Never Concede Greatness.

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Never ConcedeFinding the truth about the life I have and the way I see myself has been the hardest thing I’ve had to do.

I see that there are people who’ve doubted me, who cursed me and called me names.

These people are no longer part of my life for a reason, and they’ll never be a part again.

I choose to live this life each day, with my goals in mind, with my wants for myself, my future and who I want to be.

Within me is the person I choose to be, the person that no one seemed to want, for they all said you can’t do it, you can’t be this person, I won’t let you.

Well, when you get to end of your life, what are you thankful for?

What have you truly done to be the person you want and not who others expect.

If there’s anything I regret about living in Las Vegas, it’s that I wanted to be something else, I wanted to be stronger, live better and desired to be a great person.

This greatness wasn’t for narcissism, it was for being thankful for a life I chose, a life I wanted and being the fucking person I wanted and saying the things I wanted.

I don’t blame people, I only blame myself for the lack of courage.

Growth within the soul comes when you’ve reached bottom and crawled out.

I’ve crawled out from the depths of despair and hated myself for getting there.

When I began my journey back, with TM (Transcendental Meditation) guiding my life. I never thought I’d have the courage to leave a job I hated. I never believed I’d change my life and that of my family for the sake of doing and being the person I always wanted to be.

As I crawled out I knew that I would be different and I knew i had to leave Las Vegas, if only to live my life my way and not be forced to live a life I didn’t want anymore.

We truly reach the peak of who we want to be when we’re tired of the bullshit, tired of being something we’re not and find within ourselves the perseverance and courage to face the darkness within.

I know who I am, I’m the comedian, the writer and I love to see people smile when they’re reading a book or laugh when I do a funny voice.

I’m tired of conceding to society and tired of people who want me to be something I’m not.

I refuse to concede my life to people who don’t know me, people who want me to conform the some idea of who they think I am.

If you’ve been away from me for a long time, like a lot of people have, you might not like me, but I don’t care.

I’ve become who I am being away from certain people and they’ll never be in my life again, not because I hate them, but because I life myself more that I love them.

How Progress Leads to Change, To Learning About Ourselves and Finally Discovery of Self.

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Progress and its many smaller side effects, change, learning and discovering lead to who you are.

Change matters to those who want a better life for those around them and when they discover the way to achieve change, no matter what is going on in their lives, they learn that it’s been worth it.

The smaller moments they’ve had, learning to be the people they’ve become, because with change we often need to learn how to deal with the changed people we’ve become.

Learning about who we’ve become and discovering all the processes that entails. From the way we handle those around us, to the need to let others know we are different and that we’ve become someone else.

Learning these things, discovering the intricate ways our brain has adapted to the changes and how we deal with these processes, that is where the real progress begins.

We progress as far as we can through change and learning, but discovery is where the major things happen.

In discovery, we find that things are better than we believed, and possibly more involved with the world than we believed as well.

Discovery leads our lives in a direction that will give us new life.

This life makes us better, stronger and more involved in who we want to be.

Being this person and knowing that we’ve worked hard to progress to that stage of our life, it gives us hope that others can change and within that hope we’ll begin to help others progress.

Discovery of self helps us be the person we were always meant to be and helps us define who we want our future self to be.

The discovery of self demystifies the world around us. Leaving us open to experience the beauty around us without thought of why it’s beautiful only knowing that it is.

A Truck, A Move and Offering Prosperity to My Family.

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The truck, its cargo area full of their life, caught gusts of wind every so often as it bounced along the freeway.

It wasn’t an escape as much as a parole or something similar.

They weren’t sure about how long things would take to get their new lives in order, they only knew that things had changed and for the better.

*

The above was what rolled through my mind this past week as we moved from our residence in Las Vegas arriving nearly 400 miles later at my mother-in-laws.

It was a move that had been coming for years, but a perfect compliment of things made the move possible and without delay, we set upon making it true.

Last summer my father-in-law became really sick and we’d come up just after the 4th to be with him, but we didn’t know how bad he was until he left us in November.

On our return trip last summer, my wife asked me a question, one which I wasn’t ready for.

“How would you feel about moving back to Utah?”

They were words I’d been waiting for, but never believed she’d say.

The job I’d had for 14 years had drained me. I’d become less of the person I wanted to be and had become a shell. The only thing that saved me last year was finding Transcendental Meditation (TM).

TM changed who I was and I became more positive about the future and where I wanted to be and with that, I knew I wanted my family to be somewhere else and with overt sexualization of women in Las Vegas I wanted my daughter to be raised somewhere better for her.

The plan was for me to find a job then move, but that isn’t how it went, because, you know, plans don’t work often.

I discovered there were those I worked with who didn’t believe that I’d leave, after all, I’d been there for 14 years and planned attempts to get out before, but this time felt different. I felt like my wife truly wanted this.

I turned in my notice at my job, something which felt amazing after working hard for a company that had stripped the staff, amenities and removed the good food we’d been served for years, giving us mostly sous vide food which was less quality than we’d had before.

Now that we’ve moved, our kids are adjusting daily, as are we, but I know there are others who want to leave, but are unable because of one reason or another.

I say to them, when the opportunity presents itself, grasp it, hold on to it. It may feel hard to leave a job, friends and relationships you’ve built, but a better life for you and your family is more important than any monetary gains you’d get by staying.

Piece of mind is the greatest gift this move has given me.

I no longer worry about what I’ll find arriving at work, or the type of drama I’ll be forced to listen to.

What is the most important thing to me, are my kids, wife and being able to do the things they need to prosper in this world.

Prosperity in their lives gives me unfathomable peace when I sleep.

Now, back to living the life I want, not the one I’m forced into.

Bri

Self Discovery, Las Vegas and New Adventures.

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It’s only after we’ve discovered who we are that we’re able to understand the trials and triumphs that led us to our current position.

When I arrived in Las Vegas nearly 17 years ago, I had no money, I’d recently been kicked out of the house by my father and stepmother and I didn’t have a job.

My big sister and her family took me in, something I can never thank them enough for. If not for them I would have been living on the street, which is something I considered when my father kicked me out of the house.

Vegas, at that time, was booming and skeletons of future hotels lined the strip. 

Jobs were abundant, but only to those who had experience in a casino related field, which I didn’t.

It was before the corporate takeover of Las Vegas, when employees were treated well and they were looked at as people and not a number on a spreadsheet.

Each year I’ve been in Vegas has brought something new.

The first year I married my wife, the second we bought our house, but children, it took us five years until we were blessed with children, but that didn’t come easily either, much like finding work now.

Our first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but nearly a year later our son was born.

His life has been filled with all the things he could want, and possibly we’ve been too liberal with buying things, but when our daughter arrived 6 years later we learned how hard parenting could be.

Born 6 weeks early and weighing 3lbs 10 oz, she lived in an incubator for the first month of her life, but unlike some preemies, she’s been healthy otherwise.

Around the time our daughter was born, our life was in shambles. The economy crashed, we lost the house we’d loved, but everything has a silver lining, or so I’m told.

The house we’ve lived in since our daughter’s birth is bigger, but with that there were other things we were unable to do.

Somewhere along the way of being a good father and husband I forget to take care of myself and stopped caring about who I was and worried more about what others thought of me. This became evident last year when I suffered a breakdown and nearly took my own life.

For the past year I’ve been working on me and because of that I’ve tried to be better as a dad and husband.

When we leave Las Vegas I know I’ve made mistakes in the last 17 years, but for the last 16 months I’ve been trying to make up for those.

My journey of discovering who I am has been ongoing  for longer than I can say, but for little over a year I’ve come to grips with where I’ve screwed up and where I’ve prospered.

I’m looking forward to discovering more about who I am and who I’ll never be again. 

I’ll miss parts of our life in Las Vegas, but it’s time to start a new journey, a new life and see where the next adventure goes. 

Brian

How Fear Drove Me From “Finishing” a Novel

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Creating a world from nothing means eventually we have to show it to someone.

How we deal with their comments and whether we understand how they’re trying to help us is all on us.

One year ago, I had my cousin go over one of my stories. It’s a novel and I love the story, but having someone critique it, well, I guess I wasn’t ready for it.

I’ve thought about that story more recently.

The red sand, dancing pictures and who each character is have come to mean something to me and after a year of stops and starts on other stories, it’s time.

Each story is different for every writer, this one left me wanting to write more. I wanted to walk with them, discuss what they were doing and hear them ask, “Why’d you abandon us?”

My only answer, “Fear, I feared going back. Putting you on a table and cutting bits and pieces from who I thought you were and the thought of changing you, well, it scared the shit out of me.”

“But, we were supposed to go places, see things?”

“It’s only temporary. I’m ready to do the work, now that the writing is done it’s time to cut in, take things away and create something worthy of how I see you.”

“Okay, if that’s what you need to do. We’re ready too.”

This conversation may or may not have happened, the point is that a story we create, characters we live with for months and people we learn to love, sometimes we have to kill our darlings.

Killing them, gutting them and distributing who they are around the story, to make it better, that’s why I write.

The hardest part of writing is the killing, gutting and making the story into a cohesive piece of work, rather than an amalgam of what we think it should be.

The story, its characters, what their role is and how each puzzle piece fits into the story, that’s the important stuff, that is what makes us finish something and send it off.

I forgot that and now that I’ve had my discussion with the story, I’m ready to do the work, clean it up and send it off.