DVS
A ghost from your dreams
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2002
- Posts
- 11,416
I want to say something, so those of you who know me won’t be wondering what’s going on. And, I’m sorry, but this is very long. But, I wanted to vent and a group of people who only know me as DVS seemed like a good place for that. Knowing only a part of me might make me seem like I’m only about sex. To be more to the point…anal sex. And, that is a large part of me, and something I would never want to be without. But it’s far from all of me. I won’t be able to mention many things here, for obvious reasons. But, I hope, at the end of this lengthy essay, you can maybe understand one question. The question of why.
Some of you closer friends know that I’ve had a bit of a rough time, for the last five plus years. I’ve had to reinvent myself several times over my lifetime, when the type of job I was in stopped giving me the income necessary for me to live and also save some for the days when I won’t be able to work. I’ve been blessed in having the ability and stamina to start over when I felt it was time, to again pursue another avenue of employment that had potential.
Three times I’ve taken this step in the last 35 years. In those years, I’ve worked many different jobs, and some were far less than ideal. But, in starting over, you often must start from the bottom, and work your way back up. I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing this. In the old days, someone would work one job their whole life and then retire with the gold watch. These days, the worker is on their own, and if you’re lucky to ever retire, the gold watch is more metaphoric, than real.
After 9-11, many in the corporate world experienced fear, because different things were happening to our economy. I’m not sure it was a direct result of the 9-11 disaster, but I’m sure it was at least a residual result. Companies regrouped in areas of spending, cutting back on various things, even to the point of cutting jobs that before had been seen as necessary. These were middle management positions, mostly, where there was a working group, middle management group and executive group.
Middle management was expendable, in the intent to save money, and in some cases senior workers were enlisted to become lead personnel, and take over the middle management positions, with little or no experience or increase in salary. In some cases someone in the executive group would take over, but in a lot of cases, executives didn’t have the necessary skills to understand the work, and so it was usually the case that someone of the worker group was moved up, instead. This was found to be more likely to get the job done, and it would also save face for the executives who didn’t want the workers to know just how little they actually knew about some things.
Frankly, a lot of the time, executives are not very often “doers”, but like to be seen as the “thinkers” who put the right people in the necessary positions, so the company can compete. They themselves could never do what the skilled workers do, but often get the credit for high production totals, basking in the limelight at the annual company meetings.
I was one of those workers for many years. Then, with one retooling of my life, I soon became a member of the middle management group, for one company. I was the technical supervisor of a large wholesale mortgage corporation’s MIS department. MIS stands for management information system. My immediate boss was MIS administrator and his boss was one of the owner’s group, so I had all of perks that come with the job. I had the expense account and I often traveled to different parts of the country with the corporate credit card paying the bills. And, other associates treated me in high regard. I was a guy who could fix a problem or find a work around so down time was kept at a minimum.
Quite frankly, I was in heaven. I was doing a job I loved, and I was good at it. I had the respect of others, knowing I could be the knight in shining armor when the time came. Oh, don’t get me wrong…I wasn’t the only shining knight. My boss was just as capable. And, in fact, we worked quite well, together. He had the higher computer education and was more what you might call the brains. But, being as smart as he was, he had a difficult time relating to workers.
That’s where I came in. I’ve always enjoyed my somewhat unique outlook on the world, and seem to have the ability to translate technical things in life into down to earth explanations, so the less technically minded people could understand. Where my boss could communicate quite well in computer code, I would relate it down to the nuts and bolts, often creating human characters out of a situation, saying the server’s hard drive had a technical hiccup, which caused a lapse in the data. And, during the hiccup, the data was lost. Some might think this as a bit silly, but I feel people have the right to know why eight hours of data input must be done again.
The relationship worked well. Over a period of several years, my boss and I took the corporate office literally from a couple of 286 computers in our accounting department to more than 300 computers with a local LAN. Eventually, we connected to other branches and our mother company banks in the south with a WAN. We did all branch backups, and even removed a multitude of pesky Office 97 viruses from branch and bank computers, connecting to them via remote access software. We also were in charge of the phone systems for all of these people, extension and wire trouble shooting, voicemail setup, and even training users on how to correctly use their phones. Ah, those were the good ol’ days.
Within that timeframe, the load was too much for just the two of us, and we hired what would total to be five techs that traveled to branches for various computer and phone system situations. We got too big and had to hire a company to run new data lines, but in some cases we still traveled to spend a week on site and wire things ourselves. In many cases, time was the deciding factor. After all, time is money, in the business world.
Times changed over the years and my boss’ group sold their interest in the company. There had been a falling out between the partners, and my boss and his group sold their interests. Things started getting strange after that, because the remaining owner had no experience in computers…at all. And, also after the partner breakup, there was an upper level management exodus. Senior VPs took early retirement, the CFO retired to care for his dying mother, and the president was fired. Mostly, they were seeing the same thing many of us were seeing…the company was just not the same.
Of course the fired president sued for wrongful termination and won, but the settlement wasn’t made public. And, by that time, another president had been put in place, and he had brought his VPs and other cronies to fill the vacancies. The trouble with that was, they were those basic corporate types who knew literally nothing about computers. And because the computer department wasn’t a producing department, it was always seen on the books as spending money, not bringing any in. So, when we pushed for faster servers, switches and routers, we had to explain the necessity of the purchase to their satisfaction. More often than not, we were refused.
Loan officers were seen as high producers because you could actually see their production on the books. So, they milked it. The branches requested laptops, high-end printers, and access to work from home and even wide band phone connections, so they could “produce” with more efficiency. Of course, because they were producers, they got everything they wanted. We in the computer department couldn’t get upper management to understand that what we were requesting would make a more efficient home office so when the loans did come in from those loan officers, the whole package, from closing to servicing would be just as efficient. But, being expenditure conscious, the executives just couldn’t grasp that concept.
2001 came, and eventually 9-11. Right after that disaster, a new employee was hired. His title was MIS director. With that title, he was my boss’ boss. He was quite the arrogant type. He was very smart, and he never failed to let you know that. For some reason, he had the president’s ear. He could get him to OK purchases that before, we couldn’t get. And, it wasn’t long after that, that I was fired and so was my boss. We were middle management, and with this wonderful new employee, we were also expendable. I never quite understood the change though, because his salary was equal to both mine and my boss’ put together.
Anyway, I was out of a job, just at the time other computer people were. And shortly after that, 6,000 Sprint people were also laid off. A lot of them were local, so there I was looking for a computer job, along with 6,000 others. My boss had to move to Alabama to find a job. We just couldn’t get hired. I eventually figured out that employers were looking for young people, fresh out of college. They thought we would be too stuck in out ways and also require large salaries for all of our experience. Of course, the opposite was true, because I was more than willing to find a company where I could settle in and eventually retire from. Those fresh out of college were working a few years, then taking their newly acquired skills to another company to get more money.
Time went by, and unemployment ran out. I lived off of credit cards for a little longer, until I had to find something to pay the bills. Finding a job in my area wasn’t working, so I had to look for something just to pay the bills for a while. Because everybody was thinking about security after 9-11, I had no trouble getting hired as a security officer. I didn’t much care for the job, but I only intended to work there for about six months. I’d stay there, just until I found a computer job.
Now, over four years later, I’m still in that security position. And, I’ve never seen a field where the employees are treated with less respect. There is no lunch break at all, you are treated like just another warm body, that if you were to leave, they’d have no problem replacing you with another warm body.
There are really no breaks unless you can get another guard to stand your post while you go to the bathroom, but you don’t want to abuse that, because while he is standing in for you, his job isn’t being done. You can’t leave your post without someone taking over, or you could be fired. This goes for any situation, including bathroom breaks, and yes, even diarrhea. I know of at least one instance when a guard was forced to use a trash can, because he wasn’t relieved quickly enough. See, he wasn’t that well liked by his fellow guards. Being a little slow to relieve him was all it took for him to get the point and quit.
I could go on and on about the corruption, lack of ambition, all the way down to the lack of basic knowledge of the job or the care to do the job correctly, where the guards are sleeping on the job, allowing friends past access points against policy, and even allowing strangers past access points without knowing if they should be, or even caring about it. In many cases, nothing is done about it, because it isn’t reported.
In other cases, when it is reported, the person doing the reporting is ostracized, so it really doesn’t pay to point out these things. And you have to have proof, which is mostly impossible, with all of the corruption. All of the paperwork is handled in one location, and it is against the rules to make copies of anything. That’s how everything is controlled, so the client doesn’t find out about the bad stuff.
Oh, but when it does happen, the company won’t back you up, only to let you dangle in the breeze, if the client wants you gone. Such a situation happened to me, last Sunday. I was walking my post in the normally vacant building, and I happened to see a set of headphones on someone’s desk. I picked them up to see the brand and model. They were Sony, but they were very cheap looking, made of plastic. So, I set them back down. I then noticed the wire from the headphones going up to the cube’s overhead compartment. I wanted to see if what those cheap headphones were connected to was just as cheap, so I opened the overhead to see. I found a cheap boombox, with a name brand I’d never heard of. My suspicions satisfied, I closed the overhead and walked on.
All the time I was checking out the headphones, I’d heard talking in the cube next door. The woman in that cube was talking on her phone. I didn’t think anything about it, at the time, but Tuesday, I was visited by my boss’ boss, who said a woman had notified her management that I was looking for something to steal. Of course, she padded her story by saying I was rummaging through the papers in this cube. And she said I had also previously turned out the overhead lights in the building (I guess to make the place darker and cover up my thefts), as well as looking generally suspicious as I walked through the isles.
Well, the client said they didn’t want me around, any more, and my company (not wanting to piss the client off) didn’t stand behind me at all. I was basically convicted by this woman’s statements, and am now being transferred from that position to another…of less pay, and the late night shift instead of the day time shift I had. No, I wasn’t fired, but I can’t afford a cut in pay and the change in working hours is going to seriously change my life. But, because I can’t find a job anywhere else, in my computer field, nor in security, I'm stuck. This security company pays the most of anyone in the area. It’s one of the few things that keeps people working for them.
So, here I am. Murphy’s law strikes again. I can’t quit my job unless I find another, because I have bills to pay. I have great credit, because I pay my bills. And, I don’t want to ruin my good credit rating because of some stupid situation that could be a blessing in disguise. You never know about some things. You have to keep a positive attitude, even when those around you see things differently.
I’m now wondering how I’m going to change my lifestyle to make the night shift work. I’m not getting any younger, and it’s difficult to sleep during the day, when everybody else in the world is awake. And, anything I need to get done will need to be done when I should be sleeping. And trust me…security is a BORING job. And, a boring job together without enough sleep can be a very bad combination.
In recent years, my sex life has also dwindled. My favorite submissive had to do grandmother chores, taking care of her daughter’s kids while she went to nursing school. Her daughter’s finally getting things together after her divorce from the self-centered idiot she married.
And, my former sub’s son was soon to come back from Iraq, with a battlefield injury that requires physical therapy. And, sadly, her stepson had come back from Korea and killed himself, shortly after he arrived. Army doctors had put him on medication when he was overseas, but they failed to tell his family the extent of his depression. He had twisted his knee in training and the Army no longer wanted him. He felt dejected that he wasn’t doing what he could for his country.
His girlfriend was pregnant with his baby, and after he died, it was thought that the baby would give hope for the family…something of him left behind. But, his girlfriend was the one who found his body, and the trauma of it was too much for her. She miscarried, about a month later. I’d say this family has paid the price. Murphy should leave them be.
My father was an optometrist. And he only had one receptionist in the 40 or so years he was in practice. So, she and her family became friends of our family. It was a small town of about 2,000, and everybody knew everybody else. She was very proud of her son, who was in the navy, at the time. She couldn’t say enough about him.
He really wasn’t a popular kid in high school. His grades weren’t that good and he didn't go out for sports. He was kind of a loaner and a greaser…slicked back hair, black leather jacket…a car that was louder than it was anything else. And the crowd he hung out with was mostly the bad crowd. Then he joined the Navy, and he seemed to be turning his life around. His mother was blinded by her love. She never saw the greaser in him. He was always her son. He was their only child. She was quite devoted to him.
Once out of the Navy, we didn’t hear much about him. By that time, my dad had retired and we didn’t see as much of her. Only on occasions when she would bring tomatoes from her garden, etc. She was a very nice lady. Oh, and I love homemade tomatoes.
Sadly, a little more than five years ago, we heard she had been murdered. The small town was rocked by the event. There hadn’t been any murders in all the years I lived there, and I think this was only the second in so many years after I’d moved to the big city.
My cousin was a dispatcher for the county sheriff during that time, and so we kind of had inside info of the case. They decided her assailant had hit her on the head, from behind, and in an effort to try to make it seem like she committed suicide, they hanged her dead body from a rope in the garage. But, it was obvious the suicide thought had been an after thought. Her body had been laying on the floor for long enough for blood to settle, and "riggers" had set in. If she had died from the hanging, blood would have pooled in her lower legs and feet, but it didn’t. And, police said her body looked as if she had been lying on the floor, for a couple hours before they had decided to make it look like suicide. Her body wasn’t hanging straight, like it would have, if she had actually hanged herself.
It was a pretty cut and dried case. They knew it was murder from the beginning. And, she didn’t have any enemies. The deciding link was there was no forced entry into the house, so can you guess who their prime suspect was? Yep…her beloved son. Of course, he denied the whole thing, but as it turns out, he had his ten-year-old son with him, during this terrible thing. So, it didn’t take long for the stress to get to the boy, and he soon squealed on his dad. Police had the story straight, but the boy’s guilt at seeing his dad kill his grandmother was just too much for him. His testimony sealed the case and his father’s fate.
What was the reason the son killed his mother? He wanted her money. Now that might seem like a legitimate reason for murder, if you are of that kind of mind. But, she wasn’t that young of a woman. And, he was going to get her money when she died, anyway. He just couldn’t wait. I just hope she didn’t see who hit her on the back of the head. And, I hope she died instantly from it. I’d hate to think of her lying there dying, while her son and grand son sat around deciding on how to cover up what they’d done. It was obvious to everybody that she loved him with all her heart and soul.
I consider a good life in four parts. One part is making enough money for what you need, working at a job you enjoy. Financial security is all that you really need, and being able to set aside enough for when you’re older is also nice.
A second part is your sex life. I think that is a strong part of living a good life. Oh, I’m sure there are some who will disagree with me on that. You can live a good life without sex, too. But, I think a good sex life feeds your soul, and a healthy soul is necessary for a good life. If you never fulfil your fantasies, I think it’s something you will always wonder about…what if. Even if it’s just once, living out a sexual fantasy can mean an awful lot for your soul.
The third part is your health. Good health has a lot to do with living a good life. Oh, I’m not talking about perfect health, but at least to the point where what ailments you have are manageable with medications or some other treatments. You can even have a somewhat serious problem, if it is being controlled by medications. Good health is being healthy enough to be able to do the things you enjoy.
The forth part is spiritual. I don’t necessarily believe in any of the organized faiths, but I do believe there is a higher being. I have several reasons I believe this. Things happened right after both of my parents died that help in my belief, as well as other things. I won’t go into any of this, because this epic is long enough already. But, I do believe in a God, and I believe in a heaven of some sort and a life after death in that heaven.
I know there are some who don’t believe the same as I do, and I can say I was more agnostic when I was in my younger years. But, let’s just say I’ve had a kind of an awakening of sorts. Like I said, I don’t really believe in going to an organized church service. And, going out on Saturday night and doing whatever, then repenting on Sunday morning doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t believe going to church is necessary for my faith. But, I see nothing wrong with it, as long as I’m allowed my faith without anybody trying to force me to believe something else. Believing in something is the point, as far as I’m concerned.
If you can’t enjoy life, you are just existing. Right now, I almost feel like I’m existing. The job I have is less than what I’d like, in many ways. And, I don’t make enough to overshadow the way I’m treated. In fact, I took a $35,000 pay cut, from my computer job to the security job. No, they don’t pay very much when they consider you just another warm body.
My sex life is lacking. I’ve been looking for a new sub, ever since my last one went home to be granny. I wish she hadn’t made that choice, but I understand her choices and respect them. I can’t be selfish. It’s her life and that of her family. But, I do wish I’d find me another sub. I’m sorry to say I’ve almost given up on finding one, because of a total lack of response from anyone I’ve contacted. Well, except for those few who thought I was pompous, etc. Oh, I’m still holding out hope, but I’m getting older every day.
All I have going for me is my health. I’m not perfectly healthy, but I feel fine, and I’m not over weight, nor do I have any outstanding problems that can’t be controlled. So, at my age, I think that’s a pretty good thing. I’m losing my hair, but I can’t control that, nor would I want to. I knew I was going to lose my hair. But, it does bother me to read someone’s profile that states they are looking for someone with a full head of hair. But, that has nothing at all to do with my health.
So, after reading all of this (if you did read all of this), can you answer the question? The question of why?
Edited to add...thanks, for reading this.
Some of you closer friends know that I’ve had a bit of a rough time, for the last five plus years. I’ve had to reinvent myself several times over my lifetime, when the type of job I was in stopped giving me the income necessary for me to live and also save some for the days when I won’t be able to work. I’ve been blessed in having the ability and stamina to start over when I felt it was time, to again pursue another avenue of employment that had potential.
Three times I’ve taken this step in the last 35 years. In those years, I’ve worked many different jobs, and some were far less than ideal. But, in starting over, you often must start from the bottom, and work your way back up. I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing this. In the old days, someone would work one job their whole life and then retire with the gold watch. These days, the worker is on their own, and if you’re lucky to ever retire, the gold watch is more metaphoric, than real.
After 9-11, many in the corporate world experienced fear, because different things were happening to our economy. I’m not sure it was a direct result of the 9-11 disaster, but I’m sure it was at least a residual result. Companies regrouped in areas of spending, cutting back on various things, even to the point of cutting jobs that before had been seen as necessary. These were middle management positions, mostly, where there was a working group, middle management group and executive group.
Middle management was expendable, in the intent to save money, and in some cases senior workers were enlisted to become lead personnel, and take over the middle management positions, with little or no experience or increase in salary. In some cases someone in the executive group would take over, but in a lot of cases, executives didn’t have the necessary skills to understand the work, and so it was usually the case that someone of the worker group was moved up, instead. This was found to be more likely to get the job done, and it would also save face for the executives who didn’t want the workers to know just how little they actually knew about some things.
Frankly, a lot of the time, executives are not very often “doers”, but like to be seen as the “thinkers” who put the right people in the necessary positions, so the company can compete. They themselves could never do what the skilled workers do, but often get the credit for high production totals, basking in the limelight at the annual company meetings.
I was one of those workers for many years. Then, with one retooling of my life, I soon became a member of the middle management group, for one company. I was the technical supervisor of a large wholesale mortgage corporation’s MIS department. MIS stands for management information system. My immediate boss was MIS administrator and his boss was one of the owner’s group, so I had all of perks that come with the job. I had the expense account and I often traveled to different parts of the country with the corporate credit card paying the bills. And, other associates treated me in high regard. I was a guy who could fix a problem or find a work around so down time was kept at a minimum.
Quite frankly, I was in heaven. I was doing a job I loved, and I was good at it. I had the respect of others, knowing I could be the knight in shining armor when the time came. Oh, don’t get me wrong…I wasn’t the only shining knight. My boss was just as capable. And, in fact, we worked quite well, together. He had the higher computer education and was more what you might call the brains. But, being as smart as he was, he had a difficult time relating to workers.
That’s where I came in. I’ve always enjoyed my somewhat unique outlook on the world, and seem to have the ability to translate technical things in life into down to earth explanations, so the less technically minded people could understand. Where my boss could communicate quite well in computer code, I would relate it down to the nuts and bolts, often creating human characters out of a situation, saying the server’s hard drive had a technical hiccup, which caused a lapse in the data. And, during the hiccup, the data was lost. Some might think this as a bit silly, but I feel people have the right to know why eight hours of data input must be done again.
The relationship worked well. Over a period of several years, my boss and I took the corporate office literally from a couple of 286 computers in our accounting department to more than 300 computers with a local LAN. Eventually, we connected to other branches and our mother company banks in the south with a WAN. We did all branch backups, and even removed a multitude of pesky Office 97 viruses from branch and bank computers, connecting to them via remote access software. We also were in charge of the phone systems for all of these people, extension and wire trouble shooting, voicemail setup, and even training users on how to correctly use their phones. Ah, those were the good ol’ days.
Within that timeframe, the load was too much for just the two of us, and we hired what would total to be five techs that traveled to branches for various computer and phone system situations. We got too big and had to hire a company to run new data lines, but in some cases we still traveled to spend a week on site and wire things ourselves. In many cases, time was the deciding factor. After all, time is money, in the business world.
Times changed over the years and my boss’ group sold their interest in the company. There had been a falling out between the partners, and my boss and his group sold their interests. Things started getting strange after that, because the remaining owner had no experience in computers…at all. And, also after the partner breakup, there was an upper level management exodus. Senior VPs took early retirement, the CFO retired to care for his dying mother, and the president was fired. Mostly, they were seeing the same thing many of us were seeing…the company was just not the same.
Of course the fired president sued for wrongful termination and won, but the settlement wasn’t made public. And, by that time, another president had been put in place, and he had brought his VPs and other cronies to fill the vacancies. The trouble with that was, they were those basic corporate types who knew literally nothing about computers. And because the computer department wasn’t a producing department, it was always seen on the books as spending money, not bringing any in. So, when we pushed for faster servers, switches and routers, we had to explain the necessity of the purchase to their satisfaction. More often than not, we were refused.
Loan officers were seen as high producers because you could actually see their production on the books. So, they milked it. The branches requested laptops, high-end printers, and access to work from home and even wide band phone connections, so they could “produce” with more efficiency. Of course, because they were producers, they got everything they wanted. We in the computer department couldn’t get upper management to understand that what we were requesting would make a more efficient home office so when the loans did come in from those loan officers, the whole package, from closing to servicing would be just as efficient. But, being expenditure conscious, the executives just couldn’t grasp that concept.
2001 came, and eventually 9-11. Right after that disaster, a new employee was hired. His title was MIS director. With that title, he was my boss’ boss. He was quite the arrogant type. He was very smart, and he never failed to let you know that. For some reason, he had the president’s ear. He could get him to OK purchases that before, we couldn’t get. And, it wasn’t long after that, that I was fired and so was my boss. We were middle management, and with this wonderful new employee, we were also expendable. I never quite understood the change though, because his salary was equal to both mine and my boss’ put together.
Anyway, I was out of a job, just at the time other computer people were. And shortly after that, 6,000 Sprint people were also laid off. A lot of them were local, so there I was looking for a computer job, along with 6,000 others. My boss had to move to Alabama to find a job. We just couldn’t get hired. I eventually figured out that employers were looking for young people, fresh out of college. They thought we would be too stuck in out ways and also require large salaries for all of our experience. Of course, the opposite was true, because I was more than willing to find a company where I could settle in and eventually retire from. Those fresh out of college were working a few years, then taking their newly acquired skills to another company to get more money.
Time went by, and unemployment ran out. I lived off of credit cards for a little longer, until I had to find something to pay the bills. Finding a job in my area wasn’t working, so I had to look for something just to pay the bills for a while. Because everybody was thinking about security after 9-11, I had no trouble getting hired as a security officer. I didn’t much care for the job, but I only intended to work there for about six months. I’d stay there, just until I found a computer job.
Now, over four years later, I’m still in that security position. And, I’ve never seen a field where the employees are treated with less respect. There is no lunch break at all, you are treated like just another warm body, that if you were to leave, they’d have no problem replacing you with another warm body.
There are really no breaks unless you can get another guard to stand your post while you go to the bathroom, but you don’t want to abuse that, because while he is standing in for you, his job isn’t being done. You can’t leave your post without someone taking over, or you could be fired. This goes for any situation, including bathroom breaks, and yes, even diarrhea. I know of at least one instance when a guard was forced to use a trash can, because he wasn’t relieved quickly enough. See, he wasn’t that well liked by his fellow guards. Being a little slow to relieve him was all it took for him to get the point and quit.
I could go on and on about the corruption, lack of ambition, all the way down to the lack of basic knowledge of the job or the care to do the job correctly, where the guards are sleeping on the job, allowing friends past access points against policy, and even allowing strangers past access points without knowing if they should be, or even caring about it. In many cases, nothing is done about it, because it isn’t reported.
In other cases, when it is reported, the person doing the reporting is ostracized, so it really doesn’t pay to point out these things. And you have to have proof, which is mostly impossible, with all of the corruption. All of the paperwork is handled in one location, and it is against the rules to make copies of anything. That’s how everything is controlled, so the client doesn’t find out about the bad stuff.
Oh, but when it does happen, the company won’t back you up, only to let you dangle in the breeze, if the client wants you gone. Such a situation happened to me, last Sunday. I was walking my post in the normally vacant building, and I happened to see a set of headphones on someone’s desk. I picked them up to see the brand and model. They were Sony, but they were very cheap looking, made of plastic. So, I set them back down. I then noticed the wire from the headphones going up to the cube’s overhead compartment. I wanted to see if what those cheap headphones were connected to was just as cheap, so I opened the overhead to see. I found a cheap boombox, with a name brand I’d never heard of. My suspicions satisfied, I closed the overhead and walked on.
All the time I was checking out the headphones, I’d heard talking in the cube next door. The woman in that cube was talking on her phone. I didn’t think anything about it, at the time, but Tuesday, I was visited by my boss’ boss, who said a woman had notified her management that I was looking for something to steal. Of course, she padded her story by saying I was rummaging through the papers in this cube. And she said I had also previously turned out the overhead lights in the building (I guess to make the place darker and cover up my thefts), as well as looking generally suspicious as I walked through the isles.
Well, the client said they didn’t want me around, any more, and my company (not wanting to piss the client off) didn’t stand behind me at all. I was basically convicted by this woman’s statements, and am now being transferred from that position to another…of less pay, and the late night shift instead of the day time shift I had. No, I wasn’t fired, but I can’t afford a cut in pay and the change in working hours is going to seriously change my life. But, because I can’t find a job anywhere else, in my computer field, nor in security, I'm stuck. This security company pays the most of anyone in the area. It’s one of the few things that keeps people working for them.
So, here I am. Murphy’s law strikes again. I can’t quit my job unless I find another, because I have bills to pay. I have great credit, because I pay my bills. And, I don’t want to ruin my good credit rating because of some stupid situation that could be a blessing in disguise. You never know about some things. You have to keep a positive attitude, even when those around you see things differently.
I’m now wondering how I’m going to change my lifestyle to make the night shift work. I’m not getting any younger, and it’s difficult to sleep during the day, when everybody else in the world is awake. And, anything I need to get done will need to be done when I should be sleeping. And trust me…security is a BORING job. And, a boring job together without enough sleep can be a very bad combination.
In recent years, my sex life has also dwindled. My favorite submissive had to do grandmother chores, taking care of her daughter’s kids while she went to nursing school. Her daughter’s finally getting things together after her divorce from the self-centered idiot she married.
And, my former sub’s son was soon to come back from Iraq, with a battlefield injury that requires physical therapy. And, sadly, her stepson had come back from Korea and killed himself, shortly after he arrived. Army doctors had put him on medication when he was overseas, but they failed to tell his family the extent of his depression. He had twisted his knee in training and the Army no longer wanted him. He felt dejected that he wasn’t doing what he could for his country.
His girlfriend was pregnant with his baby, and after he died, it was thought that the baby would give hope for the family…something of him left behind. But, his girlfriend was the one who found his body, and the trauma of it was too much for her. She miscarried, about a month later. I’d say this family has paid the price. Murphy should leave them be.
My father was an optometrist. And he only had one receptionist in the 40 or so years he was in practice. So, she and her family became friends of our family. It was a small town of about 2,000, and everybody knew everybody else. She was very proud of her son, who was in the navy, at the time. She couldn’t say enough about him.
He really wasn’t a popular kid in high school. His grades weren’t that good and he didn't go out for sports. He was kind of a loaner and a greaser…slicked back hair, black leather jacket…a car that was louder than it was anything else. And the crowd he hung out with was mostly the bad crowd. Then he joined the Navy, and he seemed to be turning his life around. His mother was blinded by her love. She never saw the greaser in him. He was always her son. He was their only child. She was quite devoted to him.
Once out of the Navy, we didn’t hear much about him. By that time, my dad had retired and we didn’t see as much of her. Only on occasions when she would bring tomatoes from her garden, etc. She was a very nice lady. Oh, and I love homemade tomatoes.
Sadly, a little more than five years ago, we heard she had been murdered. The small town was rocked by the event. There hadn’t been any murders in all the years I lived there, and I think this was only the second in so many years after I’d moved to the big city.
My cousin was a dispatcher for the county sheriff during that time, and so we kind of had inside info of the case. They decided her assailant had hit her on the head, from behind, and in an effort to try to make it seem like she committed suicide, they hanged her dead body from a rope in the garage. But, it was obvious the suicide thought had been an after thought. Her body had been laying on the floor for long enough for blood to settle, and "riggers" had set in. If she had died from the hanging, blood would have pooled in her lower legs and feet, but it didn’t. And, police said her body looked as if she had been lying on the floor, for a couple hours before they had decided to make it look like suicide. Her body wasn’t hanging straight, like it would have, if she had actually hanged herself.
It was a pretty cut and dried case. They knew it was murder from the beginning. And, she didn’t have any enemies. The deciding link was there was no forced entry into the house, so can you guess who their prime suspect was? Yep…her beloved son. Of course, he denied the whole thing, but as it turns out, he had his ten-year-old son with him, during this terrible thing. So, it didn’t take long for the stress to get to the boy, and he soon squealed on his dad. Police had the story straight, but the boy’s guilt at seeing his dad kill his grandmother was just too much for him. His testimony sealed the case and his father’s fate.
What was the reason the son killed his mother? He wanted her money. Now that might seem like a legitimate reason for murder, if you are of that kind of mind. But, she wasn’t that young of a woman. And, he was going to get her money when she died, anyway. He just couldn’t wait. I just hope she didn’t see who hit her on the back of the head. And, I hope she died instantly from it. I’d hate to think of her lying there dying, while her son and grand son sat around deciding on how to cover up what they’d done. It was obvious to everybody that she loved him with all her heart and soul.
I consider a good life in four parts. One part is making enough money for what you need, working at a job you enjoy. Financial security is all that you really need, and being able to set aside enough for when you’re older is also nice.
A second part is your sex life. I think that is a strong part of living a good life. Oh, I’m sure there are some who will disagree with me on that. You can live a good life without sex, too. But, I think a good sex life feeds your soul, and a healthy soul is necessary for a good life. If you never fulfil your fantasies, I think it’s something you will always wonder about…what if. Even if it’s just once, living out a sexual fantasy can mean an awful lot for your soul.
The third part is your health. Good health has a lot to do with living a good life. Oh, I’m not talking about perfect health, but at least to the point where what ailments you have are manageable with medications or some other treatments. You can even have a somewhat serious problem, if it is being controlled by medications. Good health is being healthy enough to be able to do the things you enjoy.
The forth part is spiritual. I don’t necessarily believe in any of the organized faiths, but I do believe there is a higher being. I have several reasons I believe this. Things happened right after both of my parents died that help in my belief, as well as other things. I won’t go into any of this, because this epic is long enough already. But, I do believe in a God, and I believe in a heaven of some sort and a life after death in that heaven.
I know there are some who don’t believe the same as I do, and I can say I was more agnostic when I was in my younger years. But, let’s just say I’ve had a kind of an awakening of sorts. Like I said, I don’t really believe in going to an organized church service. And, going out on Saturday night and doing whatever, then repenting on Sunday morning doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t believe going to church is necessary for my faith. But, I see nothing wrong with it, as long as I’m allowed my faith without anybody trying to force me to believe something else. Believing in something is the point, as far as I’m concerned.
If you can’t enjoy life, you are just existing. Right now, I almost feel like I’m existing. The job I have is less than what I’d like, in many ways. And, I don’t make enough to overshadow the way I’m treated. In fact, I took a $35,000 pay cut, from my computer job to the security job. No, they don’t pay very much when they consider you just another warm body.
My sex life is lacking. I’ve been looking for a new sub, ever since my last one went home to be granny. I wish she hadn’t made that choice, but I understand her choices and respect them. I can’t be selfish. It’s her life and that of her family. But, I do wish I’d find me another sub. I’m sorry to say I’ve almost given up on finding one, because of a total lack of response from anyone I’ve contacted. Well, except for those few who thought I was pompous, etc. Oh, I’m still holding out hope, but I’m getting older every day.
All I have going for me is my health. I’m not perfectly healthy, but I feel fine, and I’m not over weight, nor do I have any outstanding problems that can’t be controlled. So, at my age, I think that’s a pretty good thing. I’m losing my hair, but I can’t control that, nor would I want to. I knew I was going to lose my hair. But, it does bother me to read someone’s profile that states they are looking for someone with a full head of hair. But, that has nothing at all to do with my health.
So, after reading all of this (if you did read all of this), can you answer the question? The question of why?
Edited to add...thanks, for reading this.
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