This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)

Sometimes making gains in life is not just realizing change is needed, but instead its seeing that change is foreign and not always natural and easy for us to recognize. (Maxwell Stone)

Today’s date: June 06-2020

Time: 11:21 pm

Location:   The club in the ATX.

Max here with another one….

Wow it’s been forever. It’s really been a long time since I stepped into writing mode. I literally can’t remember the last time that I have written. And so much has happened since I have last put digital pen to digital paper…. The world is literally debating it’s Coronavirus pandemic and here in the USA George Floyd’s death caught on film has put the country into a tail spin of almost non stop riots. Even the president Donald Trump is having a hard time trying to find a way to make himself look good in the midst of this turmoil. Before this pandemic, the economy was at it’s probably all time best and then the Coronavirus hit and stopped everything almost dead in it’s tracks, and now with the death of George Floyd many people are deeply angered about the inequality of life in the USA. And sadly this doesn’t help to make the economy better.

But that’s currently life in the USA… But how is Max? Well…. Max could be better and Max could be worse. Max lost his job for about 2 months but now I’m back at work. But although I’m back at work, that doesn’t mean that I am making enough money to pay my bills. With as many things that have happened in the world as of late, things (progress) in real estate and personal life seem to have almost halted to zero.

On one end it can be a good thing, but on the other end it is deeply painful and an uphill struggle more so than normal. The good thing is that during my phase of unemployment, I had an opportunity to feel what life is going to be like when I no longer have to work at the club… It gave me the chance to remember my hobbies and to look more at my real estate (home projects as well as the 4plex and future endeavors). I also felt less stress, less running from city to city. It also forced me to eat more at home. And eating at home was one of the best things that happened during this whole Covid thing. It allowed me to ratchet down on changing my food habit and also allowed me to become more health conscious. I finally have lost 90% of the weight that I have not been able to drop for the last 20 years. Its a great feeling, I have less body fat than I did when I was 25 year old. If I can keep this up then by November I will be at a place where I will no longer have ANY belly fat and will be at the fat loss that I was at when I was 19. (people currently look at me now and don’t see my small belly fat. But that’s only because most of America is obese. It’s hard to notice small belly fat when you are used to seeing obese)

But although there were some good things, the downside is that I had to put several of my most major bills on hold (luckily they allowed me to do that during this pandemic). And also painful was the fact that my income came to almost an instant halt. And currently my (then income) that’s what I was using to invest into the properties and to finish my own house. And without that income, certain things can’t get accomplished and or take 3 times as long to get accomplished.

Let’s see if I can break this down better….

Middle of March, the club closes and I lose my job. The president and his advisors come out and say that the country is now in a pandemic situation. People shit bricks about their life. States across the country begin to invoke mandates that make businesses close and force people to stay at home. They literally scared people. At the same time people were dying at rates faster than hospitals could handle… This just scared people even more. The whole time all I could do was to sit at home and watch things play out. No job, no sign of knowing when my job was coming back. I also didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills. by the end of march I apply for unemployment benefits. It takes 2 weeks for it to kick in. By this time its now April and nothing looks like it’s getting better yet.

Just before I lost my job, I went to my first Toastmasters meeting and loved it, and now because of the pandemic, all group in person meetings from almost every organization was suspended and all people were encouraged to work from home.. This means no Rotary meetings, no toastmaster meetings. By April, many people were going to online video conferences for their meetings. The rotary even did some “zoom” online meetings and I think I read a few emails where the toastmasters was also doing some “zoom” online meetings. Sadly I am not much of a online video person, simply because my house is not yet up to par, in the context of looking good, and when ever you look at someone in video, everyone typically always look at the background and use that as a way to judge someone. But despite that feeling/thought, by the end of April I did my first Rotary zoom. I was able to setup my laptop in the studio and create a descent space to zoom online.

Now it’s June and my job came back. (but barely came back) Sometime in April I began to receive unemployment money and luckily it also had added money from the government, the government added something like $600 to the unemployment (every week). This added money was really helpful, and in the end it was also more money than what I made when I came back to work… Picture this… I am making more money in unemployment and government benefits than I am at my job! There is a major problem with that.. And don’t forget, my most pressing, major bills are on hold. So sooner or later money is going to have to start flowing again because sooner than later, I’m gonna HAVE to pay these bills. All this was secretly going thru my mind and it still is going thru my mind. I was even considering doing food delivery for Grubhub. Shit was just that bad. But now it’s June, unemployment benefits stopped once I came back to work, and also now that the weather is warmer, people are less concerned with the Coronavirus…. However there is a new dilemma in the country, the death of George Floyd. This has caused a fire storm of mixed feelings for most Americans. The leading phrase is “black lives matter” while at the same time police officers and others in that capacity are now looked at as the agitators of violence even now the president “Trump” is looking like an agitator of violence and if he is not careful could go down as a worse president than Nixon. And so my job came back but America is still trying to find itself. It’s still lost and so it’s easy to say that my future is still unknown, but at the same time, it has also been proven that for those that are hungry, and are hellbent at a life of riches (and not just monetary riches) that it’s during the uncertain times, that’s when you can make the most gains in life.

But what does all this mean for me? well, it means that overall, I MUST get these bills paid and that I must complete the tasks that I have begun. I have written and rewritten my todo list multiple times over the last couple of months, and sadly very little has gotten scratched off of this long to do list (and it seems to keep getting longer). Most of the items on my list require money. And because my most major bills are currently on hold, I am really hesitant to buy too many things. The upside of certain things is that work at the club is slowly on the up climb and not on the decline. That must be noticed because things could be worse. But the question of all questions… will I make enough money to pay all of my bills and still keep moving my life forward…. Remember I have an apartment at the 4 plex that is deep in the remodel phase. And once that apartment is completed it will fetch me $1000 a month that’s an extra $10k a year. So somehow I must get that thing worked on…. And at the same time I have palm house (the property that I am trying to turn into a 12plex apartment complex. (that project once completed and solely in my hands will set me free from the club in the ATX) As of late I found out that I can actually turn it into a 20 plex apartment unit. This redevelopment project is a quandary for me. it’s a quandary  because I know literally ZERO about the process of redevelopment and finding funding. At first I was scared, but now I am not necessarily scared but instead I am just hoping, believing and constantly looking for small signs that can help lead me into the right direction to get this dream built.

Then there is my personal house. I have begun work in the studio and now that I am back at the club, that work in the studio is now moving slower than I wanted. And for several years now, I have been wanting to do some remodel work on my mom’s house, it is deteriorating day by day. I wanted to start in the kitchen , her sink/counter area is designed with tile and the tiles have literally begun to fall apart. I have told her multiple times that I or one of my guys can get it remodeled, but she has always told me that she was not ready… And now that I have embarked on more personal projects (because I wasn’t working) and now that I am now back at work, my mom suddenly said that she is ready for me to redo the kitchen counter area… This is totally bad timing for me because I already have a long list of projects to complete, but…. my mother is the one that gave me life, she would die for me, the least that I could do is put my personal projects to the side and get the sink/counter remodeled, especially since I told her I would do it. So this week my goal was to have one of my guys demolition the area and then I would come back in and do the installation. However, like the quote says….intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. constant change if necessary. And so I ended up doing both the demolition and the install.  And In my naive mind I was just going to demo the sink and counter and put in a new sink and counter. But in the end I decided to add a couple of under cabinet lights, move the light switch add sheetrock to the wall and I didn’t remember that my moms kitchen sink did not have shut off valves and so I also needed to re route the plumbing…. Along with installing a new sink and counter. I had thought that the project would take a total of two days, and in reality it took 4 days and I am still not 100% completed. At most it will take me another 2 days. Sadly other things can easily come in and take priority and keep me from being constantly on the project.

But once this project is done, I will move to one of my personal projects. A couple of days ago, along with my todo list, I decided to write down my most pressing 5 projects. I felt that I needed to look at them from this perspective to get a visual feel for the depth and scope of the project along with an idea of importance and time frame that it would take to complete each project.

And a few of them are as follows….. Record shelf ( I decided to revamp and finally complete my record shelf), Turntable set up (In the studio I have always wanted a space for my turntables so that I could practice DJing anytime I wanted), Motorcycle trailer (transporting my motorcycle for maintenance has ALWAYS been an issue. And to this day it is still an issue, but will be solved this year. Guaranteed), Apartment #2 (This is the unit at the 4 plex that is deep in remodel phase.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg on projects. But I have decided to finish a couple of the easiest ones first, otherwise they will just be hanging around and mentally poking at me like unwashed dishes in the sink. Once I finish my moms project, the next thing to tackle is the record shelf. that thing is 80% complete and should only take me about 2 days to complete.

Keep in mind, luckily the record shelf is almost complete and doesn’t really need money thrown into it. Which is a good thing because I have to really get a handle on my bills and be able to make a game plan on getting these things paid and off of my balance sheet.

What else has been happening?  Hmmm…. I think its more like what else has not been happening. Wait, no actually as I think about things, I would say that a lot of things have been happening, but they have just been “evolving”/ changing etc. And I have been trying to analyse on how to adapt to the change. It’s all mental change and not physical change.

What type of mental change?… Well for instance, Weight loss and the gym. The gym was closed during the pandemic but is now open, but I have not had a chance to go to the gym simply because of the number of unfinished projects that I have laid in front of my feet, or to be more precise, its the fact that I have begun to see that finishing projects really boils down to discipline or lack there of. and that a lack of discipline will not get me to the truly large goals that I have on my life experience.

One of the things that I recently told myself that I want to do is to make discipline my super power. For me, If I can make discipline my super power then, the amount of completed items will eventually stack up faster. because then within time I can learn to stream line items and find commonalities that will allow me to do things in tandem and or make things easier. And so maybe that’s why I have not just written down my todo list, but I have also written down my top 5 projects to complete. And mixed in with all of that is the need to look at my bank account on a literally almost daily basis. I typically keep a minimal amount of money in the bank. And this too must change. I will never get 20 million in the bank if I don’t change the fact that I have been consistent my whole life with keeping only about 2 or 3 hundred bucks in the bank. This will change

Maybe what I am seeing as I think about these current times in my life and then look backwards on my life is that in years past, so much of it was the germination of personal development. And when I say “germination” of personal development, what I mean is that personal development MUST begin with the study of change, the ability to notice all the change that a person must have in their life. I spent so much time learning about how to better my mind, the ability to look at life thru a different lens, and now as I fast forward to where I am now, I am now working on implementing the adaptive ways to everything I have learned. It’s like reading a book and now practicing on following the directions. And now following the directions now involves the emotional ups and downs from failure to success and then cycle thru them. Which funny enough, I just couldn’t notice this process was always happening in my life. But now I notice it and honestly and truthfully no longer bothers me the same way as it did before. You know… where you allow yourself to get caught up is in the number of failures that it takes before you can catch a success. Somehow I must master this part of the puzzle. I know that somehow it’s all mental.

There are still the normal things that I think about… like my family on the island… If things are hard for me, then they must be 100 times harder for them on the island. There is my mom, she’s 85 and by the grace of god, she’s a warrior. Most people in America by the age of 85 need some form of constant care, but my mom is not one of those people… as of last week, she was outside mowing the lawn herself!!! Pure Warrior. I am lucky to have her in my life. I love you mom! There is also the fact that on my experience list is to have a family… And as odd as it sounds, here at my job at the club, I am surrounded by an almost endless amount of women and luckily some of them are able to look at me in a way that still makes me feel relevant, the fact still remains is that time is flying before my eyes and things like a family must get done soon, however, I am fairly specific about what I want. But again…. one project at a time. So yea, family on all aspects is something that is on my mind, and I also have the IRS issue that I must finish and then master. And luckily I have lost weight, sadly because I have not gone to the gym and because of my age, I have also lost muscle mass quicker than I wanted… But that’s ok… One thing at a time… Let’s get rid of the fat, then let’s build the muscle. And if all else fails with building muscle, there’s always steroids.

It’s amazing to think about all the things that must work in chorus together just to attain the simple success that I require in life. Almost mind blowing actually. It’s really a testament to all the things (mental) that poor people don’t get provided (training/mentoring)  to them in their young years of life.

So in the end, my choices in life look like this……Get rich.

Or Die Trying!

Love,

Max.