Life Coach

17^th July 2014

Dear Cassi,

This week I talked with a career counselor. I can call it a low point among low points as it was little more that a waste of my time. It came to me to look to such a person after a bad spot at work where I believe I have been treated unfairly. Well, no, unfairly isn’t the right word. I feel like I’m being dumped on.

The technical term for this is ‘toxic work environment’ but getting dumped on echoes my feeling so much more. So, I’m getting dumped on and after getting dumped on I ran an internet search for career counselor and found an online website that let me ‘chat’ with a fellow named Drew.

         

Drew works as a ‘Life Coach’ which is a technical word for dim bulb who gets paid way too much to tell you what you already know. This fellow asked me to describe myself so I gave him the description I felt he needed. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, I have worked in security for more than ten years, I want to change fields. What more should a career counselor need to know?

         

He pressed deeper and said I should pursue a career as a novelist. “Why, yes, I am pursuing a career as a novelist. I can’t keep my head around my stories, because I’m going through so much crap at work!” This dingleberry thought I was going to change my mode of thinking and go back to chasing my dreams. I have to face the reality that I may never become a novelist. If I do become a novelist I may never be able to support myself in that occupation.

I informed him that I felt I would soon lose my job and he said “is there any way to stop it?” As if people lose their job as if it were a set of car keys. He just couldn’t come to understand that his advice was outdated. This isn’t the 80’s when any job was enough to have. In the modern day you need a good job to go after your dreams. As for the rest of us we live in nightmares.

Stay safe, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Night of Bad Dreams

1st March 2015 

Dear Cassi,

Last night was a night of bad dreams, but in waking I found the sink a mess and the laundry in need of doing. Were the dreams so bad as my reality? I had to hold off on proper food and eat only something to keep my body going. Until nearly midnight I could make myself no proper meal because of the mess I had to address.

I had taken nothing into my gut for nineteen hours and so was feeling drained and weak. I guess you know this life, but I can only guess. I do not recall when I first started doing dishes, but I know it had hard to reach the counter top when I did. You must remember that back then my mother was too weak to wash and the rest of my family to lazy.

I stacked out the dishes and started addressing the jumble in the linen closet having to wash everything over again. I can’t imagine how Pickle finds it so hard to fold towels. Then the cabinets get rumbled after he washes dishes and the mess grows until I pull it all out and start over.

For more than twelve hours the washer or dryer ran with most of it being both at the same time. The dishwasher ran twice and the long run of cleaning only made a dent in the detritus.

In the end I finally when back to sleep and had more bad dreams, but not as bad as my waking nightmare. Now in the twilight of the day I sit before the computer logging this misfortune.

Live as you can, little sister,




Richard Leland Neal

Dark World

3^th December 2011

Dear Cassi,

    

One of the largest parts of my young life was my brother’s insomnia. We would stay up all night, and he would tell stories of the ‘Dark World’ which was little more than a compilation of the TV shows he watched. Sunday morning cartoons came to life in his head and became mixed with horror films my father would show him.

    

Who shows Friday the 13^th to a seven year old I have no idea, but old man Neal thought it was the right thing to do. I spent at least a decade of my life listing to every story of death, torture, and abuse that could come from the diseased mind of a pre to early teen horror film junky.

    

The worst of this was the lack of sleep that came along with these mental assaults. I would go to school with a head that felt like it was full of spiked led balls that I couldn’t hold up to save my life.

    

When I think about that it may have been the reason for my slow mental development. How can anyone grow up healthy when suffering from sleep deprivation? I can’t blame my brother for what he did back then, but I’m still angry that he refuses to take responsibility for things he did in his twenties.

    

The Dark World was the place where my earliest nightmares where born. It was a world no more or less obscene than our own but with all those horrific things lane out like puzzle pieces put together in a hellish mosaic.

    

You could say I have a dark mind, well, now you know why.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal