“I feel beside myself, I understand me..
had to re-align myself, or else I would have lost me…
but I found myself in my youth..
time well spent in the booth..”

~ Roy Woods, “Say Less”

57 days left in the year, and there’s quite a bit that’s gone on. Good, bad, and motherfugly. Just like any day in the neighborhood, yeah? Well.. I, I have no response. But I’ll move along. It only took me a bit almost five months to gather what’s happened since our last rendezvous. And there’s quite a bit to catch up on. So, let’s get to it, eh?

#newyearnewme
Yeah, I hate that saying. I mean, I’m sure there’s a positive note in there to become a better person in oneself than what was the year before, but it’s just like any New Year’s  resolution. How true is that saying in March when you slowly seep back in the complacency of the vices you were desperately seeking solace and asylum from? Eh. It’s probably just me being an early Scrooge, but long story short, I’ve seen the majority of these fall through. However, with the unceremoniously unceremonious departure from Grainger, it was a crossroads in my life I wasn’t ready for. Here I am. 30. Unemployed. Living in Silicon Valley. How the blue hell am I about to survive? Surely I’ve found something within 30 days or so after leaving a company, so I should be fine, yeah? I’ve got unemployment for a few months, I can make it through. Yeah… until the interviews continuously get pushed back.. the interview processes get longer (if you get a call back to begin with), and “We have decided to move forward with another candidate, best of luck on your job search” is the only thing you see from followup e-mails.. then the unemployment well dries up.

Well, fxck.

So you pray. How do you get through something like this after hearing so many no’s, and you only have so much positive attitude you can continually maintain? You pray. You reach out to people who have been through those hard times with you before, and that they can help you get through until you’re on your feet.

“You’ll never be able to find or keep a job.”
“No one is going to hire you.”
“You don’t deserve to be hired.”

So you keep praying. You keep trying to maintain positivity even though each letter and job status tells you otherwise. You reach out to people who have no reason to speak to you anymore. You know they don’t need to talk to you, but you lay it out on the line, and hope that they can give any sort of silver lining..

They do.

And you get the confidence to send out that last followup letter that you hadn’t heard back from in weeks.. that leads to an offer.

It’s still a sales position. It’s still a freakin’ grind. But it has been the most fun I have had in a position so far. Team is great, I’m able to make my own schedule to do what I need to do and not be up at the booty cheek crack of dawn. The manager gives a lot of feedback and is vested in the success of his team (not just for his pockets either, he is very selfless). There’s a lot of growth and movement that is possible, and best of all, there is a mentorship program, which any previous company of mine knows that I am a huge advocate of such a thing. I look forward to finally righting the ship I call my career.

But I have to say, what has had me quite excited for the long haul here is the training sessions in Denver and Philadelphia. I already had a trip to Atlanta planned for near a year, and it happened to coincide with the training sessions I had near seamlessly.

Denverlantadelphia
Okay, so maybe it’s not as sexy as Drake’s Houstatlantavegas. But this is what I did, not Drake.

Denver, CO
Denver was only two days, and it was quite a bit of all day training and not a lot of exploring to be done, so Denver doesn’t have too many pictures for it. Sorry, but it literally was wake up, train, back to hotel, um, find bar, realize you’re in Englewood, and not Denver per se, so go to Target and pick up hotel snacks for the day and get ready for the next day. Yeah. I’m sure Denver is a nice city that has great scenery and nightlife. Yes, I’m also aware that Denver was only about 20 minutes away. However, one did not realize that once I hit the king size bed and immediately fell asleep. One day, though.

Atlanta, GA
Welp, I have officially been to the Dirty.. and it was definitely an experience. Great ones.. and uh, not s’much great. My cousin is based out of ATL, and this was a trip planned for nearly a year.. until visiting dates get mixed up with wedding dates and we have to call an audible right when I land.

But it’s all good. There’s a hotel that’s booked last minute, can head the.. wait, what’s that? Can’t check in til 4 and it’s 10? Okay, well this can work. I still have presentations to do with work, and I can just work from a hotspot and go from there..

Well, while trying to figure out where the best spot for peach cobbler would be, a drive down Peachtree unveiled something that I never knew happened every year, and something that I would fly back down for now that I know: Dragon-Con.

My first con was Anime Expo a couple years ago, and I loved it. SDCC is the next one on the list, and I hope to make it with a few cosplays. If I do go sometime next year, I want to go to one with my big sister (and just all around dope person) Tiffie Starchild. I’ve known her since 20 aught 6, and has been a beacon of light in me life. I didn’t realize how dope her cosplays have been, and if you don’t believe me, peep the Insta and YouTube here. Love you, sis.

Philadelphia, PA

So, Denver felt like a blur with how fast it went by with training, and it was only 2 days. Everyone senior to me on the team was telling me how crazy Philadelphia would be. If it was anything like what Orlando was with Grainger, then this was going to be something fierce.

And it was.

I had three main goals I had for Philly (besides you know, learn everything I could in training..

1.) Spin all the Pokestops.

2.) Climb the Rocky steps while shadowboxing and having the Rocky theme played behind me.

3.) Eat my weight in cheesesteaks.

I feels I accomplished my goal. I would be good with never eating another cheesesteak as long as I live, though.

I’ve always been a fan of architectual structures. Skyscrapers and aerial views are usually in rotation on my watch face and home screen. I have a number of pictures I’d like to make into a canvas. I’ve always made it a point that I’m not going to buy another picture again. The only pictures I will have in my residence moving forward will be my own. This is another reason I want to see so much of the world, and why I strive to do so. I have so much to do personally.. through growth, through trial and error, through perseverance. All of this I feel can be done through experiencing what is beyond the four walls that keep us enclosed.

Officially Official
So it may not seem like a big deal, but it lightweight is in my opinion. As much as WordPress helps me get out these blogs as fast as I can write them (which you can see how blindingly fast they come out, I don’t know how they can keep up, to be honest), I figured that it’s time that I actually took the basic training wheels off of my site. So, I now have my own domain name for my sites. TL;DR: It’s no longer jaysepicmisadventures.wordpress.com to get to my site. It’s simply jaysepicmisadventures.com. And that’s big for me, as I want to become more than just something a blog editor has to offer on their site. I actually have something that can relay back to solely me (and whomever wants to join my debauchery). I also bought my name as a domain as well, so now it links to me when my name is searched. That’s either a good thing or a great thing. Let’s just hope I don’t get hacked. Plz don’t? Kthx.

I’ve also a YouTube page in the works, as I’m venturing out into actual videos of moving pictures rather than just stills. I’ve got content and ideas (it’s mainly about food, because, you know, food), so I just need my camera and a reason. I always have a reason, so let’s film? I’m always down for guests and cameos.

Spitting Image

Through and through, it’s been difficult in trying to keep the site up, deal with the struggles of work, and all that they entail. My posts on IG and Twitter speak of making the heel turn to a villain to particulars and now embracing it. Well, it’s not gonna go away, so as it stands, might as well learn to love it.. but there’s a select few I’m going to be a hero to. This might be burying the lead, but it’s worth sharing:

This is my Jazmin. She is my item, my bear, my bug-eyed marble, my Sandshrew, my chain chomp, my (insert endless amount of names here). But nevertheless, she’s a healthy, intuitive, ear-grinning ting. It has been a journey with her.

Raising an item is hard. There are sleepless nights while they’re WIIIIIDE awake. There are days where sickness gets to them and they are cranky as all get out. Life plans get altered. Spontaneity is a bit harder to execute. You think that this is the end of the world as you know it.

But it’s not.

For every night you look like a Resident Evil character, you get the days where you see them process new experiences.. their likes and dislikes, their little nuances only you will see. For every day you hear them cough and sneeze and whine, you get the nights where you see them sleep soundly on your chest and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Your life plans might be altered, but they’re not canceled. You take your plans and you make them more accessible. Spontaneity is still difficult, but not impossible. 1-2 big plans turn into 10 little misadventures. Redundant or monotonous tasks are new and big adventures for the little one, and you see the smile on their face (or their eyes closed, dreaming about their next adventure)…

..so you make their happiness your happiness. You sacrifice. You hold back on expenditures. You save for college. You save for the future. You look at things from another angle. You listen to wisdom. You pray.. and you share your experiences with them. You want her to experience everything you’ve seen, and go even further. You teach them that life is more than your comfort zone, and you make sure you are her rock when she steps outside that comfort zone.

You are her hero. Even if you’re lauded as a villain, there’s a select few that see you otherwise.

There’s a scene of Wreck-It Ralph where the video game villains are in a Bad-Anon meeting. You see timeless familiar characters sitting in a circle, counting on each other to get through another day. After Ralph finally accepts the invitation and shares to the group he doesn’t want to be bad anymore, Clyde (the moderator of the meetings and “bad guy” of the Pac-Man series) informs Ralph that bad guys can’t really change who they are. It’s the affirmation at the end of each meeting that hits home:

I am bad, and that’s good.
I will never be good, and that’s not bad.
There’s no one I’d rather be than me.

For the Bowsers, the Eggmans, the Bisons, and all those given a bad name.. there’s no one else you should be.

Where to next, you say?

Nov. 2018: Los Angeles, CA – Universal Studios, Hollywood
The item’s first major trip comes Thanksgiving weekend, as Comcast was generous enough to comp passes to Universal Studios. Perks on perks on perks. So, we’re going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship to see what we can get ourselves into. This is also the starting point for the YouTube channel, so this is a big ol’ trip. If Disneyland is a possibility with cast members I can finagle tickets out of, then it’s a double dip. If not, she’s a young’un. She’ll get her annual pass sooner or later.

June 2019: Orlando, FL – Universal Studios, Orlando
Since there’s a Universal Studios in Orlando as well, I mean, why not?

July 2020: Tokyo, Japan, XXXIII Olympiad
627 days. Yes, this is still happening. This should be a blast.

A lot of change, yes. But a lot of possibilities as well. We’ll see you on a misadventure soon. Til then, #overandout