POST COLLEGE, WORK FORCE, AUTHORITY ANXIETY SWITCH

(WRITTEN IN 2024)

When I wrote this, it was a very difficult time for me, and I still struggle today. But now more than ever, I realize that I'm a member of The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter Day Saints, not The Church of Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ.

Here's an example- God sends an angel, a messenger, to deliver some crucial guidance pertaining to my life. I say to this angel, "What did you do for a living? How much money did you make a year? What's your ethnicity? Did you ever get married? Did you have a family? Did you have a nice home? Did you have leadership callings in the church? Did you have prominence in your community? Were you an administrator? How could you relate to me and my life?" The angel responds, "I can't relate to your life, but I know somebody who can relate to your life, PERFECTLY, who understands every detail of your life and hardships, PERFECTLY, and I'm here to deliver a message to you from them."

I've learned, don't look at the messenger, listen to the message. Their professional life, personal life, and education is irrelevant to the message they share. The church is giant, with assets, and millions of members, in an ever changing precarious world. The leaders have to have certain secular and professional skills to steer the ship in a sense, but that has nothing to do with my own personal worth, or importance. The message, that's what matters. Christ is the message, look to him. I've realized, Heavenly Father loves me so much, that if it was just me, he still would have sacrificed his son, for only me. That's a sobering fact, humbling. But, when I wrote this, I didn't realize that. When I wrote this rant, I very much was a member of The Church of LATTER DAY SAINTS of Jesus Christ.

POST COLLEGE

(WRITTEN IN 2020) 

After college, I was naïve, I was foolish, I thought I was like all the other college kids around me. My plan was to move to California, find a business sales job, make lots of money, surf, and marry a pretty girl. Well, that’s not how it played out.

I think my first mistake was making surfing my life. I was obsessed with it, I wanted so bad to live by the beach and become a talented surfer. A career was an afterthought I figured would just happen because I went to college. I’ve always been enamored and in love with the beach.

But my foolishness and naivety were fueled by the incredible stress and toll college took on me. Battling depression and OCD was rough in college. It took all I had to keep it together and graduate, and I did graduate, hallelujah!

So I moved out to live with my Uncle in Temecula, CA. I lived there for a month, with a loose plan, and surfing on my mind. Like I said, my foolishness and naivety were fueled by the incredible stress and toll college took on me, and really life in general for that matter. A nervous breakdown, psychotic depression, early release from the mission, angry, had to prove a point in college, OCD study craziness, etc. I was tired! All I wanted was the sunshine and ocean, that’s it! 

But, indeed I was naive and foolish just to move out there thinking it would just work out. If I wasn’t afflicted with OCD to the severity that I am, honestly I think it would have worked out.

But, mental illness is a cross I must bare, and always take into account. Living with Uncle for a month was great. I surfed. I hung out with my cousin till the wee hours of the morning. I met a guy in the YSA ward who was a surfer and guitar player, and we jammed and surfed every week.

I was hired by a company in San Diego. During my job interview my gut instinct said this is a bad idea. But I was desperate for a job, a parachute to catch my fall. I basically jumped out of a plane and thought I would figure it out before I hit the ground, that’s a great metaphor for my impulsive California move. And as I mentioned, some can do that, but being mentally ill, even with my meds, its added an entire new level of difficulty and complexity to the scenario. 

I took the sales job. It was calls in the morning and going business to business trying to sell this communication product. As soon as I started the job, the anxiety hit hard. The pressure to sell, the structured environment, the bosses, it all was a cocktail for pouring gas on Anxiety and OCD. 

I can't handle environments where my performance comes under scrutiny, criticism, expectation, and a strong reaction from an authority figure above me. I can deal with game day once a week in football, but corporate/professional work environments with bosses, make every day game day, and I become a wreck of a person.  

I was dry heaving every morning. I would dry heave in the car on the way to work. I would dry heave at work. I would come home exhausted. I had a knot in my stomach the entire day. When I’m anxious and stressed I dry heave, or throw up.

I would yearn for the weekend like a stranded person yearns for water in the dessert.

Once the weekend came, I would surf and just let down. As soon as Sunday evening came, that knot would come back. The retching would start, the dread would come back, it was horrible. You do this week after week, and you get to the point where you can’t do it anymore. 

One day I got a call from a recruiter from a job I had applied for while at BYU. They were hiring for an office that covered all of LA and Orange County. I figured this was an answer to prayer, a god send.

The exact same scenario at my previous job occurred at this new job. Only it was worse. I was hired as an area sales rep for a food and beverage company. Basically I would have an area, about 12 or so grocery stores, and in each store I would be responsible for maintaining inventory and trying to up sell product and get featured spaces in stores with exposure to customer traffic. I started as a JR. Rep in training. I would be trained for 6 to 8 weeks and then be over an area for 2 weeks all by myself, but under close supervision.

The above would be the ideal situation. In reality I was trained for a week, a guy went out for an entire month with heart problems, and I was on my own. I had no clue what I was doing. It was sink or swim, and I sank like a rock. 

The anxiety was a constant fire inside me. I was dry heaving throughout the entire day. I made mistake after mistake. I was so anxious and fatigued. My cell would ring, and it would be my boss, who I hated, and it would just be another fire I caused that I needed to put out.

I would get really aggressive with my boss, I would talk back, I would become quite defensive. I was just under so much stress. 

I would leave at 5:30 am and get home at 10 PM often. I would fix mistakes, and then I was responsible for my day to day functions. 

It all comes to a head at a Food 4 Less in Inglewood, California. I’m throwing a temper tantrum, I’m pissed, I’m overwhelmed, my anxiety is making me it's puppet, I’ve sucked and made so many mistakes, my cute USC grad manager tells me to calm down, and well, I don’t calm down, I’m livid. I’m holding a package of cookies in my right hand in the air like Moses and the 10 commandments. I'm cursing, I’m yelling, I’m stressed, I’m depressed, I feel defeated.

A few nights later, I’m sitting in front of a Ralph’s Grocery store somewhere in LA. I had just pulled a 17 hour day. I call the office, I leave a message, I tell them I’ve been getting sick, bad stuff is happening to me, I get laid off with benefits the next day, they say, maybe you can find a better fit somewhere else, they're relieved to get rid of me and I’m relieved to go.

They probably thought “that guy was intense, he had a temper, and he really sucked at his job.” They would be correct, lol.

I feel dejected, I feel untalented, I feel all the work and preparation and sacrifice in school mean nothing, I will never be better than my OCD, than this anxiety, than this imbalance, it’ll be a millstone around my neck, it's my weakest link.

BIG RANT-

I feel angry because I feel judged by peers, by women, I lack the confidence to ask out women, I think, why would a cute girl with a good job want to date me, I’m going nowhere in life, OCD is my governor, it would be a mistake to marry me, I can’t support anybody (I still feel that way often).

I wanted a good life. I thought, you’re supposed to go on the mission, and be a stellar missionary, and then go to school and study hard and do well, and marry a stellar girl, and then graduate and get a good job, and you can support your wife and family like a man, be the breadwinner, make babies, and move up in your career, and become upper middle class and live in a nice brick home.

That above picture is what was painted in all my upbringing in the church, in all the men I saw in the General Conference issues of the Ensign Magazine, of every bishop and stake president I’ve ever had, of my mission president, of my own father. That is ingrained in my brain, that is how its supposed to be. WELL, I’M NOT LIKE ANY OF THOSE MEN!!!! I’M MENTALLY ILL!!! IT SUCKS!!! ITS SUCKS MORE THAN ANY OF THEM KNOW!!! THEY’RE NOT LIKE ME, AND I’M NOT LIKE THEM, AND THOSE ARE THE TYPE OF MEN WOMEN WANT!!! Women= Security, and I have none!! Women=Good Career, I don’t have one!! 

I would get mad, and still do today, because all the men that counsel me, from my father, to my bishops, to my stake presidents, to my mission president, to the brethren at general conference, ALL HAVE SUCCESSFUL CAREERS, THEY ALL HAVE NICE HOMES, THEY ALL HAVE WIVES, THEY ALL HAVE POSTERITY, THEY ALL HAVE NOTORIETY IN THEIR COMMUNITIES AND PROFESSIONS, THEY ALL HAVE RETIREMENT PLANS, THEY’RE NOTHING LIKE ME!! I WANT A PEACE OF THE PIE TOO! All this work, all these hee man efforts, all these trials, the great efforts to stay active, to repent, to even care and try to change sinful behaviors, and I’m a bachelor pushing middle age, broke, and at home! Its a hard pill to swallow. 

I often wonder what these men in leadership positions would be like, if they walked in my shoes, if their mission’s ended early, if they failed time and time again at their careers, if they didn’t have money, if they didn’t marry the women they did, or even get married at all, and if they suffered from chronic OCD, schizophrenia, or some other chronic mental illness. Would they really be all that different from those of us that do?

I constantly hear leaders say money doesn’t matter, your career doesn’t really matter, just be honest in your work. A nice house and nice cars, they don't matter. It’s funny, because all the men who tell me that, have money, have a great career, have a nice home, and drive something besides their parents car pushing 210k miles. My question to them is-

“If they don’t matter, then why do you have them? If they don’t matter, why did you go to school, why did you sacrifice, why did you work so hard to ACHIEVE them? If they don’t matter, then why do you live in a house with square footage beyond what you or your family needs? If they don’t matter, why don’t you sell all your assets and donate all the funds to poor people in the church and live in an apartment and drive a Geo Metro?”

These SYMBOLS of SUCCESS, they do matter. It’s a way a man shows the world he paid his dues, he worked hard, he took a risk, he made it. My father, my mission president, the apostles, general authorities, bishops and stake presidents, I see them possessing these symbols all the time. If they don’t matter, a man wouldn’t have them, they wouldn’t have them. They do matter, and they matter to me, I want some success symbols too, and women like to see them.

When the brethren talk, sometimes I think in my mind- 

“This man has a balanced brain, this man has a resolve, resiliency, and ability to handle stress, to raise a family and lead an organization. These men, their minds will bend, their knees might shake, but the lord's anointed leaders don’t break. They’ve never been suicidal months and years on end. They don’t stay in mental wards. They have a tenacity, resolve, and discipline to become educated and work hard, and they achieve. They don’t have any chronic debilitating bottlenecks that throw them down to the bottoms of society. They have weaknesses, of course, but these men were never pushing 40, broke and living at home. These men weren’t sent home early from their missions in the midst of insanity. These men all have careers, they have wives they have sex with, they have posterity and children, they have success in there careers, they have prominence in their communities. I worked just as hard as they did on the mission. I gave just as much effort as they did going to school, maybe even more. I’ve walked lonely roads as they have. Why are they up there, and I’m down here?

My entire life, I have observed and perceived that though there isn’t one way to be a member of the church, there is a favored way, there is a way that is held up on a pedestal, there is a way that gets all the attention, there is a way that is looked up to, there is a way people compete and strive for. It seems like that way is the administrative way. We all know who the administrators are, they make the most money, they hold all the leadership positions. They have the cute upper middle class daughters at BYU that wouldn’t date me. It’s tough telling those girls you’re pushing 40 and live at home, there is no easy way to tell a woman that, I just try to avoid it, it never goes over well. They’re highly educated, they’re people who have never socialized with me. I've never been good enough to run in their circles.

Hyperactive kids with OCD that perform poorly in school, get sent home early from their missions, and love music and drumming, no, I’m not an administrator, not favored, not noble and great, I don't fit the part, and my entire life, schoolmates, roommates, peers, they've let me know that in subtle and obvious ways. The best members that lead the best lives, the best souls, they hold leadership positions, and that is reinforced again and again in my experiences at church. My mental and emotional capacities can’t handle church leadership in anyway. I’m sensitive to stress and easily overwhelmed. I feel like a loser at church, but I feel like a winner, I feel successful drumming on stage.

BYU, apostles, GAs, Mission Presidents, APs, they’re all so elitist!!! They’re all the same!!!!! Why can’t a good hearted community college graduate who manages a tire store be a high leader? Why not?!! I bet they could do it! Money drives the church, and the elite make the money, those are the simple facts. Yes, I resent the administrator, and the peers that hold those roles, they’ve never much cared for me, I’m a joke and a good laugh, a leper whose trying. My father loves the administration circle, he’s worked on it his entire life. He was a bishop once. I can’t do what my Dad does, my mind is too screwy. For all his talk about being the only brown face, which is rough, he’s fit into the church better than I ever have.

The administrators, they get all the praise and attention, and why shouldn’t they, they run the church. I’m a drummer who sits in the lobby or back rows of sacrament meeting. The thing is, I’ve learned to love myself more, doesn’t mean I don’t still resent the leadership culture or culture in general of the church, the culture starts at the top and trickles down. It’s just that I love music and the drums so much, that being in the margins of the church, though it irks me, I don’t care as much, because I love music and the drums so much. Was I noble and great? I don’t know, I’m not an administrator, so maybe I wasn’t.

Music is the only thing that makes me happy, actually, nature too. When I book a gig, when I play a show, when I play a cool groove, when I put together a concert, I feel like I’m on cloud 9. When I hear a song I love, it lifts my spirits. When Im at church, when I was at BYU, really anything church related, I feel like a loser, I feel marginalized, and I have always felt that way at church. I serve, I minister, and I still feel blue each Sunday, it’s a rough day. 

Why are my buddies from college, married with kids, making 6 figures, and owning a home?Why are all the kids I grew up with, active or inactive, all living in homes, married to people they love, have children, and have careers. My Dad has a big brick home, gained a solid career, has a family, and married the love of his life. By my age he had a home, a career, a wife, and kids. By my age, as weird as it is to write, he had been getting laid for 10 years. I don’t like thinking that my parents have done that more than 6 times. Anyway, everywhere I look, I see success, and every time I look at myself, all I see is failure. Yet I worked so incredibly hard, I went on a mission and I went to college under such difficult circumstances, and have made such sacrifice, to not end life, to not go inactive, to keep trying, to remain open with my bishops, to continue taking my meds and talking with my counselors. To give this much effort, to fight this much, to suffer this much pain, to have so little money, to have such little success, to have girls look you over, because what kind of girl takes seriously a man pushing 40 that lives with his parents that makes a low hourly wage at a warehouse pursuing music, it’s difficult to process all this. I have a business degree from BYU, but if you were to look at my life, you would think I was a lazy irresponsible high school dropout. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

I feel resentment toward leaders because of their success. It’s my pride that has taken root in my failures and pain, that is why I possess resentment toward them. I’m tired of successful men giving me advice. I’m a leper, not a leader. I gave everything I had on the mission, I tried so hard in college. I can not make sense of my life's situation. All you people, friends, peers, siblings, neighbors, this is how debilitating mental illness is. This is REAL mental illness, its ALL you do. All you do is manage it, day after day.

It is my weakest link. OCD affects every aspect of my life; work, finances, process of faith, religion, romance, body, family relationships, mental health, emotional stability, etc. It's like chopping cotton in the fields as a boy, and dealing with the morning glories that would entangle cotton plants from bottom to top and choke them. That's been my experience with OCD, it has entangled itself into every aspect of my life. I hate morning glories, in reality and metaphorically, and I hate OCD!

There is such a divide in the church. Could a poor man preside over a rich ward? Could a man who works in a blue collar trade preside over a ward of white collar professionals? Do rich wards call janitor bishops? Does money, socio economic levels, and race play a role in the church? The church is incredibly diverse, but is it also incredibly segregated? Is it an issue if black and white people get married? Is it an issue if brown and white people get married like my parents (because it caused a lot of uproar with their stake president in the mid 70s)?

The Ensign can say what it says, men can preach over the pulpit, but at the end of the day, this is a fallen unforgiving world, and in my EXPERIENCE, money and race play as much a role inside the church as it does outside the church. 

I look at the high leaders of the church and I don’t see common men. The rhetoric is they’re just ordinary common men.  The redneck at the gas station, that’s a common man. The guy who works at Big O tires, that’s a common man. The 7th grade school teacher, that’s a common man. The apostles and prophets, they’re executives, they’re not common people. I feel like the leaders we have, it’s about money. You need to keep the people with money happy, because in reality they finance the church.

Will there ever be a day when the 12 apostles really represent the international nature of the church? It’s because old rich white men would be irked if they were leaders, and they pay tithing, and their tithing amounts to a lot more than the tithing of a poor family in Bolivia. You can irk or annoy common church membership, the blue collar people, the school teachers, the mentally ill warehouse worker like myself, but you need to keep the money happy, because the church is a business. It’s centered around the gospel, but it’s still a business. I understand it now that I’m older. Stake centers, meeting houses, temples, sacrament trays, etc., they all cost money. The reality is that making and keeping covenants actually isn’t free. From the baptismal fonts you're baptized in, to the plastic cups used for the sacrament, to the cars driven by missionaries, to the temples where we take out endowments, they all necessitate LOTS of capital.

So, the church will always pander to the wealthy, who are usually conservative and white. Perhaps as minorities make more money, we’ll see different colored apostles. To have a Polynesian apostle, Mexican Apostle, Black Apostle, Asian Apostle, it would be awesome. It’s finally starting to change slightly with President Nelson. But the church membership has been conditioned to, “Prophets and Apostles are white, they just are, and therefore, that’s the superior noble and great chosen race.”

So if you have a righteous man in a rich ward, and maybe he lives in a condo on the outskirts of town, and he works changing tires, and he might be very capable and intelligent, he’s not gonna get called to anything. Because the rich white members aren’t going to like it. Imagine if said tire employee wasn’t white? Whoa, there would be a problem, it would be even worse. The last thing the church needs is rich members not paying tithing, or getting annoyed. Wealthy people finance the church, wealthy people are usually of a certain culture and race, and wealthy people like to see certain types as there leaders, and at the end of the day, like I said, wealthy people pay a lot more tithing than poor people, so the church panders to those people, the ones that have money.

BYU panders to those types. BYU is full of a very well to do white intellectual arrogant condescending student body, with an education subsidized by tithing and sacrifice, and some said tithing is paid by poor struggling members in third world countries, with children that will never go to BYU. Did I prove a point to anyone by going to BYU? I think the only point I proved is that I didn’t fit in there, and should’ve gone to BYU Hawaii or ASU and studied music.

The church is indeed a business. Rule number one, keep the money happy. Doesn’t matter if it’s the church, a large corporation, a start up, etc. For an organization to grow and thrive, you have to keep the money happy. It’s a business, I get it. But for me, in the church, in the realm of religion, it’s a much harder pill for me to swallow than in a secular setting, but it is what it is.

Here is another money rant. BYU is probably the highest budget item, or easily one of the highest budget items for the church, and poor Honduran families sacrifice and pay tithing so well to do white kids can go there and complain about the honor code. I actually never did complain about the honor code, it was my decision to go there, that’s the truth and that was my thought process. But these poor families pay tithing, and their kids are never gonna go to BYU. If you’re me it doesn’t make a difference, and I even feel my place should have been taken by a balanced poor kid who could go back to his country and actually do something with his degree.

Nothing is free in this world, from baptismal fonts to temples to church buildings to mission homes etc. Of course the administrators, the men with means and money, are gonna be favored and held on a pedestal, because money is the life blood of the church. I have none, and it’s so hard to live with that. I’ve constantly grown up around people that do have it. It’s hardwired into my brain, MONEY MATTERS!! I never had a stake president or bishop or YSA bishop or even Counselors in the bishoprics in my BYU wards that didn’t have it.

We would have these big FHE events at a bishop or counselors home while I was at BYU, and they ALWAYS had such nice homes. I would think, how would this affect kids in my ward if we went to a bishopric members home and it was a trailer or a two bedroom house? The only way for money to not matter in the church is for it to not exist.

There are no rich people unless there are poor people. There are no good looking people unless there are ugly people. There are no smart people unless there are dumb people. I remember my Dad getting called as bishop. He was the only brown face in the ward. The stake president even said in his interview, “you’re not who I would have picked. Being Mexican and all will cause some issues in that ward, but you’re who the Lord wants.” Well, there you have it, of course race matters, why wouldn’t it, being a member doesn’t change being human, but I feel we preach differently when it comes to certain taboo topics like race and money. We preach love and acceptance, blah blah blah, it comes down to race and money, just like in the rest of the world. 

This one heart Zion stuff, it’s impossible for it to happen in this life. I think it could happen in the millennium, as class will be dissolved somehow with the law of consecration, however that works. As far as race, will my pops have white skin in the Millennium, I don’t know. I hope not, because it doesn't matter. The color of your skin does not define you in Gods eyes, there is no way it can.

By the end of that thousand years, maybe interracial marriage won’t bother people in the church. I just get tired of Sunday school answers and rhetoric, money and race, it all matters, it all matters in this life, and I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in, that’s been my experience at church, that was my experience growing up.

Sometimes I want to say Dad, “You remember being put down for being Mexican. You remember how blatant racism was in your life, even in the church, especially in the church. You remember when your grade school teacher said it didn’t matter if you learned the material or not. You remember being attracted to as you put it “the European looking girls in the nice brick homes.” You remember day dreaming, and wanting to achieve success. You remember all that right? You married mom, the apple of your eye, the well to do blonde girl you always dreamed of. Against all odds, you went on a mission, and you served the entire 24 months and didn’t come home insane. You went to college and you graduated. You were accepted into the seminary program, and you taught, you were happy. You got a Masters Degree. You were hired by The LDS Foundation/LDS Philanthropies. You earned a good wage, and you built a nice big brick home, and all the neighbors wondered how a brown guy could have such a nice home and beautiful wife. You didn’t have a lot of family support in any of this, you didn’t, not at all, but dammit you achieved it didn’t you, it came to pass. I know you fought like hell sometimes to get it, and I know you felt like an island, but you did it.

What if that mission you went on ended in hell, was 6 months of horrible psychiatric torture and then you came home early. What if that college degree you earned amounted to nothing, and you had this chronic mental illness, and you fell apart in the work place, and the seminary program, which lead to grad school, which lead to The LDS Foundation, none of that ever worked out, it was all a huge failure. What if you didn’t marry mom. What if you were pushing 40, and you looked back and all you had was a string of failures and disappointments, of an early mission release, of no pretty blonde wife, of no success in career. What if that same nervous breakdown you had as a bishop happened when you were young and single? What if it happened again at 31, and it was worse than the first time. What if at this time period you were living with your parents too. What if you looked back, and all the condescending attitudes people had about you were true, and you didn’t amount to anything, you didn’t prove them wrong, and you were a grown man living with your parents. What if after all this and going to school, you’re 37, and the same horrible job of making carpets at a low wage you had right after your mission, you were still doing, or doing something similar, after all these efforts and trials, because of some millstone mental illness. How would you feel?

There were plenty of good memories too. Listening to oldies on the radio, on a sunny afternoon, after a game, and getting a burger or hot dog. The Sunshine and warmth of the Arizona sun will always be tied to these positive experiences with my Dad. Even despite the complexities of OCD, religion, and authority, all a cocktail my Dad can set off, the fact that my father encourages me to pursue my dreams, to stay true to music, it keeps me looking forward, it pulls me, I need it. He has always reminded me that the lord loves me. I’m trying to learn to love God back, it’s been difficult, I get mad at God often. I love my Dad. I’d lay my life down for him. He taught me to work, he taught me how to repent, and when I’m sincere he’ll listen, and when I’m hurt, he’ll drive me to the Apple orchards and be by my side, never mind we don’t always see eye to eye, we’re incredibly similar yet incredibly different at the same time.

Authority, Rules, Bureaucracy, Pressure From Others, Micro Management, people with strong emotions= This really irks me.

Autonomy, A Direction to pursue, I’m my own boss, I manage myself, peaceful people like my little brother= Calms me, makes me feel good.

Give me an open field with Sunshine in the sky, and beautiful Mtns in the distance, and one rule, go work Adam, just head towards the horizon, you have all the space and room in the world, and your little brother to be your friend, he’s by your side, this here is a metaphor for my life.

RANT DONE-

I lose my confidence after losing my job at Kraft. I figure I’m doomed, because OCD will be a constant bottle neck in my life. For whatever reason, if I have to answer to an authority figure, if there are higher stakes, and lack of performance is returned with a boss coming down on me, in any environment, I catch on fire, I throw up and dry heave daily, and I start a free fall to really bad places. In a nutshell, if I don’t have complete control of my environment, control of my destiny, I don’t do well. 

People will ask, well what about in your band, what if you mess up, and bandmates get annoyed. When that happens I’m fine, because it’s coming laterally, not from above, not from authority, it’s coming from a peer, I shrug it off or become kind of a jerk, because I can, because I can’t get fired in that band. I book everything, I promote everything, without me there would be no band. Basically I’m in an ownership position, not an employee position. If I’m the boss, I’m fine.

But if I were a hired musician, and I didn’t know these bandmates, basically the position of a paid employee as a drummer, and they came down on me for messing up, then OCD would catch on fire, and here comes the vomiting, anxiety, and dry heaving everyday. I’ve dealt with this since childhood. It really sucks, it’s involuntary, it just happens. I identify it, I know why it happens, but I can’t make it stop, it just happens in those environments. 

Also, what people don’t understand is OCD affects everybody in a different way, it’s not the same for everybody. One can’t say, “well I know this one guy who works as an executive for ABC Corp, his job is high stakes and he answers to a CEO, and he has OCD, and he does just fine.” I would say, wonderful, good for him, we’re different people, with different brains, with a common affliction, that affects us differently, so don’t make assumptions or umbrella statements about this illness, and assume we’re all the same, because we’re not.”

In hindsight, after failing miserably at Kraft, I should have said A) What am I really good at B) What do I enjoy C) Turn to God and pray about those things D) Have faith and move forward.

Again, the above would be the ideal scenario, what I should have done. What I did was the following-

Felt rejected, Felt Despair, Anger, Fear of the future. I was convinced college and becoming a professional in some organization, was the superior and only road. Not true, not even close.

I decided to sell pest control that summer. I was perpetually millencolin. I hated knocking doors, even though I wasn’t bad at it. I came to California with dreams, and all I had was failures. I sold a fair amount of accounts, but I wasn’t happy. 

Like an idiot, I decided to go surfing one more day with my cousin before heading home. I looked at the snow report, it said 20 percent chance of snow, 100 percent chance you’re gonna be an idiot and go surfing rather than drive home when the skies were clear. 

Driving home, through the mountain pass from Nevada to Utah, it started to snow. My car hydroplaned coming around a left curve, the car spun around, I went up an embankment, came down and my car tipped on its side. So, I rolled down the driver side window, jumped out of my car, and took off down the road. I thought there was a possibility the car would explode.

So I call the Highway patrol, and my car gets towed, it’s totaled and ruined, and I spend the next two days in Wells, Nevada at a Motel 6. My Dad came to get me, he was obviously angry on the phone. When parents get mad, they’re either frustrated or scared, or both. I think with my Dad it was the latter, and he had every reason to be scared. When he came and got me, and I showed him where the accident occurred, and he saw how easily it would have been for me to tumble down a mountain side, he became emotional, obviously.

I’m quite lucky the accident wasn’t more serious.

It’s November, and I’ve moved back home with my parents, failed miserably at two jobs, and lost my car. I was quite defeated. Surfing, sunshine, and a career where what I envisioned. I did surf a lot.

From this point on, I go back and forth between selling pest control in the summers and working remedial crap jobs during the rest of the year with temp agencies.

Pest control could actually be a future, but I hate it, it’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to California, surf, and be a young professional in the city, and date cute girls, well, I sucked at my job, I barely dated, and I lacked so much confidence. 

I couldn’t work in any white collar professional environment, it's an environment based on hierarchy and bosses, high stakes, and having to answer for mistakes to an authority figure. Because those environments make me so anxious, in them I make lots of mistakes, and it’s a rapid downward spiral.

Unfortunately the formula of depression and fatigue sustained for a long period, all came to a head.