Welcome to The R.E.M

Ahhh... Where do I start... Well, I guess for those of you who don't know me, you can start with my bio and go from there. For those of you who know me (or think you know me), welcome to my blog where I'm sure you will all learn something about me you didn't know.
I decided to write this blog because over the last few years, A LOT has gone down in my life and I just didn't know how to express it. I've always been a good writer and I used to keep a journal, which I actually did quite a bit of writing in. But over the past few years, my passion for writing has deminished and I felt it was about time to get back to what I know. So heres a quick break down on what's been going down over the last 2.5 years or so.

I guess I should start with early 2008 since that's pretty much when my life truely started getting hectic. At the end of February '08 I made my move back to ATL from Rochester, NY where I was going o RIT. I moved back to ATL to continue with school because I had recently changed my major from Mechanical Engineering Tech to Business Management and it simply didnt make sence for me to be struggling to pay for school at about $35K a year when I could recieve my BS in management for FREE at a school in GA. Now, because RIT is a tri-mester school I had to take the spring semester off, so I went out and found a full time job. I moved back on Feb. 28 and started a new job on March 3. It was a great job although it was commission based and I spent about 60 hours a week driving around making sales for AT&T. But at the time I couldn't complain. I was making about $3000 a month, not paying rent and had just bought a new car ('06 Mitsubishi Galant). That car was my baby.... Sadly, 6 days after buying the car, I was in an accident on my way out to the club with some friends that were in town from RIT. I eventually got the car back after it was in the shop for about a month and a half and things went back to normal.

In late August it was time to get back to school and get my education kicking again. This was a huge problem with work because I couldn;t work 60+ hrs a week and go to school and expect good grades. My boss saw that I was slaking and ended up letting me go. Since I lost my job... My bay had to go. It was a sad departure but  life moved on. Since I was no longer driving I had to move closer to campus so I moved in with one of the brothers on LUL that lived close to campus. Things went pretty good at first, I was in betweeen jobs but I made ends meet. Had a really rough period between mid December and  early January that year because I was only working about 4-8 hours a week at American Eagle. I went about 2 weeks eating nothing but bread and ramen noodles and walking 4 miles to work on the days that I was working since I couldn't afford the train. For the next few months I would go through a few rough patches but managed to stay on top. In February of '09, I bought my 1st motorcycle. It was 1999 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R fixer upper. I worked on it in my spare time and finally got it running around mid April. Around this same point in time, I was in between jobs again just trying to make ends meet, which caused issues with my room mate who was someone who never had to pay their own way through life yet. That month, I was coming up late on the rent and he decided he wasn't going to pay his part at all. Of course this only lead to us being evicted from the apartment. It wasn't a big problem because our lease was up in May anyway. As we were moving out, he decided he was going to be an ass and leave the door open after he finished moving all his stuff out. When I got back to the apartment that night... I had been robbed. Everything was gone, including my bike which I had spent so much time, effort and money in fixing up. All my clothes, books, shoes, everything was gone.

That summer, I moved back home with momma dukes for a few weeks then moved in with a co-worker of mine. Her mom had moved to Cali and left her the apartment so she needed someone to split the bills with. About two months later, her mom was moving back because she was having issues out in Cali. This obviously put me in a little bit of a predicament. To make matters worse, that labor day weekend was the ultimate fail. I had just started a new job and had the day off. I spent most of the day in bed until one of my new co-workers called me and asked if I wanted to come into work that day. I decided not to because I had to work for 6 days straight and I needed some rest. Instead, I decided it was a good time to go do some research for my business plan so I went to the library. On my way back I stopped by the store to grab some ice cream and soda then went back home. As I pulled up to my complex, I was welcomed by a police squad. I gave the police officer my ID and 10 minutes later she told me to get out the car... I was being arrested at the gate of my complex for driving on a suspended license..... Talk about being pissed. So I spent the next 2 weeks locked up at Atlanta Correctional Detention Center. No one except for my room mate and her mom knew where I was, including my brand new boss. For the next two weeks I spent my time waiting for a judge, stepping in old man piss (don't ask), playing spades and doing push-ups and crunches. After seeing 3 judges, I was released on probation at 4:53PM on September 16, my birthday... I immediately went straight to my new job to find out they m boss had gotten worried and ended up tracking me down so he knew where I was and let me keep my job. I cashed my check, bought a 12pk and went home where I waited out in the rain for 3 hours drinking beers as I waited for someone to get home and open the door.

A few weeks later, I moved to new house over by Morehouse and Spellman and life seemed to be going pretty well. With everything going good, I decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner party that year and I cooked up a beast of a meal. About a week later we had another house party like we had been doing regularly for the last few months. The next day, I get a call while I was at work from my roommate saying that the house had been robbed... When I got home, it wasn't the house that got robbed, it was ME that got robbed.. AGAIN. It was just a few things missing, all electronic so I was highly upset but I definitely felt some type of way. About 3 days later, the local bum was cleaning out our backyard for us and lo and behold, he emerges from the bushes carrying my speakers and my computer monitor that had been stolen. All the cords were cut up and I had to replace everything. A few weeks later, one of my roommates up and disappeared which lead me to believe that he was the one who "robbed" me because we had gotten into a fight the night before. It turns out that I was right when he showed up around May trying to get some things he had left behind. Of course I wasn't letting him into the house 1) because he owed me about $300 and 2) because I knew he was the one who had cut up all my stuff. This of course lead to a fight where I once again had to whoop his ass, choke him out and drag him off my porch. Good times!! LOL

About a month later, I moved again to my current spot in ATL. At this point I thought I was coming up in the world because it was a HUGE improvement from the last house I was in. Life was good once again and the world seemed at peace. Then one morning I was awaken to what had to be the worst text message of all time. "hey rem i dont know if you heard the news yet so just to let you know but everyone up here is in grief especially fedler because rudi died." <<-- Worst text message of all time. I thought it was a really cruel joke at first but I received a phone call shortly after that confirmed what I had received earlier. It didn't actually hit me until I got to work later that evening thinking that I could make it through the day. But as I stood there it slowly started to hit me. But it didn't officially hit me until the words actually came out my mouth as I told my boss what had happened and that I needed to go home.

Of course I flew up to CT to support my family and one person in particular. That whole week was crazy. I never would have thought that the things that went down that week would ever happen. I lost 2 great people in my life that week. One is still around but after the conversation we had, I don't think things will ever go back to the way they used to be.

Moving on....
Life went back to normal, or as normal as they could get at that point. I lived life with no worries, was paying my bills months in advance, going out on the regular, just simply enjoying the finner things. I had even meet someone new and was enjoying that for what it was. Then things at work started getting a rough after the man that hired me, tracked me down while I was locked up and promoted me had gotten fired for doing some dumb shit. At that point the new manager, Napoleon as i liked to call her, seemed to make it a life mission to make my life miserable even after all the favors I had done for her. So I decided to transfer to another store closer to my house and get away from the madness. Of course, the store closer to me had to be full of ghetto hoodrats who had nothing to do with their lives. Within a week of starting, one of the girls there decided to take it upon herself to start a rumor that she had caught me and this gay dude that worked there kissing.... 0_o Seriously?! Of course it had to be the ugly bald chick with no teeth that felt the need to start the rumor which made it fairly easy to put her in her place.

Now that all of that is out, time to get to my present situation. Just before Thanksgiving this year, I was being accused of stealing 2 money order checks from my job after cashing them for a customer. Now, for anyone who has ever had a money order and cashed it, you would know that the VOID is printed nice and big across the front of the money order as well as on the back once it's been cashed. So its also safe to say that if anyone stole a money order AFTER it had been cashed would have to be a complete idiot in all sense of the word. That whole situation pretty much pissed me off beyond belief for several reasons. 1) because I was being accused of stealing, 2) because by accusing me of stealing, not only was my integrity being insulted but so was my intelligence, 3) I had no reason for anyone to assume that I would ever steal from my job considering I made it blatantly known that I was trying to move into management and I was in no need for money because all my bills were already taken care of. But of course, my job didn't see it that was so I was let go on Thanksgiving Eve. At this point, I had to let my family know that I wasn't going to be making it up to CT for the holidays and they could count me out. of course several people were not very happy about that but there was nothing I could do at that point: I was out of a job.

After sitting around the house for about a week thinking things over, I came to the conclusion that ALL these things that had been going on since my arrival back to GA was a sign.Not just any sign but an Almighty sign. I was not meant to live in ATL away from pretty much everyone that I knew or cared about. So I decided to take a lead of faith and took my last paycheck from my job and bought a ticket to come up for the holiday. Of course, me being who I am, I didn't tell anyone that I was going to be around and decided I would surprise everyone.

Since I've been here, things have been going pretty well. I haven't found a job yet but the search continues. I have not real stress and I'm just taking life one day at a time. I'm soon to get my real estates license for CT and NY. Looking at finally getting my culinary degree at the French Culinary Institute in SOHO this time next year. Overall, I do feel like deciding to finally accept the signs are going to pay off and that I've made the right decision by making this move. I am letting life take its course while also grabbing it by its horns and making things happen. Essentially... I'm happy