Why Your Life, For Good Or Bad, Is Your Fault
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Why Your Life, For Good Or Bad, Is Your Fault
Everyone seems to have excuses for why they're struggling. The logical acrobatics people can do to direct the blame for where they are in life to anything other than themselves is astonishing. I'm sorry that I don't believe you. I don't accept your excuses.
I am 42, happily married, and have four daughters, a son, and two grandchildren. I own my house and cars, and earn considerably over six figures each year all after having spent most of my life in prison.
If that sounds like boasting then you're very perceptive because that's absolutely what I am doing. You should be angry that someone like me can say that and here's why:
I am the product of my old man knocking up his side-piece girlfriend. I have 6 siblings. I was that bastard baby that caused their family so much hardship. Not my gangster dad's infidelity, no, the inescapable proof of it. I was the consequence that reminded everyone. What's even better was my mother, desperate to be loved by him, mirrored this disdain as well. So there's my life on day one, no advantages detected. What's your excuse?
My father's interactions with me only existed when I'd get arrested and his responses were only disgust towards me for being the "wrong kind of criminal". He didn't like the new school way of doing things. Apparently, we had no class.
My mother spent most of her time in and out of mental asylums. My old man had broken her. She kicked me out of the house once to commit suicide because it was important my father find her and she didn't want me to ruin her masterplan. She somehow survived that attempt but I didn't come back afterwards. I was too busy hustling to deal with her. I had just officially become a teenager, practically an adult, time to set off on my own. So there was no family structure to help me. What's your excuse?
I failed in school, simply being pushed to the next grade in spite of failing grades. I only showed up because it was warm in the winter and there were vending machines I could steal from. According to the Ohio DRC, I have a double-digit IQ. I never got past the 9th grade and didn't learn to read until I was an adult. Tutored by Lifers in the Joint so I could get my prison GED. Therefore I'm not smarter than you. What's your excuse?
I learned how to spot and warn people when a cop was coming by the time I was 6, was running drugs and corner money by 8, and robbing dealers and stash houses by 14. By the time I hit puberty the sound of gunshots wouldn't even distract me from the cartoons I was watching and the sight of someone being killed was nothing more than something to gossip about later. I had no basic moral compass to help me along. What's your excuse?
I celebrated my 18th birthday in solitary confinement. I had been bound over to serve time as an adult after having been sentenced as a juvenile to spend the next 15 years in a high-security prison. I wasted no time fully accepting my new home and getting into as much trouble as I could find.
For someone who lived as I did, this was like going to crime college to get my PHD in The Game. While you were learning how to pay bills I was learning how to make a tattoo gun from a walkman radio. The life you began building at 18 I didn't reach until I was in my 30's. I've had a fraction of the time you've had to figure things out to get where I am now. What's your excuse?
I entered the workforce about a decade ago. Less than a week after getting out I got a seasonal job loading trucks. My very first adult paycheck. With absolutely no skills, work history, employment experience, and a book of felonies, I got a job.
It paid minimum wage and there was a looming layoff coming, but it was a start. An interviewer hired a convicted felon with nothing to offer except legal liabilities simply because I convinced her I wanted to work. What's your excuse?
That job was the least amount of money I had ever made in my entire life. Crime pays well when you're good at it. I made more money from my 2 points transporting a re-up in the early 90s than what I'd earn there in a week. However this was legitimate, I paid taxes now like a real-life citizen. Therefore, in order to get where I am, I first had to go significantly backward. What's your excuse?
I wasn't without responsibilities either. I got married while I was in prison and on day one of freedom took on the duty of supporting my wife and two stepchildren. I also took full legal custody of my biological daughter 8 months later.
Without a lawyer, I convinced a court that I was the better parent to have her. I was the sole income earner in my house with only the new factory job I had managed to get. I didn't know how to use the Internet or a DVD player but I figured out how to do that. What's your excuse?
I refused to spend money on anything other than food and bills. I got rides and even walked to work so I could save every penny possible rather than getting a car. I bought a foreclosed house and watched enough YouTube videos to figure out how to fix it. A few years later I sold it for enough to pay for more than half of the one we're in now. I started with crap so I could have better later. What's your excuse?
Until I got the job I have now, I always worked at least two full time. Now I make a very good living and I accomplished that by constantly applying for positions I was completely unqualified for. Job interviews were basically my hobby. The dozens who told me no didn't matter. I only needed one to say yes. Eventually one did.
Now I wear a suit and don't have to break my back any longer. I was finally able to comfortably support myself and my family with no additional sacrifices. What's your excuse?
People don't lack opportunities, they lack the aspiration that's fueled by desperation. They're not willing to suffer, to put the work in, to take the chances necessary to succeed. I purposefully had no plan B. I either had to get this right the first time or end up back where I started. The only advantage I've ever had was my ability to endure, to suffer with a smile.
Fortunately, that's an advantage any of you can choose to have yourself. There's no secret. Just do the thing that's in front of you and aim for more than you believe you can accomplish. I'm here and I still misspell my own middle name. What's your excuse?
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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Why Your Life, For Good Or Bad, Is Your Fault
I grew up in Watts-LA as a CHILD I remember the fires of the 1960's black smoke and they wouldn't let me out of the house;
Most influential book for me was "malcolmX" autobiography, he talks about how his mother committed suicide cuz the gov took all her children and put them into 'foster homes' ( jails for children )
I got into myself at about 12, spent all my time studying to make bombs&drugs, I liked to blow shit up and of course the hood loved drugs, I made LSD, and just about everything by 14; Started sitting in college classes ( at the back and kept my mouth shut ) at 14 so I could learn more physics, math, & chemistry;
Along the way of studying I spent less&less time on the street and more&more in the library;
..
Probably the best thing one can do is Get the fuck out of the HELL-ZONE, I left LA to Alaska when I was barely 20 years, and never looked back preceded to get jobs in the OIL-BIZ and just climbed the ladders, shit that took the PHD's months&years I could 'code-up' in a day, having taught myself to program back during my days of sitting in college lecutures, I would go into the computer rooms and read punched cards ( from the garbage bins ) and figure out what they were doing soon I could 'write my own programs' because I knew the 'math' and I could 'program' and I knew the gig of the OIL-BIZ was to find the oil and pump it out of the ground; I took every problem with GUSTO and would work on it 24/7
By the time I was 24 I was bored with tech and especially 'working for the man' quit and started my own businesses kept them small enough so I could go 'sail around the world'
Went back to LA a few times in early 1980's, its seemed worse than I remember; But what I remember most as a 8 year old kid is riding my bike along the LA River in East LA coughing up blood from the smog;
Traveled the entire earth, always 'traveled poor' also slept on train station floors 'near the gypsys' good people, take care of their own, and love music & dancing;
....
HELL SELF EDUCATE, and then just keep applying for the fucking JOB work a few years just to learn their 'scam and/or gid' then go do it yourself, the biggest LEARN for me was that great majority of the PHD's were lazy incompetent MORONS
Which explains the COVID-19 MD & PHD problem we have today WHY they were so easy to just go along with being MORONS and ignore scientific reality;
FUCK THE SYSTEM
I now think that GOV has created a system where parents are just 'prison guards' that often its better for a kids to just 'run away'
Like the OP say's here he could spot a cop at 6, hell yes; My sister at 10 was a professional prostitute, I was so fucking shy of girls that I didn't have my first GF until 19, yet when I was 14 I was fucking girls in a 'train' there were always everynight somewhere where somebody was pulling a train, but you didn't talk you didn't know, you just waited in line with your 'bros' got your turn, and went on with the night;
MY point is they used to put kids 4-6 in factorys and work 12 hours a day, most kids are plenty ready by 6 to ride a bike around the hood deliver drugs collect money, and have their own biz;
I noted properly at that age myself white suits they called businessmen, youths organized they called 'gangs' they were all the same;
...
On the subject of 'fault', my ex-wife used to say that I had the self-confidence of a rhinoceroses, why not? Just like the guy here say's go apply for the job, 90% of the time your smarter than anybody you will meet in the interview
In closing a perfect explanation on why some people are miserable losers and others are child prodigies is this; There were once two twin brothers both born to alcoholic parents, a psychiatrist interviewed them both; One brother a famous brain-surgeon, another brother a bum living on the street, we called 'skid row' in LA;
When the psych asked the bum brother "Why did you turn out this way?" the bum reported "My parents were alcoholics, what else you expect?"
When the psych asked the brain-surgeon, why did you turn out this way, he said "My parents were alcoholics, what else would you expect? That I would emulate them??"
TWO exact brothers, two exact home-family life experiences and yet two completely different path's in life;
One brother 'learnedhelpless' a fucking loser, the other brother set his targets high and climbed the mountain and never quit, the BUM brother never he stepped off the couch let alone climbing the mountain;
...
Lastly On EDUCATION at high levels, MALCOLM-X self-educated himself in PRISON not unlike the OP here's story, I self educated my self as a child 12-16 my just living in the library's and hiding at the back of college lectures ; The high-schools, jr-highs were all worthless shit, the teachers for the most part were all lazy morons;
There is a famous quote about a child that wanted to be like "MOZART" when the child was 6 he asked he piano teacher, can you teach me to write a 'CONCERTO" like Mozart did at 3 years of age;
To which the piano teacher replied Mozart didn't ask anybody how to play, or write music or write a concerto he just did it;
That is the difference between a CUCK/Loser and somebody who gets shit done in life "JUST FUCKING DO IT"
Wow. I feel like you’ve just written my story, from a masculine perspective.
As long as we keep pointing the finger at anyone and everything but ourselves, we are just making excuses and giving our power away.