Days of Our Lives

Days of Our Lives, if you do not know, is a daytime soap opera on NBC that began in 1965. It is essentially the only soap opera I know because that was the one my mom recorded and watched in the evening. Days of Our Lives was the soap opera I grew up with. Now this blog is not about Days of Our Lives, but it is about how sometimes your life or the people in your life could be straight out of a daytime soap. Obviously, you want to avoid recurring soaps in your life, but that being impossible, it is best to try to minimize them as much as possible.

Let us begin with the fact that soaps often have over-the-top acting. We all have those overdramatic people in our lives, who act as if the smallest thing is the end of the world. For example, (to use myself as an example) I lost my car key the other day, which of course is a big deal. However, I contacted my supervisor, emailed my entire floor, alerted gym personnel, called my brother, alerted the property management for the building, and left work early. Yes, all that. Really, it was not THAT serious (especially considering where I ended up finding the key). Point being you may be guilty of being overdramatic, or may even know people who often are. You may even know a person who takes a disagreement and allows it to end a friendship, or if you make one side comment against them you have become public enemy #1. Sometimes they even act as if a computer glitch could single-handedly end their life. It is never that serious.

Soaps also have the manipulators or fire-starters. You would not have the crazy love triangles, stolen babies, secret affairs, or backstabbing without these people. Fortunately, I cannot use myself as an example here, but there are quite a few people who definitely take part in the starting of drama. There are endless examples of this in my life, and I am sure it is the same for anyone reading this. Unfortunately, like in the soaps this backstabber, secret-telling, gossiping character always feels as if they are justified in their actions. "John did not love me back, so I had to destroy his relationship with her." Really B! Your reason for destroying a happy relationship is because you want one. You see it in the soaps all the time, and what a shame it happens in your own life too, or worse you think that anything gives you the right to destroy or hinder the happiness of others.

Soaps have recurring characters. Remember how Kristen died in a fatal car accident, but two years later she is back and turns out she faked her death because she was working for the CIA!!! Granted it may not go down like that in real life, BUT sometimes you lose people in life (either by choice or default). You may move on, you have completely forgotten about them, but then it is as if the Network wrote them into your life again. Wham! There they are again stirring up old feelings. This can sometimes be good for the storyline, sometimes bad, and sometimes it may call for the demise of another prominent character of the show, and by show/storyline I mean your life. In the same token, sometimes a character is recast, and this you should avoid. If there is a damn good reason someone is out of your life, and a completely different person enters doing the same thing or fitting into a similar storyline, do not let it play out like the soap. Do not allow negative people in your life to be recast with someone new. Recognize those warning signs early.

Finally, soaps always take place in one setting with the same damn group of people. Get out! Enjoy yourself, meet new people and go to new places. I know it's easy to wake up, go to work, go to the gym, come home drink tea and go to bed. On weekends hang out with the 6 friends you have at the local bar. Every now and then you should try a different bar. Guess what I did last weekend for the first time in years??? I actually went to a club...like a dance club. I enjoyed it, and even though I was drenched in sweat (part of the reason I stopped going to clubs in the first place) it was something new to do. And I met someone new doing it. Anyways just my opinion but keep the soaps on TV, same with reality TV, which are essentially soap operas with horrible actors.

The American Nightmare

Go to high school, go to college, get married, buy a house with a white picket fence, and have 2.5 kids. This is the American Dream. Education! Go to high school, college and in the past decade go to graduate school, and the possibilities are endless. Knowledge is power! Many of us bought into the hype, and many of us have learned there is a heavy price to pay in chasing the American dream. And by price I do mean money. In a capitalist society nothing is free, not even the knowledge and education that has been deemed necessary to achieve great things.

I chose to go to college and immediately enter law school. Let us do a quick break down of the cost of choosing the path to become an attorney: the LSAT (the exam required for admission = $140, law school applications range = $60-$80/per app, the prep course for the LSAT (I chose to buy books and study independently) = $125 but course run $250+, tuition per year = $40-$60,000 (3 years if you go full-time), books per semester = $300-$550, Prep course for the bar exam = $3000, Bar exam = $300-$650 (depends on the state), admission fees (NY) = $350. In total you are looking at $130K and up, mind you this does not include money for housing while you're in school or other miscellaneous fees. Most of my colleagues were lucky to escape owing under $200K in loans. Now surely, you may think this is manageable because you will get a great job paying six figures starting out. False. Very few attorneys begin their career making six figures, and the ones that do have loan payments averaging $1100/month, a pretty hefty payment. The majority of attorneys enter the work force at whatever salary is the norm for their industry be it non-profit, government, public sector, private large firms or private small firms. However no matter what you are paid (find a Public Defender and thank them) you still owe the same large amount of money (imagine making $40-50K as a PD and owing $200K).

This does not simply apply to attorneys but anyone who ultimately pursued the American Dream via college and/or graduate school. It does not stop there, you see loans are the nightmare. Loans are the devil, and quite simply loans are pure evil. This may be seen as anarchy because in a capitalist society such as this one, loans are necessary to our system of credit. You give someone money for their house with the picket fence, or their medical school education, and you get your money back with the accrued interest, which in some cases could ultimately nearly double the vale of the loan. Thought we were done? Nope, let us not forget that the loan companies can sell your loans, in which case if you were on deferment or forbearance, that status is ended and your loan goes back into repayment. Often times you may be completely unaware this has occurred, and it makes in insurmountably more difficult to manage your loans and loan payments.

Thought we were done, nope not yet. I do not know how many of you heard about this thing that happened recently, and is ongoing. It is called a recession. When this event occurs, all bets are off, and loan companies show how ratchet they can be. Yes, I said ratchet. They may not only sell your loans, they may rescind the offer to give you a loan (yeah we paid for the fall, but you on your own for the Spring semester), they will in all likelihood raise the interest rates.

But here goes the uppercut. Ready for TKO. Ready to burn your degree and call for an uprising (joking Big Brother Government Watcher). Whole time - you get out of school with six figure debts, and monthly loan payments that equal loan payments in a big city; your friend who entered the workforce after high school makes as much as you with no loans. Hahaha. Not funny right. That's a what the fuck moment. In some instances (sorry to pull your cards WMATA), but you meet someone with no college education getting paid $75,000 a year starting out to sit in the driver's seat of an electric train, with their sole call of duty being to override any malfunctions. With overtime they are easily making six figures a year, and let me be clear no debt.

Granted some argue that it balances out because in a few years they will reach a glass ceiling , and you (college/grad school graduate) will continue to make more money. But does it really balance. Over the course of 10-20 years you will pay back $140K plus interest during that time you may start at $60K and ultimately makes around $130K at the end of this time period. They start out, if we take the WMATA for example, making $75K and cap at says $100K with no loans. I would really like to see some statistics that not only account for the amount of money you make over time, but accounts for the debt some people have to pay back, and then let us see who makes more over their lifetime. This blog in no way suggests that you should not go to college, law school, business school, medical school, etc. Simply pointing out that the American Dream and the pursuit of it can lead to a crushing amount of debt and the nagging question: "did I make the right decision?"

The Real BS/Stick to the Script

I want to preface this post by saying it is not recanting or a retraction of my "Flip the Script" post seen here . However, the words of this post may seem to go towards the so-called grain, that post went against. Let us distinguish it like this, there are certain things that are expected of a man, and there are certain things men should expect amongst themselves, this would address the latter. This post will be  simple, because as this post represents this is no time for BS (BS = bitch shit).

This post was spawned from a convo I had with one of my friends last night, about how he was out with some other dudes he knows from his undergrad. One of the guys there that he went to school with, but did not really chill with like that, is the subject of this post. The guy starts asking him about this girl that my friend used to kick it with back in his freshman year of college.
Me: "Pause. Why does he care about some chick you talked to 7 years ago?"
Him: "K. Jobe, I don't know, but wait, there's more. I told him, she did my homework for me and that was pretty much the extent of the relationship. I did not really mess with her like that, she was just some chick who was always there to do my work. So then dude, who is asking the questions, says oh cause that's my homegirl."
Me: "Pause. What, why, who cares?"
Him: "K. Jobe, I do not know. Apparently he wanted to get at her, but she was too busy following me to give him any play back then. But wait, there's more. Dude (the one worried about what his "homegirl" was doing 7 years ago) started acting funny later on that night. Basically, we all go out, having drinks, talking to some females, and Sherlock Holmes keeps pressing us to leave cause they were supposed to go to another venue at 1 am."
Me: "Pause. But if ya'll are having a good time why would you leave. You don't leave a good thing. And why doesn't he just talk to one of the females that are there with ya'll."
Him: "K. Jobe! I do not know. But next thing we know he left the bar and went home without saying nothing to nobody."
Me: "Full stop. Wait, so you're telling me, that this dude who is studying your moves from 7 years ago, who does not know how to keep a good time going, caught an attitude and left the people he came with, hopped on a train and went home."

Fellas, seriously. And I mean this with the utmost sincerity, that's some BS. Let's take this one by one:

1. As a dude, you really should not be concerned who another dude, especially someone who is not even a good friend, is giving the business to. With that said, you also should not be hating on some dude who is getting at a chick. I can't stand when dudes say: man she can do better then him, or how did he pull her, or he probably ain't even dickin her down right. (term of art). Negro, why are you concerned about what he's doing unless you plan to take notes to improve your game, which I support, then sit your ass down. Now if in fact this is your girlfriend's past you digging into then you really doing some BS.
2. If you out with your fellas, or even just out with a group of people you came with, and they are having a good time, then you damn sure better find a way to have a good time. Hell, even if you in a bad mood and want to sit in the corner and sulk or sit at the bar solo and get drunk, do not ruin their good time.To do so would be some BS.
3. There have been times when I find out a coworker, colleague, friend has had a bbq, or party and did not invite me. If you feel that strongly about not being invited, then address it with them individually and move on. But don't go saying how that's f'd up, and you would have invited them, and that's why ya'll are not even tight...that some BS.
4. Finally, if you come with a crew you leave with your crew. Now that may go out the window, if everyone is "hooking up" or ...well really that is the only thing I can think of. However, catching an attitude and storming off home is not only some BS, but it's some kiddie nonsense.

Never fear fellas sometimes you can get emotional, and that is when your friends are there to tell you to "man up" or stop doing all this BS. Do not get mad if they tell you this, they are trying to help, and yes you guessed it getting mad would only be some bitch shit. Until next time...