2025: Chapter 15

September 28th:

Tonight was Sarah’s last night of work. I didn’t really get a chance to see her because it was busy as all fucking get out in the casino. Jerry Seinfeld was in the building to do one of his geriatric standup comedy routines, one of those you know what the problem is with America — woke people, amiright? — or when that’s over with he’ll hit ’em with a comedians can’t even be comedians anymore because cancel culture, amiright? Anyway, Sarah’s last night will forever be married to Jerry Seinfeld playing at The Show. So I’ve got that going for me.

I finally found some stamps in my closet from like 2012 and mailed the letter I wrote to my mom a few weeks back about her alcoholism. She texted me a couple days after its arrival and called it (the letter) ‘loving, stern, and yet positive,’ which is a roundabout kinda way of describing me perfectly. I’ve got that emotional deficiency where I tend to be a lot nicer and much more compassionate to strangers than I am to those whom I love. I give out so little of it — love, that is — that I hold my small circle to a higher, and at times impossible, type of standard.

Pursuant to having a small circle, it got smaller last month after I took the brunt of a tantrum from someone I considered one of my closest friends. I said I felt quote nasty about it afterwards (see 2025: Chapter 13), and I’ve yet to get the taste out of my mouth. He and I only deal craps together once a week, or twice, at most, but it’s gotten so fucking awkward between us. I look this way, he looks the other. Our only communication involves relevant game information (such as booking or repeating bets).

And I love dealing craps. I really do. A substantial chunk of the reason I transferred from day shift back to swing shift was so I could deal it with my buddies again. Our craps games are solid, but even within that there is downtime to bullshit about sports or make comments and compare notes whenever a pretty girl walks by, and so on. Now that we’re estranged I feel a lot of the joy and fulfillment I get from dealing the game has been sapped out of me.

So a few days ago I mentally sort of decided that, when the time is right, I’ll be heading back to day shift. It just makes too much sense. I can go back to getting my haircut at 10:00 A.M. every other Thursday instead of 3:00 P.M., and subsequently go and visit my dad around 11:00 A.M. instead of 4:00 P.M. — meaning I’ll avoid rush hour traffic on the ride home. When I have to get my car serviced, or go to the DMV, or handle any other sort of obligations, I’ll have all day to take care of it instead of the very specific hours with which I operate on swing.

Everything is easier, in other words. Everything is more convenient. I did sort of box myself in by going back to swing shift in the first place, because for many months, even years, I’d been telling everyone that once I moved to the desert — and thus wouldn’t be burdened by hitting rush hour traffic every night during my hour-long commute from Riverside CA — that I would resume my natural role dealing the game I love most. It was a pride thing, I guess. I didn’t want to be the guy to go against my word.

Now that I’ve somewhat exhausted the experiment, over the last year, I realized that the things I didn’t like about swing shift during my first go-around (c. 2018-’19) are the same things I don’t like about it still. I have to stay up all night and take my car in at 8:00 A.M., at shop’s open, whenever I need it serviced. When I go visit my mom and brothers I head over after work, around 2:00 A.M., and fall asleep over there around 7:00 or so in the A.M. only to wake up in the afternoon when my mom is already three sheets to the wind and my brothers are getting ready to pack it in because they work the graveyard shift.

God only knows how impulsive I am, and the night I decided this was the way it had to be — moving shifts — I managed somehow to keep my iPhone holstered instead of firing a text off to the woman who very easily could (and probably would) open a spot for me on day shift. I suppose I’ve always felt this way about swing shift, and all of its inconveniences, but it took this stupid feud with one of my best friends to remind me.

If truth be told, the first person I reached out to was actually Nohemi. I wanted, like, her permission, knowing how severely I breeched her trust last year. I still care deeply enough about her not to have made a completely selfish decision. She was cool about it, because she is sweet like that. She said: ‘Nothing you choose to do to better yourself will ever bother me.’

Now that Sarah is on her way to Arizona, I have even one less inducement to stick around. In the future all these years will bleed into one another, but this will clearly go down as one I will remember without much fondness. When I think back on my second and (likely) final stint on swing shift, I’ll think about Niña dying. I’ll think about splitting with Nohemi at a juncture that was probably premature on my end. I’ll think about how seemingly well everything was going before I got blindsided by one of my best friends. And I’ll think about how that was the match strike that catalyzed my great realization into how I don’t have to put up anymore with this lifestyle of mine.

The one positive I can take from it — from this last year on swing shift — is it’s when I became sober. You can have all the other bullshit.

September 29th:

In my last article I talked, among other political things, about being raised in a conservative middle class family. We weren’t rich, but neither I nor my brothers ever wanted for anything. My parents were Republicans, but they were Republicans in the way where it was, like, a matter of taste. Which is to say that they weren’t heavy-handed about their politics, probably because they weren’t very educated about politics. They simply wanted to feel like they were conservative.

In other words, being a conservative — er, Republican — in the 1990’s is different than being a conservative (or Republican) in 2025. Because whether or not one is actually racist against minority groups, or bigoted against the gay and/or trans communities, their preferred candidates are, and thus they give tacit approval to racism and/or homophobia and/or transphobia by supporting them. It isn’t about taste anymore. It’s not about the difference between driving a Ford or a Chevy. There are only two sides: the one that supports discrimination and the one that doesn’t.

I’m fortunate for my not-so-politically-heavy-handed upbringing, because I experience all the time people who very clearly adopted their parents’ views and never questioned or gave them a second thought. They are racist because their parents were racist. They trash minority groups for being lazy and sucking off the government tit because their parents fostered that sort of attitude. They either never took the time to understand reality, or they weren’t confronted by enough minorities, or gay people, or trans people, to see them as humans.

To be fair, I don’t have any gay or trans family members. I just know by the time I knew what any of that shit meant that I didn’t treat them any differently. I imagine a big reason why was that I spent the entirety of my public education experience in San Bernardino CA, where us white people were actually the minority. It was mostly Hispanic. There was a solid percentage of Black people. And within the cracks there were gay people, and everybody knew who they were.

The point is, in a place like San Bernardino most individuals — at least the ones I surrounded myself by — didn’t have a care in the world about skin color or sexual orientation. Because we had one thing in common: we were all poor. That’s why we lived in San Bernardino. All anyone seemed to care about was: are you cool? Or are you not cool?

My political views obviously got more radical in my mid-20’s, but I was probably, like, 13 when I understood, intrinsically, that I didn’t care about races or genders. It sounds cliché, probably, that I and those whom I associated with were the true kinds of believers in Martin Luther King’s ‘judge not by the color of their skin but the content of their character’ type shit. We were so about that kind of philosophy that we never had to acknowledge it or discuss it. It just was.

That’s why I was so confused when a couple years ago I dated a girl and it felt like she used every possible opportunity to make me feel like a piece of shit for being insensitive about her, or towards her. She was a sex worker — a dancer — but if I ever said something wrong, or in the wrong way, it became a half-hour-long argument. About how I should have known about her trauma (even though at the time I didn’t know her long enough to be aware of it), or how I shouldn’t say certain words (that weren’t offensive in the first place).

But there was a time when I really internalized her grievances against me, and actually believed that I was in the wrong. After all, at the time she was 22 and I was 33. I felt, objectively, as if I was extremely progressive with my worldview. Yet I was also openminded enough to take what she told me to heart. Maybe I was progressive for a millennial, I’d think to myself, but maybe I wasn’t so progressive to a woman more than a decade younger than me.

It was a confusing time in my life, but one day I snapped out of it and realized she was clearly dealing with some psychological disorder. Maybe she was bipolar. Maybe she was manic-depressive. Maybe she dealt with some form of schizophrenia. Maybe she was in love with me. Could have been anything.

September 30th:

Just to pile on to my swing shift angst: After about a week of uncharacteristically cool, standoffish behavior towards me from one of my bosses, tonight I approached him in my very typical, solid sort of way, and asked him privately, ‘Are we good?’ Yeah, why, what’s up, he asked, and I told him he’s seemed off, and then he told me he was quote disappointed by something I posted on Instagram after Charlie Kirk died.

I knew it was something. I just didn’t know it was something so stupid. I’m aware that my blog is incredibly one-sided, and the audience is sort of, like, forced to see my reality from my perspective. I try to convey honestly my point of view, because the last thing I want to sound like is some crazy person who is convinced that everyone else is crazy and that only I am the normal one. It’s due to my endless pursuit of truth, and constant insecurity of needing to be a trustworthy narrator, that leads me to take accountability for my life. And the decisions I make. To that end, I find myself to be exceptionally — sometimes overly — fair, and gracious towards others, when I find myself to be in the wrong.

In other words, this boss of mine is giving me the cold shoulder not because I did anything untoward that jeopardized him or his position, nor did I betray him in any way, but because I posted something about Charlie Kirk that he disagreed with. It’s just wild to me. It’s wild how after a decade of working at the same property I’ve probably had, like, two instances (maybe?) where I’ve had beef with a coworker. Now it’s happened twice in the span of a month, and it’s with two people (!) who were on my very short list of men I trust.

It feels like I’m getting voted off the island here. Jeff Probst is gearing up to snuff my torch and I’m the oblivious fuck who thought things had been going pretty well. Do I care? Of course I care — that’s why I’m the sumbitch who tries to do the adult thing and approach my friends whenever something feels off-kilter. I’ve always found it somewhat ironic how the Gen-Xers and boomers carry with them such an accepted — as in it’s pointless to even argue for the other side — sentiment about millennials, or young people in general, about how they aren’t adult enough (for reasons X, Y, and Z). And yet they (Gen X/Baby Boomers) always seem to be the ones who act most childlike and hold the pettiest grievances.

For it to be over something I posted is almost comical. As an unapologetic leftist I’m regularly hit on social media by a barrage of legitimately fake news, whether it be about Democratic politicians releasing violent inmates from prisons, or how the government is going to go door to door taking away peoples’ guns, or how Charlie Kirk spoke only about peace. The list goes on and on, without any pushback. It’s just an echo chamber for these weirdos to have interactions with other weirdos.

The outpouring of social media posts over Kirk’s death was so overwhelming that I couldn’t help myself. I had to restore some kernel of the truth, and it really didn’t take much. Kirk had such a long history of saying fucked up and hateful things that one such as myself need only to quote him, or post one of his videos, to remind people of what he was actually all about. Without consulting Reddit the answer is probably yes, I am the asshole. But still. An asshole with a credible point.

Alas, just as I can’t feel sorry for losing my friend last month — over something that I did not do to him, or with any ill-intent towards him in any way — I can’t feel sorry about potentially losing this friend, over a social media post about Charlie Kirk (of all things), either. My thoughts and my actions towards these two individuals have never been anything but solid. If they see it otherwise then I’ll say that cliché thing about how maybe we were never that good of friends to begin with.

October 1st:

If we’ve learned anything after taking a cursory look at this blog — this specific Chapter 15 — it’s that I, the writer, sound quite negative. I’m sorry about that. My last month has been a pretty negative time for me, in general. The combination of dropping a couple thousand dollars on my car for various issues, not having a real whopper of a paycheck to compensate for those losses, the aforementioned interpersonal squabbles with purportedly ‘close’ friends of mine (which has led to work being a not so happy sort of place for me), has really been the icing on the cake for a frustrating and depressing 2025 campaign for me.

And I do hate to sound (and be) so negative. I hate having to admit that I haven’t been happy. I hate that Leslie, one of my closer coworkers, recently told me that she can tell I haven’t been happy. I hate that I feel compelled to go outside every night, in the small pocket of time I genuinely look forward to, to write on Future Bets about how things in my life aren’t going in the way I wish they were. I hate that, currently, I am unable to use my writing powers for good — for my hopes and dreams, my ambitions, my motivations. Etc.

Because I can’t stress enough how much I enjoy life. On the inside I have my bouts with being topsy-turvy, but I always negotiate through them and come out fine. It’s what’s happening on the outside that’s become such a struggle for me of late, and the outside is supposed to be easy stuff. The friendships. The car stuff. The money stuff. I’m not, like, sweating any of it — as in my survival isn’t on the line. I’m just saying ninety-nine per cent of the time I can rely on the outside being the aspect of my life that’s sturdy.

I take a certain pride in that sturdiness, in acting ostensibly as a consistently straight line. Where all I want is to make others laugh, and be that dude who is willing to listen to everyone else’s bullshit. About problems with their significant others, or their kids, or about how they had to drop a couple thousand dollars on their cars, or about how it’s been hard times on them making money at the casino. It’s usually not me who has problems, and even when I do I don’t like wasting anyone’s time lamenting them.

It can only be assumed that my overall degree of dissatisfaction, insofar as it relates to the particularly dreadful last month I’ve had, is because up until the argument I got into on fantasy football draft night, I had been creeping dangerously close back to a general contentedness. One where things were going seemingly well for me both on the inside and the outside. Life is never perfect, but at the time I was definitely appreciating how it was going.

This year has certainly been a mission for me, one unlike any other. I’ve had to slug my way through it. From dealing with Niña’s death, to getting back into running after a long layoff, to getting sober, to taking a detour on my spiritual path and learning about the Buddha, to now be confronted by this stupid bullshit with a couple of my friends. It’s been a ride.

I feel like this is kind of the natural order of things. For me, anyway. I have a crazy year where it all goes haywire, then the next year becomes sort of peaceful by virtue of intentionally recovering from the year prior. I think 2023 went bonkers and 2024 was pretty easy; now 2025 is (hopefully) setting the stage for an undramatic 2026 season. Perhaps switching back to day shift will be my ticket to returning to a homeostasis that’s more agreeable to me.

October 3rd:

I’ve done enough drugs in my life, I’ve been through enough heartbreak in my life, I’ve gambled away enough money in my life, I’ve had enough anxiety and experienced enough panic attacks in my life, I’ve been depressed enough in my life, I’ve lost people I never thought I would lose enough times in my life, to know for certain: This too shall pass.

After the darkness that cascaded around me for the first handful of months in 2025 began to fade, the lone obligation I felt that I owed to myself was to move forward. To look forward to the future. It took me time to understand that I have a say in it. In the future, I mean.

And I’ve made real progress this year. In moments such as these I seemed to have lost my appreciation for that, but I know it’s true. I know during hard times when I’m at my lowest is when I make my most meaningful longterm strides. This last month and change doesn’t erase where I am, or how I’ve got here. It’s just a speed bump. A hiccup.

I’ll be fine. This real breakthrough of neither drinking nor gambling is how significantly it has raised my proverbial floor, or foundation. The highs of tying one on and ending up at a casino are not met by the much lower lows of waking up the following day with such regrets over what transpired the night prior. I’m not living my life perpetually digging myself out of holes that I dug for myself.

And, so, yeah, currently I am on the lower end of what I’d prefer my emotional outlook to be. As a rule I typically go out of my way to avoid drama with my friends, particularly friends who are coworkers, specifically because going to work is one of my favorite things to do. Tertiary issues such as having car problems, or not being in season at work — thus money isn’t just bad for me, it’s bad for everybody else, too — are more or less out of my control.

What I’m saying is, given all of these givens, I’m not exacerbating matters by drinking and gambling. The so-called ‘lower end’ of my emotional outlook is at like a 4/10 rather than a 1/10. Maybe it all blows over with my friends and we all live happily ever after on the craps table, or maybe (probably) (most likely) it does not. Either way, I’m not going to ‘fix’ this problem by hammering down my customary four beers per night. I can live with it.

Beyond that, I can already see over the horizon. I can see day shift in my future. The only real question is weather I decide to jump in a speed boat and go vroom vroom or pack my happy ass into a tug boat and clunk along until I get where I want to be. It’s perhaps shallow of me to string this out until 2026, since all of Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fall on my days off, but who knows. Even I don’t know right now.

We live by the impulsive and we die by the impulsive. As said in the story of the scorpion and the frog: ‘It is my nature.’