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Chapter 13
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Interjection Five Something I find endlessly interesting and even more irritating is something I read in one of the first online books I bought. It was about how to make money online. It warned not about envious rivals but the people you are closest to. Everyone is afraid of change. Even if something better is presented, most people will decide to keep things exactly as they are. Sadly this has been the hardest lesson I’ve learned. Something that I coincidentally read about first - but understood last.
Sometimes you’re not the problem. Sometimes someone else is. As much as you like to give credit where credit is due, it’s a hard lesson to believe in yourself over the words of others. It’s amazing how one specially placed comment can destroy something that’s taken everything you had to believe in. As Carrie Underwood says “Sometimes you have to let go of the things you loved to get to the other side. Sometimes moving on with the rest of your life starts with goodbye.”
During the course of writing this book and trying to do something new with my life I’ve come across some unexpected opposition. Mainly everyone I was close to. Even though there were only 3 people I even talked to on a regular basis, I didn’t realize how little I had in common with them. Even though you love someone, doesn’t mean you have to like everything about them. Even though you get along with someone, doesn’t mean that they get you. The hardest part about change is when the people close to you, aren’t ready to change too. You don’t want to leave them, it seems like you can’t, but after a while you know you have to. If the course in your life takes a path they don’t want to follow – you have to let them go or remain unchanged. It’s not easy but it always seems to come down to a decision between yourself and someone else. I choose poorly and set myself back badly. Letting go is hard, but most great things you can do have to be done alone.
You’ll feel like you’re doing something wrong, as if you’re actually betraying someone for not following their opinions or catering to their emotions. You’ll finally believe that it comes down to deciding what you love more – what you want to do, or the people you have to leave behind to do it. But that would be kinda selfish, wouldn’t it? To let someone make you believe that what you want is wrong? Something to remember is that it’s about them as well. Conversely, the love they claim your leaving is for them to consider themselves. Sometimes when you love someone, you have to be able to let them go. Love isn’t about one person, but something shared between two people. Sometimes you have to let love go to know if it can stand the test of time. The judge and jury of true love and infatuation. Or put more simply; if someone cares about you, they’ll care about you and not just “us” or what they want you to be. They’ll love you for you, even if that’s someone who needs change, someone who needs more. v
It was in the course of my explosion of ideas and intense writing that something rather strange happened. I know a lot of the previous stuff was pretty strange itself but that was really based on emotions and dealing with too much too fast. Everything previously was like dealing with something equivalent to a quarter life crisis. Career, money, relationship, parental, and personal stuff. – I mean to say that it wasn’t anything unique or strange. Just a guy who was finding out who he was and finally getting and accepting his problems. Put bluntly; having to go fucking crazy to find my sanity. I looked in the mirror and decided I would be who I wanted to be, not what I thought everyone else wanted.
What happened next was intellectual and .. well, I don’t have anything to compare it to.. It was what was left over after dealing with a life time of issues in a couple short weeks. Right when I finally overcame the previous problems and settled down I was presented with something unimaginably unexpected.
v
I remember driving with a headlight out and the check engine light on in my Jaguar X type (how typical) and breaking into tears, sobbing over not knowing what I should do with my life. I felt helpless and that my entire life wasn’t in my own control. I was begging for guidance, for anything to focus on.
I asked, and I received. I was listening to my mp3 player and Lauren Hill’s – The Misseducation of Lauren Hill came on; as follows
My world it moves so fast today
I didn’t know at the time what I was going to end up doing but I decided in that moment that it was my life, my destiny, and I was going to stop waiting for life to find me.
In one of the online e-books about how to make money online it explained a system to make money playing roulette. After reading that sentence I’m sure you could predict the following... Gambling is a gamble – even at 50% odds.
I sat down at an automated roulette table at an Indian Casino with the idea that if you bet on a single color constantly and increased your bet each time. The odds that you would win was “for sure” as long as you didn’t run out of money to continue with the next bet and increase it to make up your previous loss. Assuming you have enough money to start with, you would keep winning. Genius! So with the money I could take out from my credit cards I was sure I would win!
As fate would so see it I did not. I say fate because it wasn’t the system that wouldn’t work, but a form of destiny called irony. I sat down, I bet BLACK. – the ball landed on RED. So I bet BLACK again as I continued to feed my money into the machine. RED.. it’s ok Derek, it’ll change. Keep increasing your bet! RED…. Its ok, I did the math. It’s gotta switch over after a few turns. RED… Ugh oh, I can’t feed enough money in fast enough to increase the bet RED… it’s ok, I’ll make it all back once it switches back! RED. It’s ok, put in the hundreds now to catch up RED. Its ok it’s gotta switch now RED. Ok a little more c’mon black! RED. WTF is going on, now it’s going to change for sure. Bet more! RED .. I’m almost out of cash, put the rest on! It’s gotta switch now RED … I sat in what you could tentatively call disbelief as I put in my last bet on what would surly be black. REDREDRED. When I say irony, I mean it. When I say fate, I mean it in the cruelest and most humiliating sense. Out of all the tables to sit at, out of all the times to start. Out of “all” the two colors to pick I choose and stayed with the color that wouldn’t be “randomly” selected for 14 times in a row… I wish I were exaggerating or being sarcastic but I am not. I have witnesses! That was almost the end of that idea..
I would go back to win 800$ (and loose) but realized it wasn’t worth the risk. Not to mention I was out of money -opps. I remember the trip home. Not the time I lost but the time I won.. It was after I decided to get in my car and keep driving.
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