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 “What if it does work out exactly as you imagined it or greater. Entertain that thought”

—Anonymous—

I literally have this as one of the wallpapers on my phone. I see it everyday but sometimes I don’t even notice it, and other times, I see it and I subconsciously tell myself…. Yeah, its all gonna work out in the end.

Date: July 31-2021

Time: 11:37pm

Place: Club in the ATX

Max here,

Tonight is a Saturday night at the club, and as odd as today is for being July 31 (the end of the month) a day where most people are focused or worried about paying their rent, mortgage, car payment etc rather than blowing money at a strip club, the club looks pretty damn packed and is definitely poppin for for 11 O’clock at night.

Now I’m just going to be straight bluntly honest, I’m not really in the mood to write, but I I know that I must get back on a schedule of writing and putting my life back into some form of proper perspective. I’m never going to achieve my goals if I don’t stay focused. If I don’t find a way to believe that things will work out as I expect.

So let’s pick up where I left off from the last post. In my last post I never talked about what’s happening in my real estate or the people that work for me. I also didn’t talk about my eye surgery.

You know what’s funny? What’s funny is that even though this blog is supposed to be about my journey to my first million, I can easily see that this blog encompasses so much more than that, this blog is also a lot about my mental journey thru life and what it takes to grow from the person you are to the person you dream to become. Like how do I (Max) handle my thoughts and ideas and how do I pivot and shift to keep myself from not being stagnant in life? How do I keep getting up and pushing when there’s nothing left in the tank? And in the end….. Just how do I ensure that I get to those first millions?

So before I get to the real estate and the people that work for me, lets talk about my current state of mentality. Sadly I still think about my loneliness on a daily basis. Sadly I still think about the person I love on a daily basis. Funny thing about love, Personally I think it’s the most powerful drug ever created. For when a person loves something or someone, he/she will do whatever it takes to satisfy the thirst for what they love. It really is an odd thing isn’t it? Now enough about that love shit. So far for me, it has yielded very little goodness in my life. But fear not, hopefully one day that will change. (fingers crossed)

So since my last post something else that I have done was to go and finally get eye surgery on my left eye. About 9 months ago I got 3 styes in my left eye. And for me I had never gotten a stye or even heard of the word “stye”, and did I ever mention, I don’t like going to doctors, Hell, I don’t even have health insurance! So when I got those styes I decided to do a quick google search on how to get rid of them without the help of a doctor. And the great google search reveled that I might need to use an antibiotic on the styes….. So like a HUGE dumbass, I put Neosporin antibiotic gel all up in my eye, and unknowingly that is the one thing that you should NEVER ever do. All it does is clog the oil glands of your eyelid and makes things 1000 times worse. Like literally, Don’t ever do that if you get a stye!!!! Now the best thing and what google also recommended was to put a warm compress on the styes, but to be honest, I just felt and even now still feel that I don’t have time for that. (To sit and do nothing but put a warm compress on your eye) But after a while, like after a couple of weeks, I finally broke down and tried  a warm compress on it, and I’m not gonna lie, it helped but it didn’t get rid of them, remember I already did major damage by putting Neosporin in my eye.  (I’m so upset at myself for doing that) So I went to a regular optometrist, and he prescribed some eye drops and more compress to help the already growing infection and hopefully nip the styes in the butt, but sadly it helped a little but didn’t get rid of them, and then I decided to visit some very well respected eye doctors (ophthalmologists), and the doc went in on my eye and injected a nice long needle with either steroids or antibiotics literally into my eyelid, and he also prescribed me some antibiotic eye ointment. A few days after the injections into my eyelid and the use of the ointment, the styes went down, but unfortunately in the end, that just didn’t completely get rid of them, So by this time, I was almost out of options, so in the end I was finally recommended to a well respected cosmetic eye surgeon. Yes cosmetic eye surgeon… And after my consultation with the eye surgeon he recommended that he surgically remove the styes. When he told me that, I thought to myself WTF!

Now lets get this straight. I don’t like visiting doctors, and worse I don’t like someone getting all up in my eye, that’s just a place that if they fuck up, will cause serious long term damage. Now as for the procedure itself, it was definitely something that I had never experienced before. He numbed my eye and flipped my eyelid inside out and then began to cut into my eyelid with some needle like tool and began to extract the puss and remainder of each of the styes (which for those that don’t know, a stye is just oil that clumped up together and was not able to pass thru the oil glands of the eyelid. I later asked several of the doctors as to what causes a stye to form. And the resounding consensus seems to be stress. And what’s funny, is that my major stress for the last year has been love, or better said my belief in love for the person that I care deeply for.

But now a little over a year later and now with these styes removed, I am finally working hard to close this chapter of my life with the person I love. Sadly it has caused me more stress and money than it created joy in my life. Now, I will say this…. when she is in my presence, for the most part she brings me joy. A joy that I can’t ever remember feeling. It really is something that just feels perfect. Really weird. But sadly somehow life just never makes things simple. So to make a long story short and to not pour too much of my inner personal life on the net, I am just now working to believe that I will have to wait until my next lifetime to have her in my life. Sometimes that’s just the best that you can do for love…. Give it time, sometimes even if it means having to wait until the next lifetime (Saddens me so deeply to my core, but somethings you yourself you just can’t change. Super sad. will leave an inner scar forever)

So yea, stye’s are now removed and my eye looks almost 100% normal. I can still see a very tiny bump on my eyelid and I will be going back to the eye doctor for a follow up and hopefully he will be able to resolve this small infraction.

Now during my depression, I have still been open to trying to get things done with real estate. But there has always been one exception. the person I love, (that one way love), whenever they call I would drop everything I am doing and give them my full attention, which literally almost always included money in some form. And personally I didn’t mind this, and to this day I still don’t, because as I said, love to me, is the most powerful drug ever created. But by the end of the day I had less money for the real estate and my emotional bank account was left in the negative, which to me was worse than having no money. So when it comes to real estate, I still have apartment #2 still in the remodel phase and the money for it is still not fully there yet.

And as of a couple of months ago, one of my tenants decided that he no longer wanted to pay rent on time. So now I am having to go to a lawyer to get him evicted. Personally I went to the justice of the peace for my precinct and tried to evict him, but because of the covid crap, it is just not as easy to evict someone that is “choosing” to not pay rent. Funny part about Covid and “can’t pay rent people”… As I drive around town, I see signs literally almost EVERYWHERE signs, posters, and banners that say “now hiring”. Yet this guy can’t pay rent? but back during the height of covid when NO ONE was hiring, he was easily able to pay rent…. Just gotta make ya wonder, how does that happen.. And what I think really happened is that my tenant was part of two tenants living in a two bedroom. It is him and his mother, but sometime ago his mother moved out and now it is just him, and he either can’t pay rent (and knows it, and or doesn’t want to pick up a second job and probably can’t find anything cheaper for the price of rent that he gets with me). But either way, whether he leaves on his own volition or by means of a court order. Someway I am going to find a way to either sue him for the money he owes me or to ensure that this goes on his eviction record. And even though it may technically “sound bad”, the reality is that real estate will one day be my only means of income, It will be the only way that I will survive. And so playing with my money is like playing with my emotions. It’s just that simple. And even if it means that I will have to pay $2000 for a lawyer to make things happen, and in light of the fact that I will probably never get my money back, the reality is that this tenant will one day learn that not paying rent because of covid has it’s ramifications. And worse, I had multiple conversations with this tenant about paying rent and how I did not accrue the maximum late fees on him. And yet he would also tell me that he was going to pay rent and how he made in one day $450 by doin Uber. Yet he couldn’t find it to be super important to make sure that a roof over his head was worth getting paid? So what will I now do? I will now hire a lawyer and sadly his mom is on the lease so she will probably also be affected by his inactions, and why? all because this tenant didn’t keep focus on things and or chose to use the Covid thing as a way to not have to pay rent..

And also a couple of months ago, the tenants that are paying $1200 a month for rent are leaving at the end of August. They have decided to buy a house. And I am super happy for them. they have been good tenants. they have always paid rent on time and have worked to make the outside of their apartment look nice. (which is completely polar opposite than my tenant that is choosing to live rent free) My uncompliant tenant never cared to make the outside of his apartment to look nice. I always had to be on him about cutting the grass and not making it look like a jungle. I could go deeper about things, but this is a public blog and so we will keep certain things at bay..

So yeah, my tenants in Apt #1 will be leaving at the end of August and I am sure that I will be giving most of their deposit back. and the tenant in Apt #3, well, I am sure that I will need to do a lot of work to make that apartment rent ready after he finally leaves, and I just don’t see him making that apartment look like it was when he first rented it. So I will need to put not just a lot of money but also a lot of effort into making that apartment ready.

And not to mention that both apartment #1 and apartment #2 have A/C’s that are uber old, and I have had multiple a/c repair men look at them and every a/c man has mentioned how old they are and how they should be replaced. And with the Texas heat it’s just time for me to really start thinking about replacing the air conditioners in these units. Sadly this was an expense that I never “really” thought about when buying a 4plex. (Remember I come from poverty and central a/c was something I never had at home or at my neighbors house.)

And just so you can get a small idea of where my mind is at with my real estate, here’s how things are breaking down in my mind….. I will need to give almost $1000 back to the tenants of apt #1 when they leave. And I will have that apartment empty for almost a month. which means I will lose $1200 in September. Then I have the tenant in Apt#3 I will need to pay a lawyer almost $2000 to evict and or sue him. Then I will need to spend almost $1000 to get that apartment rent ready. Then I will need to somehow shit $5000 for a new A/C for Apt#1 and then also shit $4000 for Apt#3 and don’t forget I still have Apt#2 that is stuck in the remodel phase. And that apartment will cost nearly $7000 to finish the remodel. Oh and did I mention that Apt#2 soon will also need a new A/C. SMH! talk about needing to shit money from thin air. Ugh!

Apt#1 =  1k in security deposit. one month rent loss 1.2k and 5k for a new A/C in total I will need a little over $6000 and I will lose $1200 in rent.

Apt#2 = $7000 to finish the remodel and does not include the possible replacement of the A/C (a new A/C will be about $4000)

Apt#3 = 2k for a lawyer, and at least one month of rent loss and about$1000 to get the place rent ready.

Now none of this stuff includes my regular bills, or paying the mortgage of the 4plex. And as for me (Max) with all these bills and unexpected expenses, I just need to get out of my head. So much of this last year or longer, and I assume since Covid began, so much of my life feels just feels like it’s on repeat. like its ground hogs day 24/7 all day, everyday. I don’t feel progression, I don’t feel joy, I don’t feel excitement, I don’t feel fun. Instead all I feel is work and emptiness and more work with more emptiness. And worse, like I’m drowning in bills. I’m at a point where I just don’t find joy in life anymore. And fun fact, I was talking with my worker recently, and in one of our conversations, he said that I am the richest person that he knows. I couldn’t help but to laugh at myself on the inside. I couldn’t help to laugh because my house is still in the construction phase, I’m thousands of dollars in debt, and all of my vehicles are well over 14 years old, my own house is built behind my mom’s house and the property is on a poor side of town, and day in and day out, I am just struggling to TRY and stay above water and move forward. So the question is this….. Am I really rich? Fuck NO! I’m just currently an insignificant male working my ass off to try and make something purposeful and meaningful out of the shit sandwich he was given in life.

And as of recently I noticed that my 2007 Toyota Yaris was making a funny noise when I would start it in the morning. And oddly enough it only made the noise once in the morning and the remainder of the day it would sound perfect. And so because I was a little worried about it, I asked a guy at work that used to build cars about his opinion of the noise, he recommended that I put a heavy oil stabilizer to lubricate the upper parts of the engine. And because I know NOTHING about cars, I decided to take his advice, and sadly this only made the car worse. Like seriously fucking worse! To the point where my car now has a very loud ticking/knocking noise when ever I drive it. This is so upsetting. And because my car is 14 years old and its my main means of transportation around town, I recently went to an engine repair shop to see about the cost to have the engine rebuilt. And in my estimates (from the google Gods) I was thinking that it would cost about maybe $2000 to have the engine rebuilt…. And when I went to an engine repair shop I learned that it was going to cost closer to $6000 to have the engine rebuilt. And did I mention that this is a 14 year old car? God, just thinking about it really pisses me off. It pisses me off because all of my vehicles are super old. my work van…. about 25 years old. My motorcycle is 15 years old. And worse I still owe $6000 on my motorcycle loan. and my car, it’s paid off but now has major engine problems… And I have 2001 Ford truck that I bought brand new in 2001, but 3 years after I paid it off I put 37 inch mud tires on it and after adding those large tires, what I didn’t know was that the engine was not strong enough to push the big wheels and those tires, and braking was also super difficult, and so what happened in the end was that I blew the engine of my truck. And like a dumbass, I bought the exact same engine and blew that one 6 months after purchasing it. I swear some people just take forever to learn a fucking lesson!  Did I mention I know nothing about cars!  SMH. I just hope as I get older that I learn my lessons a lot faster because this shit is just really stupid and really fucking expensive.  And so for the last almost 15 years my truck has been in someone’s garage getting very minimal work done. It’s gotten minimal work done on it because I have not been putting as much money into it as I should have been doing to get it completely fixed. It has gotten to the point where the truck is now just a money pit. I have done so much damn work on that truck over the last 15 years that now almost every part of that truck is a custom job. Like Everything… aka engine, transmission, axle, driveshaft, radiator, just everything. And by my current estimates, if I drop another $30,000 into my money pit, my truck will be running perfectly. And not to mention that the woman I love, I helped her get a new car and thru the process of getting her a car and because of certain circumstances with the car, I ended up paying off the ending amount of her car which now has me in debt almost another $7000. Me and cars! Geez!

And let’s make things sound even more fun…… About 3 days ago I went to look for Eddie (one of my workers) Eddie is a good worker with the exception that he just drinks too much alcohol and has ZERO discipline in is life.

So I went to look for Eddie in my Toyota Yaris (the one with the engine problem) and as I pulled into the driveway of where Eddie was staying, the bottom of my car hit the driveway and it broke a plastic part on my radiator. FML! So much to the point that it literally drained everything out of my radiator. Now needless to say this shit just pissed me off even more….My engine on this car is barely alive and can die at any moment and will cost almost $6000 to fix. And now because I went to look for Eddie and because I accidentally drove up on the drive way in just the perfect position I now just literally broke my radiator.

You just gotta picture this (where Eddie lives is in the hood and is near my apartments) and so I pull up in the hood to these  super ghetto apartments where Eddie was staying and what happens? I break my radiator coming up the driveway with all the coolant now pouring out of the bottom of the car and on to the pavement. And if you don’t know…. You CANNOT run a car without water/coolant in the radiator. The engine will get so hot that you will literally kill your engine. So needless to say, I stood there looking at my car with the biggest disbelief in my eyes and just didn’t know what to think. I was beyond bewildered and beyond disbelief.  I just couldn’t believe that my life could be this shitty. Like my life is already fucked. My life is already more than a fucking challenge, my life is already harder than I ever wanted and or expected it to be, but fuck…. Now this?

Like it’s super important that you understand this….When I first got the 4plex I was so excited. I was so excited that I didn’t care about what hill I had to climb, I would wake up with excitement about having to get things done. I would be tired, and I would be exhausted, like really exhausted by the end of the day, but I was still able to muster the energy to knock shit out. But now after 8 years of working on the 4plex and trying to work on my other properties, I have just made so many damn mistakes that it just takes a toll on you. And this doesn’t even include the fact that my own house has been at least 12 years in the making. (And it’s still not finished!) I even recently bought the vanity for the master bath (the cabinet part that holds up the sink) and that particular vanity cost me $1400 and the sink itself (the part that goes on top of the vanity) that damn thing cost me almost $500. And what you don’t know is that it took me literally forever to finally make the purchase for the vanity I’ve been trying to put money towards that thing for the last 18 months, yes I said 18 months…. That’s almost two years for a vanity…. I just kept pushing it off because of the fact that I was mentally having a hard time believing that something like a vanity would cost that much fucking money. And worse, unknowingly I was going thru this mental battle in my head unconsciously wondering if someone like me deserves something that nice. It really is a battle, I’m telling you, poverty really plays a game on your mind. That poverty shit will fuck you up forever if you let it. So about 2 or 3 weeks ago I finally said fuck it, I finally put some of the demons to sleep and I pushed money towards the vanity and I purchased the damn thing. And when I finally got it home and upstairs in the bathroom, the most amazing thing happened.

I just ended up getting more fucking roadblocks!!!!! I saw the that the plumbing that I put in the walls was not lining up with the back of the vanity. Like really? It took me 18 months to buy the damn thing, and I even paid the delivery guy $40 to help me get it upstairs just because it was that big and F-in heavy, and what happens? I still can’t use it. So I now have two choices… either cut up the back of a $1400 vanity, or I cut the wall of the master bathroom (that still is not finished.) And so I now have a vanity and a vanity top but I can’t use it. like WTF. and to make things a bit more complicated. the vanity and the sink are the proper size for each other, but somehow because of the sink bowls, the sink does not sit properly into the vanity, which means that I will still need to cut into part of the vanity because the sink bowls are closer together than what the vanity was made for. I swear, I just can’t believe how shit like this happens?  it’s like shit is always causing one challenge after another.

I like challenges you know, like I really do like challenges, but at some point life needs to give at least a small break for me to breathe and enjoy all that I have worked for. This year has been a super expensive year and there is still about 5 months left in the year. And so before the end of the year I will need to buy two brand new A/C’s for the 4plex as well as all the other bullshit. And I may need to buy a new car. or find a way to get my truck up and running. And to get just the very basic of getting my truck up and running I will need to get new tires and get the brakes fixed, and the truck also doesn’t have powersteering, nor does it have AC, nor does it have a proper gas tank, nor does it have a speedometer for me to see how fast I am driving…. I can go on and on about what this damn truck needs, but for me, because I come from poverty, I look at the truest lowest common denominator and for me to just get this truck on the road, I am going to need new tires, the tires on there are currently about 15 to 17 years old and I am going to need the brakes fixed as well as power steering. And then somehow I will need to find a way to add air conditioning to the truck….

So tell me…….how does Max’s life look now?

I have a night job where I see naked women 4 nights a week. I also have 4 small apartments and multiple vehicles and I also make descent money. I also have my own house and luckily I am healthier than most men my age…. Oh and my worker says that I am the richest person that he knows……And with something like that,  life should be perfect right?

Perfect until you realize that I’ve done my night job for so damn long that now it is truly just “a job” and that these multiple vehicles are all just dinosaurs ready to die at any given moment, and that my own house is still not complete and needs about $40,000 to be finished, and did I mention that my house is in the hood. And as for my 4 small apartments all I need to have it completely remodeled is a simple $60,000 and this does not include the mortgage which is about $70,000.  Now lets add in all my other bills. And the list can go on and on.

And the funny part is that I don’t mind working my ass off. I don’t mind sweating my ass every day. or having super long days. But I’ve realized that because I am lonely, its just not feeling worth all the trouble. It doesn’t feel worth all the sleepless nights, or headaches if I am just doing it for myself. And I know that many people will say that you need to do things for yourself. And oddly enough I agree that some things in life you must do simply for self satisfaction and for the attainment of knowing that you can do it yourself. But for me, I already know that I can work 10 hours at night at the club and then go home and work another 16 hours during the day building my dream business. I know this because it is what I have done for so many years. And most people just can’t do that. Most people don’t have enough drive to push themselves that hard. Most people just aren’t built for that kind of pain. But I am not most people. And so again…. Pushing myself is no longer the issue, instead, I feel as if I just lost purpose. I don’t know, maybe I just need a really long vacation to regroup and put things into a better perspective that will allow me to feel like purpose is still there. I don’t know. I Just don’t know.

Now things on the horizon. a little over a month ago I met a man named Richard, he came to my house while I was pulling up a 5 ton A/C compressor up a ladder with just a rope and my helper. hood ingenuity, you gotta love it.  And now over a month later me and Richard are working out a deal for me to give him one of my properties. And in return he will build two houses and will give me 40% of the profits. Sadly this is not something that I really wanted to do. I’ve had this property for over 10 years and I have dropped probably about $80,000 into this property since I got it. But this property was a money pit since I first got it. I was fresh into real estate, it was literally my very first property acquisition and like a idiot, I never even asked to look inside of the property. Instead I made an offer just by looking at the exterior of the house. Just a really stupid decision. I never did that again! But enough of memory lane and all of my past wrong decisions…. So my deal with Richard is that I get 40% of the profits from the selling of those two houses. And I should rake in between $50,000 to $100,000. And I will then turn around and use that money to build a 4plex. And to build me a 4plex is going to cost me about $400,000 But with $100,000 I will have roughly 25% of the revenue necessary to build the 4plex. Now the only difference between buying a used 4plex versus building a 4plex is that when building a 4plex is that I won’t have any of the remodeling or upkeep costs that I have had to dump into my current 4plex. I will have a large mortgage, but that I currently won’t mind as long as I don’t have to worry about remodeling apartments. Unexpected costs are so much more cumbersome than preplanned costs.

Well, I think I’ve written quite a bit. And as you can see a lot has happened in my life since I last wrote, I just hope that next time there will be better news about my life. Or at least I will have less mistakes to talk about and more progress to write about. And don’t worry, I haven’t quite given up yet on this journey to my first million, sometimes I wonder, and recently, I don’t know…. I almost didn’t make it. It’s just been that difficult and I am not out of the woods yet. But I will say this. People have always said, What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger. So I can only assume that by the time I make my first million, I will be well primed to be ready to attack that second million.

Wish me luck, Lord already knows I’m gonna need it.

Luv,

Max.