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“When you begin to have faith, your load will get heavy but your knees won’t buckle, you’ll get knocked down but you won’t get knocked out.”

—T.D. Jakes—

I love that quote, but….. It begs me to ask the question….. Where does “faith” actually come from?

My only response….. It comes from within, and many times, it begins as a whisper. but with enough silence and enough attention….. it finally begins to roar. And that roar becomes who you are…. The embodiment of pure faith.

Let’s begin…..

Star-date: September 15 2024

Time: 12:19am

Location: The club in the ATX

Song playing: Crank That by Pickle

My mood: good to descent.

On my last post, much of my fucking problems have  been my vehicles and the real estate. And I was prepping to go to the Expo for work. And this post will be more for a record rather than help or guidance for myself or anyone else. Let’s look back and recount some of the events….

The expo was both good and bad for me. It was good because I was able to have people see me and remember me for the the way I asked questions and posed some of my thoughts. It was good because I was able to see some of the people across the country that own businesses in the industry. It was good because I feel that it helped in the terms of me being able to have a job. I’m a true believer that every business wants to see employees that care about the business and by me actually being interactive in the seminars and being proactive to meet and talk with the upper management I think was a good thing. Yet on the downside there is me…. The me that doesn’t care to feel as if I’m always around drunk uncaring people. I’m at this job 4 nights a week. and the other 3 days doesn’t give me a lot of time to really deep dive into reprogramming my mind, and my habits and “learning” “how” to achieve my goals. There are 5 things that I must become healthy at….. 1) is physically healthy. As in look good ensure that my body is in it’s peak state. And that I can find ways to slow down my body’s aging. The longer my body is healthy then the longer I can push in the direction of my dreams. 2) is mentally healthy. 3) is emotional healthy. Now to be quite honest, I truly feel there is a difference between mental health and emotional health, but up until this moment I did not have the words to help my mind be able to paint and describe the difference between the two. But thanks to google, I have now been able to find the proper words to slice them in their proper areas. You see, mental health is your minds ability to properly process and understand information and experiences, while on the other side of things, emotional health is your minds ability to manage and express your thoughts into emotions. And as much as they (mental health and emotional health) might seem to be the same, they are actually very different but they work in concert together. And as odd as it sounds, it is possible to have good mental health but have a very bad way of how you manage and express your emotions…. (which are then expressed to others, and more importantly also expressed to your inner-self. And if everything we do in life begins and ends in our mind, then those two things, mental health and emotional health are so fucking deeply important. Now rounding up #4 on the list is spiritual health. This part of my life I have been able to get a view of how to find positive spiritual health, but I will say that it is still a “process” and #5 is financial health. This one is just a long road because of where I started. Deep poverty does many times make the road longer, or at least it makes the journey feel that much more challenging.

And so the downside of the Expo was me seeing how it will just get so much tougher to keep making money at work. And worse, I have alienated myself from people at work to the point where for me to be at the Expo, I literally had no one to talk to, and no one to hang with. I literally only went to learn and not enjoy. Sadly I no longer get enjoyment from my job. Instead, it is just about generating money to create a real estate business. And the things I crave from humans is mostly something deeper than what I can find at work. So yep, the Expo showed me how once again, I have not found any friends in my new life. and how I am focusing on loneliness rather than on abundance.  What’s weird is that about 10 years ago, I enjoyed traveling alone. idk, I think it allowed me to just experience things without the color or thoughts of someone else’s opinion.  And I will say that it was helpful to just enjoy being alone as I traveled. But since then I found that I enjoy sharing life with someone. To see life not just thru my own eyes and emotions but to also get the opportunity to see it thru someone else’s lenses. But at the same time. it is equally important that I internally resonate with that person. And I think that the best way to tie the thoughts to it, is that I find it important to have the same fundamental values with whomever I travel with. Without the same fundamental values, me and the other person will not be able to look thru each other’s lenses in a healthy way.

Anywho…. So to wrap up the Expo, it was fun to a small degree (the ability, despite my internal fear, that I have no qualms with making myself known to people) and that I hopefully showed some of the important people that I care about my job. On the downside, this job of mine is on the deep decline and even more emotionally desolate and painful, and that I am being too slow to find and culture positive relationships with people of my future.

the damn issue with vehicles just won’t go away. It’s now been several posts of me talking about my vehicles issues, and currently this post is just a rinse and repeat of that same fucking problem. my car is currently my heaviest issue. Do I have motorcycle problems? well almost but not really. Do I have truck problems? Yes but that shit is like a bad marriage that currently won’t get better. But my car….. My car is still in the body shop. The owner of the body shop told me that the turn around time would be 2 to 3 weeks. And now we are working into 5 weeks of not having my car. And I foresee that it will take him at least 6 weeks to finish my car. I am also deeply worried that it will take him 8 weeks to finish my car. UGH!!! As for my truck, well, my mechanic is still saying that he is “still” flushing the engine with detergent to clean out the rust that has accumulated in the engine. It really makes me wish that I could just easily buy a new engine and swap it out. but sadly that still won’t solve the problem that my truck is a pieced together Frankenstein and that it will just be money on top of more money in order to get this damn truck properly running. and even at that, once it is up and running, I will still need to do bodywork on it as well as buy rims and tires for it. UGH!!! As for my motorcycle, well I am still moving parts from one motorcycle to the other motorcycle. And mind you, I truly dislike doing mechanic work on vehicles. I internally just don’t find it appealing. So moving parts from one bike to another bike is something that I am just dragging my ass on completing. But luckily I only have two more things to move on the bikes and then I can move forward with actually buying things for the bike. (then that will begin a whole new set of shit that I have to install on the bike) But as many people will say, life is a process. And my hope is that by the end of the year that I will have my car looking and running good and I will have my motorcycle with all the necessary accessories on it, and that I will finally have the truck out of the mechanics shop and into a transmission shop.

Speaking of the end of the year. I really wanted to have apartment #2 rented by July but because I allow procrastination from myself, it means that I fucking also allow procrastination from people that work for me. And as I have mentioned before… I MUST stop that. I must eliminate procrastination from my life. That’s the only way that I am going to get the apartments remodeled and also get the other apartments built. So as I mentioned in the prior post, my current patch guy is AWOL and I have begun talks with a new patch guy. He is from Honduras, and seems like a nice man in his 40s. The only downside is that he doesn’t seem like he has enough tools nor does he seem to have enough time. If my translator works properly, he told me that he has a regular job (I assume where he does some form of handyman work) and I believe that he doesn’t have proper documentation so they exploit him for their benefit. All in all it just says to me that I am possibly still looking for a procrastinator and that I possibly find way too much comfort in procrastination. So what I did yesterday is that I went onto Facebook marketplace and looked for a handyman. Now remember, I am scared that I will get my eyes gouged from someone charging me way too much money to finish the apartment. And maybe that will happen. And I am also scared because I don’t yet know how to have multiple people come and give me a price to finish out the apartment. At some point I will finally not be scared anymore, and at some point I will be numb to the process. And so today I went one step further and I sent about 6 messages to different people that posted as handyman on Facebook marketplace. And hopefully tomorrow I will have some responses. And if I don’t get any responses, then I will text them again, but this time I will text in spanish. And earlier tonight I sent a text message to Armando, He is a friend that owns quite a few houses, and for all intensive purposes he is in a financial position with real estate that I am trying to aspire to reach.  Earlier this year he introduced me to his patch guy and told me that he may not have enough work for his patch guy and that his patch guy is very limited on doing things alone. But also informed me that if I ever need that I can use his patch guy for any work that I need. And I never really looked in that direction simply because there is a very high chance that I might need to be there working along side his patch guy just to ensure that the job gets done properly. And that is something that I really just don’t want. Yet at the same time, it is important for me to think about what things he can do that are easy labor and don’t require that I oversee anything. I know that at some point I WILL be great at seeing how I can plan a project with the proper people and also be able to find the right people for the specific project and at the right price point. This just made me think about my lawn guy. I have a guy that cuts the lawn at my other property (the property where I want to build the apartments.) He is a guy from the neighborhood and was friends with my half brother that lives with my mom. But at some point, my mom/brother and this lawn guy had a falling out. It had something to do with the way my mom felt about him. It’s important to know that my mom also comes from poverty, and it’s very easy for people from poverty to not know how to think thru their emotions and then without knowing, they can become toxic. And I know this because I have seen it in myself…. But I digress…. My point is that this lawn guy cuts my lawn at the other property and he lives in the neighborhood and also not someone that has cultured anything vast with his life. He has no car, doesn’t own a home, argues with his girlfriend, etc….. But the one thing that I love about this guy is that he seems dependable. When he says that he will do the lawn, it gets completed without me “having” to call him or look for him. And more so, he seems to “look up” to me. but look up to me in the sense that to him I seem like someone of importance (compared to those that he normally interacts with) And this view he has for me allows me to be able to worry less about being on top of him getting the lawn cut. I simply call him and ask him when he can get out there, and I can know with certainty that it will get accomplished within a reasonable time frame that he set. And so a couple of weeks ago when he cut the grass, he mentioned that if I have any more work that I should think of him. I told him that I have a property but that he has no car to get to the property. But that I will ponder the idea and see if there is something I can find for him to do. And as I am writing these lines I am thinking that maybe I can have a couple of simple jobs that don’t require “skilled” labor. For instance, there are some rope lights that I want to install on the railing of the balcony. And I can easily pay a “skilled” labor person to do it and they will want me to pay premium, but why should I do that if I have someone within my neighborhood that is equally capable of doing the job and that will do it for a price that fits my budget. I will be texting him later this morning. I don’t know if it will work out, but I must look at any and all avenues to ensure that I am moving the ball on this apartment.

Then there is the build of the 4plex… this week I went to the city with the architect to see about which way the city will allow me to design the 4plex. From the standpoint of build costs, it will be cheaper if I build 2 duplexes on the property, but it seems that the city doesn’t like that concept anymore. From what I learned is that it was a small set of rich people (on the rich side of town) that banned together and found a way for the city to no longer allow 2 duplexes on one property. But I’ve decided that I am going to go and talk to my city council man as well as my neighborhood association and see about maybe going to the city and asking for an exception (called a variance) to allow me to build two duplexes instead of one large box. More of that on future posts.

Then there’s the taxes…. I have been procrastinating on completing this year’s taxes. My tax guy emailed me wanting the closing statements for  the two houses that got built and sold on a property that I no longer own. And truth be told, I got really fucked on that deal, and it still stings very deeply, and because I am still deeply working on emotional health, I am having the hardest mental time looking at those damn closing statements. And mind you that I am still not someone that enjoys paperwork. And well, taxes are all about paperwork. And beyond the closing statements my tax guy wants a few other documents of information about my years expenses as well as apartment rent roll. These are things that are normal but I have not sat and done the paperwork on it yet, but it will be being worked on tomorrow.

Speaking of being worked on tomorrow, things that I had planned on working on today was the 3d print designs for the launchpad in my bedroom. That project has been limping along for almost 3 months and I only have it about 10% designed and printed and put together. And one of my major problems that I MUST find a way to solve is how to not add more jobs/projects on my plate than necessary. So I had planned for while at work tonight to work on the 3D designs, and to also finish up the video part of the new promo for the club and also work on my taxes…. But as you may or may not be able to notice, instead of doing any of those 3 things, I instead have spent the majority of my time writing this blog post. But tomorrow I will definitely work on one of those three items. I think that I may be able to work on the 3d designs as well as “hopefully” do something towards my taxes.

Other items in my life is physical health. Which to me encompasses, food, sleep and exercise. And of those 3 things, about the only thing that I am getting close to being consistent on is the food. And even at that I still consume too much sugar and eat way too many tortillas and bread. But I am doing better than 2 years ago. The one that is really lacking is exercise. last week I only exercised once and I instead, told myself that sleep was more important. Am 100 percent certain that sleep is more important than exercise? I am not 100 percent certain, but so far it seems that when it comes to longevity and getting my body as a whole to be healthy. it seems that sleep will trump exercise. Which then leads me to a constant challenge that I have yet to master and that is time management. Without proper time management I keep stumbling on lining up the way to sleep, exercise and work thru my day. And yes being a day walker and a night walker is the thing that makes my time management the hardest to properly manage, but I still must find a way thru this. And to sum things up I must be able to exercise 3 days a week, sleep a minimum of 8 hours, still eat healthy and also move into completion with my current projects without adding more on my plate. I hope to get a better balance on this issue

And rounding out the biggest part of what has recently happened in my life is my  mom. As I mentioned in a prior post my mom recently turned 90. Which I love!!!! I can’t express how deeply I love that my mom is still alive. And not only still alive but able to do almost everything on her own. She doesn’t need a wheelchair or a walker to move around. She occasionally uses a cane, but overall still lives fairly independent. Now fast forward to yesterday…… Yesterday I got a text message from my mom’s bank. And they informed me that her debit card was charged from a location outside the united states. And worse for at least the last two years my mom keeps misplacing her debit card. And this year she seems to lose her debit card more often. Then compound that with the fact that my half brother is living with my mom, and somehow and without him knowing, he is more of a dependent than a help to my mom. He has no job, and believes that he can’t work, but in reality he has not held a stable job in over 30 years simply because the government will make him pay his child support for 5 of the six children that he had with different women. He is now 63 or 65. And has found a way to rape the government to give him $700 a month. Now how does this affect my mom that is 90? Well, my mom as I have probably mentioned, my mom is unknowingly toxic. and she has unknowingly taught her children toxicity, and so my half brother is also toxic, which means that him living with my mom puts a heavy strain on her emotionally, which then taxes her mentally and causes her to not be able to think clearly. And let’s now add the cherry on top….. My mom also has the onset of dementia.  So if we add everything, and did I mention that my mom has hearing loss and doesn’t want to get hearing aids, and my mom now has vision loss in her right eye. I have been taking my mom to the doctor for her eye, and it seems that she had hemorrhaging in the back of her right eye. She has “semi” complained about her eye, but again, remember my mom has no limit on the things that she will find to complain about. (That toxic thing). It also just goes to show how deep that ancestral violence of toxicity runs in my family and my own self and how I MUST constantly be vigilant to have things to remind me and constantly change my mindset. But I digress, so my mom has what I feel are real issues that need attention. But to my mom, she feels her only issue is my half brother that doesn’t want to leave the house. She will constantly complain that she wants him to leave and that the government needs to take him and that he is the government’s problem.

Which recently it finally clicked in my head. over the recent years, I have randomly asked my mom different questions about my grandmother, which by the way my mom seems to have so much distain for my grandmother to the point that she feels her mom is NOT her real mom. Again, such deep ancestral pain. So recently I finally clicked on something. I remember my mom once saying how my grandmother kept wanting my mom and other people to take care of her children. And how when my uncles got older, how my grandmother would complain about her sons that were still living with her and how she (my grandmother) would want other people to take care of her sons….. This recently clicked in my head how deeply my mom is probably like my grandmother. You see, my mom could easily call the cops and evoke an eviction notice and force my half brother to leave. But my mom does not do this because of her maternal love for my half brother. (Which I think is a half lie) What I think is really happening in my mom’s head, is the same thing that happened in my grandmother’s head. During my mom and grandmothers era condoms were not a thing, and abortions were only for the rich and also probably still dangerous. Now in 2024 condoms are the norm and abortions can easily be had at home. And so I am sure that both my mom and grandmother probably got pregnant (without being ready or wanting to be pregnant) and as psychology shows, that many poor people that get unwanted pregnancies and carry to term, typically have harder times raising the children. Which in turn can cause painful ramifications. And for my grandmother, my mom seemed to have made a reference that my grandmother didn’t want to be with my grandfather, (and they had 8 children – talk about being tied to someone in a painful way) and my mom, well she left the house at the age of 18 and got married so that she didn’t have to be at home, but she ended up marrying a man that she didn’t really want and stayed in a 14 year marriage that she calls horrible and has many times recounted fights from the marriage. Now back to my half brother not wanting to leave… Well, after long bouts of me trying to understand the whole family shit show, I finally have come to the conclusion that my mom is only repeating the cycle of my grandmother. My mom didn’t want to have so many children. (She had 3 children with a man that she didn’t truly love and felt forced to be married to him and had many many fights with him. And the majority of them were physical fights) And if we  fast forward to the life of my half brother, he as well as my mom have both independently have recounted times of when my mom and her husband were physically fighting and my half brother was just a young boy, probably no older than 10 years old, and he was forced to watch the pain of his mom and dad trying to kill each other. And I am now pretty sure that my mom holds a lot of regret in her heart. Regret of not being able to have made better decisions for herself and her young children. And that her decisions have undoubtedly caused my half brother to have a fucked up life. A life lacking self belief, lacking knowledge of how to have a relationship with himself and with others. Sadly all of my half brothers relationships have all been toxic relationships. Even the ones with his children. Hell, even I have been toxic for so many years of my life. And I didn’t even know that I was fucking toxic. (That’s literally how stupid so many of us are to our own inner thoughts and actions)

So I really think that my mom truly doesn’t want my half brother there. I truly feel that she probably sees part of herself as well as parts of the husband that she didn’t want all rolled into my half brother, and I’m sure that it brings back PTSD memories for her. But at the same time, the maternal part of her struggles with the fact that it was a unfortunate thing that my half brother was born into a fucked up family. And I believe that my mom holds herself responsible for how fucked up my brother is. And he is so fucked up that if my mom kicks him out, that he will literally be a homeless person living on the streets, and that is something that the maternal woman in her can’t stand to see. So in the end, what is happening, is that now I am forced to HAVE to watch this redundant fucking movie play on repeat and I am stuck having to hear on a regular basis about how my half brother needs to leave, and having to see my mom get so stressed that the stress itself is actually hastening my moms dementia! The stress is actually shortening my mom’s life. And what can I do about it? Do I find ways to force my mom into a retirement home? And with what money? my mom’s retirement money won’t be enough to have her live somewhere comfortable. My mom is still fairly independent and if I “try” to put my mom in a retirement home then I could be the catalyst that just adds to my mom’s quickening. I can choose not to care about my mom. But she is my mom and I must find a better way to look at the situation. My mom is now losing her debit card every 3 months, and this is now causing more problems. My mom now has so much distrust for my half-brother. It really is a vicious cycle…. ancestral curses…. the fact that my moms parents had such little education has caused so much pain for the family and all the descendants. I hope to be the one to break these chains of pain and hurt.

Until next time,

Max.