2015 Year End

In the matter of a couple of days 2015 will be gone. With that in mind it's that time of the year (which I haven't done for a couple of years now) where I sit back, reflect on where I've been and take you guys down that road with me.

I started 2015 working in the oil field. I absolutely loved my job. I met so many good people while working in the field and I worked for a company that in some of the hardest of times I could rely on and from the get go showed me that they invested as much as they could in their employees and treated each other as family. Toledo Mudlogging has taken me to places I never believed I would go to. Unfortunately with the fall of the price of oil jobs began to slow down and they worked me as much as they could. Going into April I had only worked a couple of weeks the whole year. There was a bunch of reasons that I had to leave this job, finances, needing insurance, and something 80% of you all didn't know, I was going to be a father.

Being a father was my driving force to come home for good. Coming home, getting a stable job with insurance, and being home for my family is why I'm here today. Unfortunately life doesn't always work out the way we plan it to be. In June we lost the baby. Kay and I lost out little girl. I spent days being distraught. We kept everything quiet until we knew that the baby was going to be healthy. We were both happy and optimistic. I came home from work one day and was spent so I slept hard; so hard that I missed 29 phone calls and multiple voice mails. By the time I returned that call it was too late. To keep the illusion to the outside world we carried on as if it had never happened. I know that when we were alone and when the lights were out we mourned in our own ways. Kay and I mourned separately. I tried to be her rock when we were together but alone I was distraught.

I'm gonna back up here a bit because in April I had started my new (current) job. April is when I had left Toledo Mudlogging and started working for Reser's Fine Foods as a maintenance tech. This is a job that honestly I didn't know if I was going to be any good at. All my life I've worked retail, call center work, and as a mudlogger looking at rocks. I didn't know much about how to trouble shoot a machine to fix let alone be sanitary about it in the food industry. I was just working in the oil field and make my own lunch covered in drilling fluid and oil. Hell, I bumped my head more often than not because for the last 7 years I wore a hard hat. I knew it was going to be a challenge. Even as I write this I know I'm not great at my job. Sometimes I wonder if I'm barely even good at it but everyday I try to find something new to learn. Luckily here I work with a good group of guys despite the fact that we can all be assholes.

2015 was full of so much loss. Most importantly I lost my uncle Leonard this year. It was hard. I had to watch my mom cry and comfort her while I cried quietly before I would go to bed. I can still remember my uncle's laugh. It was infectious. Of course I already talked about me loosing my little girl. I lost pets this year. When I move back to Kansas from Louisiana my ex Cody kept all the pets. This year we lost our black lab Treble and got closure on Lucky who had gone missing last year. Today I learned that her cat Cooke passed away as well. When Cody and I were together she was always a "daddy's girl" and followed me around. She was one of the few cats that I loved. I'm going to miss her so much. To add to the loss count Kay and I had split twice this year and still are. Despite how much I love her we have some difference that just can't be worked out right now.

The best time I had in 2015 was a trip to Orlando, FL where Kay and I took her children to Disney World and Universal for her daughter's 16th and son's 15th birthdays. OMG if you've never been you need to. Disney World is nothing short of "magical". I was a huge Disney fan as a kid with the likes of Aladdin, the Lion King, and what not. Go, by all means, go. Words don't describe it so here....

 

Let us not forget Universal Studios.

It was a heck of a time and there are so many more pictures from both but there's just too many to add. Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves about the time that we had.

This is getting long so I'm going to end it here. I may have missed a few things but this is all my year in a nutshell.

I promise for those of you who read these that I'll be blogging more often next year. Just wait because I've got a few things in store.

-Pat!

Fate rarely calls.....

It has occurred to me over the last several months that a change in my life is coming. It is imminent. It will happen. What I'm doing now in my life isn't where I end up. It is not where my story comes to an end but if I stay I will end. There is a drive within me that tells me there is something more out there for me.

I have sat around, I have not focused and worked on my dreams, all the while working a "9 to 5" to where I feel that as much as I try to grow and even speak for myself I am held down. I'm not the greatest at my job and I know that. Hell, I'm not even great, barely even good. As of today I am refocusing what I'm doing with my life.

I believe that I've come to a point of desperation and now is the point where I sacrifice what I am for what I will become. It is the only way, the only way I will succeed. I mean, what's the point of dreaming about something if you don't pursue it?

I will not sit back and go into another year and waste another year with my old mentality while someone's in the hospital begging God for the opportunity that I have. I will step into this moment.

"Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing." - Optimus Prime

581 Days Later

It's been almost 600 days since my last time blogging and I feel I've kind of lost my voice a little. I've lost my openness with you, whomever reads them. Life has changed. It's had it's ups and downs. Moments when I've felt at my greatest ...and moments I've been at my weakest. So here I stand, brand new but still the old me.

Life has taken me on a bit of a journey, professionally, personally, and spiritually.

Towards the end of 2014 and into the beginning of 2015 we started seeing a slowing in the drilling business. Due to barely working among other reasons I left my job for a job that was more stable, benefits, and home. This was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make because I loved my job. I loved my job that I had with a company that took a chance on me when I started and has always tried to be good to me. I loved my job, the work I did, and the friends I've made. These were some of the best people I know today and am glad to call them friends. I moved into a job back home that was a maintenance tech position. Again, this was a job that took a chance with me and I'm determined to work as hard there as I did out in the oil fields. You can stick me in an oil field and I can confidently log the hell out of it with ease but with my new job I'm apprehensive. I'm not gonna lie, my job scares the hell out of me. I'm pretty green and never did a job quite like it before. My days can go from one day greasing machines to cutting them apart the next. Thankfully I work alongside a good group of guys there too. I hope I don't let them down.

In my personal life I wouldn't do it any justice if I didn't mention my rock, who now shares my life with me after 6 years. Life got pretty crazy and she crazier still, yet I couldn't imagine my life without her. ...ok, honestly it would be pretty normal but she's also brought two awesome kids into my life. Getting honest here, (because why not) things aren't perfect. They aren't perfect to anyone else looking in, not perfect to me, and probably not perfect to her either. What I can say is that there's no one that I'd rather figure it all out with than her.

Several days ago we passed the one year anniversary of losing Robin Williams. It was bitter sweet for me. I was sorrowful that we lost someone whom we all seemed to love and there was just a huge out poor when the news originally broke but he brought an awareness to depression that most people seem to have never known about, that anyone can get depression. Not many people know that I fight it too. It's not a feeling that's here one day and gone the next. I've had days when I couldn't get out of bed, days where I cared about absolutely nothing and wanted to just give all my possessions away. Some days I wake up physically sore. It's given me insomnia to where I didn't sleep for three days and I had to force myself to sleep. I've had days when without reason emotionally I couldn't function and just wanted to break down and hide. I've literally quit jobs because of it and have sat in some spot for days, almost comatose because of it. I've never publicly opened up about this but have even considered taking that long term answer for my short term problems. So why do I tell you all of this? Because we all know someone with depression. It's not a short term problem. It is long term. It's a burden. Those whom I've let close to me in moment's when I really needed them, they've all walked away and left me to fight alone. While I'm still here not everyone is always so lucky. If someone ever comes to you, be there for them. Depression is a burden and we all only want one thing from it, to be free.

So... Here I am, trying to get life back on track to what makes me the happiest. It's a struggle but it's working. Without my rock I wouldn't look forward to every day and try to do things better than the day before. Have I mentioned that I've been sober for almost a year now? Not alcohol free but my drinking is now under control. I have trouble focusing. ....(lol) ALOT of trouble focusing but slowly I'm getting there.

I was more or less invited to participate in a local art fair here in Topeka and I've got a few ideas for pieces of art to go with but I've lost steam because the organizer this year hasn't gotten back to anyone about my participation. That being said the artwork I had planned to offer I'll find another way to do so.

I had a plate full of animation and comic projects and I've decided to narrow them down. I literally had eight full production projects from writing, designing, drawing, and/or animating that I planned to do all on my own. (Probably the reason I couldn't focus on one.) Wanna know what they were?

• Eichi Nee
• Atlantis
• The Crystal Crown
• New Strawn (Working title)
• Whisper
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Property of Nickelodeon)
• Masters of the Universe vs Thundercats (Property of Mattel and ?Warner Brothers?)
• Dino Riders (Formerly Tyco and now Mattel)

Some of these projects some of you who have been reading would know about. Some were never mentioned by name. New Strawn is a working title and it may change in the end. The name was inspired by a small town in Kansas that I used to drive through but was meant to be a title like "Cloverfield." Anyways, it's a long story on that one. It's a pretty ambitious project. All of these are a subject for a blog at another time because there's way too much to talk about right now.

I was going to upload some pictures here for you guys but Blogger is acting funny and I can't upload any. Sorry for the wordy boring blog. :/