Everything happens for a reason...

(how many times have you heard that before?)

I assume that there's a different but similar version of this sentence in every language around the World… Everyone has heard it before, likely when they were younger. The death of a loved one. The loss of a job. A serious injury or disease. Whenever these things happen, someone at some point will invariably say to you “everything happens for a reason”… Well what the fuck is the reason? Sometimes the reason is just that you made the wrong decision and ended up in trouble, and that's completely on you. Life is unfair, even cruel at times, but in order to get past things sometimes you just have to “believe” that everything will work out. Call it fate, call it faith, call it whatever you want, but life must go on.

For example: a little over six years ago I lost my job for no fault of my own. I was a model employee who was never late for work, not even once in 11 1/2 years. It was just a business decision that resulted in me not having a way to earn a living until I found something else to replace it. I was so angry and depressed about my life, and all of the poor choices I'd made throughout my existence all came back to bite me on the ass big-time. The years I'd spent doing drugs and failing in school were all coming down the hill towards me like a giant boulder. I knew full well my entire life that I was fucking up, but just didn't care enough about myself to do anything about it. I was silently and slowly committing suicide, but the only problem was that I survived…

What to do now? Try to find another way to survive. Fortunately I ended up landing on my feet by getting something else going almost immediately, and never even missed a single day of pay during my transition to the new job. Unfortunately the new job didn't start off very well, but I needed to keep a roof over my head so I had no choice but to forge ahead. Getting older, it wasn't exactly something that I could do in the long term mainly due to the physical aspect of this new job. Add on top of that coworkers who were actively hostile towards me, and attempted to oust me or just make me quit on my own.

Fast forward six and a half years and I'm still grinding away at the 'ol salt mine, and thus the search for ways to expand upon my income possibilities while still retaining the security of my regular “9 to 5” are in force… Of course everyone has heard of “starving artists”. Well, as a starving artist I can tell you 100% that it mostly consists toiling in obscurity while also being broke.

In conclusion, most of the time everything just works out and life goes on. For better or for worse, you get up in the morning and you look at the day, and you say “look motherfucker, I'm about to conquer your ass today”… And then you go out and do that shit…