THE WORST JOB I EVER HAD

People doing a job I absolutely hated! Photo courtesy of outbounders.tv

IT WAS DURING THE SUMMER OF 1990…

I was a student at UCLA and looking to earn money to help pay for the next school year, which I had planned to be my last as I was getting ever so closer to earning my bachelor’s degree.

I was hired as a UCLA camp counselor, but it unfortunately failed to work out for reasons that I don’t want to go into as I was let go literally the Friday before camp was supposed to begin the following Monday.

Which obviously left me up the proverbial creek.

I spent the rest of that June and the bulk of July looking for a job mostly in Santa Monica, where I was living at the time,

With nothing remotely close to luck of course as I particularly remember going into a store on Pico Blvd asking for a job only to be, figuratively speaking, shoved out the door.

I think it was late July when I came across an ad in either the Santa Monica Outlook or the Los Angeles Times for some marketing assistant or something like that; being that it was over thirty years ago I don’t remember what that ad exactly said.

I called the number shown and felt a sort of gladness when the guy at the other end said that he wanted to interview me; I then headed over to this office building on Pico just a few blocks east of Cloverfield Blvd, where after answering a few questions I was hired.

Which normally would be good news,

Except for the fact that it would turn out to be roughly five weeks (I’m not exactly sure; it was over three decades ago) of a virtual hell as the place I was hired was a telemarketing call center.

And a pretty bad one at that as looking back, it was a dodgy-looking place where I and the other workers were expected to do cold calls from the phone book, fundraising for various law enforcement charities much like what was seen on HBO’s recent documentary miniseries “Telemarketers”, which exposed the many scams those companies performed through folks calling people who didn’t want to be bothered, using aggressive tactics to get their money.

Add to that the fact that the callers, me included, were expected to work on commmission only, meaning that if we had a bad day with no sales, we didn’t get paid,

Which made us, in a way, slave labor – or at least indentured servitude labor,

And the fact that I had no idea of my being on the autism spectrum at that time and thus my having Asperger’s rendered me as completely ill-suited for telemarketing,

And it was a labor of hate for those few weeks.

I particularly remember two episodes which illustrated the practical hell I was in…

The first episode was during one evening – I was expected to work nights and Saturdays – when for whatever reason I had a emotional breakdown to the point where I was allowed to go home; I believe it was the way the supervisor was managing me as I felt like a slave picking cotton on a plantaion and he was my overseer.

The second episode had nothing to do with me and my personal animosities toward the job, but it showed how shoddy and scammy the whole thing was and how it preyed on innocent people trying to get their money…

I had managed to make contact with who I figured during the call was an elderly woman in nearby Venice, who was apparently lonely for some conversation and companionship as she kept me on the phone for a while talking about various things.

I managed to get a sale from her, but didn’t really feel good about it.

As one could perhaps imagine, I continued looking for a better job within the first couple of days of my being at that hellhole as along with everything else, working on commission only was and is a bad way to make money.

I eventually found a job at a clothing store in Westwood, which ultimately turned out to be a bad expericence as well as I found that I was not cut out for retail;

But that’s another story for another time.

Looking back on it all now…

I had quite a few jobs during my time in the workforce, around a dozen in all within a span of nearly 25 years,

Which I know is not good, but for a person with Asperger’s who didn’t know he had such for roughly half of those years, and for which there was no program geared to help those on the high-functioning end of the spectrum succeed in the workforce in those years, was more or less par for the course.

But if I was asked what was the single worst job I ever had,

It would definitely be that telemarking gig in 1990 that was so bad, not only do I not remember the name of that company,

I’m about 99% sure that I didn’t even include it on my resume in subsequent years.

Overall,

That telemarketing job serves as a bad memory, one which I would obviously like to forget.

Telemarketers aiming to get people’s money. Photo courtesy of rediff.com

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY POST: My Biggest Accomplishments (at least at this point in my life)

What has been the tools of my work/trade for the past fifteen years…

THE (relatively few, to be honest) THINGS I HAVE DONE THAT I’M ACTUALLY PROUD OF AS I AM ABOUT TO ADD A 56th CANDLE ON MY BIRTHDAY CAKE

I won’t lie…

Compared to many if not most people in my age group, my life’s accomplishments as I approach the end of a trip around the sun and the beginning of another have more or less paled;

• I’m not married, nor do I have any kind of significant other, nor do I expect to ever get either one
• I have no children, nor do I expect to ever be a father
• My life in the workforce was both lacking and pretty much a failure; for details, read Chapters Eight and Nine of my book WALKING ON EGGSHELLS: Living With Asperger’s Syndrome in a Non-Asperger’s World

Please don’t misunderstand,

This is NOT a “woe is me” lament as I’ve accepted my situations regarding having offspring and someone who sees me in a romantic way.

I’m more than fully aware and completely accept that having a wife and kids is NOT for everyone as if it were, the divorce, child abuse and child neglect rates in this country would be zero.

I’ve also more than accepted that working for someone else is not for me and never has been such, that I am much better off working for myself without a boss or a supervisor looking over my shoulder finding faults and reasons to belittle and fire me;

Though I freely admit that my failures in the mainstream workforce were strictly my own as due to what I believe is my being on the autism spectrum and never being trained due to my being completely mainstreamed since 1973 at age six – fifty years (can you believe that?!),

I admit that I’ve always had a natural adversion to too much authority and the workplace hierarchy, seeing it as a dictatorial oppression in many of the places that I worked (not all of them I should add, as there were a few bosses and supervisors that I got along well with).

My Point:

I know that I’ve had and have blessed life in that,

• I’m relatively healthy
• I have a roof over my head
• I have food to eat
• I have available water to drink
• I have available heat
• I have available electricity
• I live in a decent town in a decent neighborhood that’s quite convenient in that my primary needs are within a ten-to-fifteen minute walk or a five minute bus ride, which is why I call my town “Convenient City”
• I live in an area of Greater Los Angeles where unlike in other parts of L.A., the fact that there are three different bus companies – with one of them featuring trains – in my immediate area renders me as not necessarily needing a car for the bulk of the time.

Which of course I make sure to thank God for.

Putting it another way:

Every time I see a house or an apartment that’s sort of run down in a not-that-great neighborhood on TV, two thoughts go through my gray matter,

• There for the grace of God go I, and…
• I know about 50 or 60,000 people in L.A. who would LOVE to live in that house/apartment

While I didn’t attend this college, I see it as a good illustration of what was one of my life’s accomplishments…

ANYWAY…

I was recently thinking about what are the accomplishments in the nearly fifty-six years – in five days from this writing – that I’ve been breathing on this planet.

There are four that I think are notable,

• Achieving what I was convinced would not happen in getting accepted to my dream college, UCLA: I’ve always like to use this analogy with regards to getting that big manila envelope with the lead letter saying “Congratulations…” on Saturday, Feburary 13, 1988 (I even remember the exact date!) as I was watching the movie The Buddy Holly Story on TV…My getting admitted and going to UCLA is like the nerdiest outcast in the 1950s asking Marilyn Monroe to be his girlfriend, or the dweebiest geek asking Beyonce to dump Jay-Z and marry him – and Marilyn and Beyonce saying yes!
• Graduating and getting my college degree from UCLA: Particularly since we were told that, at least at that time, 70% of Blacks and Latinos/as enrolled as Bruins ended up leaving without getting their degree. I was determined to be among the 30% that did get that piece of paper, and I won’t forget the feeling I had after taking that last final exam and apparently doing well in such as I got a “B” in the class. At the risk of sounding cliche-ish, getting that Bachelor’s Degree in History is something that could never be taken away – and I was even successful at getting into graduate school!
• Having two blogs, a sports blog and this one, for nearly a decade: It’s safe to say that it’s gone pretty well, having this blog and SoCal Sports Chronicles (Here’s the link: http://www.socalsportschronicles.wordpress.com/), with SoCal Sports Chronicles getting quite a few reads in particular. It’s been nice having, for all intents and purposes, my own business through these websites of mine.
• Writing and (self) publishing my first book in 2019: It took a long, long time – several years. And there were quite a few times where I had long periods where I wasn’t working on the manuscript. But when I clicked “download” on Lulu.com and it signaled that it was done and available on that site on January 3, 2019 (I remember that exact date, too!), and subsequently on Amazon.com, well…you can imagine the sense of accomplishment that I felt not only in publishing WALKING ON EGGSHELLS, but having people actually reading it! And me actually signing that book for some of them!

While I am as far from being J.K. Rowling, financially and otherwise, as an author can get,

It feels nice having a book out there that’s authored by Derek Hart.

SO IN SUMMING UP:

As my birthday approaches, I have both been and am blessed by God for the life I’ve had and continue to have.

Goodness knows it could be a lot better.

But it could have also been a lot worse.

And I thank God for that fact.

And for the fact that my life has been and is as blessed as it is.

One of my prayers, which I do this time of year, is that I have many, many more birthdays after this one.

That’s about it, except for my looking forward to marking my 56th journey around the sun with delicious Chinese food from Panda Express and eating some chocolate birthday cake.

While my birthday cake will be chocolate and won’t have any strawberries on it, I think the message is the same…

HIDDEN DEPRESSION: Signs That I Have Of It & Five Things To Not Say To Someone Who Has Such

Quite the noticable – and loudly orange – background here…

WHILE ONLINE RECENTLY…

I saw an post describing the eight signs of concealed depression, in which the person is such but you’d never know it because that person is doing such a good job at hiding his/her depression, interacting and behaving like everything’s okay.

Here are those eight signs, the first four being the signs that I have showed and have described me; they have asterisks and are in bold…

• * Fatigue/lack of energy/too much or not enough sleep
• * Irritability/intense sensitivity to rejection
• * Difficulties with concentration or memory
• * Thoughts of suicide
• Aches, pains or digestive problems that can’t be explained by some other cause
• Appetite changes
• Feelings of heaviness in limbs
• Changes in substance use

There have been a couple of times recently where I don’t turn off the light to officially go to sleep until three in the morning, which is not good,

And which has of course resulted in my having trouble getting going in the morning.

I have had – and still have to some degree – intense sensitivity to not only rejection by my peers, but also to what I see as excessive criticism, being micro-managed in the workplace and elsewhere, and being ordered about by someone who leads my mind to think, “This is someone who’s acting like a slavery-era overseer and a bully who thinks so little of me!”

Which had led to thoughts of suicide, particularly during my days in the workforce being an employee of someone else, notably while I was teaching Physical Education at a special education school on Los Angeles’ Westside and my supervisor, well…

Not that I’m really blaming him for the troubles that I suffered while there; the details can be read in my book, WALKING ON EGGSHELLS: Living With Asperger’s Syndrome in a Non-Asperger’s World in the chapter “Failures in the Workforce, 1999-2008”.

There have been times, including recently, where my memory has failed me; this past weekend while at a function at UCLA, my alma mater, I had to ask the name of one of the dorm buildings because I couldn’t remember such.

And just today I was at the showers at the clubhouse at my condominium complex, about to turn the water on when I realized that I had forgotten my towel, forcing myself to walk all the way back to my home to fetch it.

I have always liked photos of the sun shining through forests like this one; they help with my emotional psyche and I feel less depressed somehow when I look at these; I’ve always felt it was a sign from God…

These four signs are proof positive of what is apparently a depression that I’ve been living with for over forty years, since age eleven when I spent the sixth grade being mercilessly bullied by one kid in particular due to my social weirdness stemming from being on the autism spectrum; Asperger’s to be precise.

It got so bad that I spent several days that spring just staying home and not going to school because I just couldn’t face those bullies anymore.

It happened again during my first year of high school in the tenth grade as well, me spending several days in my bed or lounging on the couch at home because things were so bad, both academically and socially during those first few weeks at Santa Monica High School;

Details of those bad days can also be read in my WALKING ON EGGSGELLS book, in the chapters “Rough Times At Samohi, Part One” and “Rough Times At Samohi, Part Two”.

I hope nobody panics over my having had thoughts of suicide, as while they haven’t completely 100,000% gone away I DO NOT want to hurt or kill myself and HAVE NO PLANS WHATSOEVER to do so now.

I very much want to live.

It’s just that reading these signs reminded me of having this ongoing depression stemming from being a high functioning autistic in a world that is not and doesn’t necessarily socially accept autistics the way they should.

Which leads me to the five things that should never be said to a friend who is suffering from depression, according to the website Christianity Today…

• “Get over it”
• “Come out, in Jesus’ name (trying to perform an exorcism like in that classic 1973 horror movie)”
• “Stir your faith”
• “I’m going to be there for you (unless you REALLY mean it and you 100% KNOW you can deliver and actually be there, as opposed to just saying it but not coming through)”
• “Everything will be fine, you’ll see (while on the surface is good to say but to be honest, there’s no guarantee that it will be okay; saying ‘I hope and pray things will turn out good for you’ is better)”

“Get over it”, in particular, is the worst thing that anyone can say to someone who’s emotionally hurting as no sentence is more insensitive and just plain mean.

I sincerely hope people take the time to read and embrace this, because it would really help depressed folks like me as while I generally feel all right at the moment, and while accepting and embracing Jesus as my Lord and Savior and my subsequent studies of biblical verses, particularly this one, which I consider my favorite…

“Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

Various levels of depression will more or less always be in my emotional psyche.

Meanwhile, hold good thoughts for me if you can.

I’m going to go ahead and start fixing my dinner; I’m getting hungry.

I reckon I can guess if not actually know how this guy is feeling, because I’ve felt this way many, many times over the decades…

MY PERSONAL RATINGS SYSTEM FOR TEACHERS, COACHES, & ALL OTHER LEADERS

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

A NUMBERS SYSTEM I DEVISED THAT ASSESSES THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THOSE WHO LEAD

About five years ago, more or less, having spent over twenty years working with young people in coaching sports, teaching P.E., and in other endeavors,

Along with obviously having been under teachers, coaches, bosses and supervisors for the bulk of my life,

I came up with a numerical system in which teachers, coaches, employers, managers, and anyone else put in a position of leadership can be rated as far as how good and effective they are as leaders.

I feel it’s a good way to assess what type of teacher/coach/boss you would prefer to work under and – more importantly, what kind of leader you would want for your child in a sports league or the classroom.

It’s a fairly straightforward system on a scale of one through ten, but with a little twist.

Here’s a detailed description…

• A teacher/coach/supervisor who’s a ONE is the type who tries to be your pal.

Your buddy.

Your best friend.

Your BFF.

What I sometimes call a “Barney”, that purple dinosaur that,

Well, don’t get me started on him.

This is the teacher/coach/supervisor who’s extremely nice and friendly in a pronounced fashion, someone who often tries too hard to get his charges to like him or her.

This is the teacher/coach/supervisor who is very well-liked and popular.

However…

The big problem with this type of leader is that by trying to be your best buddy, he/she ends up not being very effective as a leader.

These are the folks who often let their charges walk all over them, a “pushover” in which the workplace, sports team, or classroom often end up in chaos because there is no boundaries, discipline, or control.

And at the end of the day, not much gets done because this “Best Buddy” type of leader gets taken advantage of too much of the time.

Which makes him/her ineffective.

• The teacher/coach/supervisor who’s a TEN is the complete opposite of the best buddy-pal type.

This is the person who’s an absolute tyrant of a dictator;

One who yells, screams, belittles, humiliates, and oftentimes treats those under him or her much like an slavery-era overseer would treat his field workers on the plantation.

In other words, this is the person who’s just plain mean – so much so that they would make a Marine drill sergeant look like a preschool teacher.

As an example of this, I once saw this video on YouTube of a college basketball coach throwing basketballs at his players during a practice, while calling them a homophobic slur that rhymes with “maggot”.

A better, and more personal example is a teacher I had during my high school days.

He was my first high school marching band director (who will obviously go nameless) who, although he was very good at what he did with my high school marching band winning tournaments and championships left and right while he was there,

Let’s just say his tactics and methods during rehearsals left much to be desired as he used intimidation and belittling far too much of the time, berating us when things weren’t going so well, looking like he was Bruce Banner about to turn into the Incredible Hulk while he screamed at the top of his lungs,

“YOU STINK! YOU CAN’T MARCH!! YOU CAN’T PLAY!!! YOU STINK!!!! I HATE YOU!!!!!”

To my recollection, those were his exact words.

And I once saw him throw a baton at a trumpet player in front of the whole band during another rehearsal.

Although the goal of these “tens” is to get the best out of everyone and to be the best, which is all noble, well and good,

As I heard someone say in a movie I saw…

“What’s so great about being the best, if it brings out the worst in you?”

It looks like this teacher is well-engaged with her students! Photo by Yan Krukov on Pexels.com

• The rating that signifies the perfect teacher/coach/manager/supervisor is a FIVE.

This is the teacher/coach/boss that’s the perfect balance of someone who, while they are capable of getting on you when things aren’t going right or when you’re not performing up to snuff,

At the same time makes it crystal clear and shows you that they care about you as a person and won’t go through harsh measures to get their point across or to get you to do your best.

These are the leaders who are usually very successful, whether it’s their students getting A’s or their athletes winning games and championships or their workers meeting their sales goals or whatever.

Folks who are under these “fives” almost always have fond memories about them, more for the way they cared about them as people than anything else while helping them be the best they can be.

They do a great job at setting boundaries and sticking to them, and they have control and discipline because of one very important thing that they have from their charges:

Respect.

These “five” leaders are also fairly rare.

In my life during my school days in particular, there are two people I can think of who – while not absolutely not 100,000% perfect – come closest to being a five in my book…

• My fifth grade teacher at Will Rogers Elementary School in Santa Monica, who although was tough in the beginning of the school year, ended up well-liked at the end because of him showing that he cared about his students, encouraging them and such; he certainly encouraged me
• My high school orchestra director who was the assistant band director as well as my beginning string orchestra teacher; I tried playing the string bass for part of 10th grade and all of 11th, and while it ultimately didn’t work out this lady was encouraging and more than showed that she cared about her students. When she became the band director at Santa Monica College the year I began there, she was invaluable in being a source of security, someone I and many others could go to as we made the transition from high school to college.

I suppose some of you are wondering this right about now…

What about me? How do I rate myself as a teacher/coach/supervisor?

All right, I’ll tell you…

I put myself anywhere from a 2 and a half – 4 to a 6 – 8; no way would I ever regard myself as a five.

There were times where I tried to be a buddy and a BFF to the youngsters I coached and taught,

And there were times when I – most regretfully to the point where I would apologize to those I upset with my methods and how I interacted with them if I ever encountered them again – yelled and wasn’t the nicest person while in charge.

In both cases, I was young and, while I won’t called myself stupid, had much to learn about being an effective and a just plain good leader.

To put it another way, there are many things I would do differently if I were a teacher or a sports coach now that I didn’t do while I was in that part of the workforce.

I hope this numerical ratings system makes sense to everybody.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of this system in the comments…

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“WORK IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ENJOYABLE”: A Rebuttal To That Mindset

This young teacher looks like she enjoys her job! Photo courtesy of better.net

 

WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T ENJOY WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING?

About nine years ago I read an article online about people who were stressed, burned out, and unhappy in their jobs; the article offered suggestions on how to cope with those feelings when they arose.

In the comments section, one comment that was posted upset me.

The comment said, in effect, said that people who were miserable in the workforce were nothing but whiny crybabies who needed to understand that work is not supposed to be enjoyed.

According to the person who wrote that comment, work is supposed to be difficult – which is why it’s called work – and people who feel otherwise are losers who need to simply get over themselves and be glad that they have a job.

I found myself vehemently disagreeing with what that individual said, or anyone else who sees being in the workforce as necessarily being a life of drudgery and humiliation.

In short, a career does NOT have to be unenjoyable.

It does not have to be eight hours in the proverbial salt mines.

After all, it is said that one third of a person;s life is spent working and earning money at a job, which is obviously a lot of time.

So if such is the case…

One better be full well sure that what they do as a job or for a career is something they want to do.

Don’t misunderstand me – I also know that sometimes, especially these times, folks have to do whatever is necessary to make sure they have a roof over their head, electricity, clothes on their back, and food on the table for his/her family.

I worked in jobs that I absolutely hated, that remains a source of post traumatic stress to this day, I hated them so much.

However, while in a large sense I felt feelings of relief and gladness when I was let go from those jobs, at least I was earning a paycheck.

The significant thing that I learned from working as a telemarketer and a luggage salesman in the early 1990s, the two jobs that I hated the most, is this…

Money cannot be the only motivator for being in the workforce.

I used to feel that money was the only motivational factor in working, and that led me to nothing but misery and depression to the point of having suicidal thoughts..

It all led me to this conclusion…

You have to like what you do, or else it will never be worth it. No matter how much money you make.

In my case, the money I earned in the jobs I hated was like blood money, as I felt like a paid slave because of the way I felt I was feeling treated, having to deal with bullies, I mean bosses, and overseers, I mean supervisors who I felt saw me as something similar to the field hands on the pre-Civil War plantations in the South.

 

 

An illustration of what I’ve been doing for the past eleven years. Photo courtesy of healthyplace.com

 

 

ALL RIGHT, HERE’S MY POINT:

I can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s my strong opinion that people need to have a passion for whatever job or profession he/she is involved in.

Happiness in the workforce, enjoying what you do for a living, is both essential and crucial for one’s mental and emotional well-being.

Which was probably the number one reason why I became an online writer and blogger, because it was and is the only line of work where I can freely express myself and do my own thing without bullies (bosses) breathing down my neck and deliberately finding faults.

Simply put, I was absolutely sick and tired having my livelihood – whether or not I was going to be able to eat and pay my bills – dependent on someone else.

I realized that I will never be truly 100% happy in that situation; being at the mercy of someone else in the workforce.

While I haven’t gotten J.K. Rowling-level rich from this career of mine, at least it has given me more of an emotional peace.

Which in many ways is just as important as the peace derived from getting a paycheck, if not more.

 

So for all you folks out there who are hating your jobs, who are sick of being humiliated by you supervisors who seemingly sees you as a lesser being…

Unless the definite alternate is living in a cardboard box, you don’t have to like in that kind of misery.

In other words, find your passion.

Paint or write a book (like I did).

Whatever you dreamed about doing, do it now – or ASAP – in order to avoid regret when you’re on your death bed.

Find your true happiness; as Confucius famously said,

“Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

 

Being a nature photographer looks like such fun, taking shots of spectacular scenery like this! Photo courtesy of naturephotographers.network

 

 

 

 

My Biggest Struggles As A Christian

Photo courtesy of worldreligionnews.com

 

I was watching Joyce Meyer’s daily show “Enjoying Everyday Life” this morning, as I have done every day since I recited the sinner’s prayer and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior through that program about six years ago.

Joyce – actually, God speaking through Joyce, I believe – was talking about the four tests that God puts Christians through that are necessary to strengthen them in their faith, Joyce saying, “There’s no testimony without tests.”

When she mentioned those four tests,

• Patience
• Forgiveness
• Faithfulness, and…
• Submission To Authority

That really hit home, because not only have I struggled mightily on a pronounced level in all four of those areas, failing more often than not, throughout my life and to this day,

When Joyce mentioned the fourth test – submission to authority,

I was extremely convicted, saying to myself and God, “I’m so guilty of that, Lord, and I’m really sorry,” remembering once and for all that it was, in a large part, the refusal to submit to certain authority being a big factor in not being able to last for more than a year in any of the jobs I had during the last six years I was in the workforce.

While I was thinking about those shortcomings, I realized that it went, and still goes, a little deeper than just behaving on the job in a way that told my bosses to “f*** off”.

I’m convinced that the root of my failure to humble myself, my pronounced struggles to do so even at home sometimes,

Lay in my thoughts that those who are trying to exert authority over me see me as a lesser being, as not as good a human being as them.

In other words, they don’t see me as an equal person or treat me as such,

In fact, my thinking is, “Well, he/she sure doesn’t like me,”

Which not only offends me and hurt me in an emotionally excruciating way,

In my mind, being an African-American, they might as well be seeing me as a slave or calling me the “N-word”.

I know I will be told “That’s not the case!”

And I know that I will be told “You shouldn’t have taken it so personally”; I was told that a couple of times.

And they’re not wrong; I’m fully aware of that in the rational part of my mind.

 

 

I just like this photo, God showing His light upon this tree in the meadow. Photo courtesy of desiringgod.org

 

However…

Another root of these workforce failures of mine lay in something else;

I simply wasn’t happy doing what I was doing the last six years of being in the workforce.

In fact, I was never really happy working for someone else, as there are some people who are better off working for themselves,

Me being one of them, I know now.

The reason?

Throughout my entire life in the workforce, no matter how good the job was, how much I enjoyed it, or even if the boss was nice, considerate and treated me like an equal human being (I actually had a few bosses like that), I felt like I was walking on eggshells.

I felt like in order to not only last on the job, but to also avoid any criticism whatsoever (which I didn’t want), I needed to be absolutely, positively, 1000% perfect in behavior, performance, and everything else.

In other words, looking back I always felt that it was a “one strike and you’re out” kind of deal, two strikes at best.

That caused much anxiety, unhappiness, and depression to the point of suicidal thoughts, particularly at one job I had fifteen years ago; the details of that are in my book (which will be self-published soon), “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS“.

So perhaps God, in my struggles in the chosen field I was in, was telling me that it was not for me and that He had a better plan.

But that doesn’t change the fact that my biggest struggle has always been humbling myself and submitting to authority that I didn’t want to submit to.

Incidentally, before anyone thinks of me as arrogant and someone who sees himself as entitled or thinking that I’m better than anyone else, I’ve NEVER felt that way to any supervisor, as my struggles stem from wanting to be seen by them and treated by them as an equal partner, NOT as someone who’s better than them as I don’t think I’m better than anyone, nor do I want to think that way.

I feel that I’ve been better – not where I need to be , but not as bad as I used to be – as far as patience, forgiveness, and faithfulness.

But it’s failing to not think that authority in too many of the various workplaces I have been in is offending me and figuratively regarding me as/calling me a word that rhymes with “bigger” with an “n” instead of a “b” in the front in their interactions with me that has been a pronounced struggle.

And continues to be, I think, as memories of those days continue to cause some post-trauma in me.

I’LL BE HONEST:

I’d like to say that I know how to pass this particular test of submission, but that wouldn’t be the complete truth.

Which is why if anyone’s reading this who has some helpful hints from the Bible or personal experience, I’m all ears.

BOTTOM LINE: I’d really like some help here, because I really want to please God.

I suppose you can consider this as an appeal to the Good Lord.

 

 

Yes, I’ve been studying this; I’ve got a notebook that’s almost full of study notes, Biblical quotes, prayers written down, etc., to prove it. Photo courtesy of stjudechapel.org

 

 

 

 

ASPERGER’S RECKONINGS: What If I Were Never Mainstreamed Into The Neurotypical Community?

I like this illustration, showing how Asperger’s and Autism are essentially fusioned together. Photo courtesy of spectrumnews.org

 

Recently I was lying in my bed, randomly thinking about different things, when a particular thought popped into my head, a thought that had entered my head quite a few times…

 

What if, as a person on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum disorder (Asperger’s Syndrome to be precise), I were never put into the mainstream community at age six?

What if, as opposed to being put into a regular classroom from the first grade on, I stayed in special education?

How would my life had turned out?

What would my life be like today?

 

As detailed in my book, “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS” – which is coming out soon, it’s just a matter of finding the time to start the process on Lulu.com – I spent kindergarten in what was then called a “Special Day Class”, in the days when the concept of special ed was so new, it wouldn’t be made law until 1975, three years after my time in that SDC classroom.

My memories of that special day class were not fond ones, due to being whacked by rulers and put into closets for various infractions as part of a behavior modification program; details of such are featured in “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS”.

However, the harsh methods that were used apparently had a good effect, because at the end of that school year the powers that be determined that I had progressed to the point where they felt I would be able to be mainstreamed into a regular classroom for first grade, which is exactly what happened.

Though I continued to behave like an animal at times, my grades were such that I apparently wasn’t seriously considered to be returned to special ed, as I never saw the inside of a special education classroom again.

After 18 years (including college) of being in the educational mainstream and roughly two decades of being in the mainstream workforce, socially and otherwise, I have wondered what my life would be like today if I had stayed in a special education program until age 22, and never saw a regular classroom.

 

 

I like this image! Courtesy of bloomfieldpsychology.com.au

 

 

Here they are – keep in mind that these are strictly my opinions:

1.  Though I would have been able to attend a two-year community college, as many people on the spectrum are, I wouldn’t have been able to go to, and get a degree from, UCLA.

2. I believe I would have had a limited social life, as my only peers would have been people on the spectrum, mostly guys as males outnumber females in that population by an average of five to one.

In other words, though I wouldn’t have been shunned and bullied the way I was, I think I would have been essentially, for lack of a better term, segregated and Jim-Crowed into a community strictly consisting of folks like me, plus teachers and supervisors and the like.

Which would have left me feeling extremely bored and restricted while wearing a permanent strait jacket, as I would have felt that in too many ways, the neurotypical world would have been closed to me.

3. I would have probably been in one of those adult programs, where they take groups of folks on the spectrum and with other developmental disabilities field trips to the library and various other places. I would see these groups, which includes people around my age (early 50s) and older from time to time at my local library reading magazines and surfing the internet on the computers and think one prevailing thought:

“For many if not all of those kids in special ed right now, that’s where they’ll end up.”

4. I believe I would have also probably, at best, been in some type of (so-called) menial labor job set up by my adults with disabilities program, doing janitor-type work in an office, picking up trash on the roadside, taking orders at a fast food restaurant or at a coffee-house or – as two developmentally disabled guys are doing right now at a Ralph’s across the street from my house, one of them for around twenty years – working at a supermarket pushing a broom down the aisles and collecting shopping baskets from the parking lot.

I hope no one thinks I’m denigrating that type of work or that I’m implying that such jobs are low-class crap and beneath me, because nothing can be further from the truth.

I’m sure that all those autistic folks pushing brooms, making mocha lattes, and cleaning up supermarket aisles are as happy as clams in mud. I know that there is dignity in all kinds of work.

But though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a janitor or a fast food worker, I would not be happy doing such.

And I’ve always felt that the best kind of jobs are those that make you happy.

By the way, I’m fully aware that many people on the spectrum are doing things like owning their own businesses and are embarking on many professional careers today.

Unfortunately, those options were not nearly as available in the 1970s through the bulk of the 1980s, the time when I was in school.

 

 

A comparison between an aspie brain and a non-aspie brain. Image courtesy of quora.com

 

 

OK, I’ve written a lot here; let me sum up…

It’s safe to say that my life would have been a lot different if I had not been mainstreamed into a regular classroom in the fall of 1973.

In some ways, my life has been better by being mainstreamed; I have been able to do things that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.

But in other ways, I wouldn’t have been bullied, shunned and misunderstood nearly as much had I stayed in the special needs community.

I wouldn’t have had such a socially volatile experience in school, especially high school, and wouldn’t have had (seemingly) so many of my peers dislike me, reject me, misunderstand me, or a combination of such.

I wouldn’t have had such a checkered life in the workforce, my social issues that were caused by my being an aspie being partially responsible for being either fired or forced to quit 12 jobs in a 17-year span, with three years being the longest I have lasted in one place of employment.

And I might even have had a spouse, like that couple who’s about to get married in the A&E reality show Born This Way.

Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m okay with how my life has turned out, and am quite grateful for all my fortunes and blessings.

But there are times where I just can’t help wondering how things would have turned out for me if I wasn’t mainstreamed as a little boy with a wild afro.

And I’ll probably continue to wonder such.

That’s all I’m saying.

 

The symbol for the autism rights movement. Image courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

 

 

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY: Commemorating The Day I Changed My Life And Decided To Pursue Writing

Photo courtesy of droidtvnews.com

 

RELIVING THE DAY I DECIDED TO CHANGE MY LIFE ONCE AND FOR ALL

I remember it well;

On this day in 2008, I was in pretty bad shape emotionally.

In fact, I was in pretty bad shape for the past few years, as I was pathetically trying to hold onto my life working with young people in education and sports.

For the previous five years, I was miserably failing at being gainfully employed, either quitting or being fired from every one of the six jobs that I had, ranging from being a tutor in East Los Angeles to being on the coaching staff for a high school softball team, to being a playground aide – a job where I lasted only a few weeks – to my last gig as an after school teacher.

Looking back, it was evident that I was depressed on a fairly pronounced scale, even threatening suicide at one of those jobs when my supervisor was, at least in my warped mind,  picking on me for something.

It all came to a head during that last after school job when my supervisor – a young lady who was half my age – lectured me due to something I did.

Which I deserved in retrospect, but my mind was so messed up over having to kowtow to someone who could have been one of my students or athletes that I felt humiliated, among other negative things.

I fell into SUCH a depression that I stayed home for the next three days, rarely getting out of bed.

Which brings me to that fateful day – this day – exactly a decade ago.

I had finally realized once and for all that the effects of my being on the Autism Spectrum Disorder – having Asperger’s Syndrome to be precise – was never going to be conducive to me working with other people on a daily basis.

Not only that, I had realized that I absolutely was sick and tired of working for and answering to someone else.

I hated having to impress and please people who I honestly felt saw me as an inferior, not an equal human being in my mind.

I realized that I desperately needed my freedom, my independence from being at the mercy of someone else; for that someone else to determine whether you were going to be able to eat, buy clothes, and pay the rent through their employment of you.

 

 

Considering all the work I’ve done these past ten years, I suppose it’s safe for me to say this. Photo courtesy of dreamstop.com

 

Which was causing a stress that was quite unhealthy.

And most of all, after remembering how people had told me over the years that they liked my writing and my essays in schools and such, I realized that my talents were in that field and that I needed to pursue that wholeheartedly.

Or forever wish I had.

In short, being an employee was virtually – and perhaps literally, being that I had threatened suicide more than once during my time in the workforce  –  killing me.

I began that February 6th by meeting the softball coach I was under the previous spring at a Carl’s Jr., telling him of my plans.

Then I journeyed to the school where I was working at to take my stand against those oppressors, I mean employers.

To formally quit not only my job, but the “Kid Business” in general, ending my life in working for young people.

To in layman’s terms, tell the overseers, I mean supervisors, at that after-school job to “Kiss my ass” (not literally of course; I had a little more class than that).

And to begin my life as a writer, which I did a few days later when I found a site called HubPages.com and began writing different articles about my experiences with having Asperger’s and other things, which I got paid in royalties for.

Which led me to joining another writing site that paid royalties, Triond.com

Which, being a sports person who liked to give opinions about such, led me to writing for Bleacher Report and Fansided, helping to start GoJoeBruin.com, a sports blog covering my alma mater UCLA, on that network.

Which eventually led me to starting two blogs of my own:

SoCalSportsAnnals.com, on this same WordPress network,

And this blog.

Which I will have had for three (for SoCal Sports Annals) and four years this July (for this blog) respectively.

Along with working on my book describing  my struggles with being on the autism spectrum in a non-autistic world, “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS”, which I am on the verge of finishing as I have done a fourth draft and am going to do some final editing on one chapter in particular.

 

 

 

I thought it would be nice to include a picture of Charlie Brown’s dog doing his writing here, as I grew up on “Peanuts” and consider it the greatest comic strip of all time. Image courtesy of  jdspero.wordpress.com

 

 

In Case You Were Wondering:

No, I have NOT gotten rich from this now decade-long career – FAR from it.

But that’s perfectly OK as my mental well-being has improved in the past ten years since that day I walked away from the “Kid Business”

I don’t pretend that I have arrived as a writer; I’m definitely haven’t had any success on any best seller lists whatsoever.

But one thing is for sure…

By having these two blogs and this soon-to-be published book (by no later than the end of this year), I feel that I’m being more a contributor to society.

For lack of a better term, I feel that I’m more in my niche.

And that I will have left something worthwhile to be remembered by when my time in this world is over – if people care to remember me at all.

Which I think is a big part of living your life.

 

All Right, Here’s My Main Point:

It all began ten years ago today.

And it wouldn’t be right to not mark the occasion in these Hartland Chronicles of  mine.

Of course it’s my hope and prayer that my life in writing will continue to be fulfilling.

And if it becomes lucrative, great!

But to be honest, making a lot of money was not on my mind when I decided to do this.

It was to become happy in my life’s work – or at least happier.

Which I of course thank God for as I’m convinced He was leading me to this.

It’s been a pretty good ten years doing this writing thing.

I only pray that the next ten years are as good if not better.

Perhaps I’ll work on a young adult novel when “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS” is done and published; I have a few ideas swimming in my head.

I know I’m going to grow and evolve SoCal Sports Annals, as that’s my business for all intents and purposes.

I also know that I’m not where I want and need to be as a writer, and probably won’t be for a while.

But at least I’m not where I used to be those past few years working for someone else, especially mentally.

And that’s something that I certainly thank the Good Lord for.

 

Photo courtesy of writehacked.com

 

STRUGGLES IN THE WORKFORCE: Excerpts From Chapter Eight of “Walking On Eggshells”

This seems like a decent image of the hard times I had while in the mainstream workforce. Photo courtesy of yourstory.com

 

 

A brief update on the progress of my book, “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS”:

It’s getting closer to being done!

All ten chapters have been edited for the third (or fourth, I’m not sure) time and been printed.

I just have to go back to one chapter and possibly replace the name of a place where I used to work with a pseudonym, in case such place takes offense at its mention, the way I described my experiences there.

The next step? Getting my manuscript into a sort-of book form at the local UPS store and (finally!) sending it to Lulu.com for self-publication.

As I’ve mentioned on my Facebook page, if “WALKING ON EGGSHELLS” is not in your hands by December 31st of this year, then I will consider myself as having failed at this endeavor.

 

As For Now…

I thought I’d give another excerpt of the struggles I had as an adult in the workforce due to what I know now stemmed from having Asperger’s.

My (mostly) bad times during those years toiling for a paycheck were so many, like my high school days I divided them into two chapters.

These excerpts are from the chapter I call “Failures In The Workforce, 1991-1998”:

 

As I obviously needed a job and it was, as Mom put it, “desperation time”, I went in, asked for an application, filled it out at home, brought it back, and a few days later I got a phone call from them saying I was hired. I remember promising Mom that  I would “work hard and do whatever they say”, feeling a sense of relief that I was gainfully employed again and was able to find something relatively quickly after such a monumentally terrible experience at Grant School.

That feeling of relief evaporated like water in Saudi Arabia in the middle of summer as my job as a salesman fast became what I call to this day “The Eight and a Half-Month Prison Sentence”, realizing quite rapidly that working in retail was even MORE of a wrong profession for me than education was.

I hated the concept in retail of “There’s always something to do”, even when no customers were in the store and all the luggage and counters were clean, polished, and stacked neatly.

I especially hated it when, just before the 10:00 p.m. closing time, which was the shift I was always given, what seemed to be a load of customers would come into the store and I would be forced to stay after having been there for eight full hours, gritting my teeth on the bus home and doing everything I could not to scram in anguish over slaving away at that plantation; for the record, it was the only full-time job I would ever have.

And I REALLY hated it when, on a scheduled day off which gave me a most blessed sensation throughout my being the phone would ring and it would be the store ordering me to come in and work because someone had called in sick, whom I would think would be faking so I would be tortured at that personal hell hole; there I’d be, so looking forward to a relaxing day at home watching TV and what not, and I’d be forced back into the salt mines.

And on top of everything else, in the tradition of pouring salt on what in my heart was a painfully gaping wound, there was one other thing that made tat place of retail a maximum security prison hell: A certain co-worker who, like Marlon roughly 15 years before, was a flat-out bully and a word-that-rhymes-with-witch.

I’ll call her Gina*.

(Gina) was short in stature – not quite like Snooki, but in that Jersey Shore girl’s league – with pale, pasty skin and long, wavy brown hair. She had an ever-present stench due to her being a heavy smoker, reeking of tobacco as a prominent image of mine regarding her was standing outside of the store with a pack of Marlboros in hand, dirtying her lungs, other people’s lungs, and the air with those wretchedly foul cancer sticks.

I’ll never forget one particular day when she pushed me too far and I snapped, going into one of those meltdowns which are common to at least some folks with Asperger’s…

Gina and I were standing behind the counter next to the cash register. I wish I could tell you what Gina said, but like so many other incidents before and since, I’ve blocked it out of my mind due to the extreme post-traumatic stress that it would cause to my psyche.

One thing was for certain: I was feeling low and depressed and Gina must have called me some bad name or made some bad gesture that pushed me over the edge. I do remember her putting her hands in her ears like Bullwinkle and making a taunting noise after I had told her to leave me alone.

 

 

A more accurate illustration of how I felt during my years working for someone else in the workforce. Photo courtesy of businessinsider.com

 

 

The next thing I knew, I was throwing some balled-up piece of paper at her and she reciprocated by spitting her Marlboro-laden saliva at me. No, I didn’t make any move to hit her – however much a word-that-rhymes-with-witch that Gina was, at least I had enough presence of mind and respect for females to not let it come to that – but it was another albatross around my hellish luggage store neck.

You would think that my experiences at that store would improve by leaps and bounds after Gina was finally fired for her evilness a few weeks later, the owner of the store dramatically pointing at the door and telling her those two words that I so wanted to her for the longest time, but nothing could have been further from the truth as my miseries went beyond that little Lady Voldemort.

That’s why it was a foregone conclusion that I would be relieved of my duties right before Labor Day, though in all honesty they beat me to it because I was planning on marching into the owner’s office right after that holiday and tell my oppressor, I mean employer, those two little words that I had desperately desired to tell him for so long:

“I QUIT!!”

I’m quite positive that many of you are thinking this right about now…

“You should have been glad to have had that job! You were just an ungrateful, spoiled little baby who need to suck it up and grow up!”

I can certainly understand that sentiment, and despite what it seems it’s not my intention to use my Asperger’s syndrome as an excuse for my fucking up at that store – and nearly every other job I had before and afterwards. I know that many Aspies have been successful in retail-type gigs and other professions where service with a smile is required,.

However, I’m about as far as those Aspians as one could get as not only is any gig of that persuasion isn’t any place for me, I knew even before that horrible experience that I was 1,000 times more successful in situations where I was allowed to do my own thing at whatever work I was involved in.

It’s like if I had a little plot of roses growing in this huge garden, and it was my responsibility to take care of those roses in that plot, keeping those American Beauties watered and the ground insect-free.

When an overseer, I mean employer, would criticize me on how I’m doing or micromanage me, he/she is – figuratively speaking – stepping on those roses of mine for what I see in my mind as no reason other than to be a mean bully.

That’s how I felt and, to be brutally honest, still feel. Even though I understand that employees need supervising and constructive criticism in order to achieve maximum performance, I couldn’t, and still can’t help from seeing that as bullying.

That was why I HATED evaluations…at least in my mind, evaluations were always a way for bullies, I mean bosses, to remind me that I was a lesser being in their eyes, which essentially and eventually ruined me as a person with ability to sustain gainful employment as far as working for someone else.

 

No, this wasn’t where I had such a horrible time but as it’s a place that serves the public, it’s in the same league as that luggage store where I toiled. Photo courtesy of themountaineer.com

 

 

 

 

“Work Is Not Supposed To Be Enjoyable”: AN EXTREME REBUTTAL

An illustration of someone who evidently enjoys her job. Photo courtesy of teflonline.teachaway.com

 

WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T ENJOY WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING?

I remember a few years ago reading something online about people who were stressed out, burned out, and generally unhappy in their jobs, the article offering suggestions on how to cope with that.

I also remember reading one particular comment in that section by someone who apparently was a miserable jerk because he wrote that those who were miserable in the workforce were nothing but whiny crybabies who need to understand…

A. That work isn’t supposed to be enjoyed, but is supposed to be difficult, which is why it’s called work, and,

B. People who feel otherwise are losers who need to get over it and feel lucky they’re earning a paycheck.

If I ever came face to face with this guy, I would tell him in no uncertain terms that he is nothing but a mean bully who a firm believer in misery loving company.

And who is just plain wrong.

Bluntly put, a career need not be eight hours of hell following orders from bosses who are essentially schoolyard bullies or supervisors with the mind of and who behave like slavery-era overseers.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that sometimes a person has to do whatever is necessary to survive, and to keep a roof overhead and the family clothed and fed if he or she has one.

I know this because like probably 98% of the world’s working age population, I worked at jobs l absolutely hated, ranging from telemarketing to working in retail, particularly at a luggage store in the early 1990s that felt much like a prison sentence, I hated it so much.

The minimum wage salary I made peddling luggage and handbags felt like blood money, as I felt that the only difference between me and a slave on a plantation was that I got a paycheck.

Those dark days were the product of me believing that making money however possible was the most important thing, and I eventually learned that nothing can be further from the truth – at least as far as I am concerned as I can’t speak for everyone else.

That luggage salesman gig taught me once and for all that you have to like what you do for work, else it’s just not worth it in the long run, and especially when you factor in mental health as I suffered from a couple of nervous breakdowns and some suicidal thoughts stemming from my unhappiness in some of the jobs I had.

There’s an old saying…

Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

No statement can be more truer than that.

 

Here’s my point:

A person needs to have a passion for whatever job or career he or she may be involved in.

Happiness, enjoyment, and work satisfaction are essential or else bitterness and depression will set in; I know this because that’s what happened to me.

It was wanting to enjoy my work – as well as being able to work without some bully or overseer, I mean boss or supervisor, micromanaging me and telling me how much I need to improve or flat-out suck, looking for faults and reasons to fire me – that is the reason why for almost ten years I’ve been an online writer with two blogs (including this one) and working on a book about my life and struggles as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome in mainstream society called WALKING ON EGGSHELLS.

Which is getting closer to being finished and ready for (self) publishing, by the way.

While it hasn’t been the most lucrative venture, I can safely say that I very much like what I do and am pursuing my passion.

My message for all you folks who are hating on their jobs is this…

Unless you would definitely be on the street if you quite your hated job today, you don’t have to suffer through misery, because life is too short.

Go paint or work with kids.

Write a book like I’m doing.

Or anything else that you have a passion for.

Find your happiness.

It may the thing that will restore your mental health and save your sanity.

 

It’s my hope that everyone can find this. Photo courtesy of idealistcareers.org