What goes on in the mind of one such as me? Sometimes if you feel you’re in a big rut and can’t see the top to crawl out or even begin to know where you should start to climb. I’d like to share what I’m feeling and thinking and see if anyone else out there can relate. And if you can’t relate I’m sure you know somebody that battles depression or anxiety. These are medical terms to put labels on those of us that seem to feel a little more deeply than the average person.

Life for the depressed is like a roller coaster. Up’s and down’s every day. And the same track laid out in front of you that you follow without much thought. As I sit here writing this right now I’m in a highly emotional pattern from events around me.

I’ve not been feeling 100% healthy in the past weeks. I get bruises on my body although I never remember having physical contact with anything that could cause a blunt force trauma enough to make a bruise. I was supposed to go out on a 24 hour long route at work and really felt too ill to be able to do the route. I now have a job that apparently is extremely hard to cover if you call out. But then again it seems like it’s been this way my entire life regardless of the job. If you call out sick it seems you’re belittled and made to feel guilty. I think most people just let things like that bounce off of them like water on duck feathers. I’m not one of those people. I take it personally and let my emotions get the best of me.

I deliver food to restaurants while driving a semi truck at times long distances with alot of physical labor involved. I have to hand pick up an average of 20,000 lbs of food, stack it on hand carts as heavy as I can take. (more trips mean more time delivering.) I take food from a compartment on the truck set to 0 degrees and run it into kitchen walk in freezers and coolers. I’m in and out of extreme temperatures dozens of times a day.

So let me ask you; When you go to a restaurant, are you concerned with how the food the kitchen is preparing is being maintained? Would you want somebody with a flu, touching the boxes you’re food is contained in? Would you want to be cooped up in an 8 foot room (or semi truck) with someone with a flu for 24 hours? Not many would. I was made to feel so guilty for calling out just 3 hours from my scheduled departure time. I woke up feeling bad and thought I’d be able to sleep it off but woke up about 3 hours before I was supposed to report and felt even worse. My eyes are burning from what feels like a fever. My muscles are sore from top to bottom and anything that touches my skin has a slight pain feeling.

This call off was not received lightly and I promptly had my job threatened because of it. Now here’s where I have problems with my emotions. I feel enough guilt from not being able to do my job the best I can but now I have to have my livelihood threatened too? I get pretty angry thinking about it. But I’ve made a pact with myself not to let anger and hatred control my actions. It’s the bad karma thing that this blog is about. I invite much of my own suffering.

Here is why I’m writing this entry. I want to be able to look at this later on and remember the decision making I need to adjust and stop bad karma from it’s endless cycle on me.

My first emotion is anger and the thought of “Someone needs to take this manager down a notch.”  There are many people that would take that initial thought right there and run with it. I know it’s hard for me NOT to but I’ve got this voice in my head (and that of my wife) telling me this is not the best course of action. So now I have 2 different voices in my head battling each other over who’s will needs to be acted upon. I’ve been reading alot about tuning in to your higher consciousness. I know it’s the quieter voice in my head at the moment so it’s harder to listen to. But when I stop and feel within myself (through light meditation) I can literally “feel” that this voice is of benevolence. I’ve let the angry voice control me so much of my life that I really have to try hard to feel what the other voice is telling me.

The angry voice make me feel like this: I feel my heart rate quickening as my anger starts welling up. The voice tells me I need to respond to this guy with fierce words and strong dialogue. I need to prove my point to this guy and show him his passive aggressive responses will have consequences. The scene starts unfolding in my mind of how I’m going to pick up the phone and speak my mind. And my mind is filled with vulgar language and strong angry emotion. I’ve used this strong angry emotion several times in my life to thwart aggression or other action against me. And looking back it’s always been effective to stop what I’m trying to stop but it doesn’t actually “stop” it. Much of the time in just stalls it. The thought that tells me this, is coming from the quieter voice I was talking about. Reacting to this aggressive impulses I’m having may feed the need to be combative but it won’t stop the inevitable from happening and will most likely cause a bigger problem down the road.

Now I’ll try to channel the quite voice. I feel it’s telling me to do what I’m doing now. Write down my thoughts and emotions and read them back later to “remember” my higher judgement will bring good karma to me. Most of heard of the sayings. “You get what you give. Or Whatever you put out into the universe, the universe will bring back”  I know in my heart of hearts that I don’t want to be a truck driver the rest of my life. I deeply want to make a difference to some or many and in a good way. My deepest wish is to give someone such a good feeling about themselves or the world that they just feel compelled to say “thank you.” The feeling of helping someone is the best feeling in the world. Which to me sounds selfish. I like helping others to make myself feel good. 

So how am I going to move forward with my job tomorrow? First off I’m going to go see a doctor as I have a feeling I’ve got some kind of health thing going on inside me. Something just feels out of place. If I lose this job than I’m sure that it isn’t what is meant for me to do. I’ve been asking the universe to help me achieve my soul’s desire to write. As of now the desire to do it is there, but not the money to live. Next I’m just going to treat each day at work like it’s my last. I have a strong work ethic. I want to do the best I can every day. I take pride in doing a job well. But if I’m not performing it as good as the others than I know I’m on the wrong path. As long as I know this there is really not much to gain by trying to convince anyone else this is how I feel. I’m not going to go to management and try to defend myself. Wow…that sentence I just wrote stopped and made me think.

I have alot of regret for not speaking up for myself all these years. I’ve taken alot of shit from other people because I don’t like to have confrontations. I see I’m going to meditate on this some more as long as my body lets me. The medicine is wearing off and the pain is coming back. Let’s just see what my mind tells me what to do later.