Storms

The phone rang about 2 that afternoon, I was in the middle of working on some things for work. It was my oldest daughter…

“Ally’s having a seizure.”

Fuck.

With a rushing heart, I ran out of the office and bolted to my car. Jumping in and driving as fast I could.

When I arrived at my ex’s home, I found my 10 year old completely out of it laying on the ground with her mother rubbing her head. She was still recovering from her first seizure after 8 months.

Dammit.

We had seen such improvement, we thought we had the epilepsy kicked. We only needed another 16 months of no new seizures….but, alas, that’s not how the story’s going to go.

As her mother got up to tend to other things, I laid with my daughter on the floor of the bedroom and rubbed her head. I didn’t want this to happen, but it had. That’s the deal.

She had gone into the other room to play with the cat and that’s when my ex and my oldest daughter heard a thud. They called out to my daughter, but no response. Then they heard another thud. When my ex got there, my daughter was leaning against the wall, unresponsive to words, and my ex knew.

She laid her down and held her as she had the seizure, which was in many cases, different from the ones before. No convulsing, no foaming at the mouth, but my ex knew this was happening.

After my ex had administered the meds to bring my daughter back out of her seizure, she had a gigantic headache and slept for 14 hours. A seizure is like running a marathon for your mind and it wears you out.

So, in the quiet of the room, I looked at my daughter resting after this incident and just kept saying, “When is shit gonna calm down. Fuck.”

Guess what Mr Beckett? It doesn’t.

When Times Are Tough

Without a doubt, this is one of the most challenging times for many of us, and I’m not an exception. As a small business owner, I’ve had to lay off my part time staff, hoping that one day soon I can hire them back. Everyone is surrounded by uncertainty and government handouts only help for so long.

Still, it speaks volumes for people who are struggling right now that it’s EVERYONE that seems to be going through some shit on some level or another. It always helps when people who are struggling just like you understand and empathize with you on your journey. That’s one of the brightest spots in all of this.

But it still doesn’t answer the questions that we all have that generate self doubt in all of us everyday. Why? Why does this happen?

People try so hard to control what can’t be controlled, they sometime forget to read that sentence again. “You can’t control what can’t be controlled.”

Which is why the only thing you can do during a storm is seek shelter and wait until it passes. You can scream at the storm to stop, you can run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, you can jump up and down in anger, but the storm is still going to strike.

Which is why, after 20 years before of looking up at the sky and asking “why me?” I was calm, collected, and smiling as I looked at my daughter post seizure sleeping after it passed. I knew that there wasn’t shit I could do about what had just happened except what I could do.

So I calmly called the neurologist, who explained that because of my daughter’s recent growth spurts, she may have to increase her medication, got my daughter comfortable, kissed her forehead, and went home to contemplate my situation.

I had a business in the balance of all of this uncontrollable mess, a daughter who has now relapsed into epilepsy, another daughter who’s in intensive therapy over out of control anxiety, family issues, and all the other bullshit that life throws at us everyday.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t sleep much the next two days. But all of that mental masturbation as I contemplated what had happened didn’t help one bit. As a matter of fact, after hour one, I started to work on solutions that I could actually DO, as opposed to pie in the sky bullshit that only landed on the flip of a coin or worse, the spin of a roulette wheel.

One of my most used sayings is “it is what it is” and it continues to ring true in these unprecedented times.

Two things to remember:

  1. It can always be worse. No matter what you’re going through, imagine there are thousands of folks going through worse.
  2. You can’t control it, you can only control how you react to it, or better yet, how you prepare for it.

There will always be a segment of the populace who labors under the false assumption that their complaining will change their outlook. It never does, it only adds to the misery of how they are living their lives.

You can only control:

  • Your actions
  • Your perspective
  • Your reactions to events

This is it. There’s nothing you can do with things you can’t control.

It’s been a long time coming for many people as they continue to get smacked in the face by life to just lay there and cry instead of getting back up. They think if they lay in the fetal position after the punch they’ll get left alone only to find out that life continues beating their ass as they lay there.

Punches and kicks don’t stop because you tell them too. At some point, you gotta hit back.

If you want life to stop hitting you, you have to be tougher to absorb the blows.

But you also have to register that fact that there’s nothing you can do. You can contemplate, you can pray, you can do a whole host of things, but stuff is still not going to change until you realize that you must adjust to it all.

The simple fact that the hits keep coming in your life isn’t your fault but it doesn’t change that they’re going to keep coming at you, for better or worse. If my daughter’s medical bills pile up right before I’m about to make a payment on my debt, there’s nothing I can do about that except move forward with my current plan and tweak when necessary.

My joy of seeing my daughter eight month seizure free was dampened by the most recent seizure, but in the big scheme of things, there are children having daily….hell, HOURLY seizures that can’t be controlled with medication.

And with a simple increase in medication and a bit of expense to restock seizure ending meds in the long run is much better than being whisked to a hospital every week with life threatening seizures.

It can always be worse, but it can also be better.

That’s why, regardless of what is going on, you need to construct a plan, sort of a “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” type of plan. And you need to go over it every day and twice on Sunday. Have it as a part of your life.

Plan for the Storm

Let’s be honest, there’s no way to completely plan for every little eventuality, is there? Health issues are unpredictable. Financial windfalls and shortfalls happen very quickly. Which is why what this pandemic and ensuing fallout from it is showing us that there’s nothing wrong with being prepared.

Despite the fact that my daughter had another seizure, I was prepared for it.

We had a plan. Contact the neurologist. Understand the symptoms and what was ahead. Know that the medication amount hadn’t changed and we were going to have to raise it. Know that a keto diet may be in the cards. Know about CBD oil and it’s effects. Run through all of these plans.

Which is why I was set back, but not set out. As unpleasant as the eventuality was, I had to keep it on the table. You can’t whistle on the train tracks all day without knowing what to do when a train is coming, especially on a bridge…(for you Stand By Me fans out there).

You have to have a feel for the track when a train is coming. Which is why the reaction to run as the train came was the only one, and it was a distinct possibility that Gordie knew about as he kept feeling the track.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best is your best stance, especially financially.

In my life currently, I am going on month number 2 of monk mode Beckett.

I am working on paying down my debt, once over 75k to now under 19k with more to come. I have cut every last expense in order to get me over the hump and put me in a better position come 2021. My plan, regardless of what happens, will still be in place. I have contingency plans for job loss, for homelessness, for lack of clothing, for lack of food.

I have contingency plans in place for my daughters. If I die, they have millions coming.

If their health, either mental or physical, becomes an issue, I have avenues to work with. We have different paths that we take to get to our destination, and most often the ones with the most hardship are the ones we avoid, but are also the ones that get us there the quickest.

Every situation you can think of can help you craft and mold a plan to ride out the storm. Which is better? Riding it out in a metal shack with holes in it or a brick house that has been built to withstand the chaos?

You build and you re-build, but you never cower and hide. You make it stronger than before the storm, but you keep re-building. You keep preparing so you aren’t surprised like you were the last time. Adaptation is a key component to a full life.

Death? Life insurance. Job loss? Updated resume on file and hard copied. Health issues? Doctors, specialists and people who know how to treat these conditions. Divorce? Several attorneys that can give you advice. Finance? Invest, have a plan, learn about money. Expenses? Only pay for what you need and pay cash as much as you can. Many ways to skin a cat.

This won’t be the last crisis we have. This won’t even be the last crisis we have this MONTH. So you have to be better and prepare for all things, even the worst things like death, so that you can continue to persevere in this life of yours. Get stronger in all aspects of your life and you’ll weather any storm life throws.

The storms aren’t stopping, all you can do is prepare.

And even better, be the storm yourself.

The American Woman

Your modern American woman.

When she has all the attention, she never gives it back, she only loses it.

It’s been a while since my last post, so what better way to jump back into the cesspool with a stark and real look at what I’ve seen in the dating apps.

Tinder, especially, is a dumpster fire. As I have always said guys, you can avoid a ton of garbage if you swipe left on any and all dating apps. But they’re there to be convenient. And that alone is why they all suck.

But it gives me a chance to really discuss the state of the modern American woman.

This certainly does not ascertain a blanket sweep of all women, as I’ve met many women who are quite awesome, especially those that I DON’T meet on dating apps, but there is a disturbing trend we are seeing that only continues to get worse.

I do believe in equality, but I don’t believe in equality of outcome. Women most certainly have had to earn rights and still suffer in other countries under brutal regimes. But I also think that women growing up in this modern time have been led to believe that they can act exactly like men. And that is a mistake. And it’s showing when you see women who are ravaged by trying to be something they are not. You can’t make biological differences a factor in equality, because Mother Nature doesn’t play that, and feminists these days certainly don’t believe in equality as much as they believe in revenge for what men did to them all those years ago.

Make no mistake, women have come a long way. They’ve had to fight for rights and privileges that they should naturally have, but did it go to far?

As the COVID-19 epidemic is showing you, feminists are reverting back to “save me” mode and wanting men for what men do, because quite honestly, no one can be a man except a man. That’s biology, not anything new.

But the modern feminist and women in general “have their cake and eat it too” is getting tiresome for this generation. When men step up, they are being lauded as “toxic”. When they fade back, they are told to “man up” or do their jobs. In essence, men can’t win, and feminists want it that way.

Feminism has poisoned several generations of women, with the oldest generation now reaping the crops they sowed so long ago.

Modern Feminism in the Dating Scene

The glory days of Sex in the City and having a career and sleeping with an entire city have now crumbled and you see tired, fading women who didn’t embrace their femininity, they flaunted it, and now they don’t have it to flaunt.

You are seeing women who were rode hard and put away wet. Years of “empowerment” have resulted in tattoos, piercings, obese and worse with these women being told that living just like a man is a great life and you can be sexually promiscuous with tons of men and be just fine.

But as they are finding out, that’s not the case. As Jordan Peterson has stated many times, “Who would want to be a man?”

Men are built biologically to reproduce with as many partners as they can. Now while we certainly don’t do that, women are not built that way, and society saying that they are is empowering? And we see the result. Dating apps filled to the brim with women who took their wild years too wildly and now are a shell of who they were. They were told embracing their femininity is weak and acting like a man would strike a blow to the patriarchy. And you see this behavior seeping into younger generations.

While Tinder is a very small slice of the pie, you consistently see women who are 30-45 that are very damaged. Liberal women galore. “If you like Trump, swipe left.” “I’m a feminist” types that have been on the dating app carousel for ages, hoping to find a guy who puts up with the crap they dish out, and finding there isn’t anyone out there. Swipe left.

And then you have the IG fisher thots, amateurs trying to grow their respective followings of simps IMing them dick pics, swipe left.

Then you have the feminazi’s who have found the error of their ways but are so far gone there’s no hope. Buy cats. Swipe left.

Emotionally damaged women who made the wrong choice and now have addictive behaviors, but refuse to help themselves or work on themselves as they’ve been sold the “be yourself” trash by society. Swipe left.

Dudes pretending to be girls (either digitally or in real life), she-male fiesta hoping to trap a dude by looking attractive enough from the waist up. Swipe left.

Married women looking for that guy who will be the bull in their loveless marriage because their man stopped trying years ago and hey “do you mind if he watches us?” Swipe left.

22 year old with 3 kids who’s ready to “settle down” after three different fathers didn’t know she wasn’t on birth control. Swipe left.

But we know this isn’t the norm, is it? You are seeing a slice of the female pie that only exists online. There is hope for women, I’ve seen it in the women I’ve dated because I’ve put down the phone.

Empowerment Traps

I’ve said many times, society has allowed women to overvalue themselves while pushing men to undervalue themselves. Once again, empowerment was never about equality, it was about putting men in their place for the feminine dominant to come out. But when the dominant feminism came out, the minute a spider shows up, the imperative wants men to kill it so they can continue to rule.

The influencer movement is extremely interesting to me, as it’s turned millions of men into mindless followers hoping for just a taste of that perfect woman who’s far from it. And now, thanks to OnlyFans, thousands of amateur women can now have male followers who pay for homes, cars, and other necessities while she fucks around with the best of the best who she has. It’s hypergamy on steroids and feminism in a nutshell. “Have your cake and eat it too.”

And men not only allow it, but they placate it. Men have been neutered to the point of being willing accomplices to a woman’s sexual strategy. And they aren’t stopping anytime soon.

“Venmo me for nudes!”

Remember, gentlemen, these women described above are garbage. Plain and simple. And they are the product of feminism let out of the barn with no plan on how to deal with it. Even since the advent of birth control and women’s sexual options opening up, any woman with a vagina has an open season on any guy.

But here’s the fail-safe that we are seeing that women didn’t count on. Age.
Many of these women have an expiration date. Women don’t age as well as men, and they can’t understand that the fun they had when they were younger didn’t translate to a kick-ass life when they are older. We are seeing aging hipsters like Sharon Stone, long a screen smoke show, now having to resort to Tinder to find a dude that will put up with her feminism sideshow. The makeup, hair dye, and skin products can only do so much to hide the hideousness inside and underneath, and these women will rightfully grow old and die alone, which is a much bigger fear for women than for men. (Manosphere term is “the wall” as Rollo has dubbed it.)

When women fought for and what women expected were two different things. They want all the fun without the consequences, preferring to blame others for their lots in life, or with feminism, evil men and their patriarchy which by the way, paved the way for women to have the very rights they feel they don’t have.

These women dictate terms as long as their favorable, then tap out when they aren’t, blaming all and everything but themselves.

And when they don’t get their way, they scream “sexism” and move on down the road to deface their bodies in the name of fighting against “the man”. Militancy is not a path for women to go down so they have men with guns to keep other men in line until the men with guns are busy with a bigger threat.

Feminism creates perpetual victimhood with endless demands and bottomless complaints. You can’t satisfy those who refuse concessions.

So, we see this, now, with women struggling with their identities. Society tells them to be empowered and the men they want telling them to be more feminine. It’s a struggle that feminism is winning, sadly, but there is hope. As we see COVID-19 and other factors pushing women to be more feminine, they are starting to see they can attract more bees with honey than vinegar. They’ve been lied to, and for many, it’s too late, but for others, they are resetting their lives before it’s too late. And while I may poke fun at the “born again” crowd, it shows more guts to admit a change in your mindset than blindly plowing forward until death to try to fulfill a blantently untrue narrative.

This part gives me hope. I see many women in my travels who are bucking the feminism clap-trap for a more nuanced approach to femininity. And this makes me smile because I know that the narrative isn’t affecting near as many women as we think.

But we as men need to do our part as well. We have to stop placating this behavior as normal. Silence means acceptance. We have to stop financing women with hopes of intimacy. It’s only making the whole situation worse.

So beware of the new American woman. She’s on a mission to maximize everything she has while she can. But also applaud the women coming out of this realizing the lie and praising masculinity instead of toxifying it.

There’s hope for the American Woman after all.

American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
Mm, American woman gonna mess your mind
Mm, American woman gonna mess your mind
Say A
Say M
Say E
Say R
Say I
C
Say A
N, mm
American woman gonna mess your mind
Mm, American woman gonna mess your mind
Uh, American woman gonna mess your mind

Uh!

American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama, let me be
Don’t come a-hangin’ around my door
I don’t wanna see your face no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin’ old with you
Now woman, I said stay away
American woman, listen what I say

https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
American woman, get away from me
American woman, mama, let me be
Don’t come a-knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
Colored lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else’s eyes

Now woman, I said get away
American woman, listen what I say, hey

American woman, said get away
American woman, listen what I say
Don’t come a-hangin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your face no more
I don’t need your war machines
I don’t need your ghetto scenes
Colored lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else’s eyes
Now woman, get away from me
American woman, mama, let me be

Go, gotta get away, gotta get away
Now go go go
I’m gonna leave you, woman
Gonna leave you, woman
Bye-bye
Bye-bye
Bye-bye
Bye-bye
You’re no good for me
I’m no good for you

Gonna look you right in the eye
Tell you what I’m gonna do
You know I’m gonna leave
You know I’m gonna go
You know I’m gonna leave
You know I’m gonna go, woman
I’m gonna leave ya, woman
Goodbye, American woman…