Truesday: Hazard Of Occupation

And since they’re putting food in your mouth, you showed some appreciation and did right by them. All those shakes and moves produced some seriously badass results. It was like your laboratory, where you got the chance to fiddle with shit. To fill that black book. To hone your skills.

To sharpen those knives.

You suffered for the sake of their empire, but all the while were all-too conscious of just how profoundly positive your contribution had been. The ridiculously high premium put on your sweat, yours specifically, because they won the lotto when they found your ass. Golden hammer motherfucker. You counted every bean, meticulously noting the narrowing chasm between you and those who bought your blood-flowing hours.

And when it got narrow enough to reach across, your eyes got wide enough to seriously start looking for a way out and over.

Over and out.

Time pushed on, and you kept quietly pushing forward with the status quo, patiently waiting for the opportunity to regain control of the fruits provided by your genius and sheer awesomeness. If anyone there knew what you had started planning, the time you put into diagramming the execution, what you were secretly wishing for while in the sink holes of your head-locked thoughts- there’s no way they would have been so accommodating. They knew you were built for better, but seriously, do you think they would have guessed you’d leave like that? A parachute knitted from luxuriously silken “fuck y’all!”?

They never do. If it isn’t a surprise by an honest ignorance of the obvious, then it’s a surprise by a conscious denial of the obvious. Every time.

So here you are, making efforts to forge ahead as an autonomous entity, trying to do so from an already-established position in another, soon-to-be competing group. Well, then you can be sure to expect the haters to be clawing at their own mothers’ faces for a piece of what they (perhaps unreasonably) see as your sweet Benedict Arnold ass.

But is that your fault?

In a way, yes. Because you’ve decided to go Lone Wolf with what they see as their Cub: those skills you previously sold to them at a discount. You’ve made the conscious decision to cross over into the maligned “Them” from the wrong side of their Us-vs-Them side-defining dynamic. Sure, those people should seriously be supportive of you, because you’ve put yourself out there, and after all that work you did for them. I mean, shit. ALL THAT WORK. You don’t need your old confidants and fellow happy hour heroes fucking with your program any more than your doubt-addled mind already is.

Shit’s rough enough out here in big-boy world. No need to piss in a man’s cheerios when he’s already using water instead of milk, right?

Right.

But they’ll be there, I promise, cursing your name, threatening to crush the light from your eyes into patchouli dirt with a toilet brush, and then they’ll demand to drag your lifeless ass behind a VW Microbus. I’ve been those dudes. I’ve been chased by those dudes. One changed my oil once. You’ve been them a few times. Senators and Network Admins. They’re everyone at some point, everywhere, all the time.

And they will likely feel that you owe something to someone for something. Or so you’ll likely hear.

But again, is that YOUR fault?

In a way, no. Technically the work you did under their banner could have, with some ingenuity and shmoozability, been pulled off with one hand and a fading sense of consciousness. Pulled off like the plastic thank you bag after that sweet oxygen-deprived load’s passed.

Takes a trained hand though. Highly, highly trained with lightening reflexes. Catflexes.

In lighter words, it was probably you all along. And you were simply nice enough to pimp yourself out for a bit before you truly cut your teeth and realized you needed no representation but your own. You grew some balls, and that’s always commendable.

And that’s why going out on your own, no matter what the situation, should be applauded. Balls. Big fucking brass-coated, lead-filled ones.

Kudos to that. In all seriousness, kudos.

Why can’t all splinters be considered a positive situation? I mean, I’m sure there could have been some bad blood when El Sol y La Luna formed from a set of Las Manitas workers, but no. There wasn’t. In fact, those who started El Sol were fully supported the entire way. Even though they were setting up their shop right down the street. I mean right down the street. Walkable and shit. I know, because I’ve done it a couple of times: too drunk to hail a cab and too stupid to remember I lived up north at the time.

Those joints still LOVE each other.

Cheers to the future’s future.