It’s so lonely over there without you. I’ve prepared the site and it’s going to take us all the way baby. I just wish that you were alive, or I mean animated, doing spirals in the ice around my soul, tap dancing to old B&W movies and crunching popcorn like Bobbleheads. What am I saying!?
Come over and see what I’m doing WordPress. There’s a place for you as well, under “Promote Your Website”. Take care. http://www.homeprofitstream.com
And, my Green Energy site: http://www.solarpowerprofit.com
The tide was low one day and I memorized how many naked footprints I left behind as I walked out into the water. There was nobody except for gawking seagulls, pulling apart a clam. It reminded me of humanity, ripping apart the competition.
My body is now half submerged in the water. I almost forgot that clothes wrapped around me. I guess it had been a long day, a long year, how many lives do cats burn through? I stared forward and contemplated enough to realize I was fucked. People had left me behind and ex-lovers created families without me.
It’s dead silent, except for the large freighter slugging through the water, the rumbling motor many fathoms below the sea, the large propellers churning blue into white, churning effervescent bubbles towards the surface. This is a cycle I suppose. Life moves slower than the particles that form the objects we comprehend.
Should I just try and kneel down into the water and let it consume me whole; would it pull me into some exotic current on its way to Japan? Would I be a world traveler then? A fake success story, the one a family member could tell at some function to pass boredom?
I was just getting used to my routine, then it felt like my spine turned into a taut guitar string, that vibrated and buzzed with electric anxiety. It’s a song that heavy metal rockers try to mimic, with their faux anger and spittle-flying rants through a Microphone. How funny we as ants, I mean humans are!
Fuck it. My toes wedge themselves into the sand and I push off. The water is way too cold to survive. But, I guess I can say that I finished something now. But, I forgot to write a letter, or a note, how funny notes can be, sticking to refrigerators to remind cute domestic mothers that this needs to be done before cheeky metrosexual husband comes home. How trite, like a sitcom that consumers love to relax to, as they temporarily reprieve a long working day for working dollar.
My body is no longer felt, it’s like finally letting go of stress, like the moment when you, as a five year old, decide to let go of the pressure of your bladder into your pants. That’s when you realize that your need for relief overrides your need for respect, and fuck it, you pee your pants.
I look up to a fluffy white cloud, as I’m doing the Breaststroke. It’s comical. It feels like I’m a millions miles away from the last memory I held of you, that smile you flash always won me over, especially when I was naked, steamy loved hungover of youth, yeah, youth is where it’s felt, life meant something then.
Copyright 2012. Erik Christian
It’s not rocket science to know that America is riding on a free fall of bad credit. We owe everybody, and we as individuals are like little Americas. We go around and shop with our eyes and must need this and that, sign the line on the bottom of a credit contract, and off we go. If only consumerism didn’t stink the morning after. We could sit alongside the news channel and watch the decline of consumerism, and the rise of the national debt. We could go buy cake on credit to celebrate.
No, I’m not cynical. I am whispering this message softly because I have barely escaped the fiasco with bad credit, bankruptcy, and a lot of stuff lying around my house, stuff I can’t really get comfortable with as truly being mine.I see the eyes of shoppers get watery with a great deal, a blowout sale, or Two for One. It’s the same song and dance, when I’m pulled through a mall, thrift store or a wholesale outlet with my girlfriend. The big red tags dangle from merchandise, like a white flag waving after a heated battle, only this battle is between the merchandise and that little piece of plastic in your purse or wallet.
I’m not playing anymore. I see plenty of documentaries on the free Hulu site to know that billionaires are jerks and government is in on it. Everything is a fund raiser for the next public deception. Romney had a lot of money, Gingrich did not. If you can’t amass millions of dollars, go the other route. No, I’m not ready to layer myself up and wait in a food line in the middle of winter, but I am willing to save real money for the things I want. I will have to wait to purchase something nice, but just think about the feeling of accomplishment when the item that you just bought was something simmering in your mind for awhile. Rich people don’t get satisfaction from buying things anymore. It’s like a sex addiction, you need to bring out the whips to get any satisfaction.
That’s why the rich are crabby, because playing with their shiny diamond studded Tonka trucks in the sandbox doesn’t do it for them anymore. They have to pick pick pick on the hands that serve them. If treating everybody with respect doesn’t light up the endorphins, then being an asshole will. We will eventually repay our debt by whoring ourselves to China. So, who cares about eating a seven course meal when people are starving a few blocks away. Humanity is a bitch and so is justice, because justice was served bribery, blackmail, and extortion a long time ago.
Copyright 2012. Erik Christian
We don’t need to be a Social Marketing Specialist to know we are slaughtered and inundated by slogans by marketing gurus on the internet, that promise traffic, recognition and profit, if you just follow them, read this, or try that.
If you look closer, these same marketing specialists have very little followers on their various social platforms. Why is that? Because they are faking it! They’re faking it until they make it, or until there is a solid, predictable marketing method in place that they can stick to. No one really knows what truly works yet to drive traffic and sell products from your site.
It’s time to get back to basics, back to good wholesome feelings that people still use in their social activities during the day. No one wants to listen to a know-it-all dressed in a business suit at a neighborhood barbecue, or a person who comes into a room of strangers and tries selling something to everyone. He/She becomes instantly despised, and that’s the same for the internet.
The most successful people are the ones that wear their heart on their sleeves and is not afraid of expressing true feelings. People can smell fake a mile away, so be real. Stop bragging about your credentials and listen to your clients. Listen without thinking about what you’re going to say next. Stop placing dollar signs on the faceless victims that just needed your help.
When I first started writing books I thought about all the things I thought people would like. I talked about sex, drugs and Rock n’ Roll. I was so engrossed with my idea of cool, with what I thought my audience wanted, when in fact they were patiently waiting for me to grow up. They wanted a solution to the madness. They wanted to get a nugget of wisdom that floated somewhere deep in the bile that I was producing.
It took a few years for it to sink in. People wanted the guts. They wanted to know the real me. I didn’t write that way. I was looking to be the next Jack Kerouac or Chuck Palahniuk. I thought my audience would be so entertained with my memoir about drunken theatrics, that they would propel me to stardom. I lived a lie, and my sales reflected it.
The World is changing fast. I don’t see a lot of people drinking and smoking anymore. It’s not like the seventies, or the HBO series Madmen, where every scene someone is holding a drink and a cigarette. People want healthy, and they want to extend their life as long as possible, not destroy it.
When reality slapped me in the face, I stopped running with my ego, sat still and looked within. The noise slowly disappeared. The money schemes subsided, and I was able to listen to my real heart. The true voice came out and wanted to reveal what I had been doing wrong for all those years. People began to listen. They wanted to see my face and know my name. I began to write without thinking about the outcome, about the dollars and laughs. I wrote without thinking about how I could benefit from others. The more selfless I became, the more people listened. It was miraculous, the simple act of letting go produced some of the best stuff I had written.
It seems that the majority of people who use the internet to market themselves are fixated on SEO, branding, backlinks, tags, adwords, and a million other tricks. Some people hire ghost writers to add content to their blogs so that search engines can find them better and drive their Alexa rank up. It’s a mad dash to the invisible finish line and feelings, especially vulnerable feelings are squashed. Don’t people realize that everyone is writing about how to market content. If everyone is talking about marketing content, who is writing the content?
What I believe people want is HONESTY. They want to know you are just as scared about life as they are. They want to see your grief, your happiness, and what makes you tick. They don’t want another data report about SEO, or how to “go viral.” They want Bob to walk out of salesman mode and sit down and really talk. If Bob doesn’t, he is just another bullshitter.
I wrote an article awhile back that was called, “Tens Ways In Being Man.” It was meant to be satirical, clever and marketable, I thought. No one liked it. I pulled it. What people really like are the posts about how insecure I get in life, how I made it out of a downward spiral. They didn’t want comedy hour, they wanted Erik to be Erik. There is a lot of value in letting go of the façade, and in today’s lightening quick world, people are starving for real more than ever.
Copyright 2012. Erik Christian
http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Dad-Lost-Father-ebook/dp/B008YNRAEY/ref=pd_sim_kstore_4
Erik Christian has poured his feelings about everything out on page and has accompanied them with intense personal photos. Based on his award-winning blog, Christian starts out a young boy who witnesses life differently; from moving with his family from California to Washington; to having the traumatic encounter with the ghost of his mother’s father; to his sordid affair with drugs and alcohol, and then events leading to his complete separation from family. There is a sweetness that underlies his traumatic experiences. It shows the transformation of innocence lost. . .Will it be regained?
These candid stories are a snapshot into a young boy’s beginning, to a young man conflicted with alcoholism & self-doubt, and finally a middle-aged adult who tries to find a place in the world.
Copyright 2012. Erik Christian
After being sober for four years, but not really working a spiritual program, I began faltering. Just going to a job, working out, and having dinner-night with family, didn’t keep the skeletons at bay.
I stayed home more when I wasn’t working. Thoughts and ideas swirled through my head. I still rocked back and forth on the bed, as I did when I was eight. Fortunately, none of my girlfriends seemed to mind.
Having a tendency to shutout people, my home became my best companion. Days bled into days, as I pondered what I thought were life’s questions. But, as lofty as it seemed, it’s an invisible downward spiral. It whispered its rewards to me. It wanted me to forget about everything and roam the lands, like a prophet, like the Beat Generation of the 50’s. It seemed harmless.
Eventually, my reclusion started to take away my confidence. This confidence is false to begin with, having been created from my adolescent ego, it’s just leftover from the years I strutted with the false illusion of importance, while buzzed on booze.
I’m becoming naked in humanity’s eyes. I’m forgetting how to smile when spoken to, and to laugh at the punch. My PTSD, of the total fear of going into work, trembling with withdrawals, is coming back. After four years, I thought that shit was worked out.
PTSD is a creeper. It’s insidious like a parasite, only a social parasite, that eats away moral fibers and social skills instead.
The social parasite is fed by the long hours I pondered alone. It’s seed was in that first beer I ever drank, that gave me liquid courage to dance with a girl. The seed grew the more I depended on the courage in social situations, until finally it took the most important thing away: my family.
One night, during dinner-night with mom & dad, I’m telling a story at the table. The overhead light is bright, because my parents are old and need to see what they put their fork on. It’s a normal conversation. I’m telling a story and they’re smiling and chewing.
Suddenly, the total fear, like stage fright, entered my conscience. It’s like, I’m under a flood light now, doing a “cold reading” at an audition; I’m speaking to my boss, while smelling like booze; I’m driving drunk with a cop behind me. It’s the same fear wrapped into all the same fear. Fear doesn’t know a face, when a cataclysmic match is lit underneath it. It becomes Fight or Flight, and nothing can stop it.
I stopped in mid-sentence and looked at the floor. The audience is waiting for my next line. What do I do? The familiarity of my parent’s faces becomes blurred by the dark tunnel vision that ensued. My appetite vanished, and my legs tingled with adrenalin, and sweat climbed the leg hairs. I had to excuse myself and go watch TV.
The following Sunday, I had all week to think about what happened. They were my own frickin’ parents, how could this be! The parasite had come into my most familiar playground: my parent’s house. It disturbed me and gave me more anxiety. It became a vicious cycle. The more I worried about acting calm the next time, the more I worried.
I tried exercising to get the parasite out of my conscience. My parent’s loving faces, and all those years of memories, flashed through me. The unbelievable strength of anxiety had me running miles without getting tired. I tried drinking tons of Camomile, and getting up at the crack of dawn, so I would be tired by dinner. It was insane, and nothing worked.
The next dinner came and I steered clear of the “table”, because that’s where it happened. My parents are loving and had the brilliant plan of eating in the TV room instead. It partially worked, but the fear of the “table” loomed. Eventually, I would have to eat dinner at it again, even worse, “Thanksgiving” with MORE people.
And, this is when you get help.
Copyright 2012. Erik Christian Please visit: http://www.amazon.com/Erik-Christian/e/B008C2WKNI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
I won’t bore you with my childhood, except to let you know that my dad’s dad was a drunken asshole, and my mom’s dad killed himself at 41, because he felt the party was over, and the responsibility of raising a family was pressing.
My dad is a loaded gun while growing up. He is essentially in a “dry drunk”, meaning he had the symptoms of an Alcoholic without drinking. He wanted to create a perfect family, a far cry from what he grew up in.
My sister missed the rage by producing straight A’s in school and being silent unless spoken to. I became the center target when I struck the first beat on my drumset, drank the first sip of alcohol, and took the first puff of smoke.
Long hours at the job, then coming home to work on his hobbies, then listening to me, is enough to start my father’s time bomb. Television can only babysit a family for so long. There’s a silence that looms over the dinner table, there is a silent dread that falls with night upon the household.
I begin to rock myself while watching the Muppets. I sat Indian style on the floor and pushed myself forward then back. The motion created a sense of freedom, the motion of moving from one place to another. Eventually, this motion matured into driving away in my car from one place to another. The grass is greener on the other side of silent suffering and domestic hell.
There’s a backdrop to this motion. It’s called Rock music, audible rebellion, notes that tingled the spine and created visions of defiance. I am whoever I wanted to be, with just my head encased between headphones.
My ears rang at night, from my lengthy escape into my imagination, from after dinner until bed. Listening to dark heavy Metal and dreaming of destroying the bullies at school is a far cry from the days when Dad wanted to dance with me in his arms to the Beegees.
Yes, in a way this is normal rebellion. But, the seed of Alcoholism is planted on both sides of the pot. My mother’s dad was like Jack Kerouac, a Pinocchio unwilling to grow up, with the effervescent buzz of the first sip of Alcohol, to the last drop in the morning shaking and filled with dread of impending work; and, my dad’s dad, angry, demented, sitting in a dark corner of the house, terrifying the family with a shotgun. It’s a legacy, this demon Alcohol that destroys families while hiding behind slick advertisements. America’s first lover, Alcohol.
Copyright 2012. Erik Christian Please visit my ebook page: http://www.amazon.com/Erik-Christian/e/B008C2WKNI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
