2025: Chapter 1

With gloomy thoughts, Siddhartha went to his pleasure garden. He locked the gate, sat under the mango tree, and felt death in his heart and horror in his chest. He sat and sensed how everything within him had died, withered, and terminated. By and by he gathered his thoughts, and in his mind he once again traveled his life’s path, beginning with the first days he could remember. Was there ever a time he experienced happiness and felt true bliss?

Certainly, he had experienced such a thing several times. In his boyhood he had a taste of it when he obtained praise from the Brahmins. He had then felt in his heart: ‘There is a path in front of the one who has distinguished himself in the recitation of the holy verses, in debates with the scholars, and as an assistant in the sacrifices.’ At that time he had felt in his heart: ‘There is a path in front of you, you have a destiny, and the gods are awaiting you.’

Once again, as a young man, the ever-ascendant and always-loftier goal of all contemplation had plucked him out from the masses who also sought the same goal, when with pain he wrestled for the sake of the Brahman, when every bit of knowledge he acquired only ignited new thirst within him, he had again felt this very same thing in the midst of the thirst and pain: ‘Go on! Go on! You have been called!’ He had heard this voice when leaving his home and choosing the Samana’s life, and again when he had left the Samanas to go to the perfected one, and also when he had departed from him into that which is uncertain.

How long had it been that he did not hear this voice; for how long had he reached no heights? How monotonous was the way in which his path had coursed through life — without a goal, without thirst, without exultation for many long years, being content with small pleasures of lust and yet never satisfied! For all these many years, he had tried and longed, without knowing in himself, to become a man like all the many others, like the children. In all of this, his life had been far more miserable and destitute than theirs.

Neither their goals nor their worries were his; after all, the entire world of the Kamaswami-people had been only a game to him, a dance or a comedy that he would watch. Only Kamala had been dear ands valuable to him — but was she still so? Did he need her, or she him? Weren’t they playing a game that had no end? Was it necessary to live for this? No, it was not necessary! The name of this game was Samsara, a game for children, which was enjoyable to play perhaps once, twice, or ten times — but again and again for ever and ever?

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

As honest of an effort it was, the answer is no: I was not able to make it through all of 2025 without posting a blog. Of all the sincere intentions I wrote about last December — otherwise known as the end of 2024 — I would reckon that withholding my services on Future Bets is the only one that I’ve, like, broken. But only as of now, as I write this, and as you read it.

In other words, I have indeed spent the last three months writing a story. It is about a family from Iowa. So far I have completed five chapters and am currently working on a sixth, and at current press time it is 63,422 words in length. I just looked up how many words are on the typical page of a book and it said between 250-300 if the lines were double-spaced, and between 500-600 if it was single-spaced. Either way, it’s already really fucking long.

Secondly, pursuant to making a so-called honest effort to all the things I said, so far in 2025 I have read three different books on law:

1. Law 101
2. The Tools of Argument
3. An Introduction to Constitutional Law

Naturally books with such titles tend to sound more impressive than they actually are. The truth is, there hasn’t been a lot that I didn’t already know. Not in the sense that I could recite specific details from certain famous cases that I read about in An Introduction, or that I knew all of the latin phrases and/or logical fallacies that attorneys capitalize off of from Law 101 or The Tools.

What I mean to say, generally speaking, is that I learned how to argue (somewhat effectively, I would say) from living and breathing over the last 35 years of my life. I know if I cannot one hundred percent validate my point of view I ought to qualify it with soft language such as ‘allegedly’ or ‘probably’ or ‘likely,’ and so on. I know that being right is not necessarily as important as proving somebody else to be wrong.

And I believe my foundation as a one-time aspiring journalist, or writer, if you want to call it that, has quite clearly shaped this mentality of mine. It’s the reason why general law — the practice of it, its procedural nature, etc. — does not seem to me such a daunting undertaking. What does feel like the biggest hurdle, even as I admittedly and at the same time kind of jokingly refer to it as My Five-Year Plan, are the mechanics of how actually I would dedicate the time and money to obtaining the proper education that would make me appear as good on paper that I know I would be in reality.

Back in the old days people would just self-teach themselves law and then, poof, they were lawyers. That is what Abraham Lincoln did. In the real world I will be competing against graduates of reputable colleges and law schools, or both, and who am I, really? I’m just a fucking dealer who spent the last eleven years working in casinos. I clock in at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Standard Time and clock out at 1:00 AM. When I speak of the mechanics, I am talking about how I would make sense of my work schedule, my personal schedule (which is just as fucked up), and all the while my biggest priority is (and has been) buying my first house. I guess I have five years to figure it out.

I spent an appropriate and simultaneously insufficient amount of time during my Year In Review talking about Niña, and even though December 11th, 2024 — her official date of departure — continues to grow further away in my rearview mirror, the passing of time has only reinforced her meaning to my life. Still not a day goes that she isn’t on my mind, in one form or another. And oftentimes such a moment arrives most noticeably when I am leaving work and walking back to my car and I again meet that realization: she isn’t here anymore.

So I said that I exhausted so many words and not nearly enough, because I never even mentioned, for example, how much she loved bacon. How every time we went to Blaze Pizza she would ask for bacon and then they would add some more bacon and then she would ask for just a little bit more and they would add some, and then she would finally admit that she just wanted her entire pizza to be weighed down with bacon. And they would always listen to her.

The other night my coworker showed me a picture from a party we were both at, which occurred on March 20th, 2019 — I mentioned in my last blog it was the date that Niña and I became official. And this coworker of mine asked if I got the same memory on my phone, and I said no, because I don’t think it made it past my iCloud when I got a different phone some years ago. So she sent it to me. It looked like this:

I think, both privately and publicly, I have always shied away from admitting that I have regrets. It’s just not cool, you know? For someone to say that they regret something, or many things. I am from the goddamn 1990’s. My generation very literally became those that were/are proud to say You Only Live Once. I have been conditioned to swallow it, to continue pushing it down, deep down, and deeper, and further deep, and then when it becomes time to crash out, I crash the fuck out. Every day I eat just a little bit of shit. Like it’s manageable the amount of shit that I eat. Whether it is from reality itself or in an internal sort of way, like I am eating my own shit. Regardless, I eat the shit.

Because I came from the generation that was told they would be nobodies and losers if they didn’t go to college. I came from the generation that was told we were spoiled, and selfish, and entitled. I came from the generation that was told everything had been handed to us. I came from the generation that didn’t get drafted into wars, that was around for the so-called peacetime, that had the Internet and cell phones and video games and was able to jerk off in absolute peace. I came from the generation that wasn’t allowed to complain.

I think it’s because of all these factors, those in which I just mentioned, those in which I have spent so much of my life internalizing, that has made me, or turned me, into someone who does not feel worthy of having grievances — even legitimate ones. I don’t like to waste anyone’s time complaining to them. I don’t like to admit my own insecurities or vulnerabilities. As a consequence, I still haven’t really figured out how to act like a normal human being when an actual tragedy, such as Niña’s passing, occurs.

Presently, as of like right now, I do admit that I have regrets. I regret being so insecure as a teenager that I felt as if I needed to go to Virginia Tech to validate my entire childhood and upbringing. If I could go back I would have gone to community college, or become a tradesman, or started working in the labor force straight out of high school.

I could of course go on and on about every single one of my regrets — and thank god I do not have many significant life-altering ones — but forever Niña will sit atop such a list. She was just so fucking solid in so many ways. I had personal beefs with her both when we were in a relationship and when we were out of one, but each and all stemmed from the very real sense of love that we shared. How much she loved me. How much I loved her.

So it is regret that I feel. Even still. The type of regret one feels when they know they could have done more, or that they could have done something. Or anything at all, really. That the entire world would look much differently right now if that was the case. That her final thoughts of me, of which were probably semi-regular, were that I was seeing a different woman, and that, therefore, in Niña’s mind, I no longer cared about her (Niña, that is), and that she was showing me the same respect that I was showing her, with my own personal knowledge that she had gone on a date with somebody a month earlier. Maybe she did not want to interrupt me in the same way that I did not want to interrupt her.

I was talking to my dad some night in February. I went to visit him at his apartment in San Bernardino CA and it was one of those talks where we didn’t really like actually talk about anything. Sports. TV shows. Bullshit. You know the deal.

And I did not mean to put in on him, or make him feel guilty in any sort of way. But I had to let him know that I was still going through it, in a manner of speaking. I would have preferred every conversation began from his end about how I was doing, or how I was feeling, or if I doing better, etc., but that isn’t how my dad is and that has never been our relationship. So it isn’t like I hold it against him.

Before I left, though, my dad started getting real emotional with me. Seemingly out of nowhere. It had been so long since I had seen my dad be on the verge of any kind of tears that I couldn’t (and can’t) remember the last time. But I swear to god I’ve never given him enough credit, my dad, because when real life happens there are few people who have as much perspective as he does. So he told me, straight up, that ‘This is something you will never get over.’

And I know he didn’t mean it in the negative-Nancy doom-and-gloom passive-aggressive and pessimistic way in which he has operated most of his life. He did not intend to make me feel bad, or to imply that things aren’t going to get better. He was just being real. He was telling the truth. He was being the man that I have always wanted him to be.

From my own end, I can say that things have gotten significantly better. I still think it’s weird that Niña is no longer here, but personally I have come a long way from the initial days and weeks when I wouldn’t want to do anything but lie in bed. And when I got beyond that I had for about a month a physical sort of depression where I could eat and sleep just fine but I was always so tired.

I mentioned to Sarah last month that I was/am still feeling it, my loss, in a sense. I broke down and started crying in front of her while she was headed to Norwalk CA to spend the weekend with her fiancee. It’s as I said a few paragraphs ago, about the depths to which I continue pushing down my feelings, but I had to admit to Sarah something I never say to anyone in my everyday life: the fact that I am still faking it. Every day. I guess some days the burden gets too big for me to bear, and it just so happens that Sarah is one of my choice people that I am comfortable enough to cry in front of.

So that is kind of where I am. I’m not like Hurt in the same way I was in the beginning, but I still feel it. I had actually probably gone a full month without shedding any tears until I started writing this blog, and was confronted by that picture of Niña and I, and the finality struck me once more. And that’s okay, you know? It is okay that I still care as much as I do. It is okay to fake it everyday in real life. It is okay that I still miss Niña, and wish she was here. It is okay if I never truly get over this. It is okay to admit such things.

Because, again, each day is merely another reminder of how much she means to me. I think I skipped a few stages of the grieving process and re-arrived later on to the denial portion of it. In a playful sort of way I tried to imagine that her death wasn’t real, that she had just gone back home to the Philippines and the GoFundMe page for her funeral was so that she could have some spending money to live on once she made it home. That one of these days she’ll text me a photo of herself on some beach, with a smile on her face, and a girly-looking cocktail in her hand, and a whole silver platter filled with all of her favorite street foods.

I know that ain’t ever gonna happen, but I suppose that is simply my version of praying to a higher power, or wishing for something that isn’t real. It’s a cute thought, though. For me personally it took an entire month before I was able to return out in public to the types of establishments I tend to enjoy. It just didn’t feel right to go through with the act of smiling and laughing and flirting with women, and so on.

At Niña’s celebration of life I was only on my first beer when Niña’s sister called me up to speak about her. I was the second person to go up there, in other words. And in my head I was thinking how much I would have rather been like tenth, or some shit, because I was not nearly loaded enough to share my thoughts in that moment. I wanted to be drunk. I would have preferred it, at least. But that is where I stood and will forever stand in the eyes of Niña’s family: I was the very first non-family member to speak on her.

And I gave the necessary credit, to Niña’s sister, Raven. To Raven’s boyfriend for helping lead the celebration of life. To the boyfriend of Niña’s mom, who was there by the side of Niña’s mom for the darkest days of her life. And then I started talking about Niña. About how much love she had to give. About how we dated for a few years, and how we were friends for a few years more. About how my favorite things Niña and I did were the simple ones. About cooking. And cleaning. And doing laundry. And going grocery shopping. And watching shows. And how Niña always made the simple things feel so special, always.

At the end I talked about how much I knew that Niña wanted out of life. That she wanted everything, all the time. And that her legacy, much as I mentioned in my last blog, will be carried on through people like me, who have never felt more motivated to get everything that we want, or I want, personally, out of this life. And that’s real. That is still what I intend to do. To fulfill my dreams. To arrive at a point sometime in the future where I will be able to say that we made it. Not just me.

Niña’s death occurred obviously at a difficult and complicated stage of her life, and the timing sucked because it’s been a difficult and complicated stage of my own life. I never would have been prepared for such tragic news, of course, but it felt a lot worse due to my own selfishness of being so focused on myself when I could have and should have been looking outwards, towards the people I love, and especially those I love(d) the most.