I don’t want to be to call this a good thing, or a bad thing, if it’s not anything. It’s just too much work. But I brought this work upon myself. It’s not like I have a job, and somebody assigned me the work. I’m self-employed. So I make my own work.

Then there’s the similar but different problem of being concerned I’m going to fall behind. As I get too much work, I start thinking “oh, what if I fall behind and can’t go my work done?”

And that may happen. And I really have to choose whether or not my top priority is to not fall behind, or to have more work than I can handle.

Currently, since I’m broke as shit, too much work seems to be the best thing for me to do.

I guess when I really think about it, I’m not fearful of fucking it up. Because I realized that the matter what I do everything is going to be okay, because everything is okay. But instead what comes up as I really need money, or I really need my kids to turn out okay, and I’m afraid that if I don’t do something correctly or I do something incorrectly, that can have a negative impact on what I want. So the fear comes from not negative impact, which I call fucking it up. It’s not really that though. And I mostly get worried about it when I need the money or when I feel like read overcoming me. I don’t want to do something, or not do something, and then have that cost me money.

it just so happens that I’m not suffering right now. I’m tired and I’m gonna go to bed. Oh fuck, as soon as I said that, I remembered the pain that I’m having in my back. My brain wasn’t satisfied with not suffering, so it immediately looked for what I could suffer about.

but I’m not goung to call that suffering, I’m just noticing it. It’s pain I’m actually not suffering over it. I’m pretty sure if I just go get some body wor,k I’ll be able to get my back stop hurting. And because I happen to have a little bit of money right now, I think I can afford to go get a massage. So what am I suffering over right now in this moment? I don’t think anything. I’m pretty happy.

here it is 845 on Saturday morning, I’m taking my son to a playoff game. There’s so much traffic from people trying to get into the park, that it’s literally ridiculous. And people don’t make it easy, they stop in the middle of the intersection, and they stop in the middle-of-the-road as it suits them. Sometimes you go through two or three light changes, just to make it through the light.

Sometimes traffic really pisses me off, and other times just me crazy. Right now it’s doing both.

okay, so I get into the park and there’s no spaces. They decide to have this event at this park it doesn’t have enough parking. There’s hundreds of cars driving around looking for parking space.

i’m sitting here park in front of a sign that says no parking anytime I’m thinking I’m in a park here because otherwise it just doesn’t make any sense.

it’s late I’m tired, I’m working. I got to have some nice time with my wife, and then she went to sleep. I laid there for a little while to see if I could fall asleep, but nothing came. So I got up, and went into the TV room. There I hung out with my son and we play guitar for a little until he went to bed.

Something that working a put on a movie, Medicaid, that means I smoke some weed. I’m sitting there working and I have a whole bunch of screens open on my computer and I’m in the middle of doing something kind of important when I get the blue screen of death.
so I’m suffering here is the computer is fucked up. I was right in the middle of some stuff. And I have a lot of stuff open on the screens because I’m doing a lot of things at once, and they’re all gone. But really sucks because this one page I’ve been working on for like the last hour where I made all these lists, it’s gone completely.

thankfully Google Chrome will get all my windows back open again and Wordon Excel should show me my recovered documents. Then that’s a big advancement from the way things used to be.

But still I’m so pissed about this time I just put in that was all lost. I got the computer restarted Alan I just saw message that there’s updates I hope windows didn’t crash because it was updating suck not that I would know either way.

so I immediately thought to myself fuck. I need a new computer. This one kind of sucks because the screens going out, so there’s this line across the screen. I don’t even remember what I had up on the screen. Oh well, so I can sit here and suffer over how much that sucks.

but you know the reality is that it’s not that you should deal. I get so intense about my thoughts I think they’re so important. And I do have great ideas, at least I think so. But I’m a little ADD, so I have all these ideas. It’s really better for me if I can focus my attention so a lot of my ideas I don’t really need.

so I think maybe I should just buy another computer just like this one so I can just take the hard drive out of mild want to put my new one and I’ll start working again that’s a solution. And I have a little bit of money right now so I could do that. And I don’t know if I will, but I’m just sitting here experiencing the suffering over having had the experience I just had.

but I open Word back up and I can see all the documents that I had open. And they’re still in good shape, so that’s good and I do the same thing in Excel, and I can see you again the same thing. So I just have to open the documents again.

send my computers kind of back to where it was before seems to be working, and I’m afraid now that it’s going to break again and maybe this time I won’t be a little open things back up. I really just need a faster computer because I just am doing too many things at once and I need a machine that can handle it.

on a whim I decided to take my son to the movies. So we go to the movies knowing it starts at 6:45, I’m running just a few minutes late.

it’s opening night there’s a line so we park and my boy heads over there. By the time we get there I’m thinking this line is a little bit longer and I would like it to be, so I suggest that we just leave there and go rent a movie because I don’t think we can get in before starts.

No he says let’s stay, so we do. that is until the guy from the theater comes out and calls to the line who’s here to see the movie we went to say. So the people who were there to see the Lego movie which is the one we went to say he says the only seats left for the first three rows. So other people start squawking
What hello what do you think which movie

I grabbed my boy right away let’s go because I know I’m not sitting in the first three euros. He’s a little dumbfounded but he comes with me and then I explain us for walking and we both agree that we didn’t want to sit in the first three rows. But then I see a red box across the street and I say hey let’s go over there and see if they have any movies so we walk over there, but before we can get to the machine another group walks up, and another group starts waiting outside.

one hour standing there in the cold waiting for a Redbox machine I say let’s just go to the movie store and get a movie from there because there to have all the same movies that are in this Redbox. Again he’s a little con founded but after minute realizes that that does make sense, so we walk away.

I can see how it would be easy to suffer over thus the frustration of trying to get to the movies and not being able to, but instead I immediately said felt a sense of calmness, and peacefulness, I was okay with not going to the theater. And was grateful when I remembered that I have this blog where I can write about my experience dealing with suffering and then this one case, today was a victory.

it’s been one of those roller coaster days. Meeting with a client getting a check, then driving to another job and picking up the check, then going to the bank. And I pick up my son and get an amazing email telling me that pretty soon I’m going to be rich.

it’s just another email on a string of emails that I’ve been receiving telling me this and while I’m excited it’s immediately offset by the tears in my life size.

She’s going to go see a doctor for her arthritis and it makes her sad. Makes me sad too. And it’s really hard to be excited about this opportunity I have.

because more money is exactly what I need to give my wife she needs to get treated without medication. But I don’t have that money right now. So find out that it’s coming maybe in a year to this really hard today.

Send meantime she has people coming over and asked me if I could put another leaf table, which I said I would. So after changing to disgusting Boxes, and I don’t mean discussing just because there Boxes but these two really needed to be changed, I spend a few minutes at the computer and then I’m ready to get the leave for the table. I grabbed the leaf and came out yet too late, she’s already done it without me.

So then I immediately start suffering. the suffering experience I have is common. It’s like me failing to be a good husband. It’s really in my face, how I’m not able to provide for my family right now.

And this almost sent me spinning down like it does sometimes, but it didn’t because I had this blog that I can post too. It’s so nice to just have a place to spew these thoughts and let them go. And since this is anonymous nobody knows who I am, so nobody can judge me for what I say here.

Sure I suffer. I suffered a bunch just now. But I also just got an email saying i’m going to be rich.

i’ve been broke. I’ve been more broke than you most likely. Especially these last few weeks I’ve been really out of money.

But thankfully today it’s starting to flow. After a long drought and me working incredibly hard just to find consistent work, I finally found some sense of relief. It took me three jobs combined to make enough money as I was making with just one, but at least the money starting to flow now. It’s amazing to me how much greater my suffering is when I have no money. So many of the simple things in life that require money becomes major stressors when there is none.

so now with just a few thousand dollars in the bank I’m feeling better today than I was yesterday. I drive past this guy who’s got a sign that says anything helps and he’s not even holding a sign up he’s kind of flopping it down where it’s hard to even read it. Of course I feel bad for people who have no money, but I’ve been that person and I didn’t stand there with a sign I went and created money.

but I’m not insensitive to the suffering that occurs with no money. In fact quite the opposite, I am very aware of how I experience it. I know the Buddhist deny themselves all physical things as a way to alleviate the suffering that comes with the wanting of physical things, but that’s just. not me. I like things

So instead what I do, is I focus on being happy while I’m in pursuit of the things I want. I try as much as I cannot to suffer over not having the things I want. As an example my laptop has this set of dead pixels going straight across the center of the screen.

of course I want to be left top but there like $800, which I don’t have. So do I suffer because I don’t have a new laptop? No, I just noticed that I’m looking forward to when I’ll have enough money to buy new laptop. I had to get the iPhone 5c instead of the five ass cause I just couldn’t afford the $200 for the five ass. Is there any difference between the two?

sure but it doesn’t matter. What matters is in my suffering over not having the fine ass? The answer is no. No if I had to go back to a flip phone because I couldn’t afford the $30 a month for a smart phone that would be a problem. I use my phone for its email capabilities and web browsing constantly. And I can see how a lack of funding would create suffering for me in that area.

I don’t think it’s any different for people who can’t buy a brand-new Ferrari because all they can afford is a brand-new Lexus. Isn’t it the same? There really is no end to the suffering. There’s no limit to the number of things we can come up with suffer over. Were constantly wanting. I’m still striving for my success, and I’m living in today.

it’s rheumatoid arthritis. And it’s a severe case. Have been pushing her to get her to take some kind of medication, but she doesn’t want to. So I’m left to watch her suffering. But lately I’ve had enough, and I’ve been pushing her to go to a doctor and get some meds. It seems like methotrexate is really going to be the best first solution.

we hate medicines we don’t take any pharmaceuticals my house except for me to take some painkillers sometimes. So we’re really not looking forward to taking something like methotrexate, but it’s time it’s been too long and her suffering causes me suffering. I feel like it’s at the point now where she can’t even think clearly about what her own needs are and I have to do it for her. Watching her being in pain really sucks.

Every room is trashed. There’s dirty dishes in nearly every room, dirty laundry in every corner, garbage on the floor, dirt, dust ,and grime everywhere I look.
I don’t even know how I can take it. The level to which this grossness infects my life utterly and completely disgusting. Sure a housekeeper would be nice, but who the fuck can afford one right now? I know I can’t.

i’ll be able to eventually, but right now I just have to live with it. And I guess if it was just my mess, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it’s not.

it’s partially my kids mess and predominantly my wife’s, but it’s not her fault. With her condition, cleaning the house is not her number one priority. Yet even though I understand that, I still want to throw up and run away.

And sometimes I feel better about it than others, today I feel bad. I think it’s also compounded because we just got an argument. Over something that I really don’t know what to do about and suffer over greatly. But that argument is the topic for another post, because this one’s about the mess. Growing up, my dad was a slob and guess who inherited that characteristic? It’s really hard for me to even comprehend how I can live in this utter chaotic shit.

but what is the suffering? Suffering is generally not related to them now. So I think about the mass, all I can do is experience it is what it is. There must be something about the mass that has me taking myself out of the present moment.

it gets me really present to that I don’t have the money to pay a housekeeper, and goddamnit why not? It takes me to this dark place of feeling like I’m being poisoned by my environment. And yet, although I want to clean it up, I have work to do. And my work is more important than cleaning.

so I essentially have to make the choice to live in this disgusting mess so that I can make money. Hopefully the result of which will produce enough money for us to get a house keeper so that I don’t have to live in the mess anymore. But the Buddhist lesson of it is to just be okay with the way things are. Just smile, and allow it to be the way it is.

I clean as I go, it gets messier and messier. Sometimes I really would just like to dump my entire house into a garbage can and move on. But ultimately all there is to do is keep cleaning and keep working.

Simplicity is the key. I’ve dreamt of living in a Japanese-style bamboo and rice paper home, where there really is almost nothing to do but sit and drink tea. Where what I own is minimal. But my family doesn’t want to live that way, so even if I got rid of all my stuff, I would just live in a house of all their stuff, and their mess. Which isn’t really different than what I do now.