I don’t think that I could say with certainty what I wanted to be when I was five as the answer to that question probably varied from day to day. One day it might have been an astronaut and the next day it might have been a fireman and the day after that it might have been a cowboy. Who really knows for sure what they wanted to be when they were that young. With that said, that was back when the imagination was allowed to run freely and before the harsh realities of this world took effect and everything was reduced to chasing after a high paycheck.

Life shouldn’t have to be that way. I wonder what kind of place this would be if we all followed our dreams, especially the ones that we had when we were younger.

Trace through your past and maybe you’ll see why you have wound up where you are today.

Did you make one mistake that you didn’t think much of at the time? That might have been all it took to get you where you are today. It’s kind of like those choose your own adventure books that came out when I was younger.

Today I find myself backtracking and looking for the point when it all went wrong. Even if I can pinpoint that time it’s of little value other than to satisfy my own curiosity as one cannot go back and correct a mistake or at least I don’t think that technology exists yet. Perhaps it does in some secret black site but the general public is completely unaware of it.

These days it feels like we are living in clown world. Down is up, black is white, what you’re told doesn’t match with what you perceive.

I feel like I’m living in some sort of a twilight zone. Some sort of quantum state where the strangeness exists and two different things are true at the same time. Perhaps that is why I am experiencing physical pain all over my body. Perhaps that is why every conversation I have with others feels like one big gaslighting session. It’s hard to explain without writing a novel but I don’t have the energy for that. I try and talk about it in videos I make but no one ever sees them or comments. It’s as if I have been shadow banned from existence all because I have sought out knowledge and perhaps I know too much about the nature of our existence here in this realm.

Things are not always as they appear.

It is possible that this thing that we call life is all part of one big simulation. If that’s the case, then we are all in real trouble as I believe that we were all supposed to learn something that we have not learned yet and are very far off from doing so.

I’d like a bigger microphone as to discuss what I have found but for now, all I have is my little website.

File this under the abstract but one of the best and one of the worst gifts that I’ve received is a higher than average level of intelligence. It doesn’t make me any better than anyone else as I struggle with things like feeling like an outsider in this world as I tend to over analyze things perhaps a little too much and look for ways to do things better. Often times, whatever the status quo is just doesn’t make sense and then I try to find out why it seems out of order. It’s a real predicament to find one’s self in.

So while being smart is a gift it is also looked down upon by many as we all like to believe that we are all equal. We all have our own special talents and that is what makes us unique from one another. Some people like gather a whole bunch of degrees and letters after their names as to prove their intelligence but somehow it just doesn’t seem right and hardly a good metric. While the movie was very exaggerated with the solving of the complex equations, my life seems a lot like Good Will Hunting and for the record I once did work for a while as a custodian for a school district.

I don’t spend my time solving complex equations, in fact, a lot of times, when I see things like that, all I see is a bunch of random symbols and have no idea of what someone is trying to prove. No, for me, I look for the truth about this world we live in and it’s getting more difficult every day to decipher what is real and what is not.

If I were to start a sports team then the colors of the team would be black and white like a chessboard and the chess pieces as it shows they are stark contrasts of each other to reflect the duality of the game, both offense and defense as every player on the team has to be able to play both sides. As far as the mascot goes I would pick a pawn as even the least powerful piece still has enough power to be positioned to put the king in check and win the game.

To say that my political views have changed over time would be an understatement. For the life of me, I can’t understand how political views cannot change in this ever changing world and at this moment in time, things are changing very quickly and if one is to stagnate and rest on one’s laurels then one risks being left out in the cold.

I remember back in high school noticing the shift. My family had always been conservative in their beliefs and voted along Republican Party lines and perhaps it was the need to be rebellious or acting out, I took a more democratic approach to how I viewed the world. That stuck with me for quite sometime until years later when the democrats got more liberal in their positions and then my own pendulum swung back towards the republicans…a position that I’ve held until recently wheee I find myself not fully on board with either party. Lately I have started making a more conscious effort to see both sides of each issue and I don’t know where that puts me in the political spectrum. There’s no right or wrong side to any of the issues that the country faces.

I’ve even changed my stance on voting as if I can’t in good conscience agree with everything a candidate campaigns on, then my vote will be withheld. I noticed a trend not to long ago in my own voting record. With the exception of Bill Clinton in 1996, I have consistently voted for the candidate who failed to win. The only candidate for president since then who has won since then was when I registered myself as a write in candidate in 2016. Of course I did not win the election and have no memory of serving in that capacity but I did win something intangible from that experience. I won peace of mind.

I was reminded of this when earlier this year I did a google search of myself and saw the strange listing pictured above. I found it amusing as it relates to something I did in the past and was listed as past tense as well. Did I really win back then? Was this a glimpse into the future of something that I was going to do later in time? Am I now living in some alternate reality? The questions could go on and on.

While I know that if given the opportunity to serve in that official capacity I would do a great job, it has not happened yet and perhaps it is just some cruel joke that the universe is playing with me as I pondered this listing a lot , and maybe too much, as to how to make this fabrication a reality. I have to wonder what anyone else would have done if they saw something like this attached to their name?

So have my political views changed, the answer is yes. We have a lot of problems in the country and in the world and each one of those problems don’t have a clear cut and dry solution. Will the incoming administration be successful? That remains to be seen and while there are a lot of good positions Donald Trump has taken and I do believe he means well, there are some other positions he has taken and surrounded himself with some people who might not have the country’s best interests at heart that are giving me reasons to be concerned. One thing that is for sure, the next few years are going to be interesting.

If I were to build my perfect space for reading and writing I know just what I would do. Years ago I had a job where I was delivering wine for a wine shop. In that job, I noticed that the store would just throw away the wooden wine boxes and I as someone who doesn’t like things to go to waste, offered to take all of the boxes off their hands. Over the course of a year, I amassed quite a lot of them. Originally I was using them as bookshelves but I decided to fasten these together with glue and screws and noticed that I was building panels that in theory I could use for a construction project.

I looked at the couple hundred wine boxes and thought that I had enough to buying a small structure. Whether it was a tiny house, auxiliary building or garden shed, the ideas of building something out of materials that would have otherwise been discarded was very appealing to me. I have experience in some forms of construction and like to dabble in carpentry and thought this would be a perfect project what would allow my creativity to flow. The only problem was where to put such a thing. Maybe I could have put it on a trailer and make it mobile.

I’m still thinking about where to build this project and someday I hope to make the dream a reality but as time goes by it’s starting to feel like more of a pipe dream. Only time will tell but if I can someday build this project than I could think of nowhere better for a place to read and write than there. Of course I would need to add a few more materials to create the floor, siding and roof but I think that I could create something very nice from something that should have been thrown away.

Such an easy question for today’s daily prompt and here is my answer. This is more than a car for me than it is a dream or an old memory. I own a couple of these in various sizes, just not one that is full size and drivable. It’s not just any Pontiac Trans Am although on a whole each generation of the car got better than the previous generation and I could say that it is in general my favorite car but this particular model of this particular year is the pinnacle of the line. What is pictured here is a representation of the 1989 Pontiac 20th anniversary turbo Trans Am.

I got to ride in one of these once when I was too young to drive. I have since been in many other over the years and for a while owned one of it’s sister cars the Chevrolet Camaro Z28 but this one sticks out because of the memory.

At the time thus far was chosen to be the pace car for the Indianapolis 500 and at the time I lived just outside of Indianapolis. The month of May is known for all the festivities that surround the race and these cars were seemingly everywhere back then. My dad worked in the travel industry and won some kind of contest or got a perk and was awarded the use of one of these cars for a weekend. I didn’t know anything about this until one Friday afternoon I was called to the principals office and told not to skateboard home as my dad would be picking me up.

When I went outside, I was looking for the Oldsmobile that he owned and it was no where to be found. Then I noticed this car and sitting in the drivers seat was my dad. He looked so cool in my entire life up until that point. I got in the car and then he took me for a ride I will never forget. Normally he was a very conservative driver and used to get ridiculed by some members of my family for driving like an old man but this car unleashed a different side to him that I had never seen before and hadn’t ever since.

The car itself is fast. At the time it was the fastest car that was sold, even faster than the Corvette which was always supposed to be the fastest car that General Motors built and it did this all not for the small block V8 that the Corvette used but with the turbo charged V6 that was previously used in the Buick Grand National. If memory serves, the zero to sixty time was right around 5 seconds and back in 1989, that was fast.

Even the way it’s styled is beautiful. The white color with the gold wheels and camel interior all go very well together. I still see these rare cars around where I live now near Chicago on occasion and when I do, it’s the highlight of my day. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to afford one, but as time goes on, the price seems to just go up and up. Even if I don’t ever get to own one, I’ll be fine as I can always admire and dream about it as I look at the miniature versions of this very special automobile.

In the year in which I was born the birth rate has bottomed out. This was the year that the least amount of babies were born since the Great Depression. Perhaps that’s why I’m so solidly a member of generation X because in there just aren’t as many people my age when compared to people of other ages.

Perhaps some of this had to do with the political climate of the day. As I was born during the Ford administration I’ve always found that fact to be interesting as Gerald Ford was the only man to ever serve as president who was not elected to the position. Maybe that’s why there was so much turmoil in the world back then. 1975 marked the fall of Saigon, a while after US operations ended in Vietnam. My father was a veteran of that war and from what I’ve read about the subject, it was brutal and there will never be another one like it as technology has changed and it seems like countries, the US in particular, doesn’t send mass amounts of ground forces anymore.

So that’s what I know about the year I was born, that and the economy stunk but that’s nothing new, stagflation, problems with auto manufacturing, new fuel economy standards were beginning to be implemented. Maybe I should be thankful that I was too young to remember it, as it didn’t seem all that great. The time I grew up, throughout the 1980’s were a lot better.

Yes, I would like to think that I am a good judge of character but whether or not I really am is debatable. I think we all like to believe that we are as well. On social media it’s one thing because everyone is trying to prestige best version of themselves so it’s a little harder than in the real world. There is where we interact with people face to face and for the most part, it seems like it’s pretty much split right down the middle as to whether the people we meet are of good character or not. Sometimes I might meet someone and they seem alright but then after a while they will do or say something that is a little off and give a glimpse of who they really are. It ultimately depends on your own individual beliefs as to what is good and what is a bad character. Always try and find the good in people and others will let you know who they are.