This post is also available in: English (Inglés)

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”

–Mother Teresa–

Need I say more.

Today’s Date: Friday Feb 14-2020

The Time: 1:07am

The Place: The club in the ATX.

Max here,

It is officially Valentines Day. And where am I? I am at work in Austin. And nope, I am not in the arms of the one I love, I am not walking and holding hands on the beach or even cuddled up on the couch with the one I love, I am not sending sexy text messages to the one I love or even at the store buying a valentines day gift for the one I love….. Why am I not doing these things on the cusp of such a revered day?. It’s simple…. It’s because I’m single. As in “just 1” I’ve been single longer than I care to remember. Sometimes this is a good thing, to be single, but at the same time, many times it is not a good thing and cuts like a knife. Years ago when I was with someone, I was so hellbent on working on the 4plex and learning everything I could about real estate and because of that, my relationship suffered, and suffered badly. I spent so much time trying to learn about construction, repairs, receipts, accounting, phone calls, property management and all things related to fixing and running a dilapidated multiplex . In those times, I had the city on my ass with threats about kicking my tenants out because the property was not zoned to be a 4plex. And if it wasn’t about the zoning, then it was about not having enough utility meters for the units, or it was about the grass, or it was about not having permits…. It was always something.. Or at least it always felt like something. (Talk about a learning curve). And I was still trying to learn how to fix things and build things and remodel things and how to find and pay people to help me. Those times were just extremely exhausting. And to be honest that stuff went on for almost 10 years. It was just a shit ton of sleepless nights and hours and hours of work and learning about real estate.

And now at this exact moment as I write these words my ribs are hurting. And I mean a literally hurting physical pain. Last night I had a small accident on my motorcycle…. But more about that later. Let’s stay on the Valentines issue for just a moment longer. So today is Valentines Day and me (Max), I’m a sentimental person at heart. I love “love”. I love being needed and I love being pampered and all things related. And in the beginning of my loneliness, I actually wanted the loneliness, I wanted the loneliness because I needed time to learn and time to understand. I needed time to grow. I needed time to properly learn about how to love, about how to care, about how to give and take in a loving way, about how to communicate in a way that creates more than an intimate relationship with a girl. Instead I needed time to learn how to create lasting relationships. And I needed to do this all still while working at the club and while doing the real estate thing. But now, years later, I think that I have finally learned something about love and relationships, something about the importance of that thing called intimacy. It has taken so long and I can tell that I still have so much more to learn, but now, the only drawback is that I am older, and the sprouting of grey hair looms in the mirror and wrinkles begin to show their presence more than before. And in the mirror a person sometimes can’t help but to ask themselves, do I still have something worthy of what someone will want. And I mean it in a sense that is more than monetary. We all want beauty in our life. And for me, if I want beauty in my life, then the woman who will be in my life will also expect beauty from me. And so somehow, when I look in the mirror…… I just can’t help to wonder, If I still have what it takes to give someone the things that they will need from me.

I guess it goes back to that negative mind that plagues all of us in our own way. You see, I realized that I needed some loneliness so that I could figure out how this whole real estate thing works and what I found as an extra added bonus was my own intimate need for personal development. Back in the day, it was super difficult for me to go to work at the club, then afterwards go and do physical construction work on the apartments until dark, then to only have my girlfriend push the issue that she wanted us to do something at night. And all I wanted after a long day like that was to sleep. It was so tiring and exhausting both mentally, emotionally and physically. Back then I didn’t have enough knowledge on how to properly explain my inner thoughts and emotions. I was like most people…. Just getting into a relationship without ever taking time to learn “what is a relationship and what does it need”. My girlfriend at the time could easily see my goals because I was working on them all the time, but she also needed the relationship to also have it’s own personal time. And this I didn’t know how to do. It was just so much to juggle for a poor kid from the hood.
But now a days I am blessed that I have more knowledge on how to manage my time. ( I am still not perfect and I have so much still to learn about managing my time) But now I can mentally block time for different things in my life. And I now have the knowledge of understanding the importance of being clear on my thoughts and my appointments. But still…. And so in many ways the loneliness these days still randomly stabs at the core of the person that is just looking for significance and in its own way is beginning to wear on me. And in so many more ways than I care to dive into at this moment or publicly. But so yea, it’s Valentines Day, for some, it’s a time to do something special for the partner in their life, but for me….. currently it’s just another day. Friday to be specific. I can’t express enough about how deeply I look forward to this part of my life changing. Sadly though, I just have a hard time seeing it changing until I am able to leave the club.

Which just leads me to the fact that there are just so many reasons why I MUST get all of my properties up and running and why I MUST get the 12plex built. All of the reasons are easily the things that I want to accomplish in my “Experience List”. But on a deeper and simplistic level, it’s things like the freedom from having a boss that thinks differently than me, to not having a boss (other than my own self),to the simple joy to actually go to the movies with a loved one on the weekend, and to actually finding that beautiful woman to share the spoils of my life with.

If you saw my “Experience List” then you would see the depth of all the things that I want in life. And almost none of it doesn’t involve someone by my side. But I guess every person in life, in some way, shape or form, has to walk a part of the journey of their life alone. And currently this has been my time to walk alone. But if I believe that I can achieve my goals in life, then I must also rejoice in the notion that my future is nearer than I think, that my goals are literally closer than they were yesterday. That just around the corner, that a day like Valentines Day will soon actually be and mean something special. Sometimes this is extremely hard to do when your exterior surroundings just keep painting you a different picture than what you have written down on paper. But I must find ways to stay in the pocket of belief.

So now… lets talk about that pain in my ribs…

So I have been working in the club scene for over 20 years. Since I was in my early 20s. And I must be honest. In the beginning when I started in the strip club, I said that all I wanted was money, but in reality I fell prey to the siren ghosts of the business…to the music, the lights, the sounds, the atmosphere, the vision of the fake fantasy that was being sold on stage every night. It easily became addicting for a person without mentors and without proper teachings of goal setting to fall into the trap that caged me for so long And so for the first 10 years, I drank more alcohol than I ever wanted. The partying in the club was massive over the years… So much that God had to do an intervention just to help me realize the path that I had put myself on. It was a painful intervention, but all these years later in retrospect, I am very thankful for that intervention it has helped me to get back on track to finding the higher from of myself. I just wish it hadn’t been so painful and that it didn’t hinder me for so many years of my life. But I can only assume, it’s the time that I needed in the dark to prepare myself to walk in the light. But as for the drinking….towards the end of my drinking phase I met a guy in the club named Blake. And among the fact that I have met many upon many people like Blake, (Drink, party, have fun, repeat) Blake and I became good friends at work. We drank all the time at work. We would even meet at the club on my days off and drink and party with the girls. As my good friend Josh likes to say… Good times. But luckily for me, somewhere along my journey, I could feel the inner me wanting more from life. More than a smoke filled room with a Santa list of alcohol on the table and the smell of different perfumes all giving the fake love that was easily accessible at any moment. I could feel me wanting more meaning, more depth, more of what I call a successful life.

So what does all of this have to do with my ribs that hurt? I am glad you asked, Blake recently came up to me and said…”Max we haven’t hung out and drank in a long time”. And to be honest, he was right. By my calculations, it had been at least 10 years or more since him and I hung out. And so after a week or two of thinking about it, I told him that I would dedicate a night to hanging out and drinking with him. And so last night I drove to Austin. But my drive to Austin was 2 fold, first I met with 3 people that wanted to talk about real estate. This is now becoming a regular event (meeting with these three people). This is our second meeting to talk about real estate and it was actually very satisfying. When I left the meeting I could feel my inner core happy about those 3 people that I surrounded myself with at the meeting.

So after my real estate meeting I drove to Blake’s house. Things began organic, We had a beer and talked about where we are in life and things that we haven’t known about each other in quite some time. From there we had a few shots then took an Uber to a near by bar and drank some more. And sadly by the end of the night we got into a pretty big argument. Without going into too much personal detail…. I quietly didn’t like something that happened. And I let it annoy me. And from there an argument ensued. And because I was at his house, I just had to leave…… Did I mention that this happened in Austin and that I live in San Antonio? Did I mention that I had about a dozen shots or more. Did I mention that I RARELY drink? And did I mention that I drove to Austin on my motorcycle?

So as I walked out of Blake’s house, I loaded my stuff onto the back seat of my Honda Goldwing motorcycle. I was so pissed and DRUNK. I felt that I had no where to go in Austin. Where am I gonna go? I’m drunk! The last thing that I want to do is to burden anyone with a drunk person. So I decided to get on my bike and drive all the way home. All went well until I was about several minutes down the road. It was about 3am. The roads weren’t wet, but it had rained the night before and the grass and the edges of the road were still wet. And for some reason this particular road had a larger hump curvature than most roads. It was like the perfect storm…. A deeply drunk man on a motorcycle, driving on a road that he does not know, in a part of a city that is unfamiliar and late at night.

And so within minutes of me leaving Blake’s house, I somehow slipped off the road and rammed the bike into the dirt wet muddy grass. It all happened faster than a blink of an eye. and luckily after the bike went down, I was able to stand up and walk away from the accident. But even though I was able to walk away from the accident, I was still drunk and still stuck in Austin. So as I stood there for a second looking at my bike laying on its side in the muddy grass, I thought to myself….What the fuck am I going to do now?…. And somehow the hellbent person in me said….”pick up the bike and get the fuck home”. So I attempted to pick up my bike, but my bike is the largest motorcycle that any manufacturer makes. Something to the tune of 800 pounds from front tire to back tire. But after a few minutes and with enough leveraging I was able to get the bike up and ready to run. Now…. The only problem is that hump curvature and the wet grass. Every time that I tried to drive the bike out of the grass it would slip and not be able to get any traction. But with God’s help and a little luck, a man in a vehicle saw me and stopped and slowly helped me get the bike back on the road. I waved thank you to the man and drove off.

Driving home, It was literally one of the scariest rides of my life. Now for anyone that has never dropped a motorcycle before, it is important to know that the brain is always trying to protect you. You see I have dropped a motorcycle before, and whenever you drop a motorcycle you get a small fear of being scared to ride a motorcycle again because of the fact that you dropped the bike and almost hurt or killed yourself.

But for me, and luckily for this event, this is not what was on my mind as I was driving home. Instead I could feel a small dull pain on the left side of my chest area. I knew that obviously it was from the accident but I didn’t’ have time to diagnose myself, instead I was desperately trying to focus on the road and trying to not hover into other lanes. Needless to say, 18 wheelers did not make it easy for me. It was one of the longest rides home.

And today as I woke up I could feel the sharp pain in my ribs whenever I tried to move to quickly. It was a slow and painful process just to get out of bed . And at this moment, I still can’t easily take deep breathes. And when I went outside today to see my bike, I could see that it had a lot of body damage. I’m pretty sure this is gonna cost me close to $1000 or more to fix everything. Seeing it definitely did not make me smile.

And so as I reflect on everything…. Valentines day…… it’s a wonderful day, but just not for me and I’m just gonna try to not think about it. The future, my future will be amazing. That’s the mindset that I must have if Valentine’s Day is ever going to mean something to me. And as for my real estate meeting in Austin…. I loved it, it was with like minded people talking about what they are working on and what they want from their life. That’s exactly what I am looking for from the friends that I surround myself with. Not all my friends have to be in real estate, but they must be working on something in life. And finally my time with Blake and my accident….. Painfully it was just a blunt point from the powers that be, that my time with Blake was best left to the days of the past. Blake and those times of drinking were definitely some wild stories worth a story-time,  but sadly they are just not worth bringing to actual life anymore. They were crazy and wild memories but my life has finally morphed into something closer to what is on my experience list. And I must keep pushing in that direction. I send Blake love, I send him happiness, and wish him only the best in life…. But for me, I must move on to friends that think like the person that I am meant to be.

Happy Valentines Day to me.

Love,

Max