Hind Sight

It’s two days after Christmas. I called my family yesterday and talked to my 17 year old cousin John. He asked me what I did for Christmas. I told him I do boring grown up things in my spare time like read books and play chess and didn’t do much for the holidays. He laughed and told me I was funny.

Since it’s important to my mom, I went to church the day before Christmas. I thought the service was going to be three hours long. The priest said it was the fourth week of Advent. I don’t know what that is, but the service wasn’t very long. At least I don’t have to worry about my mom preaching to me for a few months. I should check the calendar in March to find out when Easter is this year.

I also lit a candle when I was there. A nice Mexican family adopted me when I was a kid. Grandma Salazar used to say when you light a candle in a church you’re asking a saint to pray for you. I’m not very religious and don’t really pray very well, but I’ll take all the help I can get.

There was a guy who didn’t pay for his coffee at the coffee shop this morning. He started yelling in a language I couldn’t understand and left right before mall security showed up. The temperature is dropping below freezing at night and the homeless people who can’t get into shelters are doing stupid shit so they can go to jail and stay warm.

I almost feel sorry for them. Then I go to use the restroom and see blood sprayed on the bathroom sink. The pattern is obviously from a needle getting pulled out of someone’s arm. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

Sometimes you just have to let people do what they do. They’ll either get a wakeup call or hang themselves with their own rope.

A lady at the dorm invited me to a laser light show. There were some cool special effects and music. You had to have watched a television show I never saw to understand the story line. It was still a good night.

I woke up early this morning. My eyes slammed open at three a.m. and I was half asleep until five. That’s almost a decent hour to be up and walking around, so I got up. Something was wrong with the coffee pot in the dorm.

The coffee tasted more like tea. Oh well, It was something to drink. The news is usually on in the morning. There was an infra-martial playing. Someone must have lost the remote. That’s been the routine for me in the morning before I go to the coffee shop to read and draw.

Then I run errands and keep myself busy. Some people might think it’s boring but I have to do something while I’m waiting for Work Source Classes to start so I don’t complain.

The New Year is here and I hope it’s a good one for everyone. I started my work retraining class. It’s different from what I expected. Since I’m getting into a line of work that isn’t a lot of manual labor I’m not surprised the class isn’t like I thought it would be.

When I came back from Alaska with my back hurt after losing everything in the recession there were lots of people who fell on hard times. I watched a lot of people give up and fall by the wayside. It makes me wonder how and why I came out of it as well as I did when so many others gave up.

Why do some people give up while others drive on? When I got my back hurt and couldn’t do labor jobs any more I realized there’s a lot I don’t know. There were guys with more education and a better “skill set” than I had who lost everything at the same time as me.

They knew more than me and weren’t injured and they gave up when I kept going. It doesn’t make sense!!  Maybe you don’t need to know that much to just keep moving.

Written by Mark Blevins

Thank You For Reading

About Me:

I was a Construction Worker and Commercial Fisherman. An injury on a fishing boat in Alaska forced me into early retirement. Now I’m a Writer and Blogger. Having to start over forced me to realize people are more than their job title.

Contact me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Bllevins