LOSER

I feel like a loser today. I really, really do... There is no getting around it. I lost my wife. I lost my family. I lost my mind for a while. I'm losing at the game of life and there is no restart button. My best efforts, thoughts, ideas, experiments all end in failure.

I can't tell you how many people tell me how I should be making more money, in a higher position of leadership, or doing something significant in the world. Yet, I do none of these things. My income is average. My life style is less than average. My impact appears to be minimal at best. And, I don't feel as though I have a career, but simply a job (a career has a direction. A job just comes with a paycheck).

My close friend may have summed it up perfectly, "You have no life...you can't even get a life." I laughed when he said it but I it hurts like hell because it's true. I live in a place where I have no family. I can't move and I don't have money to make this spot something that attracts folks or could entertain family. My never ending financial woes only serve to remind me of my great failure. No matter how they came to be they're mine now. I have little hope that the part time job will help solve anything. Typically, in such situations in my life I have found that time outruns my opportunities and leaves me holding a bag of shit. I'm in love with a woman but I have little to offer her and I can't make a move for more because of the baggage I'm carrying around. I'm a loser.

Despite busting my ass at work, taking on more responsibility without more money, and doing so with a smile I can't make a move. Yet, I see unqualified people all around me getting promotions, overtime, or conducting themselves in such a way that they should be fired but for some reason aren't. I have forces (those higher up) working against me. They squash my plans only to return to them later as though they were original. While I see people implement foolish things and receive accolades for them. I'm a loser.

There's a glass ceiling of wealth, prestige, and respect that I can only see and never achieve. I don't know how to get there. I don't know how to break it. I don't know how to go around it. I don't know how to find the steps to get up it. I don't know because I'm a loser. Folks don't see the loser on the outside. They all say I'm supremely confident and yet I know the truth. I'm a loser at my core. I used to think otherwise but moral victories have their limitations and winners eventually have a trophy to prove their triumph...I have nothing...I'm a loser.