What you've lost to bad decisions
 

i have a lot's ot thoughts about this and a lot of time to think about it. i've been doing really poor the last two years and going back thru things i've seen there are a lot of bad decision going in a row, that lead me to where I am at now. i'm not ranting or else, just keep track of what i have majorly fucked up. so it's not been a long ago i had pretty decent journo job in a huge company, got a lot, or at least it seemed to me like a lot of bucks, i was single and had couple of kick-ass fuck buddies i always could hang out with, had a band that recorded an album and started going pretty good for a period of time. then, i got heroin. and, you know, heroin (and all the drugs)gives this special smooth glow to everything, but only for a short while. i don't blame it on drugs at all. what happened to me is just a bunch of bad decision in a row, starting with smack. due to these bad decisions i've lost
-at least three great jobs, that would've paid greatly to my 'career';
-connection with my bandmates, not totally destroyed, but still a thing to re-build from now on. and it's been a good 8 years w/ this band.
-all of my musical gear, except the main thing- my epiphone bass. but there was a time i seriously wnated to sell it for dope.
-all of my photographer shit, huge collection of lomography cameras, all went up my femoral for a very short time.
-relationships with various people i liked.
-the pure vibe of being abroad with my band. i had to do gigs in withdrawals, getting fucked up on everything i could put my hands on in a foreign coutry. that was a lesson to learn the hard way. playing w/ Oi Polloi puking behind the amp. sorta child dream meets raw reality.
-missed a brief tour i could've played on.
-relationships w/ family, even though i have partly re-bulid some of it.
-lots of things i do regret now, but the worse is there are a lot of things i do regret NOT: thats what makes it hard as hell for me keep away from new bad decision binge.

i guess everyone has those times around.
this is not another drug-talk thread, at least not my intention for it to be, though my shit is so tightly packed with drugs i'm getting the shivers only thinking about it.

on the other hand all of this shit made me realize that i got a bunch of kick ass friends around, which is a tough life-exam. i found out i'm in love with a girl, whos always been around. not that it made me stop using brown for the sake of her, but it helped me a lot thinking about it. if there's anything that prevents me on going back on the short term, it's losing that friendship.
so, +1 point to me on the whole situation.

huh yeah i might want to come back here later. I can't be bothererd to write a long post but lots of things to say to that , sure. will report back.
+ 1 point from me to you for the hindsight . It's good to be able to SEE when it's all been BLURRED for a long time, i can totally relate to this. will be back.

Urmm, education, girls, money and some music too, not that much really.

You have to keep smiling though don't you?

EDIT: i should probably add my health too.

yeah, should keep smiling, or at least keep the optimism to wake up every morning. the last one being extremely hard for me anyway.
looking back, it's a lot easyer now- from the outside of the things.
the inside- well, it's been a mess, and now it's a complete disaster, but still...

I'm not sure what I have to offer you, other than hope for the future. out of all my old school friends, I was the only one that avoided a vicious monkey. my best friend (who was surely the worst abuser) has turned his life completely around.

so...my point is: bad decisions only haunt you if fail to learn from them. I realize that heroin addiction is different than, say, buying the wrong kind of shampoo, but it too can be overcome.

get outside help if you need it and beware relapsing. just say "NO" to "just one time". [a regular point-of-light, I am]

good luck.

Her.

W_-V

I lost my $200 pay check because I decided to go see "Be Kind, Rewind" I'm a fan of Jack Black but that was an awful movie.

fuck man, at least you can see clearly enough to understand what has been going on _shentov_. Keep yr head up my man.

i shouted this shit from the rooftops when this horrid bullshit came out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.
before or after you watched the movie (if you watched it)

after walking out of the theater 25 minutes into that piece of SHIT

werd. i fucken loved it. i laughed like a motherfucker. prolly cuz i've made my own "sueded" movies and i got all the movie references & shit. it's definitely a movie for movie nerds.

funny, that's about how long it took before I closed out the dvd-window.

why did that movie suck so bad? I was expecting better and the premise sounded funny....but....


[subliminal_msg: this is not a hijack. I was not here. I did not post this]

it was fucking horrible. the theatre where I saw it with my girlfriend had maybe 50-75 people in it, an daround the twenty minute mark, I had counted one guy, just one fucking guy, who was laughing at anything on screen (and he laughed just 3-4 times ). I looked around and saw everyone with the same look on their face, thinking "did I pay $8.00 to sit here and watch a movie populated by near mental deficients in some sort of pseudo-mystical nether region of Queens?" it was fucking sad to watch. it was even sadder to watch how far Danny Glover has fallen off man. what a fucking JOKE of a role and a JOKE of a movie.

fucking horrible.

it was WORSE THAN SWEENEY TODD.

I stayed for all of THAT piece of rotten shit. I guess I like self-torture.

It did seem like a funny movie. I mean Jack Black and the re-made movies were somewhat funny and all, but the fact that they were trying to save some gay little movie rental store. I mean the story itself was completely shitty. Not to mention the the ending, which I wanted to puke after watching. Making a movie on, well I don't remember what that stupid movie was about but.....Ah screw it. It was shit.

MY FUCING PAYCHECK WAS GOING TO MY CC BILL WTF!

so i thought for a while about to answer seriously and i realized that the reason i was compelled to make jokes is not because i don't take your woes seriously, but because i don't wanna be posting on the internet what i "lost to bad decisions", and because of a zealous protection of my privacy, but because i just dont like to spend a lot of time with regrets and lamentations.

my point is-- learn your lessons from the past, yes, but focus on the here and now that's in front of your nose, or you're liable to squander that as well while you're being haunted by the romance of looking back in sorrow.

the present!

its a fucking jack black movie, of course its gonna be shit, you can'thave one without the other...

Well maybe other people can learn from other people's mistakes, however it isn't automactically goin' to make you regret the decision but it will certainly make you think twice about it. Take my bad decision for instance, I'm sure you know that you may not lose $200 after watching "Be Kind Rewind" but it is foolish to think that it isn't possible. This is to teach us something about life if it affects us directly or not. And yes, we should only focus on the future, but knowing a little history certainly doesn't hurt.

that is why I find people who say the live by the mantra of "No Regrets" completely deluded.

regrets are what one learns from, what one uses to reshape one's life and decisions, so those regretted things do not repeat themselves. anyone who claims to have no regrets because they don't live life that way is in for a world of deep deep hurt when all that shit catches up to you without you having done anything about it, either internally within onesself, or externally to repair or at least minimize the pain caused by actions regretted.

School of Rock was motherfuckin' "Touch of Evil" compared to Be Kind Rewind!

thats what i said, learn from the past, but being sucked into the emotional maelstrom of past sorrows is a trap too-- this is a subtle one so think about it.

now my question is how the fuck did you lose $200 after watching be kind rewind? $200? doing what?

i don't think about regrets. it'll just be a waste of emotions and time if i did. i was never into drugs or heavy use of alcohol or anything that will make me think i have lost something. i have lost good friendships, but that's just a part of growing up.

well today i regret not buying this parka that was on sale. a few days after i saw it the coat was gone.

not dwelling on regrets is different from denying regret altogether.

I think that regrets shape us much more than the good things in life.

yeah i'm not denying that i have regrets, but it'll be a waste of my time if i sit around and dwell on them. i could be doing something else more constructive. well, aside from looking at this messageboard.

those underwear scare the shit out of me

you don't like the shaq manties?

I lost my wallet....I don't know how. I bought popcorn and I guess I must've lost it somewhere between buying popcorn and goin' to bed that night.

I'd agree with this, to the extent that regret is an important part of the way we develop and shape ourselves. Without regret, we cannot empathise, feel and even love.

[insert standard reply: 666-butthole_surfers/regret]

tell yr mom.

uhler where did you find that underwear? i want some

i stole them from my son.

That kinda makes me me wonder all kinds of strange things about you...please say you're kidding.

OK to the real point of the thread....

I have a TON of regret...

If I had actually PLAYED the old guitar my dad gave me instead of getting hooked on video games, I might be more confident/proficent on the instrument today, plus I might've have been exposed to the great 90s music I love now at an earlier age, when it was most relevant to everyone else.

If I had turned around and paid attention when there was a girl screaming my name down the hall in junior high (actually it's more of a case I didn't realize she was talking to me; she was calling my first name and most people called me by my last name in those days), I might've had a real relationship-or at least gotten laid (maybe not, but I'll never know now).

If I had started working out at an earlier age, I might be more muscular now. On that same subject, if I hadn't been so picky with what I ate when I was younger, I might not have been so scrawny for so long.

If I had gone to college, maybe I'd have more friends, have played music with more people, have better job options, and have had more interesting experiences to look back upon.

That's actually pretty much it...slowly I am finally beginning to realize what's done is done and it's a useless waste of time to dwell upon the past. Still, I can't help but wonder sometimes if I could've had a better life up to now if I had just done things a bit differently (i.e. take more risks and live a little)...

If you can find at least one reason each day to not go back, it can be the start of a positive change. At least from where you are now, you can see a lot of outcomes that have had a negative effect on your life. You have that perspective. I think when you're still deep in it, its a lot harder to see that.

I've never had a habbit that has reached that far into my life. My self destructive nature for wahtever reason hasn't chosen heavy drugs and has avoided the bad choice of drugs + alcohol combination OD a few times through dumb luck? I hate to think what I'd be like if I ever started on heroin. I used to take a lot of codeine, valium, and alcohol, plus a bit of pot to get through the day, on top of on and off taking my perscription paxil. My life would stop, I think, if I ever started on herion. I'm lucky. ...But I've had friends who have come pretty close to fucking it all up.. cocaine and heroin are fucking noxious. The realisation of how much damage you're doing to yourself, and actually caring, is a big step.

You're still alive, which is a lot to have coming out of a smack habbit.. and you've managed to hold on to some friends by the sounds of it. These things can be enough to pull you out, just need to have the strength.

Hope you can manage it, I really do. There are lots of people out there that can help you too. You should ask, if you havent already. There's nothing I wouldnt have done for my friends to help them, when they needed it, if they asked.

The hardest part from my perspective, is that after this, you'll end up making friends who've had the habbit, and it can be pretty magnetic in trying to draw you back in. As hard as it is, its probably better to stay away from anyone who is remotely inclined to start again. If you can. Again, I've seen friends use.. just one more time.. after making new friends that either still do, or used to have a smack habbit.

good luck

you said it, and if you see your mother later tell her "SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!"

This intro is scaring ( I thought the album was all blank ).

not that there's a huge point turning back in anger and regretting shit from the past, it's just that the past is hard to delimit from.

do i sound like yoda?

so basically, i think we may be the exact same person

now thats confusing, dude...

actually i was kinda wrong, the working out part didn't apply to me, i've always been ripped

rather ripped, y' know