthy Workplace Advocates. I never knew of an organization like this that understood on a grand scale what I went through. I started to attend their monthly meetings, hearing the tales of abuse from Bosses, co-workers and institutional thinking. The stories in these meetings were excruciating to hear and it wasn't my story particularity. Just good people getting fucked around. This abusive behavior was an obvious epidemic. It was not a sharing therapy session but they all turned out to have hand holding and acceptance. Nobody believed my story, I know. The two wonderful women who ran these meetings, victims themselves, thought passing a law was going to fix things. Do-gooder liberals believing in government are not my folks, but these gals had good hearts. I was offering solutions based on living an honest life as possible, forgiveness, and better mental health. I was humored. The complaining and constant victimization, "poor me", wore out my welcome after a while. Soon I was being bullied at the anti-bullying meeting because I wasn't politically correct and pointing out that working people should be more responsible for their own behavior and stop blaming "Them". Also, if they try all the avenues of solution and not get anywhere, start to Fuck Shit Up. They were aghast at such a prospect being loyal slaves for the wages system to the end. In my view, that is what an abuser understands and if you weren't listened to the first time, give them another black eye. Pleading to politicians to take on the Chamber of Commerce isn't effective and time has proven me correct.
The love affair withered from chronic female dissatisfaction. She was bossy, not good. Totally externalized living on Facebook, nothing inside to share and it all came crashing down because I was holding my own standards. It seemed as if I was there to work for her. She was always in her middle manager role, and the stress she brought home from work showed. Like always, she denied it.
I lived in my own place for a year, not the happiest time in my life. But I was striving to stay healthy, especially mentally because I wasn't out of the woods and free from my frustrations and anger, not even today can I say such a thing. I just knew staying honest with myself and others was the key to improvement. I liked California generally if I stayed away from those things that did not fit me, but that concept out grew me. In Cali, many people think mice can talk. They don't have their feet on the ground. Common sense is sorely lacking in the State of Insanity, as I have come to call it.
I met a wonderful gal. We dated. I drove an hour each way to spend time together. We got along great. She didn't play those games out of the Girlfriend Handbook. Talented, intelligent, accepting I wouldn't put up with bullshit from anybody. We went to Vegas and got married by Elvis, how much in love can you be? I was a bit squeamish about moving into another women's home, but I went ahead and moved in anyway. As I remember we agreed to find a new home together, but I soon realized that turned out to be on her timeline, not mine. We lived together very simpatico, very loving and kind. Like they say, she wasn't like the others.
So, I sit her today in Wisconsin and she in California. I don't believe the endless distortions spewed from media, mainstream or social. I refuse to live in such a condition . She, with her moral relativity and personal truth, wears her mask regardless of effectiveness and 'plays along'. Facts don't matter, which tells me she is in the Cult of California, where staying in the herd and never speaking up against stupidity is her comfort. Fitting in, head down, like 38 million others. Not being honest with herself, but putting up with the bullshit. As if to keep your job, even though she doesn't have one. Willing to be lied to and get bossed around by psychopathic nincompoops.
The toxic workplace has become the toxic society.
Surprise. Surprise.
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https://escapedwageslave.blogspot.com/2009/01/canary-in-coalmine.html
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