I​ remember the days when I was doing tattoos, people would generally ask which tattoo hurts the most. I do not remember what tattoo artist I quote or where he got the response he used, but I used it too. The tattoo that hurts the most is always the one you are currently getting done. I would get this look and most would ask which part of the body hurts the most. I could describe where I imagine would hurt the most, like eyelids, forehead, or a bone. But it is all on the eye of the beholder. I still believe that the tattoo that you are currently getting hurts the most. It is why you could hear someone say “I don’t remember it hurting this bad last time.”

L​ife in general is like this, I think. Our current circumstances seem to be the worst we been through, ever. Or this is harder than the other times that…. For me personally, I do not think that anything I go through could be harder than anything I have already been through in my life. I have fought to stay alive more than once. At sixteen I was stabbed four times and was unable to go far on my own, even to the restroom. In my early twenties I spent three months in jail and had numerous tasks I had to accomplish, in order to maintain my freedom.

F​ighting for my life and for my freedom. I don’t think that anything I go through could be tougher than that for me. But I have been so behind for the last year and a half maybe, trying to catch up to bills, debts and deeds that I need to accomplish. Even when I get far ahead, I am still far behind it seems. It has felt like that most of my life, when I look back on it. At 19 I had a new car, my own condo, good job, nested income, an airbrush business and more. It only took three months in jail for me to lose it all. It was the first time that I really had to start over from scratch.

A​ year after starting from scratch, my daughter was born. A year after that, my ex wife decided she wanted to leave us. I started raising my daughter on my own since she was one year old. I cannot count how many ups and downs I have had, trying to do so many things on my own. It is not that I wanted to, I was expected to do everything alone, and with my criminal history, family members did not see me as someone they wanted around, so it seemed.

H​ere I am again facing adversity and dealing with issues that began about a year and a half ago. Some problems are about two and a half years old now. Slowly I have been completing tasks lefft and right, but it still seems that I am caught up trying to finalize some old ass problems, issues or tasks. Every day I am still in some kind of danger of something happening if I do not take action soon. For instance, I am running out of time before my driver’s license expires. I did try to order a new one online, but it did not work that day I tried. Many things have happened since, and I have not tended to that issue. I am close to the day it will be expired now, and I currently do not have a car, so I am pondering how high in my to do list should I put that task.

I​ actually feel like life bounces like a tv show in my perception lately. In the morning I wake up and something new happens that will need to be resolved. By the end of the night, there is at least a satisfactory of the conclusion and that positive thought that tomorrow is another day. Some days are tougher than others. But it always seems to be an adventure for me, whether it is a task I percieve as bad or one I percieve as good. At the end of the day, another cliche, I am content with my life and very happy that I have many different experiences. Being stuck in one job, and thinking it will be the one job I will do for the rest of my life, just to pay bills and give everything I make to someone else, gives me a sense of being locked up still. It blows my mind hearing someone say “what you gonna do, we live to work and pay bills.” Due to the nature of the world we live in, I agree that we do have to make money to pay bills and take care of debts needed to be paid. But I also think that I neeed to learn as much as I can, in order to be prepared for anything. If all I know is how to do Computer Aided Drafting, which is what I recieved my Associates degree in after getting out of high school, then there wouldn’t be much I knew how to do.

I​ have elected to try new jobs, new ideas, new businesses and concepts of making money. I welcome a challenge or a task I have not done before. I prefer doing art pieces that I have not done before, than to copy a piece of art that I have done before. I like to personalize the art I create for a client, so I like to try to figure out what it is that the client is envisioning when requesting artwork from me. There are some people who do not have much imagination, and would much rather pick the art they want done than to give it thought to how they would really like. Befofe I get too deep into another topic, the point is that I like trying new things.

S​ometimes I learn something new and do not need to use that new idea or thought till a much later time. Many times, I have gone through a whole cycle, only to end up with what I started with and look at it from a new perspective. It has helped me writing this today, because earlier in the day I was trying not to lose it, after accidentally cutting a line that was for our central home a/c. The parts that I needed in order to fix it are somewhere in the mess I have around the house, since everything is being shuffled around and not where I would ordinary have it at. I went walking to the stores nearby and none had the parts I needed. I could not believe I had done something so careless. I kept kicking myself, since it was taking more than thirty minutes to fix this situation, and I am losing precious time fixing this instead of one of the tasks I had set myself to accomplish this morning. “Why does this have to happen today?” I kept asking myself. Eventually I figured out how to do quick fix and get a/c for everyone here in the house again. It was not that bad, but at the moment it was the worst situation I had gotten myself in and I was trying not to lose it. Silly me.