Hey, Folks.
How goes it?
I've been a bit off, you know?
But nothing I can't handle.
I think we need to talk...
I feel like...
This has been quite the one-sided conversation, you know?
Like, ya'll just never see fit to post any comments, or say ANYTHING, lol.
You know something?
That doesn't bother me at all!
At least you come and read along, thus giving me your time AND energy.
What more could a lowly peasant like me ask for!?
I hope this next entry leaves you just as well as it's found you, and I hope it's found you well.
I will see you back here soon enough.
Wherever HERE is, lol.
Have you ever splibbled your skrabaple?
No?
Yeah, me neither.
Hmm.
Has anyone?
Enjoy.
-----
August 17th, 2013.
Journal #074.
-----
What a weekend...
A great party.
Far too much sex...
No XXXXX.
I guess I'm just used to seeing her, so she feels so...
Far away...
I hope to transfer soon.
Start a new position with the gift god has given me.
I just hope it all goes well.
I can't.
I WON'T lose everything I've worked so hard for.
Everything I've built...
I miss her.
Who else?
I need to clear my mind before I drive myself to destruction.
A Knight must be strong...
Right?
Life...
You can't draw blood from stone...
-----
Hmm.
-I wonder who I was sleeping with at that time?
It's not like I don't recall due to there being so many, lbvs, I just haven't thought about it for quite some time.
Why would I?
But now, you all give me reason to do so on a weekly basis, along with a plethora of other topics, lmao.
I was one for what we here in America call "Fuck buddies" back in my 20s, and I was never long without one if I was single, and should the need arise, you know?
We all have needs, and some people just want/wanted casual sex, and I was never opposed to that.
I still don't.
I was obviously not sleeping with the Gothic chick, as much as I am sure that young me wanted to, and as much of a bad idea as that would have likely been.
Now that I've pondered it a bit more, I do recall who I was sleeping with, lbvs!
I wonder how she's doing?
-I was quite in love, and being away from her would haunt me at times. (The Gothic chick.)
I fought that feeling till maybe a handful of months ago, and we are now in 2025.
It was...
Potent.
Powerful.
Love bombing and gaslighting, with a splash of sex and manipulation for good measure, can drive a man to...
Many things.
It took me nearly three and a half years after our breakup in 2022 to fully let go and start to heal in a proper and healthy way.
Hmm.
"Love" can do that to you.
One-sided love, that is.
-I had worked for the Boys & Girls Club for nearly 4 years, and I loved it.
I was given the opportunity to transfer to a new site that was within walking distance of my house.
Why would I say no!?
It was a horrible choice that, in hindsight, I should have never made.
It was only made easier due to my then-manager being a dick to me when I had expressed to him my interest in transferring.
The first few weeks were tough, but nothing that I couldn't handle as a trained educator, you know?
My biggest hurdle was the fact that nearly 70% of the children were either bilingual or spoke nothing but Spanish.
It was not something that I couldn't work around, and with time, it all began to come together.
That was until I suddenly realized the real reason that I had essentially been scalped from the last site that I had been working for...
This new manager only wanted me for my accolades and the fact that I had led my first-year Lego League team to an astonishing 3rd place slot over nearly 50 other teams just the year before.
He was eager to start his own team, and thus bring me and more funding to his much smaller Boys & Girls club.
What a shitty, selfish asshole he turned out to be, you know?
He saw me struggling with the group of children that he had assigned me, and did nothing.
Nothing but add more work, more children, and suddenly the responsibility of gathering a plethora of different children, selecting from among them the "best and brightest", introducing them to the Lego Robotics system, training them on how to BUILD the damned thing from just under 2000 pieces, teaching them to PROGRAM it, design and get printed a WHOLE uniform-like group shirt, pick anywhere from 5-8 objectives for them to program their robot to complete, get them ready to make a FILMED STAGE presence in a matter of weeks, ready them physically and mentally to preform in front of not only the other teams but several HUNDRED students and parents AND the judges.
And that doesn't cover it all...
That dude wanted me to work fucking miracles, I tell you.
And you know what it all came down to?
After all of the work and effort and time and energy I put in?
He fired me.
He fired me for reporting a bruised-up child to C.P.S.
A child who was very clearly uncomfortable with being questioned.
It was a strange and troublesome event.
So, yeah...
I ended up losing all that I had worked for.
I loved that job.
I shouldn't have transferred.
But alas, everything happens for a reason, and I am so far from where I was back then that I can't imagine still being there in any capacity.
-"You can't draw blood from stone." I forgot where I heard this quote, but I loved and still love it. I used to be told that I was too emotional, and so I toned them down.
I was then told that I was too cold.
Stone-like.
That sucked.
It sucked to keep trying to change and adapt myself to whatever image she may have wanted me to be.
It sucked more to come to find that after just under 9 years, I was never going to be what she wanted in the first place.
-I've always fashioned myself a Knight, you know?
In some ways, I still do.
But this armor of mine is...
Rent.
Torn.
Patched and dented.
It still holds,
But for how much longer, I often wonder?
I gave just under 12 years of my life, time, and energy to the wrong people, the wrong jobs, the wrong pursuits, and the wrong relationship.
It's okay.
If everything happens for a reason, wouldn't all of that be for something?
Hmm.
I sit here typing for you all to read.
Maybe...
Maybe all of that led to all of this.
But even so, what is THIS?
What is my life but to write and serve you all in this capacity?
Hmm, again.
Maybe that is enough.
I hope you all are good and well until the next one, yeah?
I hope to see you then.
Safe travels out there.
We live in strange, dangerous times, you know?
It's okay, you're all safe here.
You have my word.
Stay safe.
Stay healthy.
Stay vigilant.
-Redd