I'd like to talk about those three struggles you mentioned - living independently, obsessions and finding a job.
1. I'm 53 so I've had a lot of time to live independently. As a matter of fact, since I never got married, had kids, or never had a real girlfriend and just one short-lived boyfriend, you can say I've lived mostly independently my entire life. How did I cope? I drank like a fish. What else could I do? I'm a loner, very difficult to find people I could relate to. People didn't get me because I'm odd and out of the norm. I've written on WP how I eschewed family functions, parties and events, and so have other people, but I wonder sometimes if it's a positive thing to keep on bringing up the bad things that's happened to me. The abuses that people have growing up are terrifying and I don't blame them if they don't want to keep on bringing it up. I don't like to bring up my abuses, but believe me, those long lasting scars don't go anywhere. I'm as messed up now as I was as a kid. And no, I don't like living independently, but after all these years, it's just something I've got to learn how to handle because it seems like it'd be like that forever.
2. By nature, I'm a collector. When I was a kid it was philately, shells, marbles and bottle caps. The philately became too expensive, unfortunately, so I had to give that up. Same for the movie baseball cards and foreign coins I used to have. Throughout my life my collections have changed. These days the three main ones I maintain are my classical digital music collection, my horror film collection and my digital books on torture and execution through the ages. The main focus of my classical music collection is symphonic and solo piano music from the Romantic era, my favourite. I went through great lengths to built it up, mainly from various online music & file sharing sites. I have music from about 450 composers, and since I'm a completionist, that would be their entire oeuvre in one particular area. For instance, I have all the solo piano music and orchestral music of Franz Liszt. That's 106 CD's. Some aren't that large, though. My Beethoven is about 50 CD's, my Mozart about 70, but I also have music by unsung and obscure composers that are extremely rare but worth listening to anyway, people like Felicien David, Hans Rott, Ole Bull, Myaskovsky, et al. Not only do I have the symphonies and orchestral poems by these composers, I also have their concertos whether it's piano, violin, viola, double bass or whatever. I especially like sonatas because a sonata is like a novel. It tells a story, and the interesting things is, you can ascribe any "story" to what you hear.
I could talk about my other collections forever but who'd want to hear about that? My history has already shown that people are not interested in hearing about these things so I keep it to myself. The difficulties I have in creating and maintaining these collections are enormous, but they're my personal demons that people could care less about. And, to be fair, I have about 900 horror, thriller and war films but I get rid of them after I watch them. More and more gets made all the time around the world so I'll never run out.
3. In my life I've had about 30 jobs, from working the produce section at Waldbaum's, to decorating pizzas at Pizza Hut, to nursing, to driving a cab, to picking up stray animals from the street for an Animal Shelter in NY, to flipping burgers at McDonald's to engineering in a recording studio to...It goes on and on. Again, no one cares that I had all these jobs. They're my personal demons. I was able to get jobs because I can "fool" the employers. I answered questions the way they'd want me to so I can make money to pay the rent. "Do you like working with others?" Yes, I'd answer even though that was a bold-faced lie. "Do you see yourself working for this company five years from now?" Yes, I'd answer knowing full well I'd probably only last six months or so before I got fired or something else happened.
Some jobs I got because, well, I was either qualified or conned my way into them. When you have bills having over your head, believe me, you find a way, even if it means getting help from a job agency or advice from other people. I wish I knew back then what I know now - I was never going to settle down, have kids or a house so I may as well had lived my life carefree and not suffering through the rat race for nothing. Anyway, what's done is done. I only had this one chance to get it right. I've been half-dead before so I know what it's like to throw everything away. I'm glad I survived, though. I feel like I've gotten a second chance. I still may not get it right but I'll be better prepared.
28 Jan 2016, 8:49 pm
