Category: Random Thoughts

From Warrior to Citizen: Why leaving the Military (ETS) Has Been One of the Most Difficult Decisions of My Life

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, life, military, peace, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

Leaving the military has been by far the most difficult decision I have ever made and I never really sat down to try and understood the real reason why it was so difficult until now.

For those of you who may or may not know, back in 2006, I had just turned 19 when I joined because I was flunking pretty much every single one of my college classes. The military became a “scapegoat” of sorts so I wouldn’t have to deal with the cruel, harsh realities of the real word such as studying (yuck) or growing up (booo!).

What I never thought was that after 11 years of service, and finally deciding it was time to move on, that it would be the most painfully difficult decision of my life.

I have been extremely vocal throughout my military career about the “best”and “worst”parts of my career choice, however I never really considered why it was so painful for me, as an individual. So much so that I wrote about some valuable lessons I learned during my military career which you can read about here.

My mother passed away of complications due to cervical cancer on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007. The last time I saw her I was in my Class-A’s (at the time we wore the Army Green’s) after graduating from Basic Training, the approximate date would be right around mid March 2007. This would be the last time I would ever see my mother before she passed away.

I had already made peace with every other part of leaving the military but the real reason it hurt so much was because it was the last thing I had left in my life that reminded me of my youth, most importantly, the last moments of a life that included my mother. The last embrace, hug, kiss, comforting words that I ever gave to her were whilst wearing my Army Green’s and that to me is something that I took so seriously for so many years.

Deciding to finally take off my Army uniform for good means having the courage of letting go of these beautifully painful memories and it was something that I was not ready to do for so long. Perhaps this is the most difficult decision I have ever made because of my fear of letting go and forgetting everything she has ever meant to me.

I promise you this, Sandra I. Lopez Castro (my mothers full name), I will never forget what you meant to me or my siblings. You were the light that filled my life with inspiration, you were the voice that whispered into my ear when I was about to give up over a million times and convinced me that I was way more than I ever imagined.

I will never forget your ever lasting love and I promise you, that I do not need a uniform to remind me of you and the grace you have placed upon me and all of my brothers and sisters. I love you more than you will ever know and that’s what hurts the most…

Written by: Del Rivers

Forgetten Poem of the Day: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, life, poetry, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -William Butler Yeats

Quote of the Day: Roman Payne, Hope and Despair

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, life, peace, poetry, Random Thoughts, UncategorizedLeave a comment

“It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains… If only one could leave this life slowly!”

-Roman Payne, Hope and Despair

Forgotten Film of the Day: Vanilla Sky

On By trustmeimnotadrIn film, Food for Thought, life, poetry, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

“I’ll find you again”, “How will I know it’s you?”, “The way someone looks at you, the way the wind blows in a cool summer day, a laugh you hear somewhere, you’ll remember a feeling…and that will be me…”

“What is happiness to you?”, a question that resonates continuously through this beautiful love story told through the mind of David Aames (Tom Cruise), the young and attractive millionaire who has everything in life going for him. The film is told in retrospect with David being in prison for the murder of someone who has not yet been disclosed. Back in the past, the love story begins when at a party he hosts, he meets Sofia (Penelope Cruz) who he immediately becomes infatuated with and the 2 share a great night together just enjoying each others company. The following morning, his scorned sex partner, Julie (Cameron Diaz) lures him into her car and attempts to commit a lovers suicide by driving off a bridge resulting in her death and his horrible disfigurement.

Upon his recovery he is having trouble readjusting to his new looks, in particular his scarred face, and decides to wallow in self pity. One day he decides to look for Sofia at her workplace and asks her to let him take her out, she agrees. That night, they meet at a nearby nightclub where they have a terrible time mostly due to David’s drunkenness and pitiful behavior. When the night is over she walks to her apartment and he passes out on the sidewalk only to be awaken the following morning by Sofia who tells him that she is willing to give him a chance and admits that although she loved his previous looks she mostly does not want to forget who he was on the inside. Shortly after the two begin dating a plastic surgeon contacts him and tells him of a revolutionary procedure that can fix his face to which David agrees to have done. He successfully recovers from his surgery and continues his relationship with Sofia. The two share one of the most beautiful and intense relationships Hollywood has ever graced us with until one day David begins to see Sofia as Julie. In a fit of anger and convinced that Julie was dead and that she was not Sofia he kills her by smothering her with a pillow only to find that it was indeed Sofia who he had killed and this is what had landed him in prison.

After a series of events it is revealed to him that in reality he is in a cryogenic frozen state and what was supposed to be a lucid dream turned into a nightmare due to a glitch. In other words, everything that happened after the nightclub outing was not reality but a dream created by elements of his subconscious. The most vivid part of his dream was his intense relationship with Sofia, a woman whom he had only met once in reality but was the only person to ever make him feel that love did indeed exist.

The film is a very close adaptation of Alejandro Amenabar’s “Abre los Ojos” and also stars Penelope Cruz as it’s predecessor did. What makes the story feel so beautiful yet heart breaking at the same time is the way the film captivates you emotionally, dragging you into their near perfect relationship and then tears you apart when you find out that it never happened. That this love story was not real.

The movie touches on many themes and there’s a slew of interpretations out there but to me it signifies something much more basic, our own lives; paths taken and not taken, impending crossroads with decisions that will mend our lives in ways that you cannot imagine and our subconscious showing us our deepest desires and the way things could have been through our dreams and imagination.

We can sit here and debate what’s real and what isn’t for the rest of our lives because reality is a relative concept. If something so beautiful and powerful as a kiss, a hug, a whisper, the sweet scent of that special someone’s perfume feels realer than the air you breathe, who am I to take that from you? As one of my favorite quotes from the movie says, “Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around”. Vanilla Sky tells one of the most beautiful love stories of all time that never happened.

Written by: Del Rivers

Six Degrees of Separation…Perhaps?

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, life, peace, Random Thoughts, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Another day has gone by; another story to be told has been written. As I sit drinking my coffee at the nearby café, I can’t help but look at everyone around me and think how we all have our own stories, our own memories, our own problems, our own daily dilemmas and issues.  To think that I got it easy compared to other people makes me feel somewhat blessed but it also leads me to think about how things happen and how we are all linked in some way or another.

The guy that is sitting in the table next to me at this very moment, scrolling aimlessly through his laptop, quite possibly might have ten times more problems than I do and to be honest  I might never know. Although it does get me to think; could someone that knows him, know someone that knows me and could said person be what causes him some of his problems? Crazy to think how it really is a small world. With all of its vast oceans and continents we still  can’t escape the lingering fact that we are all connected in some way. I remember a song by a band I loved in my college years that  said “Seeing all those people on the ground, wasting their time.” Looking back now I find that song very interesting because a lot of people are literally wasting away their lives and weathering away in the tunnels of time. Funny how there are billions of people on this planet and we don’t even know 1/1,000,000th of them all and even funnier is that we may all be somehow connected. Perhaps it’s time I get up and introduce myself…

Written by: Del Rivers

The Pajama Chronicles: Why Working From Home Sucks More Than You Think!

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, Long Reads, Random Thoughts, successLeave a comment

Now before all you “regular worker bees” go and grab your pitchforks and get the lynch mob ready to exact some “vigilante justice” let’s get something straight: working from home is pretty great and has many advantages and perks. There, I said it! Sure you get to rock your Batman pajamas all day (not that anyone would do that…) and theoretically get to pretty much do whatever you want and you don’t have that nosey co-worker who sits in the cube next to yours listening in to everything you say and do just so he/she can go tell everyone about how all you do is crack jokes all day while he/she is actually getting his/her work done and how unfair it is and blah blah blah! BUT, despite all of the good things that come with working from home, they’re quite a few downsides that only the 2.5% (latest statistics from globalworkplaceanalytics.com) of us who actually DO work from home understand and the other 97.5% don’t even know about or shrug off. So before you decide to break your bosses door down and demand that he/she let you telework before you go apeshit and burn his/her house down read on to learn why working from home actually does suck more than you think:

  1. Getting into a routine becomes an IMF (Impossible Mission Force) Task: The most difficult thing to accomplish whilst working from home is getting into a routine because, let’s face it, you no longer have a strict order you need to follow. Most home jobs are pretty flexible (most times) and if you lack discipline you’ll find yourself struggling. Let’s say you you start your work day at 8:30am and have a 20 minute commute; that means you would need to be up by 7:00am at the latest to have time to kickstart your day. You get up, brush your teeth, shower, get dressed, have some breakfast, grab a cup of coffee and jump into your car to beat the traffic. It’s this kind of routine that helps you maintain order and productivity and doesn’t vary much from day to day. When you work from home you can lose a routine very easily and become, for lack of a better term, extremely lazy. It’s very easy to just get up 5 minutes before work and then just do everything in between phone meetings which in turn leads to a severe loss in productivity and lack of motivation. If you’re trying to work from home with the intention of doing the aforementioned “waking up 5 minutes before work” I suggest you don’t even consider it or you’ll find yourself looking for a new job in no time (which we’ll discuss why below on number 4).
  2. Your social skills/life go down to about 0.017%: It’s a glorious Monday morning and the clock just hit 8:30am as you’re walking into your cube; as soon as your workstation comes up and you check your email you’re off to the break room to grab a fresh cup of coffee and shoot the shit with whoever is there about how the weekend went and how you’re all excited about this years Christmas bonus and what you’re going to do with it. This may sound extremely dumb but as soon as you start working from home these tiny interactions that help keep you sane throughout the day no longer exist. Your cube becomes a home office (which is really just a fancy way of saying “some empty room in your house that served no purpose until now”), the break room is now your kitchen, and the only ones who care about your weekend are the Lego’s you’ve placed on your desk to help simulate some form of humanity. Everyone, no matter how anti-social you may think you are, needs human interaction and this is something you will loose almost in its entirety once you begin to work from home full-time.
  3. Nobody understands that you are ACTUALLY working: This has got to be BY FAR the most annoying part of working from home. Everyone including brothers, sisters, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, friends, your dog, that dude you met one time at the taco stand, literally EVERYONE will all of the sudden count on you to help them out with shit because according to them “no one actually works from home they just collect paychecks for sitting around playing Xbox all day”. Your “honey-do” list will go from 3-4 items to about 1,345,897 since you now have all of this “free time”; everyone suddenly has 1,500 errands they haven’t been able to take care of because they don’t have the time but hey, you “work” from home right? You’ve got all the time in the Universe and then some! Flash? Fuck Flash! Who needs to be the fastest man in the world when you have time on your side and according to everyone, way too much of it! I know this may be hard for a lot of you who work in an actual building or establishment to understand but YES we do actually have to work to get paid just like hmmm…. you! Working from home just eliminates the need to have to dress up in the mornings but other than that we do still have to attend phone meetings, finish projects, and pretty much all the shit you have to do at your cubicle except at twice the speed because…
  4. You have to work twice as hard to justify your job: Although this is something that with time and proven work ethics begins to go down a bit it is still a notable nuisance especially for the first year or so of your “at home” job. At most jobs, letting you work from home or offering you a position which allows you to tele-work requires building some trust and establishing yourself as a tried and true reliable and knowledgable asset to the institution or company you work for. It is EXTREMELY rare to just land a job that lets you work remotely from day one. With that being said, once you are granted the “privilege” of working from home you will be expected to have the ability to take on twice as many projects and be able to complete them in half the time because hey, you work from home so you got nothing but free time anyways right? Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if working from home eventually turns you into a TARDIS wielding TimeLord that can bend time to his/her will! Remember that meeting you normally skip because you’re slammed with work and your attending that meeting is really just pointless? Yea, expect to never be able to skip those ever again no matter how swamped you are. Got a project due tomorrow but woke up feeling like shit and need to take the day to go to the doctor? Yea, how about you take your laptop with you to the hospital because hey, you work remotely anyways right? Things like being over worked, sick, victim of an earthquake, etc. all become things of the past and excuses to everyone around you. You are now expected to perform no matter the circumstances because you have all your work with you which also leads me to my next point which is…
  5. You no longer have regular office hours: At a “normal” job you’d have pretty standard hours such as 8:30am-5:00pm; they’ll occasionally vary due to work requirements and such but for the most part they’re non-variable. Not anymore! So your boss needs someone to overlook an overnight data migration? Have no fear, “work-from-home-dude” can take care of it! I’m sure that since he works from home he has nothing better to do anyways! Someone is falling behind on their projects and they need someone to wrap it up because it’s due tomorrow? No problem, just shoot it over to “work-from-home-dude” and go home knowing that someone else will do your shit for you, besides I’m sure he has nothing better to do because he works from home anyways, the way I see it we just did him a favor by giving him something to do! All jokes aside now, say goodbye to having a regular schedule. Anytime a project needs some extra or irregular hours to complete you will be the first choice; you’ll quickly find yourself working 50+ hour weeks with sometimes weekend work tucked in between! Oh, and by the way, most (not all) “work from home” jobs are fixed salaried so guess what? You cap at getting paid for up to 40 hours a week, anything more and you’re working for free. But hey, you work from home so that shouldn’t be an issue right?
  6. You have no Sanctuary to retreat to: It’s finally 4:55pm and you start sending out the last bit of emails and reports before heading out for the day. You start getting your things together slowly to kill the last 5 minutes at work and before you know it’s 5:00pm and you’re home free! You rush to your car before anyone stops you to ask for a favor and get home by 5:30pm. Finally, time to kick up your feet and grab a nice glass of scotch while sitting in your living room couch listening to some Chris Botti and relax after a long day at the office. Doesn’t that just sound amazing? Oh wait, you work from home so that sacred sanctuary of Zen and relaxation is now also your fucking office so guess what? You never get to leave work! As stupid as this may sound, it is very difficult to separate your work from your personal life when they are two and the same. When you work in an office or any establishment you look forward to that time when you can finally leave and retreat to your home BUT when you work from home you’re stuck at the same exact place where you worked and it becomes very hard to differentiate the two. Your home will no longer be where you can retreat to relax because it looks exactly like where you work at! Hmmm, how can we get around this? Oh, I got an idea, let’s leave the house! Let’s call your buddy Erick up, I’m sure he would love to go out and grab a beer with you since I’m sure he’s had a long day at work too! Oh wait, Erick is tired and tells you that he just wants to go home. The very place you are trying to leave because you’ve been cooped up all week is where he wants to go! And here is the grim reality of it all, EVERYONE IS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE FENCE THAN YOU ARE!!! What does that mean? That you are the only person you know that wants to get out of the house to relax whereas everyone else wants to get home TO relax! So now after a long week of being at work, guess what? You now get to keep staring at the same fucking walls you’ve been staring at all week! Doesn’t that just sound amazingly relaxing?!

Written by: Del Rivers

Be Grateful For Every Breath You Take: A Story About ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

On By trustmeimnotadrIn Food for Thought, humor, life, Random ThoughtsLeave a comment

As some of you may already know, just a few weeks ago  (August 29th, 2015) marked the 10 year anniversary of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina that caused massive damage to the coastal city of New Orleans, Louisiana here in the United States. Hundreds of people, including celebrities, came together to share stories and anecdotes of their life experiences both before and after the powerful storm transformed the city forever. One of the stories that really drew my attention was that of ex pro-football player Michael “Steve” Gleason.

Gleason was a professional football player for the New Orleans Saints who at the age of 34 was diagnosed with a super rare disease referred to as ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In a nutshell ALS is a degenerative illness which slowly causes you to lose voluntary movement. From the ability to walk and talk and speak all the way thru to your ability to eat and breathe. He came to the peak of his career n 2006, just a bit over a year after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and gave the devastated and demoralized city hope by blocking a punt from the opposing team. This in turn lead to the first score in the Saints first game in New Orleans in nearly 21 months due to hurricane Katrina having devastated both the city and the morale of the team. Unfortunately his heightened career ended when he was diagnosed with ALS in 2011; right around the same time him and his wife were trying have a child. Despite his everyday battle with ALS and being confined to a wheelchair, Gleason’s spirits are high and his optimism and passion for life have all but been lost in the midst of his struggle with a widely misunderstood disease.

Imagine wrapping your arms around your significant other and feeling the warmth of there skin tightly pressed against yours, imagine walking down the beach and feeling the cool wet sand beneath your feet, imagine driving down the highway with the windows down and the warm summer wind caressing your face, imagine eating your favorite slice of chocolate cake and savoring it within every corner of your mouth. Now imagine what it would be like if no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t wrap your arms around the one you love, imagine not being able to walk down the beach because your legs won’t move, imagine not being able to place your hands on a steering wheel because your arms refuse to respond, imagine not being able to enjoy your favorite chocolate cake because you cannot chew. Imagine that one day, everything you normally do, everything you take for granted, all become things that you will never be able to do again.

If you haven’t been grateful for anything in a long time I implore you to walk outside and while you take a breath of air and feel the warmth of the early morning sun on your face you can at least be grateful for the fact that you were able to step out that door on your own two legs and live to see another day. As Carlos Mencia once said, “What makes life beautiful is the essence of the fact that it can go away”.

Written by: Del Rivers