First Audio Blog

First audio blog, I just did kind of an introduction for the most part.

Let me know what ya'll think.

A Work Around for Audio Blogging

Because you can't upload MP3 audio files to your Blogger blogs, I was told of a work around you could use. It's just turning your audio file into a video file and posting it that way.

So I'm gonna to post my first two audio logs that way. Hope ya'll enjoy it, let me know what you think.

Update to Voice Log

 I started looking into a voice log idea instead of writing out my blog.

I found out about Googles GrandCentral thing and signed up for it, so I'm just waiting for them to get back to me about an account.

I made my first voice log last night and I can't wait to post it, and even make another one. I explained why I like the idea of a voice log better then writing out my blog in the first part of it.

Alright, for anybody that's been reading up to this point, let me know what ya think about the voice log idea, or what you think about my first voice log

Dreams Of Right Speech

 

I just woke up about ten minutes ago, and I remember having a dream about "right speech."

"Right Speech" is one of the rules of the eight fold path, which are kind of the rules of Buddhism. I don't really know a lot about them, other then what I've read in a few books, but here's what I remember about right speech.

Don't lie, don't say negative things about other people, and don't participate in idle chatter, or gossip.

I guess I had a dream about it because I've been doing a lot of that lately. What's odd is that it started out that I was talking bad about my boss because I didn't like some of the things he has been doing lately. I remember that that's how it started, but then I also remember talking bad about some of the people that hang out at the same club as me and go to the same meetings. Then as I thought about it I remember talking bad about my girlfriend in some situations, then my girlfriend's Mom, and also my Mom at times.

What I don't remember is feeling good before or after talking bad about anybody. The whole thing got started because I was upset about something, then I started talking trash about somebody, that didn't make it that much better, so I just didn't stop for the most part, I just kept trash talking to be trash talking, and honestly I felt worse and worse the more and more I talked.

I think for the next few days I'm going to try to focus on that, or maybe not doing that as much as I can. I'm not trying to be Buddhist by any means, but the fact that I'm having dreams about this whole "Right Speech" thing means that some part of me is thinking about it, and I don't feel good about how I'm acting so far.

If after a few days I don't feel any better by not talking bad about people, lying, or participating in gossip, I can always go back to doing it.

Monday, bloodly Monday..

 

Ah Monday morning. The first day of the work week.

It doesn't really effect me that much because I pretty much work seven days a week so there really isn't a start or a finish to my work week, but it's nice to keep track of the days from time to time.

There are a few things that I'd like to do this week. I've been meaning to write my Mom and email all month because I don't really talk to her that much on the phone and she lives 300 miles away so I don't really get a chance to see her all that much. It would be nice to get her an email so she knows everything's alright. Everything's not great, but then again I guess it never really is. I hate talking to her when I have problems going on in my life because nine times out of ten she disregards to fact that I'm just calling her to say hello, and turns the whole conversation into "what I should be doing with my life."

Things are going a bit better then they were when I talked to her around Christmas. Alisha and I have been dating for about seven months, and during those seven months Alisha has only worked about 3 weeks of them. It's not really the fact that she hasn't worked that bugged me, it was the fact that I was trying to support her and myself with just the very few hours a week that I got from my job, and for some reason we always ended up either helping out her ex-husband or her mother from time to time.

All that aside, Alisha got a full time job a little more then a week ago so that's not even a problem anymore.

One new thing that is kind of a pain in the butt is the fact that my hours have been cut back even more at my job which really sucks because I was already working less then part time there as it was. I've been looking into getting a different job, but after thinking about it for a while, I think the best thing to do would be to get back on unemployment and just kind of ride things out a little bit on that while I try to get back into school.

As far as school goes, I'm waiting to get my 2009 tax information back so I can apply for a pail grant and see about going back to school full time for accounting. Accounting isn't my dream job, but it's something I'm sure I could do for a while and not get bored with.

Ok, I'm gonna jump in the shower, then get a little more sleep before I have to pick Alisha up from work, then turn around and go to work myself.

Misshapen chaos of well seeming forms

Am I really going to try to quit smoking?

As of 11:30 PM on January 23 of 2010 I smoked the last cigarette in the "last pack" of Marlboro's that I had bought earlier today. I'd like to think it's my last pack but we'll see. I've been smoking a pack a day since I was 16 years old, making that pack approximately pack number 3360.

Just some quick math for fun. That means I've smoked about 70,000 cigarettes in my life time, and I know that it hasn't always been $6.20 a pack, but for the past 3 or 4 years I know it's been about that much. So at that price I've smoked around $23,000 dollars worth of cigarettes by myself.

That doesn't include smokes I've given other people (or smokes I've gotten off of other people) but there's no point in being nit-picky.

Some other fun facts; Currently between Alisha and myself, we smoke about $350.00 worth of cigarettes a month... I pay $375.00 a month in rent...

We spend about the same in a month what we spend in rent for a shitty one bedroom arrangement that we share with 2 other guys in a 3 bedroom house.

About 10 hours of my working month is spend on just the cigarettes I smoke, 20.56 hours are spent on the cigarettes Alisha and I smoke. Times are hard and I only get about 80 hours of work in a month... That means everything I make for a weeks worth of work is spent on cigarettes.

None of this has anything to do with health.

If I keep smoking the way I've been smoking for the past ten years, by the time I'm 40 I'll look 50... By the time I'm 50 I'll look 70... If I make it to 50 without getting cancer of some kind, or dieing of lung, or heart complications.

At the cost of large amounts of money, and health I still smoke...

This blog is about my road to happiness... I think quitting needs to be a stepping stone on that road.

That which never was

I've been doing this thing in my head since last night and it's starting to worry me a little bit. I've been going over and over in my mind what I'd do if I won ten million dollars.

At one point in time I wanted to pay off all my bills and do nothing but bad with it. I wanted to go around and make everybody that ever hurt me or did anything that I thought was upsetting feel bad for ever crossing me.

It made me feel all high and mighty and I had this mentality in my head of "I'll show them." I don't like that because that just tells me that I'm still dwelling on the past as if it matters. I'd like to just be over it and stop letting the negative things that happen to me in the past stay in the past.

Then as the night went on I changed my mind to just wanting to help everybody around me as much as I can. I wanted to give large amounts of money to anybody I thought it would help, then I started to wonder who I would help because honestly when you have that kind of mentality ten million dollars isn't really that much money. Ten million dollars could solve a lot of my problems, but then once you had in the fact that you have ten million dollars, and everybody knows you have ten million dollars, you end up with a lot more problems then when you started.

At this point I kinda just wish my mind would settle down and I could stop indulging in that illusion so that I could just do what I can do in the here and now and be happy with that.

All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away

 

For the past four day's I've been in a bad mood. Each day is worst then the last and I can see it's starting to wearing on Alisha, and what's worse is that it's making me miserable.

Most of my bad mood can be contributed to my work situation, which is kind of upsetting because there really isn't anything I can do about it.

The most recent issue that's come up is the fact that my bosses son decided to take most of this week off. The way it currently works is that I can only go to work while his sons there because... Well I'm not really sure why that is, but that's just how it works.

What's really getting to me about the situation is that I had to work for the beginning of January because I had an outrages power bill that I had to pay, then the few days that I got to work last week paid for some food and gas, this week was going to be kind of my overage week, which means that what ever I got paid this week was going to be kind of extra money that I didn't have to spend on bills, and I was going to save some of that money so that when rent comes due next week I wouldn't have to worry about it so much...

In the end all that means is that I'm going to have to work as many hours as I can next week to make sure I have rent.

For the most part I know what I'm doing. I'm worrying about the future even tho I know honestly there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm letting situations out of my control cause me suffering.

The jobs not really working out as well as it could, and altho that's upsetting the only thing I can really do about it is talk to my bosses son to see if we can work some of the problems out. If not I'll just find another job and life goes on.

So for the rest of today, and tomorrow I'm going to enjoy my days off. I'm going to stop worrying about money and future events that I can't do anything about and just enjoy the moment.

The Story So Far...

I'm not really accustom to sitting down and writing out my thoughts in an order that other people can read, and understand them, so bear with me.

I'd kinda like to write out what has happened over the past two years before I go on. A lot of important events have taken place during that time, and I kinda want to get that out there before I go on.

Where I've been, and where I'm at now:

Two years ago my life was pretty much as low as it had ever been. The year prior to that I was working one of the best jobs (as far as pay goes) that I had ever had.

I was working at a mine as a lab tech making $28+ and hour, and working 12 hour days. Life wasn't really great despite the fact that I was making great money, but at the time that was ok with me because at least I had money.

About six or seven months before I gave up on just about everything my girlfriend of four years had just dumped me for another man. The relationship itself wasn't really that satisfying, but it was the longest relationship I had ever been in, so I figured that had to count for something.

Shortly after she dumped me I found myself visiting bars quite often, and after a while I lost interest in other people, so instead of hours and hours at the bar, I spent a great deal of time alone in my room drinking myself unconscious.

I lost my job mostly due to my drinking, and spent the better part of a year living in my parents basement slowly drinking myself to death, and not caring one way or the other.

About the only times I came out of the basement was to hang out with my friend Josh, and I can't really say that was too healthy because during those times we were high on one drug or another.

I guess it was the spring of 2008 when I first tried to get myself out of the hole I had dug. It all started when a girl I had dated back in high school moved back to McGill. We had reconnected and decided to give it another shot despite the face that she had two kids, and neither of us had held down a job in a while.

That lasted about seven months, and after she dumped me for another guy I ended up back in my parents basement with a drinking problem, a drug problem, and more bitterness then any one person should have at any given point in time.

In January of 2009 after about a month of slowly killing myself, and ending up in jail 3 times, my parents decided they couldn't carry me anymore. I got out of jail for the third time, and my parents showed up at the jail with all my stuff packed, picked me up, and dropped me off six hours later at a rehab program in Reno Nevada.

The rehab program didn't really work out that well for me because... of a lot of reasons. In retrospect, honestly I didn't want it at the time.

After trying a few times on my own, and landing flat on my face I found a group of people that had the same problem. They said they could help me, so I gave it a shot (mostly because I didn't have anything to louse.) With a lot of help from these people, I ended up finding a grove that I could maintain.

Over the past 12 months I've managed to find a job that works, a place to live, and a great girlfriend that's worth every moment I have with her....

I have things I can be grateful for, so I think for the rest of the day I'm gonna focus on that.

Thanks for reading if you did, I'll write more later and hopefully in an easier to understand format.

The Shake Down

I'm starting this blog because basically I've spent the last twelve years of my life unhappy. I have a few things that I'll cover in following blogs such as Alisha, my girl friend whom I love, but am still getting to know on many levels, my job, and what I'm currently doing with my day to day life.

This blog is more or less just going to be an introduction.

My names Chris. I'm 26 years old and currently living in Reno Nevada.

I was born in Las Vegas Nevada, then moved to Okinawa Japan with my family, then Fort Worth Texas, then McGill Nevada.

I'd like to spend the next few days talking about where I come from, but then once that's cover I'd like to focus more on what's going on in my day to day life.

Kinda of like a journal, but more based on the idea that one of my goals is to be happy, and I mean truly happy.

I'd like to sit down at the end of the day, write out what happened, and then maybe examine it so that if I'm unhappy I might be able to figure out why.

The reason I'm posting it online is that some times I'm so involved in the situations going that I might not make the connection as to why I'm unhappy and maybe somebody, some random person, an angel if you will :) might be able to point me in the right direction.

Thanks for reading, and if you keep reading I hope that you'll feel free to give feed back at any time.

-Chris