A Fragment in time that Changed my life Forever

Author's note:  (I just wanted to share something that I wrote a little over a year ago.  I recently have been a little down and out, but then I realized how far that I have come.  My thoughts are a lot more coherent now than ever before.  This is because of all of those who have taken time to read what I have written.  If no one read what I have posted, then I would have never gone anywhere.  Thanks goes out to all that have stood by me all of this time.)  

A person’s career is one of the most important aspects in his or her life.  Choosing the right path in regards to employment can be rather hard task due to pressures from the outside world.  A closer look at the personal traits of an individual will reveal the career that is best suited for him or her.

I am a heavily introverted person and tend to be receptive of the world instead of active.  I am slow to process information while evaluating the world around me before I come to any conclusions whatsoever.  I have a constant barrage of thoughts going through my head every second of the day.  I am a very imaginative human being despite coming off as mechanical in everything that I do.  Unordinary thoughts pop into my head at times when they shouldn’t.  I used to get angry at myself for being this way.  I wanted to be like everyone else and focus on the task at hand as it is presented to me.  However, I was not meant to be this way.  My inner world will always be a lot stronger than my outer world.  My inner world will dominate me even if I am in a room with hundreds of others.  When I lose my voice within my head due to sounds from the outer world, then I get frustrated and want to leave the area.  This is because I tend to pop in and out of existence when my inner world is threatened.  Without my thoughts, I am just a corpse, and I cease to be a human being. 

Working in call center poses huge problems in regards to my personality type.  I take calls back to back with no breathing room in between.  The loud beeping gets annoying quickly each time a call comes through.  The cell phone reception these customers have is complete garbage.  The volume of the static is unbearable in a lot of cases.  This means that my inner world is taken away from me.  This means that I pop in and out of existence while on the phone with other people.  This can create confusion in my speech, and so I will have to end up restating information multiple to customers due to my inner world and outer world competing for my attention.  My mind does not know which one to pick, which results into speech that can sometimes seem nonsensical. 

Break times are also a huge deal for me within the confines of the call center.  We have two fifteen minute breaks within an eight and half hour period.  There is a half hour time slot for lunch that can be taken away if calls keep coming through at an alarming right.  In situations such as this, everybody works through lunch.  The company provides, but what is the point when no one has time to eat it?  A person can only pack so much food into his or her cheek.  Everyone is also required to work mandatory on call on weeks assigned to them.  If a person has an early schedule, then he or she could be working up to four hours extra without any extra break.  People need adhere to the schedule that is given.  There is a bit of leeway regarding the time someone’s paid break begins and ends due to how long the last call runs before that individual can use his or her break time.    Going to the bathroom twice in ten to twelve hours is not enough for anyone with a sensitive pelvic floor.  I am sure others with a standard functioning pelvic floor are suffering as well, but to a lesser degree. 

The way the call center operates with sick days is flat out ridiculous.  If a person calls out sick, then he or she has to call three different numbers.  The employee needs to call his or her supervisor, the attendance line, and the human resources department.  The human resources department should not have any say on sickness whatsoever.  I had a few issues regarding potential gingivitis and pharyngitis.  I also had a few doctor appoints and a meeting with a lawyer that I needed to be present for during the winter months of 2016.  Because the company was in the middle of high bill season, I was not allowed take off for any reason.  I used sick time in order to go to all of my appointments.  It turns out that the company no longer offers the option to use the floating holidays everyone receives on a yearly basis as sick time.  I was formally written up for being sick too often.  One of days I was sick was due to the company encouraging me to go home due to coughing up a storm for a week straight.  The reason that this issue transpired is because the departments within the company that I work for do not communicate with one another.  Every time I have called down to another department to ask a question about a process for a customer’s account, the person on the other line has no clue what needs to be done.  No one talks to one another about anything or anyone.  Once an individual moves from the call center to another department, then he or she forgets all the knowledge that was learned during his or her time taking calls.  An employee should carry knowledge from one department to another even if the knowledge learned does not relate directly to the workload that the employee will be responsible for.  What is the point of doing a job if you are not going to learn anything from doing it? 

All of these events have led me to contemplate about embarking on a new career path.  It is clear that a highly sensitive individual such as myself has no business in a call center.  This call center is for extraverted who react to situations quickly without any kind reflection.  I do not know how to smooth things over in a nice way.  I am not overly blunt with the customers that I talk to everyday, but I do not know how to say things in order to alleviate the angry emotions that the customers are experiencing.  This is because I have to stick to the “script” that I was given in training.  If I cannot interact with the public in an honest and fulfilling way, then what is the point of my job other than to appease people?  If I cannot apply the skills I have learned throughout the entire company, then how can I take my career seriously when all I am doing work to keep myself busy. 

Because of all of the hustling that I have been doing, my health has declined.  I do not eat or drink the way that I should.  My lower back arms hurt from being leaned over a desk all day.  The door to the bathroom is also ridiculously heavy, and has definitely hurt my arm.  Eight hours of sleep is not enough for a person with a dominant inner world.  I will sleep for eight hours and wake up feeling drained.  My throat is dry and scratchy all the time.  I actually was diagnosed with adult allergies.  I am not one to question doctors too often, but the diagnosis I was given was not correct.  I think my issue is that my voice and throat gets tired of yelling at people because no one understands me when I speak at a regular.  This constant yelling has caused me to have throat issues.  The lack of sleep probably contributes to my sinus problems.  Eight hours of sleep is not enough recharge my body.  The customers steal every ounce of energy that I have.  This means that I have no energy to engage in any extracurricular activities on the weekends.  The weekends are spent sleeping or listening to music in order to build up the strength for the following work week.  When I finally took a vacation, my health improved in just three days.  I no longer had pain in my back or arm.  My mental energy could be used in a productive manner.  I did not feel like I had to rest up for two days in a row just to be able to survive.  One might say that almost every person does not like his or her job.  While that may be true, not everyone has a job that impacts their well-being so much that there they cannot do anything else.  These issues go beyond not liking my job.  It is destroying my essence as a living creature.  A highly sensitive introvert like me needs a career path that meets my need to create while also allowing me time alone to recharge my energy.  Everyone has to face obstacles that go against who he or she is as a person at some point, but no one should be forced to act the opposite way to how he or she actually is every day of his or her life.  I need a career that allows me to put my best foot forward.  Anyone can do anything for a short amount of time and be fine.  For example, suppose that someone is great at working with appliances and electronics obtains a job as an editor for a publishing company.  He or she might be good at the job for a while, but his or her extraverted needs will not be met sitting inside a room at a computer not talking to people on a regular basis.  This person will eventually feel as though he or she is wasting his or her talent editing papers.  This individual would most likely feel more actualized working as a plumber instead of remaining locked in one room all day long.  Who you are will eventually catch up with you.  A person has to choose what is important to him or her.  Should a person sacrifice his or her health for financial security, or should he or she feel good about him or herself from a mental perspective and sacrifice material perks to feel healthy on the inside? 

The answer is pretty clear in my situation.  I need to leave the extraverted life of the call center in order for my health to improve.  I will have to worry about money for a while, but in the end, I will feel better about my mental state.  I will be able to be creative and feel as though I have enough energy to finish things to completion.  There will be some tough times ahead, but I have weathered through the employment storm before, and I can do it again.  I need to find my purpose in life.  The universe is not going to put me through sixteen surgeries and a gender transformation just so I can sit inside of a call center and not be able to interact with others as an authentic human being.      

The Challenge that is Forgiveness

Everyone goes through tough situations in their lives.  During these trying times, a person can be in a relationship with someone else that is not fulfilling whatsoever.  The relationship continues to exist because both parties feel that they need one another for a specific reason.  Neither party will realize that he or she could have existed without the other until a major event drives them apart.  I had this type of relationship with my father.

The relationship my father and I shared was based mostly around material goods.  I have a condition known as Cerebral Palsy.  This makes it difficult for me to traverse any kind of incline.  At the time, I thought I was unable to obtain my own place.  I worked ten to twelve hours a day at my call center job.  I remained ignorant to every other aspect of my life.  I did not really notice my father’s health like I should have.  I was too busy trying to climb the corporate ladder to really focus on my father’s health.  He took thirteen pills twice a day.  Most of the pills were for difficulties with the heart.  My father had quadruple bypass surgery in May of 2004.  He wanted to get fried chicken his first day home from the hospital.

I did not do a lot at home.  The house was always a mess because my father never put anything away.  I was too drained from arguing with people about their bills to even give a crap.  I did clean my father’s messes up quite a few times, but then I got tired of it.  He used to yell at me for taking out the trash because it was “easier” for him to do it.  The only problem is that my father never did it.  The trash bins would overflow, and he would let everything sit.

My father became a bump on a log outside of driving me back and forth to work every day.  He would just sit on the couch and watch TV without moving.  His fingers on one hand had turned brown due to lack of bathing.  I told him to go wash his hands while we were at a local diner.  He dunked his hands in a cup of water a couple times and said “there, I washed my hands.”  My father then laughed about as if it was funny that he was so disgusting.  I wanted to punch my father in face so bad that day.  I could not take it anymore.  He had not taken a shower in months.  I am surprised my father made it as long as he did.  If that were me, I would have died a long time ago. 

 The day before my father went to the hospital, I told him that it was his choice whether or not he wanted to live or die.  He went to his primary doctor the next day, and the doctor told him to go to the hospital.  I got out of work around 5:30 P.M.  I waited for an hour for my father to pick me up.  I eventually decided to take a taxi home.  When I got to the house, I did not see the HHR in the driveway.  I did not know what had happened.  I waited around for a few hours until it got dark.  I called my supervisor on the phone, and he told me to call the police.  The police came and took down all the information for my father.  They even went to the local diner to look for him.  The police did not get anywhere and decided to call around to local hospitals.  My father was found at Northwest Hospital in Randallstown.  It turned out that he told the head nurse not to tell anyone where he was located.   This kind of thinking made no sense.

After my father passed away, I found out that he canceled his death benefits with Verizon.  In other words, there was no money to pay off the loans that my father borrowed against the house after the original mortgage was all squared away.  Who would actually do that though?  Why couldn’t my father just tell me that he did not have the money to send me to college?  I could have studied philosophy on my own if I was still interested in the subject matter.  I knew that there were loans against the house, but I did not realize that the benefits policy was canceled.  My father and I got into a fight one time, and he threatened to cancel out the policy, but I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to actually do it.

It has been almost ten months since my father went to the hospital. I will never understand why my father could not trust me enough to tell me the truth.  Then again, it is not as if I made a serious effort to know certain things when he was alive.  I was too absorbed the hive mindset from my job to even think about my own personal needs let alone someone else’s.  I work on letting the past go every day.  Some days are more difficult than others.  I will eventually forgive my father completely.  I will also never forget the lessons I learned from the relationship that I had with him.      

         

The Inspiration for Living an Authentic Life

A person can feel intuitive about particular events that are coming up in his or her lives.  The outing itself might seem small and insignificant at first, but then the message becomes quite clear further down the road.  One might leave with something different than what he or she came for to begin with.   

I was out at an expo for disabilities last Saturday. I heard that the expo was going to have free wheelchair repair, so I naturally assumed that it would have walker repair as well. I took my rollator walker because it functions a little bit better than the other one I use on a regular basis. My mother in law drove me to the expo and dropped me off.  I arrived at the location two hours early and waited for the event to begin. The technician in charge of the repairs came over to me and asked if I needed any work done on my rollator. I did not seek the individual out whatsoever. His station was all the away on the other side of the room. 

I decided to listen to the band that was playing in the arts area of the expo. I had to use the bathroom. When I was done washing my hands and reached for the handle of the door to the exit, I suddenly pulled back and went to the side. Just as reached the wall someone else came inside the bathroom. There is no way I could have heard her coming because of the loud music.  I would have gotten hit by the door if I had not moved out of the way.   

I went over to the independent living booth later that day and asked about housing. I was turned away because the booth did not have anything of value. I got a few pamphlets with a list of organizations, but I already spoke to most of them in the past.  They all turned me away because I made too much money. 

I decided to walk the rest of the expo floor to see what else was there.  There was a booth there that had a picture of angels.  It was probably a church of some kind.  I then saw an angel on the back of some person’s shirt.  I did not see any writing to go along with the picture.  I took this as a sign that I was supposed to be at the expo after all.   

I was going to leave the expo after I finished resting up from walking the floor.  Something in my head told me to stick around to see what else would pop up. Quite a few people on the autism spectrum put on some performance later that day. There was a keyboardist that mastered a song by ear. Someone else was able to sing quite well. There was also some kind of act revolving around exercise. I took this as inspiration for me to start playing an instrument again. I began playing the guitar back in October of 2015. I stopped playing when I started getting sick a lot. 

I saw the organizer in charge of the all the artistic talent at the expo.  I went over and let her read my blog post about seeing a disability as a gift instead of an obstacle.  I did not have an extra copy to give her, so she copied it with her phone.  I wish I would have had a card with my information on it to give out.  The woman gave me a card with her information on the back of it, and then I went to my seat to finish watching the show.

I might not have found what I was looking for when I came to the expo, but I left with something even more valuable.  I left the event more inspired than ever before.  Those who were “worse” off than I was built a career based around their talents, so why could not I do the same thing?  It will take a while, but I could definitely make a career out of my gifts to the world.  The people at the expo did it, and they are fine.  I can do the same thing with my talents.  All I need to do is put myself out there and see what happens.  I know what type of life that I want to live.  Now I have to build it piece by piece.              

Learning how to show Compassion

The world can sometimes be a very scary place to be.  A good part of the population is still stuck in survival mode, and this can lead to circumstances that would be very unpleasant to deal with.  On the other side of the coin, compassion is something that a lot of people seem to have forgotten about.  I also forgot about compassion as well during last night’s conference regarding getting a name or gender marker altered. 

The conference started inside a small room within the Chase Brexton healthcare facility in Baltimore City.  A person by the name of Monica stated that she does not trust any medical institution.  She thought that the medical was talking about her when she was unconscious from anesthesia.  Another individual who identified as a trans man told his story about working a job in the medical field.  He made sure that the doctors gendered people correctly.  A non-trans female lawyer also explained that she was at the conference in order to obtain information to serve her clients more efficiently.  Monica decided to start arguments with both lawyer, and the trans man.  She asked them both what they are doing here.  The lawyer explained once more that she was there to gather information to help her clients.  Monica did not like this answer.  She felt as though she was being observed and did not feel that was equal to the lawyer.  Monica also had an issue with the story the trans man gave regarding his experience in the working world.  In other words, the only thing Monica would have accepted for a legitimate answer would have been someone saying that he or she was at the conference to help takes steps to get his or her name or gender changed.  Back stories did not matter to this woman. 

I began to lose my cool on the inside as Monica berated these two individuals over and over about why there were at the conference in the first place.  I wished the host of the conference would have stood up and told Monica to stop, but she just sat there instead.  I could have voiced my opinion, but I did not want to add insult to injury.   The host probably thought the same thing. 

After the arguments were over, the conversation then turned to gender identification on medical forms that one receives in the waiting room of an office.  People were complaining about forms stating “female” and “trans female” instead of “cis female” and “trans female.  Certain people felt that this was an injustice to the transgender population.  One person thought that the different boxes on the forms forced people to indicate how they perceive their bodies.  It just amazed me that no one brought up the fact that transition is more of an internal movement than an external one.  No one talked about what they learned from transition so far.  It was always about others people’s perception of who they were.  Transition is about the journey to express one’s inner nature.  I felt like I did not belong at this conference.

After the conference was over, I went to the diner in my neighborhood to try to raise my spirit.  This helped a little bit, but it took about five more hours before I was able to get the whole incident out of my head.  I did not sleep at all during the night.

 

I thought the whole conference was about helping others with changing one’s name or gender marker.  I came to the meeting to tell my story about changing both of these things.  I hoped to inspire others with my words, but this did not happen.  I was the one who was taught something in the end.  I did not see the conference this way immediately after it was over.  The universe was teaching me how to have compassion for others who were less fortunate than I was.  If someone told me three years ago that transition was a journey from the inside out, I probably would not have paid attention to a word that this person was saying.  I too was stuck on physical and vocal changes for a long time, and I would not have been able to see the bigger picture.  I have to remember that I was once where some the people at the conference are now.  I wish I would have had this in mind before I went to the conference. 

The reason that I had no knowledge of being taught a lesson was because I absorbed the negative energy that Monica was sending out.  I let her rampage on two other people affect my mood.  This in turn lowered my vibration.  I began to think solely of my needs just as she was doing.  This is why I was not able to see what was really going on in the conference.  Monica controlled everything, and no one did anything to stop it.  This includes me as well.  If I would have stood up to her and changed the topic, then I might have been able to raise the vibration of the rest of the room.  I was somewhat of being physically assaulted, so I did not say anything.  I had an opportunity to change things for the better, but I decided to give into fear instead. 

Now that I realize that I actually do absorb the energy of others, I can then take more constructive measures to protect myself in the future.  I now know how to handle myself in an environment where low vibrations are dominant.  I also understand that I need to show more compassion to those who cannot see the good in the world.  I need to remember that I was not always as optimistic about my life when I was younger.  I was able to pick up on Monica’s vibration right after she opened her mouth.  I should have showed compassion towards her from the start.  I guess the night was not a complete waste.  I might have failed to inspire others, but I learned something about myself in the process.