Tag: moving forward

It’s 2021, we are entering Post-pandemic life, half the year is over already, and we have a new President – so whats new?

We have a new president! I think the world is Genuinely stoked about that. The USA not so much.. Hopefully the US can begin to heal, however opinions are more important than facts it seems these days. Orange man baby is still running his mouth from the corner and he still has a chunk of the USA under his lying corrupt thumb. I don’t get it.. Well, I do to a degree.. our country is strait gullible, ignorant, and ultimately racist. A large part of our voting populace will believe anything they are fed online or on the TV. Many if not all of our high offices and institutions are plagued by white supremacy and institutionalized racism. We are more aware than ever before thankfully. I keep saying that 2020 was the year of perfect vision. It may not have been what we wanted to see but it is what we have to and were meant to see. We were shown that our society is a big facade, our healthcare sucks, our governments response to a pandemic is Shoddy at best and serves only to make corporations more money, and all the while our policing institutions have been blatantly murdering Black people and can’t figure out what the problem is.. I know its not that black and white but that is only a tip of the ice berg.. Long story short, 2020 was a hellish year all around and I am glad that 2020 is over.

I progressed a lot in my current career with cannabis, and subsequently the laws changed and now New Mexico is legalizing recreational Cannabis. Now as of a month ago I work for myself. I left Sacred Garden at the end of May for what I call visionary differences, but I mention some details below. I definitely didn’t like the 40+ hour work weeks plus the 10+hours of driving per week, or waking up at fucking 5 am. I liked the benefit of having money on paper. I got paid well, and was making more money than I ever have in my life by like four or five bucks. The grind was definitely heavy, I was more tired in general then I ever have been in my life. I didn’t have much free time, and my mental health was slipping into a funky depression. I was spending so much time every week for someone elses dream.. I realized the hard way that I am not happy doing that, and no amount of money makes it worth it. I quit over a personal issue with a tough guy shoddy maintenance man, we never had problems at work but he just talks to people like a bully and I wasn’t having it, and none of my bosses or managers could care less or backed me up. Fortunately for me I have a strong sense of dignity and self worth. I’m thankful honestly it gave me a very direct sign that it was my time to move on. I wasn’t learning anything and I was promised lots but nothing ever came to fruition and when I inquired it was like ” yeah right, we’ve never gotten a bonus,” or they told me when I started, “we’ll pay 100 bucks a month to help cover gas and expenses,” (never offered or paid me a dime for gas beyond my paycheck and gas was 300+ a month). Another one was “we’ll give you a raise at your review,” and then after a 3 month late, basically self given review, there was no mention of any added compensation yet the facility looked remarkably better than when I started. I could go on and on, that facility and the atmosphere didn’t let me do my best work although I left very proud of what we did accomplish. I left the facility in a MUCH better state than when I started And ultimately everything I was told or what enticed me to the job was never honored. I learned a lot but it was a lot of how NOT to do things. Otherwise I was just an overpaid team member with no official authority. I was hired as a “manager or assistant Lead”, yet i still had like 5 experienced growers who always knew better methods or do what they saw what someone in California was doing on Instagram.. Literally anything I ever said based on my experience was thrown our or ignored and then i would do what I was told.. something would mess up or be wrong.. then I would follow our SOP and still mess up even though I was doing what I was contractually ordered to do.. Ultimately it was kinda a waste of my time. I did however get ton of positive reinforcement that I could do my own facility and Cannabis business with success. Again 2020 was a year of vision and realization to me, and many others I’m sure.

We are steady cruising through 2021 and the world has somewhat come back to life. Music and events started happening back in May, and now just this past Thursday July 2nd, New Mexico has re-opened to max capacity. It feels so good to move forward. I am not naive and I know that we have a long way to go. I’m so thankful for all of the support and gigs I’ve gotten. I wouldn’t be who I am without my music community. I had gotten jaded with music over the past 18 month and barely touched anything music in at least that long. I was just feeling burned and sad that something that was such a big part of my life was no longer a thing for the foreseeable future. Many of us in the music and Entertainment industry had no idea when we would be able to do what we know and love again. It was very stressful as we learned what businesses and industries were being effected the most. This time last year in 2020 seemed hopeless and like music and events may never come back the way they were before. I’m so happy that is not the case. It’s been hard to shake the anxieties and stresses of the pandemic but it has felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good to see friends and peoples smiles and dance together with amplified music in social spaces… some things I, and many others, will hopefully never ever take for granted again.

So not much new except for a new president who is carrying the status quo. I voted democrat. I voted for Biden and Kamala, however I don’t feel their platform is aggressive enough on the progressive end. We need systematic change, not just throwing temporary solutions, but digging deep and rooting out the corruption, greed, and racism.. However the establishment is too embedded in greed and systemic racism to work any differently. I voted Democrat but for the first time in my life I wasn’t really proud or stoked to vote Democrat. I literally carried my party line to prevent the Orange Shit stain from taking office.. Biden should have won by a landslide and seeing how close it was does not give me hope for much of a progressive future. About half of voters still vehemently voted for Baby in Chief and still stand by his moaning that the “election was stolen” despite there being not ONE single piece of evidence that supports that claim. Even after he was gone and cut off from social media he continues to represent the absolute worst this country has to offer, and undermine American democracy.

My personal solutions that I came to, to help me move forward.

I have stopped paying attention to the day to day political stuff because it was literally damaging my mental health. FUCK social media. People act so differently online as opposed to real life. The hate and ugly that people (friends, family, and associates) displayed has made it easy for me to move forward with, and definitely without, certain people. I know going forward how, who, and what to spend my energy on. I hope others made these self discoveries as well. I stand firm in my belief that if you and someone you thought was a friend negatively disagree on basic moral and ethical subjects, that person doesn’t care about you or to understand where you come from. They usually just want to argue or debate. That person is probably not as good of a friend or community member as you may have once thought. I’ve been called more hateful things by family and people I know over the past 2 years than ever before in my life. I can thank orange shit stain for that. He inspired people to show their true colors and sadly much of those colors were out of touch, completely false, blatant lies, violence, racism, and general lack of compassion for others. yeah I can forgive and “still be friends” with lots of people, however I do not want to be friends with hateful, racist, blatantly ignorant with no desire to learn, and overall uncompassionate people.. I don’t have time or stress for these people moving forward. You, [readers] don’t deserve to stress about these types of people either, the choice is yours. I made my social medias a nicer and more peaceful place, now I try to only use them for business, promotion, and networking, more or less how they were originally meant to be used. I choose to remove negative and hateful people from my social medias. I choose to move forward with love and inclusion, productivity and community. These things helped me and might possibly help you

If you read my posts thank you and I hope you gained something or got a chuckle at least. Feel free to comment. I don’t entertain trolls or shit posters, I’ll remove negative comments unless they are constructive in some way that I can determine.

Pax out! Much love and music!

My 2018 in review! Moving onward and upward! & Some goals and ideas!

I learned a lot in 2018 but I think the most important thing I learned, once again, was to NEVER READ THE COMMENTS. I’m partially joking but that is one of many things that I reminded myself of countless times over the past year. Don’t read the comments, say what you have to say, watch what you want to watch, and like what you want to like. Don’t let the dregs of the online population get you down or critique your favorite things to death. Remember to enjoy your time doing things because you enjoy it, not because someone tells you that they think you should or shouldn’t. Form your own opinions and think critically for yourself.

I had a bad habit of reading too far into things that I like or consume, whether it be media, food, or even certain industries. I realize I over critique a lot of things to the point that I don’t ever experience them for myself, more or less I only experience things through this lens of critical analysis.

I am hopefully stopping this in the coming year. Don’t get me wrong i like to read and do some research on things but concentrating on others reviews or comments about a certain thing can be damaging.. You gotta think someone is more likely to comment on something if something was wrong or if they were unsatisfied.. Unless presented with an option someone who is satisfied or content will PROBABLY NOT go out of their way to make a post or review saying “I like it, I’m satisfied”. The comment sections and review sections are usually more or less for trolls or people who have negative things to say. While it is good to review certain things so you don’t make shit purchases, it’s easy enough to look at the overall numbers of people who gave it a good rating VS people who gave it a bad one.

Bad time to be a gamer..

Since 2016 I have felt that as a solid video game player I have been getting more and more screwed over. Lately it has been a trend in all gaming industries to do micro-transactions. However they rely on these MTs (micro-transactions) to generate revenue so they can add more content and development to the games. There has been severe push back on the topic of MTs, gamers in general don’t care for them.

Now they do this Games as a service model that effectively releases partially finished games at full price and then updates them regularly and adds content to the entire player base instead of just charging extra for the guarantee of full content packs. They rely on a strong player base to be buying those MTs which are usually customization’s that have no real game value, they don’t effect statistics or characters actions at all they are purely cosmetic.. Most gamers can agree that this is pretty harmless and one doesn’t have to purchase them in order to enjoy the game in any sense. However the release of sub par and unfinished games is a sad conundrum that I don’t see getting better as game companies get greedier and the prices to produce games gets ever higher.

I would almost prefer if they were real with their customers and say look Games just cost 80 dollars anymore.. Sorry it’s the price of production and whatever else but now it feels like they are charging full price and not delivering even half of what would be considered a full video game, even 5 years ago.

I am a customer who likes to support the game developers and artists, but when I am repeatedly suckered into paying full if not extra price only to have to deal with bugs, glitches, and price drops less than a month after release.. Countless times it has happened where less than 40 days after I pay 80 dollars for a game I see it online for only 30 or 40 dollars. That is ridiculous. It’s like they are punishing the players who pay the most amount of money. Needless to say I finally learned my lesson. I won’t be buying any more games on launch and especially paying extra for pre-order crap. It’s simply not worth my money and the games end up not even being fun to play for another 6 months to a year after they are released by that time they are a fraction of the price, yet more enjoyable.. How does that work.

I love video games and I will always play them and enjoy them but I’m learning that this is considered normal in the industry now and it probably won’t change just get more effective over the years.. I’ve always said if they do away with the physical media I will probably not play as many video games anymore.. I don’t like the always on model and streaming games idea. Let me have my collections and share them with my friends if I want to.

Looking forward to 2019.

All in all 2018 was a great year. I did a ton of business and made a lot of great connections. I have some ideas and things that I want to do in 2019 and one of them is go back to school. I plan to attend CNM again this coming summer and start my degree in communications. I want to be a writer or game journalist of some kind. Even if it doesn’t have anything to do with video games I want to do some kind of writing either creative or professional. I will pursue business but I will do that in my own capacity with Unity Sound Co and other ventures.

I am also practicing and want to learn proficiency in the Spanish language. I think it’s important to be able to speak the languages of your neighboring countries, for both business and security. Being an interpreter is a well paying job that I would actually get some enjoyment out of and the communication degree as a whole will let me practice what i do for fun anyways; reading, writing, and creating.

As for Unity Sound Co, I like where I am at with it. I can increase business the more I go out and network, and a steady stream of people organically hit me up on the regular for small events and shows. I need to put my foot down with my pricing this year. I helped a lot of people out, even last minute sometimes, and never got compensated. Only I can ensure I get good business. I also need to keep better track of my accounting. That just makes it a lot easier when I go to file my taxes and do end of the year paperwork.

I want to do a couple of party in the park styled events and this time I would like to have some more vendors and artists. Maybe invite a little bit of color into the spectrum. I’m not looking to make a lot for that part of my shows, more to let the artists have an opportunity to make some money.

Overall I am looking forward to 2019.. I’m through pre-ordering games.. I am done reading comment sections and critiques.. I’m ridding myself of toxic politics.. I am going back to school and running my business well and making it as good as I can. I know nobody cares haha.. feel free to comment and tell me what you are up to in the coming year.

As always thank you for reading!